Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7851395" data-attributes="member: 6873517">I think it was a necessary change if you were getting rid of lookup tables. The fact that 3E went nuts with modifiers is a separate issue and they shouldn't be conflated. The assumption in the 1E days was that you were not doing any calculation yourself. You were simply looking up number in tables, which is, obviously, not very difficult. 2E maintained this to some degree, but the community was going in the direction of computing numbers themselves.The problem is that 1E didn't actually explain the underlying arithmetic that was behind the tables. Partly this was due to the fact that there often wasn't an actual pattern that maintained itself amenable to simple arithmetic. For example, the 1E to hit tables had long flat spots in them in places at the top of the die. I can understand the intent of the flat spot (it is explained in the section on attacks) but it breaks the use of a simple rule. However, it cannot be understated that the authors were old wargamers, who were very comfortable with table lookup and were pretty simulationist. The deviations from pattern were typically there to avoid things like automatic hits on a modified 20.</blockquote>