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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gryph" data-source="post: 5876025" data-attributes="member: 98071">I think they are connected. I think the reason they did away with the cap in 3e was because it didn't make sense for the ascending math of d20 to have caps anywhere. That "doesn't make sense" only became an issue in d20 versions because they were trying hard to make all of the various subsystems intuitive and identical. I very much doubt that there was ever a discussion on whether it was desirable to cap AC. The decision was rolled into "open-ended makes sense for d20".  This is mostly speculative, though I do remember WoTC promoting the open-endedness of d20 as making more sense then previous versions. Your earlier post was correct in that descending AC going to -10 never made sense. That was part of my very first post in this thread. The very non-intuitiveness of that system took it off the table in our many and varied houseruling discussions.  A lot of system balance properties in 1e were non-intuitive and undocumented and most of the damage done to them occured in 2e by the post-Gygax TSR designers. What Tweet and Cook and company did for 3e made perfect sense coming off of 2e, I just don't think they examined their own assumptions concerning open-ended math systems closely enough. I think there is some reason to believe that the Mearls led team agrees to some extent. Hence, the columns referencing flatter math and threats remaing viable across more levels. In short, d20 system math is easier and more elegant but prone to scaling issues that need to be addressed.</blockquote>

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