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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9772469" data-attributes="member: 7026594">THAC0 was a bit of a simplification from the tables with their repeating 20s.Most players clearly got the hang of descending AC and the needed calculations, but there was always a sub-set who had trouble with it.  There was almost always one or two at the table who had issues with the calculations, IME.Delta (who's a math professor as his day job) made <a href="https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-is-best-combat-algorithm.html" target="_blank">a pretty good argument for descending AC with the Target 20 formula</a> on his blog some years back, during peak OSR blog fervor.  But overall broad player sentiment seems to favor ascending AC as the most intuitive.The bonus stacking rules in AD&D were annoyingly arbitrary. 3E rationalized them with the bonus type rules, so you always knew what stacked with what. The math in combat for attack bonuses, OTOH, could get a little fiddly with all the potential situational bonuses and penalties, even though it was just adding or subtracting small modifiers.</blockquote>