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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dragonblade" data-source="post: 5756246" data-attributes="member: 2804">THAC0 is very easy. Its the number you need to hit an AC of 0.In 2e, AC went from 10 to -10. 10 was the worst AC and -10 was the best. If you had a THAC0 of say 15, that meant you could hit an enemy with an AC of 0 on a 15 or higher with a d20.If the monster you were fighting had an AC of 10, you would need to roll a 5 or higher. If the monster had -10, you would need to roll a 25. Since a 25 is impossible, you need a natural 20. (and technically a +5 sword as well, but since a natural 20 always hits, its enough).Another way to look at it is a positive enemy AC effectively gave you a bonus to your attack roll, while a negative AC subtracts from it. Likewise, the plus from a magical weapon, or other source, also gave you a bonus to your roll.So say, you have a THAC0 of 15 and rolled a 13 and are fighting a monster with AC 0, that would be a miss. But if you had a +2 or greater sword, you would add that bonus to your d20 attack roll and now you would hit since you reached the target number of 15.Generally, when we played 2e way back in the day, we would announce how far over or under THAC0 we were and then the DM would tell us whether we hit or not. That way the AC of the monster was sort of a secret. At least for the first couple of rounds till we did the math ourselves and figured out what rolls were hitting and what were missing.So if my THAC0 was 15 and I rolled a 17 after all bonuses were applied, then I would announce "I hit 2 above THAC0" or just "2 above". That tells the DM I rolled well enough to hit an AC of -2. Likewise, if I rolled a 10 after all bonuses, I would say I rolled "5 below", telling the DM I can hit an AC 5 or worse. But if the monster had an AC of 4 or better, I would miss.Make sense?I think a lot of confusion stems from the terminology used. You need to roll "above" THAC0 to hit a monster with a "negative" AC.</blockquote>

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