D&D 5E Mike Mearls interview - states that they may be getting off of the 2 AP/year train.

[Aldarc]

I'm another guy who played plenty of 1st Ed. and 2nd Ed. The old armor class was counterintuitive and took all of a few seconds to understand. Convoluted? Nope. It wasn't hard to understand. It just wasn't the simplest thing to understand. Archaic? Nope. Rolling high comparing modifiers is older.

I can see folks preferring this or that edition. I do not understand fixating on bashing one mechanic that worked well enough to carry the RPG community for many, many years.

So you had a different experience or sense for the armor class system? Jolly for you. As I said in the post you quote, I am only attesting to my own sensibilities and experiences, and Thac0 comes across as incredibly Byzantine in comparison with the d20 system adopted by 3e onwards. Whatever benefits Thac0 may have, the simplicity of d20 outweighs in excess. Again, IMHO, if that was not clear enough for you.

 

[guachi]

I never found descending AC to be complicated. If only because using "class" to describe a quality of something has historically meant lower is better whether it's first class mail or a first class petty officer.

But even if I didn't, all THAC0 does is use subtraction instead of adding. The problem for a system isn't subtracting or adding, it's subtracting or adding large numbers. Specifically for subtracting, it's subtracting where the difference is large.

At least with THAC0, once the difference grew to 10+ you either automatically hit or automatically missed basically every monster there is as almost no creature had an AC above 10 or below -10. In that respect THAC0 is easier as you can easily discard certain values out of hand without having to do the harder math (where harder is where the result is greater than 10).

For a system of ascending AC the difficulty in the math comes when the bonuses are high. A '+ to hit' of, say, +27 makes the math a little more difficult than if the bonus is +7.

For me as a DM the problem isn't THAC0 or + to hit. The problem is actually remembering what the THAC0 or + to hit of the monster actually is. I spend far more time looking those up (usually a few seconds) than I spend doing math (usually fractions of a second).

Heck, I can do the math for either THAC0 or ascending AC in the time it takes me to say "I hit AC..." So in that respect there is not a lick of difference between the two systems.

 

[MackMcMacky]

So you had a different experience or sense for the armor class system? Jolly for you. As I said in the post you quote, I am only attesting to my own sensibilities and experiences, and Thac0 comes across as incredibly Byzantine in comparison with the d20 system adopted by 3e onwards. Whatever benefits Thac0 may have, the simplicity of d20 outweighs in excess. Again, IMHO, if that was not clear enough for you.

"Jolly for you...if that was not clear enough for you" - Are you intentionally trying to set a negative tone?

"incredibly Byzantine in comparison" is hyperbole. I see the benefits of the "d20" system of rolling d20s. I just don't buy any implication that THAC0 was incredibly Byzantine, cumbersome, etc. And I am "only attesting to my own sensibilities and experiences" as well.

 

[Oofta]

"Jolly for you...if that was not clear enough for you" - Are you intentionally trying to set a negative tone?

"incredibly Byzantine in comparison" is hyperbole. I see the benefits of the "d20" system of rolling d20s. I just don't buy any implication that THAC0 was incredibly Byzantine, cumbersome, etc. And I am "only attesting to my own sensibilities and experiences" as well.

I think this is a great example of "Your Mileage May Vary". The majority of people I played with (some of whom were new to the game) back in the day found THAC0 annoying, confusing and bizarre. They were relieved when 3.5 came out and fixed it.

Of course YMMV.

 

[MackMcMacky]

I think this is a great example of "Your Mileage May Vary". The majority of people I played with (some of whom were new to the game) back in the day found THAC0 annoying, confusing and bizarre. They were relieved when 3.5 came out and fixed it.

Of course YMMV.

I get that THAC0 bothered some people. I don't get the volume about it. 2nd Edition did not die because of THAC0. It declined because of business decisions and circumstances for TSR. And plenty of people chose not to jump on board for 3rd Edition and I doubt it had much to do with moving away from THAC0. There are far more significant differences between 2nd and later editions than how you do basic math to determine if you hit.

 

[Oofta]

I get that THAC0 bothered some people. I don't get the volume about it. 2nd Edition did not die because of THAC0. It declined because of business decisions and circumstances for TSR. And plenty of people chose not to jump on board for 3rd Edition and I doubt it had much to do with moving away from THAC0. There are far more significant differences between 2nd and later editions than how you do basic math to determine if you hit.

To a certain degree I think THAC0 is just a shorthand for "older versions of D&D had design flaws that had been carried because of tradition".

THAC0 is wonky and the reason it was kept was because of tradition, not because it was good game design. There were some sacred cows carried over that really should have been cleaned up with 2E. In my mind it's a poster child of sacred cows if you will.

We still have some sacred cows to this day of course, but most (like the standard ability scores) are there because they work reasonably well with the structure of the rest of the game.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

[MackMcMacky]

To a certain degree I think THAC0 is just a shorthand for "older versions of D&D had design flaws that had been carried because of tradition".

THAC0 is wonky and the reason it was kept was because of tradition, not because it was good game design. There were some sacred cows carried over that really should have been cleaned up with 2E. In my mind it's a poster child of sacred cows if you will.

We still have some sacred cows to this day of course, but most (like the standard ability scores) are there because they work reasonably well with the structure of the rest of the game.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Perhaps those sacred cows achieved different goals. Later editions place far more emphasis on character builds than earlier editions. Characters in earlier editions primarily diverged through acquisition of spells and magic items rather than "dipping" classes, feats, and the like. There is no objective argument that one taste is better than the other. Rather, it is plausible that younger players are more comfortable with the later edition approach due to the time in which they lived and, for some, their lack of familiarity with older editions.

 

[bmfrosty]

All that I know is that every time I play an old D&D CRPG, I have to look up THAC0 and right it in my head. I've never had that problem with 3.0 onward. Roll a d20, add your modifiers (whatever those happen to be) and meet or beat the challenge rating is intuitive, and all that has to be remembered is if you have to meet it or if you have to beat it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I keep seeing statements about THAC0 being/not being hard, or taking/not taking more time...I can't remember any person, in my whole dnd playing life, criticising THAC0 on the basis that it is hard to do/use, or that it takes longer.

The criticism is that it is a silly system, that some people find counter intuitive to remember, and others just find annoying on the basis that there is no reason for it to work the way it does, and nearly any other system would be strictly better.

And it's not just young people today, or people who are used to other systems. These criticisms were common, IME, when 2e was still the current edition. The group I started in used THAC0, but then the group I played with right after them used the same system as Alternity.

And rolling under made sense to me, and the other, slightly newer player. I was like, ok negative bonuses is still just...weird, if nothing else, but fine, at least when I get better at something the number increases.

Then, when we finally gave that up and switched to 3.5 (skipping 3.0) it was like Christmas. Finally, the system wasn't designed like it was trying to keep out the dirty casuals, or by a guy who was too much in the weeds to really take stock of the system's idiosyncrasies and see if they were actually worth keeping or not. I was never convinced it wasn't both.

 

[Jester David]

I keep seeing statements about THAC0 being/not being hard, or taking/not taking more time...I can't remember any person, in my whole dnd playing life, criticising THAC0 on the basis that it is hard to do/use, or that it takes longer.

The criticism is that it is a silly system, that some people find counter intuitive to remember, and others just find annoying on the basis that there is no reason for it to work the way it does, and nearly any other system would be strictly better.

And it's not just young people today, or people who are used to other systems. These criticisms were common, IME, when 2e was still the current edition. The group I started in used THAC0, but then the group I played with right after them used the same system as Alternity.

And rolling under made sense to me, and the other, slightly newer player. I was like, ok negative bonuses is still just...weird, if nothing else, but fine, at least when I get better at something the number increases.

Then, when we finally gave that up and switched to 3.5 (skipping 3.0) it was like Christmas. Finally, the system wasn't designed like it was trying to keep out the dirty casuals, or by a guy who was too much in the weeds to really take stock of the system's idiosyncrasies and see if they were actually worth keeping or not. I was never convinced it wasn't both.

I remember in my last few years of 2e, writing down the full chart of my hit numbers at the top of my character sheet to speed up the math. So I could just say "I hit AC 3" without having to add modifiers and subtract.

The thing is, they knew it was a funky and counter-intuitive system back when they were working on 2nd Edition as well. They talked about switching to positive AC. But opted not to, to keep 2e as close to 1st Edition as possible to ease the transition of existing players...