D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[Micah Sweet]

You liked THAC0? Seriously!?

Yeah, it was easiest enough to understand. And it certainly wasn't a primary reason why TSR failed, as @Neonchameleon implied.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You forgot the completely busted Mythos priests!

Specialty priest were one of the most awesome concepts in D&D, and have never been equalled. Execution can always be better and is subject to preference in any case.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Why don't the player's sheet just have +10 to hit next to their weapon? There is no need to recalculate it for every roll.

In 3e there was. Not only situational, but you had different modifiers for your attack bonus

2e was just a simpler system with fewer situational modifiers. 99% of your attacks had the same bonus, so literally no math is needed. Roll a 15, see that hits AC 0 (or whatever) for that weapon. No math is simpler and faster than even one step of math.

 

[billd91]

Yes. Because it was faster. Especially when compared to the edition that replaced it. Any modifiers you had were already factored.

THAC0: "I rolled a 15, so I hit AC 2."
3e: "I rolled a 15, then add +2 for strength. then +1 for the weapon, then +3 for my mastery, then +2 for flanked, etc. etc. etc."

Why did you stop pre-adding your inherent modifiers (str, weapon, mastery, etc) when you went to 3e?

THAC0 was faster than looking things up in a table like in 1e, but turning AC around to be ascending was an important usability fix.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yeah, it was easiest enough to understand. And it certainly wasn't a primary reason why TSR failed, as @Neonchameleon implied.

One of the reasons I think it was more intuitive that it gets credit for is because it uses the term "class". It's "Armor Class". When you rate things by class, the lower value the better. A "Class A" is better than "Class B". Petty officer 1st class is better than 3rd class. So it's intuitive that Armor Class, the lower value means better.

Sure, adding is more intuitive than subtracting, but I think the Armor Class system and THAC0 gets less credit than it deserves.

 

[Oofta]

In 3e there was. Not only situational, but you had different modifiers for your attack bonus
View attachment 296150

2e was just a simpler system with fewer situational modifiers. 99% of your attacks had the same bonus, so literally no math is needed. Roll a 15, see that hits AC 0 (or whatever) for that weapon. No math is simpler and faster than even one step of math.

I played a two-weapon fighter in 3.5 and played with people who had a tendency to buff my PC. I had made a sheet to add up all the bonuses I had for that particular fight. At higher levels, with multiple energy damage types on both weapons ... it was a lot. I color code dice so I can roll all of them at once which helped but rolling a handful of dice for a full round attack was a lot.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Why did you stop pre-adding your inherent modifiers (str, weapon, mastery, etc) when you went to 3e?

Look at my post above. 3e had way more situation modifiers you needed to consider.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Specialty priest were one of the most awesome concepts in D&D, and have never been equalled. Execution can always be better and is subject to preference in any case.

The ones in Allston's Complete Priests Handbook, that were clearly though-out, consistent, customizable, and even somewhat balanced (against eachother, anyway), and not as egregiously unfocused/faux-Christian as the traditional Cleric?

 

[FrozenNorth]

And? I didn't say they were min-maxed. I said they were decent. You don't have to have the best numbers theoretically possible in order to contribute.

You were suggesting that it didn’t matter that the fighter couldn’t really contribute in social situations because there was an exploration situation where he could shine… except he could be pretty easily outshone in that situation too, by a Rogue (or Bard) with expertise in Athletics.

In a game without feats, there is literally nothing a fighter could do that can compete with a Rogue with expertise in Athletics.

 

[billd91]

Look at my post above. 3e had way more situation modifiers you needed to consider.

Not if you were fighting things that wore armor or used shields. Then you had quite a few that 3e reduced down to ”flanking +2”. 3e did add more buff spells (which 3.5 then kind of cocked up by hosing the durations of some of them), but you didn’t have layer those on if you weren’t comfortable with them. The stepped base attack bonus was a new complication, but it did save you from having to vary your attack rate from round to round. Explaining that one drew a lot of blank stares back in the day.