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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 4867360" data-attributes="member: 22779">Obviously, he's not.  Not because he can't hit, but because he dies after the first time the minotaur hits him.  In other words, his failure has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the opponent.  However, let's take a more realistic situation and a 7th level fighter (1e AD&D) is fighting a minotaur by himself.  A fairly reasonable challenge.  It shouldn't kill the fighter, but, it should give him a bit of a run for his money.He's no longer hitting on 13 though.  Now, he's hitting on about a 7 or better, between additional magics, possible potions (like Heroism or Super Heroism) and the fact that his THAC0 has jumped.  Suddenly, he's hitting a whole lot.  Meanwhile, our poor minotaur, who does not gain any bonuses to hit, has to contend with the 7th level fighter's negative AC because he's got a +1 or +2 shield and a +1 suit of plate mail and quite possibly a Dex adjustment in there as well.Because it works both ways.  The PC's armor classes do certainly start climbing.  Rings of Protection, Cloak of Protection, magic armor and whatnot certainly start to add up in a hurry.  Add a couple more points if you allow Full Plate care of Unearthed Arcana.  Suddenly, the PC's rarely being hit, while he's hitting very, very often.  The challenges very quickly become a joke.  As Ariosto points out, by name level, we're super heroes.   However, since monsters did not gain any bonuses to their hit points, all their HP came from straight hit dice.  As JG Browning has repeatedly pointed out, hit points max out at about 100 for non-unique monsters.  The poor minotaur, with his 6d8+6 hit points, should have 30 hit points.  The fighter blows through that like tissue paper because he's hitting the majority of his attacks.  I disagree.  IME, at high levels, the only real challenge to characters became save or die effects.  Straight up combat was a joke.  The fighters had AC's that were so low (-5 is not that hard to reach, particularly if you played modules) that the monsters were missing far more often than they were hitting, and, when they hit, their damage was so low that it wasn't a real threat.  It became playing on God mode.  You blitzed your way through armies because nothing could hit you and you obliterated everything around you.Ok, that's hyperbole, but, you get the point.</blockquote>

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