Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 4690793" data-attributes="member: 55271">No it doesn't. "You have to beat X to hit armor class 0" is just as legitimate as "you have to roll X to hit armor class 0". The phrase "to hit armor class 0" does nothing to distinguish between the two cases.Wow. Talk about your blatant apples-to-oranges comparison. You could just as easily argue that the 3rd Edition DM should know that no one at his table has a BAB of +11.This argument has a bit more traction. But (and this is an important but) it only matters if the DM announces the AC when combat begins.If the DM doesn't announce AC when combat begins, you have dramatically increased the bookkeeping the DM has to perform: They must now keep track of (or ask for) the THAC0 for each character; perform a calculation for the AC of each creature in the combat; either record them or repeat the calculation each time the PCs attack; and then do the comparison between the number rolled and the calculated to-hit number.In 3rd Edition, all of this record-keeping and calculation has been off-loaded to the players. They tell them their result, the DM compares it to the monster's AC, and that's it.More importantly, nothing about the BAB system prevents the calculation of a to-hit number once the target AC is known. (AC - attack bonus = to-hit number) Quite a few players at my 3rd Edition table do precisely that.But note the key phrase there: "once the target AC is known"This is the fundamental flaw with THAC0: In order to calculate a to-hit number, you need to perform a calculation using a piece of information that the attacker has (BAB or THAC0) and a piece of information that the defender has (AC). (In the BAB system, by contrast, the default calculation is performed on two pieces of information held by a single person -- the attacker. In both systems the result needs to be compared to a third piece of information.)The other problem with THAC0 is confusing nomenclature of descending AC in which a + is sometimes a penalty and sometimes a bonus.So the BAB system performs just as well as THAC0 does in a situation where a to-hit number can be calculated by the player. And it performs better than THAC0 does in a situation where the player cannot calculate the to-hit number (because AC is unknown). And it eliminates the confusing nomenclature of descending AC.How isAC - BAB = target numberany more or less intuitive thanTHAC0 - AC = target number?Umm... you are aware that AD&D also featured bonuses and penalties to BOTH attacks and armor class, right?</blockquote>

Verification