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<blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9680376" data-attributes="member: 7026594">I think it's &quot;ironic&quot; (at least in the colloquial sense) that Gary knew that the descending AC system was awkward and had issues and yet he made the decision to stick with it for reverse compatibility JUST before D&amp;D's sales launched through the stratosphere and its player base vastly expanded beyond those existing folks who were used to the descending system.Remember that as soon as you start getting into negative armor classes, as you regularly do with more powerful monsters and once PC fighters have a few protective magic items, you start to lose the intuitive value of &quot;first class&quot;.&nbsp; &quot;Zero class&quot; is better, and &quot;-1 class&quot; better still.&nbsp; These are terms divorced from the conventional notion of class ranking, so we're getting into specialized game terminology with them.While some people are and were familiar with class rankings, everyone's familiar with the general notion of higher/bigger numbers being better.&nbsp; And addition is always a simpler mathematical operation than subtraction (in part thanks to the former being commutative).&nbsp; Every group I've ever played descending AC with has had at least one player who stumbles and hesitates when doing THAC0 or similar calculations.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mannahnin, post: 9680376, member: 7026594"] I think it's "ironic" (at least in the colloquial sense) that Gary knew that the descending AC system was awkward and had issues and yet he made the decision to stick with it for reverse compatibility JUST before D&D's sales launched through the stratosphere and its player base vastly expanded beyond those existing folks who were used to the descending system. Remember that as soon as you start getting into negative armor classes, as you regularly do with more powerful monsters and once PC fighters have a few protective magic items, you start to lose the intuitive value of "first class". "Zero class" is better, and "-1 class" better still. These are terms divorced from the conventional notion of class ranking, so we're getting into specialized game terminology with them. While some people are and were familiar with class rankings, everyone's familiar with the general notion of higher/bigger numbers being better. And addition is always a simpler mathematical operation than subtraction (in part thanks to the former being commutative). Every group I've ever played descending AC with has had at least one player who stumbles and hesitates when doing THAC0 or similar calculations. [/QUOTE]

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