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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7434395" data-attributes="member: 996">At the height of the fad, 1e AD&amp;D asked you to calculate your AC, rear AC, and shieldless AC, and various AC bonuses or penalties might or might not apply in various circumstances - including parrying, which added an amazing +1 AC, FWIW.&nbsp; 3.x got a lot of flak for separate AC, Touch AC, &amp; modifiers flying everywhere, but, if anything, it was significantly simplified from AD&amp;D.&nbsp; (Arguably, THAC0, for all the flack it got, was a slight simplification from 1e's two facing pages of attack matrices with their series of natural 20s.)&nbsp; 4e further simplified not only AC, but consolidated Touch AC and REF saves into a single REF defense, along with shifting FORT &amp; WILL to attacker-rolls resolution.&nbsp; 5e's handling of AC is still simple enough, but it returns many attacks to defender-rolls 'saves' and has six different categories of those compared with 3e's three categories, and, in addition to a relatively small number of bonuses/penalties, has advantage/disadvantage and randomized bonuses.&nbsp; 5e's prettymuch on a bounce as far as complexity of resolution is concerned.&nbsp; It wouldn't hurt to follow that trajectory and add a little more...&nbsp; One neat aspect could be that when you're 1st level, your proficiency probably won't give you a better 'parrying AC' than your armor, so it needn't even be considered until later, when players have more bandwidth for a little depth to the combat system.&nbsp; :shrug:Shields, OTOH, especially larger ones, could do with a very good AC vs ranged attacks from early on.&nbsp; Ranged needs to be taken down a peg, anyway, and enemies closing from behind a shield wall could help.&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7434395, member: 996"] At the height of the fad, 1e AD&D asked you to calculate your AC, rear AC, and shieldless AC, and various AC bonuses or penalties might or might not apply in various circumstances - including parrying, which added an amazing +1 AC, FWIW. 3.x got a lot of flak for separate AC, Touch AC, & modifiers flying everywhere, but, if anything, it was significantly simplified from AD&D. (Arguably, THAC0, for all the flack it got, was a slight simplification from 1e's two facing pages of attack matrices with their series of natural 20s.) 4e further simplified not only AC, but consolidated Touch AC and REF saves into a single REF defense, along with shifting FORT & WILL to attacker-rolls resolution. 5e's handling of AC is still simple enough, but it returns many attacks to defender-rolls 'saves' and has six different categories of those compared with 3e's three categories, and, in addition to a relatively small number of bonuses/penalties, has advantage/disadvantage and randomized bonuses. 5e's prettymuch on a bounce as far as complexity of resolution is concerned. It wouldn't hurt to follow that trajectory and add a little more... One neat aspect could be that when you're 1st level, your proficiency probably won't give you a better 'parrying AC' than your armor, so it needn't even be considered until later, when players have more bandwidth for a little depth to the combat system. :shrug: Shields, OTOH, especially larger ones, could do with a very good AC vs ranged attacks from early on. Ranged needs to be taken down a peg, anyway, and enemies closing from behind a shield wall could help. ;) [/QUOTE]

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