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30 years old. Started with 3.5 in 2005. Been watching anime since I first found Ghost in the Shell and Black Magic M66 back in the early 90s. Cut my teeth on Redwall, boi ecky. Tolkien just doesn't do it for me. David Eddings is my light reading. Don't have an opinion about prior editions, I just talk smack to rile Kthulu up. 4E just didn't have the support I was looking for, so I became a 3.5 grognard. I've been a player, and I've been a DM, and never felt more important in either role. And don't call me a GM, DM is only trademarked in print. Heavily introverted if you can believe that. Pathfinder is just 3.5 splat, but you gotta go with the flow. Just because you can compensate for flaws does not mean they disappear. There is no best setting except the one you're running right now. Choose your difficulty, Novice, Medium, Hard, Dante Must Die, whatever. Good and Evil are just labels, but sometimes you NEED those labels. ALL HAIL BRITANNIA!
Oh yeah. And i'm being completely serious here... THACO was better. It made more sense, was less complicated, less confusing and was easier math. There. I said it.
When my brother purchased the Gygax memorial AD&D books, I made a point to read up on THACO. I still don't understand it well. It's all backwards.
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When my brother purchased the Gygax memorial AD&D books, I made a point to read up on THACO. I still don't understand it well. It's all backwards.
It's pretty damned simple. To Hit Armor Class 0: the number you need to roll to hit AC 0. Simply subtract the opponent's AC from your THAC0 to find the number you need to roll to hit them.
Let's say your THAC0 is 10. If the bad guy has an AC of 5, then you have to roll a 5 or better to hit him. If his AC is -5, you need to roll a 15 or better. It's not complicated, it's merely subtraction. Far less messy than d20's glut of modifiers, in my opinion.
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Oh yeah. And i'm being completely serious here... THACO was better. It made more sense, was less complicated, less confusing and was easier math. There. I said it.
I am sorry, but i vehemently disagree. THACO was one of the main reasons we converted to 3E. Saving throws and non weapon proficiencies were the other two.
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Geez, every time I try to think about THAC0 it's like trying to grab a greased pig...
Edit: Wait, I think I have a hold on it.
0 is the target number, and THAC0 and AC are the two modifiers to the die roll.
I find having AC be the target number and To Hit being the only modifier to the die roll much simpler.
I guess if i had a choice in how to improve thaco i'd have made the base armor class 0 instead of 10. then every advantage would have meant a negative number. Which it should be. because its a penalty to the guy swinging at you. it shouldnt be a bonus to your inability to get hit. you're not making a saving throw against getting hit, so making it a bonus in a positive direction seems more annoying to me personally.
But I think liking THACO firmly puts me in the grognard category.
I know its maybe not the best thing for 'the industry' but I feel like the idea that thaco was so difficult for some people and the possibility that it might discourage people who didnt understand it from playing was actually a good thing. I know morally and from a business perspective its right to want your game to be accessible to everyone, but as a player and even dare I say a game designer i'm not absolutely sure i'd be happy with having people playing my game who ask questions like 'do you need hands in order to use 'laying on of hands'... I know that such statements are what makes me a less than ideal capitalist. (or a great capitalist if you're a company like ferrari or lamborghini or rolls royce)
Thats why they called it 'Advanced' D&D. If it was too confusing for you, you were not 'advanced'.
I know that says horrible things about me. Horrible but true. Oh and I agree with Jerald on Magic the Gathering. What a horrible thing to do to the gaming industry. You think i'm insulting the community by saying i want thaco to keep out the simpletons? Turn our hobby into pokemon. Adds to my book of grudges.
Geez, every time I try to think about THAC0 it's like trying to grab a greased pig...
Edit: Wait, I think I have a hold on it.
0 is the target number, and THAC0 and AC are the two modifiers to the die roll.
I find having AC be the target number and To Hit being the only modifier to the die roll much simpler.
Actually the simplest way is to think of THAC0 as the target number of the roll while AC is modifier to the die roll. That's why negative AC is good for defender (because it's penalty to the attacker's roll) and positive AC is bad for defender (because it's bonus to the attacker's roll).
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But I think liking THACO firmly puts me in the grognard category.
THAC0 had its moment in the sun. It freed us from having to lookup our attack results on a table. All you had to do was subtract your die roll from your THAC0 and that was the AC you hit.
That said, BAB is much easier. If I ever went back to 2e, I'm turning the ACs around for usability. Period.
But I think liking THACO firmly puts me in the grognard category.
So deeply that to see the Sun you have to pass through three different dungeons stacked on the top of each other.
I've never really played AD&D, despite owning the DM Guide, Player's Guide, and Monster Manual. I'm sure it's easy to pick up if you play with people that understand the system. For me, trying to learn it on my own, it's confusing. The way you've described it makes much more sense than what I've read in the books and discerned from the tables (good god, Gygax loved tables/charts).
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39 can't believe I'm that old. Started with 1st edition but played every edition. Oddly I fit into the second group more so then the first, but don't really fit either if you know what I mean. The only edition of D&D I can't stand is OD&D (sorry grognards). Also played around with gurps, hero, and palladium.
Oh, I really want to make a players options remake for the OGL, only with more classes, races and skills & powers and everything, ha (even alignments). And, I love anime and manga (i even tried, unsuccessfully, to tech myself Japanese, many times).
Ah yes... And if you have to use a map. It must be a hex map. I'm surprised how far into the pimsleur japanese i've managed to get just from being an anime watcher and martial artist. Heck. i'm even surprised how far i've been able to get into pimsleur russian despite having practically no exposure at all to that in my everyday life. I already know too much french so I don't even bother seeing how far along i'd be in that.
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I know its mean to use 'thaco's too hard' as a player filter, but if you're day job is to be so angry, jaded or thick that when i ask for a no sauce and no cheese on my burger I can still manage to drive away with a burger with sauce and cheese (and lord knows what else) on it then I'm glad when my games have filters on them... There's probably a nicer way to say that but being a grognard has never been about being nice. And if such filters mean 'being a gamer' is only for geeks nerds and dorks, then i'd like to be able to say I was a gamer nerdgeekdork not just before it was 'cool'... but before it was 'easy'.
I mean you gotta set your lower threshhold somewhere.
And for your japanese I think you remembered it right.
Oh yeah. And i'm being completely serious here... THACO was better. It made more sense, was less complicated, less confusing and was easier math. There. I said it.
Agree, because weirdly when you got into the to hit + of 3rd, it started to get out of control after a while. I miss old thaco and its steady progression (and thus betray my name, urrrrk suicide).
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(good god, Gygax loved tables/charts).
You can never have too many tables and charts. They are very delicious.
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I love me some charts. One of the best influences of old D&D.
But I think liking THACO firmly puts me in the grognard category.THAC0 had its moment in the sun. It freed us from having to lookup our attack results on a table. All you had to do was subtract your die roll from your THAC0 and that was the AC you hit.
That said, BAB is much easier. If I ever went back to 2e, I'm turning the ACs around for usability. Period.
+1
I rember looking at the New 2nd ed book and dancing a jig of joy seeing that the dreaded Combat Matrix(or the dreaded Combat Wheel that made it easier...slightly) was gone.
THAC0 was a not that bad of a solution to it...without changing too much.
But the BaB system is so much better.
Before this escalates, let's just agree that both BaB and THAC0 have their goods and bads.
Some people like the former, others the latter.
Oh yeah. And i'm being completely serious here... THACO was better. It made more sense, was less complicated, less confusing and was easier math. There. I said it.I am sorry, but i vehemently disagree. THACO was one of the main reasons we converted to 3E. Saving throws and non weapon proficiencies were the other two.
Add the 3.0/3.5 changes to the magic system (particularly the item creation system) and I'm with you 100%.
I've played every combat system D&D has used since the very first pamphlet rulebooks ("OD&D" now, I guess?) and IMHO for simplicity and ease of play there is just no comparison to the new "AC = d20 number to hit".... so much so that, looking back, I'm amazed it took so long for someone to figure it out.
However, if some folks prefer the older systems it's their game - so, go for it.
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34 years, gaming since 1994-5. I begin with Lord of the Rings, the Red Book, like many people I know here on Spain. I think of myself more like the second gamer (great fan of Anime, Super-heroes and Videogames) but some details from 1.
I remained with LotR for like a year or two, and later begin with Dragonlance on D&D 2 Ed. Really liked Dragonlance, FR was good but not nearly as much, but when I find it,I loved Planescape. For me and my friends, the pass from 2 Ed to 3 Ed was fantastic (except for the 3.0 bard), but really disliked 4 Ed; we buy the basics books, read them, try 1-2 sessions, and forget them.
Favorites RPG are basically D&D /Pathfinder, WoD / Exalted and Legend of 5 Rings. We have not played much outside that ones. Cthulhu has never been my cup of tea, but here gamers really like it.
Gaming group has been fairly stable for like 6-7 years. On that time, I have roleplayed very few outside my circle of friends. We rotate DMs, but I am one of the more frequent DM. Many of us have job with strange timetable (I feel really afortunate for having a stable job; Spain have a serious problem there), so we play like this:
Players 1-2-3-4: Make campaign A
Players 1-3-4-6: Make campaign B
Players 1-2-3-5: Make campaign C
One campaign for each player distribution possibility. Plays great, only problem is that campaings advance a bit slow.
For many years we always do homebrew (except sometimes for 5 rings) but the last two years have been playing AP's, and liking them, but slowly we are returning to self made adventures.
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26, I started off 10 years ago with 3.0 and played very rarely since I tend to run more with the sports and outdoors crowd. Very much into martial arts and literature.
Found my current group online 5 years ago, we're now good friends even out of game. We play every other weekend, ususally 10-15 session homebrew adventures with rotating GMs and rotating games. The two of us that got married last year actually set up a gaming room in their new home.
Don't much care for anime nor manga (with few exceptions), used to be heavily into comic books; best fantasy is Martin, Moorcock is overrated.
Pathinder is very archetyipical and works fine but my heart lies with Mutants & Masterminds and the FATE system. Love non-traditional, non-european fantasy. Not a fan of grimdark settings.
I was just a boy when I started, but I am so glad I got to play AD&D in the early 90s (I think I beat you to it Alaryth, just). Better than any t.v program going, better than playing outside. Ah youth.
Airon, I've known so many gamers into martial arts and obscure literature. It really attracts the crowd. One guy I know trained with one of the Gracies, another is into ninjitsu, one is into Gempei poetry, plenty are into Lovecraft and 20th century horror.
I'm mid 30's, I started with 2ed, I love Touhou, and despise unnecessary character death. I still say DM and mean it, although I'm willing to work with players. I use mostly custom settings. I think 4e wasn't a good idea. As much as I've had some crazy things happen in games, it's not related to any anime I've watched. I'm introverted by circumstance, though I can be extroverted when the situation allows.
So yeah, mostly a mix. Also, I don't really like the games for Touhou, just the characters and the fandom. :3
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13. Read an article 5 years back in a magazine, started getting interested. Dad, a Type A player, was interested, so we went to Total Con 2012 to get a taste for it, and I got hooked. Got Pathfinder RPG Core Rules for my birthday, read them enough that I can level up my dad's character from him. Mostly play PFS, thinking of GMing a ROTRL home to get mom and my little brother in too.
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27, and ridiculously fond of adventures where nobody is explicitly good or evil (including gods and outsiders) and players must weigh the morality of their actions and their allegiances without the help of handy alignment labels. I loathe random character death and prefer that death only occurs when plot-relevant. A satisfying death (from any number of classic death tropes; redemption equals death, hoisted by his own petard, heroic sacrifice, villainous sacrifice, etc.) is far more important than any whining people might make about the game not being 'dangerous'. Your life may not be in danger, but I will threaten your friends, family, and very sense of right and wrong in the world. Death prevention/raising are easier than ever, but detect evil does not exist here. Those gleaming, golden-winged angels may not be the automatic good guys you expect them to be, and those horned, firey abominations from the pits might be rather amiable.
In the last fantasy game I ran, two nations were going to war. One was stealing ancestral land from the other and refusing all prior claims. The other was enslaving or exiling all nonhuman races found within their borders. Both sides thought they were right for various reasons, with sympathetic and antagonistic NPCs on both sides. I enjoy playing in such games, but other local GMs seem to prefer straight up bash-evil-in-the-face plots.
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Yikes. A quick scan of ages and I notice I'm definitely at the far end of the curve. 50+
I remember when we had to roll our dice three miles up hill in a snowstorm. Seriously though, I remember not being able to get polyhedral dice and having to use cups full of chits.
Now, get off my graph paper, you kids!
Yikes. A quick scan of ages and I notice I'm definitely at the far end of the curve. 50+
I remember when we had to roll our dice three miles up hill in a snowstorm. Seriously though, I remember not being able to get polyhedral dice and having to use cups full of chits.
Now, get off my graph paper, you kids!
LOL!
Gotcha beat, Earl. I'll be 61 this year, but it's a great view from waaaay out here on the edge. ;D
Somewhere I still have the first set of polyhedra dice that TSR put out.... the ones made of the rather soft injection plastic, so that the edges wore down after a while until you had more of a "ball" than a "die". :D
Good to know some of the veterans my generation learned from are still out there gaming, Fitzwalrus!
And those dice... are those the ones that were hollow inside?
46.
Started with Holmes basic, then moved to 1st AD&D. Skipped Second - when I looked at the core books, I saw lots of mechanical things I liked gone, and lots of mechanical things I hated still there. So I kept playing my houserules 1st ed AD&D, and mostly played HERO system.
3rd ed brought me back to D&D.
4E almost made me stop (I did take a few years off, and just concentrated on HERO).
I came back with Pathfinder, and the playtest for next.
My style -
GM is god. He sets the rules of the world (what races, classes, etc are allowed, what the setting is ect). Those things are generally inarguable.
However the GM pitches the idea of what he wants to the group. If they want to play that particular run, then they abide by those restrictions. The fact that every player in our group GMs, and that we usually do this about a month before we start playing that game makes this a work.
We usually spend the first 30 minutes of each session devoted to the upcoming game - communal character ideas and backgrounds and how to tie the characters to the world. Then we play that session.
As a GM I tend to balance fights, and the characterization and interplay between PCs and NPCs are as important as mysteries, or fighting. As the entire game is designed for the PCs I tend to try for no character death. There are lots of non-death fail states that can lead to roleplaying and further adventure. Having played Superhero games for years helps there.
As a player, I don't think tactics or mechanics I become my character. I make all choices from in character choice even if it is not the best tactically. I've got the Pathfinder/3.x (and HERO) rules down to the fact that thinking about them does not break immersion (I am a huge proponent of system mastery.
The only input I want in a game while playing is only what my character can do. I generally dislike drama editing or Hero points or what have you. If my character cannot do it, then I as a player don't want the ability (now a limited in game resource that the character is aware of, and knows where he stands in relation to that I am okay with - that is why the Mythic Points don't bother me).
For book background, Tolkien, Eddings, Donaldson, Fiest.
I tried reading Fafrd& mouser, Conan, Burroughs, Elric and I learned I detest sword and sorcery genre. Give me high fantasy any day.
My games Good and Evil are palpable forces in the universe. But that is for Big E and Big G - evil clerics (any evil spell) undead, demons etc. Lots of middle ground. I don't like darkness (grimdark) in the game, unless it is there for the heroes to triumph over. Settings with little/no hope bore me to tears (Warhammer RPG is right out).
Paladins are such are very at home in my games. I love alignments, and I tell any prospective player that I do not allow non-good alignments. Evil is Right Out and Neutral I am leery of. I do make that clear upfront to anyone wanting to play my games. People acting in evil fashion, or has truck with dark forces get penalized XP.
I tend to start games in Pathfinder at 3rd, and I find the game really takes off around 8th.
All I'm sayin is that I understood not only how THACO worked when I was 11 years old but 'why it was built the way it was' when I was 11 years old. There are at least two other threads here were I have shown that I really dont care much about fancy high end math, but THACO is not fancy high end math. Its still a number line.
And people complain about the thaco table... but the table for a fighter was so simple it didnt need a table. Thaco=21-level.
To hear people say its confusing or complicated just sounds funny. Especially considering how many optimizers play this game, its incredibly more... I wont say complicated... comprehensive? uh... Whats the word for a billion different ways to get a billion different bonuses to the same stat... Diverse?... and nuanced and mathy this time around than it ever was in 2e.
Of course I also am on record as liking palladium's armor as armor ratings and being damagable equipment that needs to be replaced and the whole sdc/mdc thing. For people who like their games gritty, having gear that just eventually breaks can be a nice flavor or at the bare minimum a decent money sink
Thac0 was relativally easy on low level... but at high level, when both Thac0 and AC was negative, it could be a real pain in the ass.
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Thac0 was relativally easy on low level... but at high level, when both Thac0 and AC was negative, it could be a real pain in the ass.
+1
It was still workable, but a considerable pain in the ass imo.
Good to know some of the veterans my generation learned from are still out there gaming, Fitzwalrus!
And those dice... are those the ones that were hollow inside?
Don't know if they're hollow (never cut one open to see) but definitely are lighter than dice made from the harder, denser plastic - these are more like the plastic from injected plastic model kits, and judging by the marks on the dice that's probably how they were made.
They really did wear down over time - by the time more professionally-made dice were available a year or two later my original d20 would roll clear across the table and off onto the floor if I put any force behind the roll at all. :D
And people complain about the thaco table... but the table for a fighter was so simple it didnt need a table. Thaco=21-level.
Oh, the problem wasn't figuring out what the fighter's THAC0 was in 1e. It was dealing with the repetitive 20s on the table that screwed up the use of the THAC0 system that were hard to deal with.
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I don't get how the negative AC thing throws people off if they graduated 4th grade.
Thac0 of 17 vs AC of 4 = 17-4= 13 to hit
Thac0 of 11 vs. AC of -2 = 11- -2 = 13 to hit.
Thaco of 15 vs AC of -6 = 21 to hit...meaning you need a 20 to get auto successPositive and negative rules should not be complicated to ANYONE.
The fact things are "streamlined" now to only go up instead of some things like Thaco going down is probably an improvement, but I think the Thac0 hate is kind of silly. I'd be more concerned with the fact you rolled for HP at 1st level or the spell capabilities of early magic users.
Adding positive numbers is easier than subtraction or doing any operations with negative numbers. Why put unnecessary difficulties in people's way? That's why BAB and increasing ACs is, from a usability standpoint, a win over THAC0.
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Adding positive numbers is easier than subtraction or doing any operations with negative numbers. Why put unnecessary difficulties in people's way? That's why BAB and increasing ACs is, from a usability standpoint, a win over THAC0.I don't get how the negative AC thing throws people off if they graduated 4th grade.
Thac0 of 17 vs AC of 4 = 17-4= 13 to hit
Thac0 of 11 vs. AC of -2 = 11- -2 = 13 to hit.
Thaco of 15 vs AC of -6 = 21 to hit...meaning you need a 20 to get auto successPositive and negative rules should not be complicated to ANYONE.
The fact things are "streamlined" now to only go up instead of some things like Thaco going down is probably an improvement, but I think the Thac0 hate is kind of silly. I'd be more concerned with the fact you rolled for HP at 1st level or the spell capabilities of early magic users.
Except, as Vincent pointed out, the abundance of bonuses from every source under the sun quickly turns the simplicity of the bare-bones d20 system into a horrible mess.
Whereas the worst that happens with THAC0 is having to subtract a negative number! Ye gods! Elementary school mathematics! THE HORROR!!!
And the very fact that you can apply both a holy and a profane bonus to the same roll makes the d20 system as anti-intuitive and utterly ridiculous as can possibly be conceived.
Thats pretty much it. The way people talk about it, its as if 2nd grade math broke peoples sense of immersion. Just because your armor class is an imaginary number doesnt mean its the square root of a negative number...
Its still just a number line. You did it when you were 7. We're not trying to orchestrate a moon landing (and even if we were you've got an iphone... so you now have a better computer in your pocket than they had in the ship that actually did make it to the moon).
If you're the kind of person who thought in their head 'man. I remember back when I was 7 that whole 'number line thing' was really my nemesis... And to some degree despite having my diploma it still gives me trouble to this day...
CURSE YOU NUMBER LINE!!! HOW YOU VEX ME!
Well... Then I guess pathfinder is definitely the game for you?
I didnt say its what you said.
I said "If you are the kind of person"...
If you are not that kind of person then that post is not about you.
Unless it is.
And my post 'thats pretty much it' was more a reply in agreement to kthulhu's post than a reply to yours. Your post was not up yet when I was typing my reply to Kthulhu. And of course you also replied and quoted my post, proving that I like to keep editing my post until my hour is up.
I'm not saying you're a doofus. Clearly by your reply though the idea of adding negatives together, though not complicated for you, you might say it 'does add a 'stressor'', no matter how minor. (I just dont happen to experience it as a stressor personally)... Throw in a half dozen additional bonuses or penalties and suddenly its a lot less likely to be able to accurately take all of these modifiers into account. Even for people who are 'good at math'... So if its about stressors having an effect on accuracy, then to argue that 3.0 or pathfinder made things 'easier' is refuted as follows:
Is far more often nowadays that someone at my table says 'oh crap, i've been forgetting to add my blah blah blah bonus all this time!!!!' so the math is still wrong, but instead of being able to blame 'complicated 2nd grade numberline math' the people who are messing it up are now messing it up because theres too many plusses to remember.
Oh yeah. Much easier than 2e. Both mistakes are 'silly mistakes' but to say the subtracting negatives number line math stressor kind is more relevant than the 'too many modifiers' kind seems pedantic/semantic and they both produce errors of approximately the same magnitude over arguably the same frequency. I don't call that an 'improvement'. But if it does add complexity to a system that scares people off who had trouble with 2nd grade math, then I clearly prefer that more complicated system, apparently because I did not personally find it more complicated.
Prefering a table with like minded folks is a personal thing, and though it does me a deeper grognard, I own up to it. The argument that 'thaco sucks' and 'what we have now is so much better' is the argument that
a + b - -c + d is harder to do than
a + b + c + d + e + f + g and thank goodness we do it this way or else we might be doing
a + b - -c + d + e - -f + g which might mean we start making silly math errors.
Subtracting negative numbers and thaco math never slowed me down or broke my sense of immersion. And thats one thing. The fact that it was changed from the first one to the second one indicates that the publishers of 3.0 and pathfinder think that the difference between the two is so significant that it's chewing into their profit margins. Either it isnt and the change was unnecessary, or it is, and they've now invited people into the hobby who experience personally significant time delays or stressors, or a break to immersion by having to do 2nd grade math.
My grognardiness in this case is not liking that they've changed the system to cater to those people over an issue that I personally find so minor. And doing so in the interest of broadening the userbase and the profit margin to include people who thought the difference was substantial enough to be a 'playability dealbreaker'.
Thing is this is not a problem if you want to not deal with negative numbers without loss of generality. You could just make it to hit armor class 10 and make a new table to hit armor class 10 or THac10 so you do not need to subtract negative numbers and subtract postive numbers and make a new table where you just subtract armor class but add 10 to what to what you need to hit. Change of variables and get over it. All I did was add then subtract 10 so the difference should be zero. Although people that have trobule subtracting negative numbers might have problems with change of variables. This might speed up play if you take the downtime. Edit should note armor class 10 is the new armor class zero.