Re: [Wargamer] DnD fans debate whether sushi is unrealistic in a make-believe game

On Fri, 13 Sep 2024 15:34:59 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 9/7/2024 9:28 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Fri, 6 Sep 2024 23:50:01 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/6/2024 6:31 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 
 

Although maybe it's all just lingering resentment over 2nd edition
D&D's much-maligned attack-roll system that is the cause of it all.
Taco is only one letter away from THACO, after all. ;-)

 

I occasionally understand THAC0, but even when I was playing with it it
felt like an enormous kludge. Either the old table-lookup method or the
simple Attack-roll system from 3rd edition always made more sense (and
were mathematically equivalent.
DnD has had this habit of keeping utterly baffling artifacts from the
early times of the hobby for way too long, long after everyone else
already switched to something way easier.
The same actually with descending AC. I know the arguments for it, I
just don't know why anyone would be making them in good faith.

 
I'm a firm supporter of descending AC, but I can't in any way argue
for its inclusion in good faith. As much as I dislike a lot of stuff
in 3E+, I can't disagree that many of the changes they made _were_ for
the better. Especially stuff like changing AC going up as it improved.
Old-school D&D was really weird in how, in some cases, lower numbers
were better and in other cases, you wanted to roll high. 3E (and
onwards) fixed a lot of these oddities.
 
My preference for AC-going-down is almost entirely nostalgic. I like
it because it's what I learned, and I feel oddities like that are one
of the things that gave D&D its own character.
 
     [There's maybe a little gatekeeping involved too; a bit of
      "keeping the rules weird to keep the normies out." But
      I'm not proud of that bit ;-)]
 
But, yeah, mostly when I argue in favor of AC-goes-down, it's meant
pretty tongue-in-cheek. Same with THAC0. I mean, I can do it in my
head and enjoy it, but boy did it discourage a lot of people from
engaging with the game. I mean, it was better than the constant table-
look-ups of 1E but not by much.

>
>
My only defense is it's to prevent players using loaded dice.  As A DM
it was no issue as that's how I learned it (well thac0 with 2e) and I
just tell you if you hit or miss, you don't need to know it at all.
>
That and reverse compatibility.  Easy enough to change it on the fly if
using the opposite for monsters or whatever.

It also (sort of, maybe, not really) put a cap on max AC. 10 was the
worst, and -10 was the best you were going to get.

    [Technically, of course, there was nothing that prevented an
      armor class lower than -10, but I never saw that happen].

D&D 3E lacks that limit, and I've seen ACs of 30 and higher after all
buffs have been taken into consideration. I've frequently complained
about the power creep in later editions of D&D -how 3E and beyond
started feeling like superhero adventures- and that's one of the
reasons.

The only other improvement I can think 3e+ made was allowing M-Us to
cast more than one spell at first level (not withstanding 2e specialists
and 1e cantrips)

Yeah, 1st level Magic Users were always rough in old D&D I know the
logic is that their power scales upwards and by the time they're
twentieth, the fact that they've near-god level magic is supposed to
make up for how under-powered they are at the start, but we almost
never played our characters that long (they tended to get retired
around 10th level).

So our general house rule was that high Intelligence (which, natch,
every mage has) got you an extra spell, cantrips were free* and you
could swap out your memorized combat spells for 'utility spells' at
will*. We also heavily utilized the 2nd ed proficiency system, and
since number of proficiencies were also linked to intelligence, the
wizards greatly benefited there too. All in all, it gave the low-level
mage a more well-rounded role than the usual 'wait in back until the
perfect time to cast their one spell' tactic.

No relief from that d4 Hit-Die or the can't wear armor thing, though.
Or the general distrust all wizards faced in my campaigns. Gotta
balance those boons somehow ;-P






* these boons were understood to be at the whim of the DM, and if a
player abused the ability they'd lose them