chaosapiant posted:

It’s likely because I grew up playing it in the late 80s and into the 90s, but I always enjoyed 2nd Edition. I still do. I can see how goofy and unintuitive it must be from the outside, but I started playing when I was 9 years old and it made sense to me, because it’s all I knew.

So I’ve always enjoyed the rule systems in the Baldur’s Gate games. My first exposure to 3rd edition was when Neverwinter Nights came out.

FishMcCool posted:

Same, 2nd ed is really my comfort zone. And on tabletop, it was the "don't think" game of choice in my circles, when you didn't feel like thinking too much in terms of story/rules and just felt like fooling around, and rolling a d20 against an AC to kill monsters. There were a ton of better games out there, 2nd Ed AD&D was just the granddaddy with its familiar classes and its ton of premade settings/campaigns, with plenty of easily available ones monthly from rpg magazines.

Draile posted:

I still think of 2nd Edition as the one true set of rules on which everything else is an interesting and curious variant.

Original D&D had elf, dwarf, halfling etc. as their own classes (and arbitrary level caps that made non-humans bad), no good/evil alignment axis, AC based on 9 instead of 10. That was weird! It also had some CRPG games that ruled and, for some reason, two amazing arcade beat em ups in Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara.

1st Edition streamlined a lot of that weirdness and has all the Gold Box games to its credit.

2nd Edition is the one I grew up with and has nearly all the Infinity Engine games to solidify its status as the default rule set.

3rd Edition and 3.5 made some sensible fixes to the jankier parts of 2nd but then went way off into the wilderness; the big offender being a system intended to give you more choices in character building but which instead created a minefield. I guess if you like theorycrafting more than playing, or if you’re only playing short term and don’t need to think too hard about your character, these are the rules for you.

4th Edition was far too weird and I did not like it at all, being someone who never focused on miniatures. I also didn’t like the vastly reduced set of things that spellcasters could do. Wizards and clerics having a functionally infinite set of bananas abilities is so ingrained in me I can’t imagine it being otherwise. I think this is also the only edition without a CRPG, making it a historical curiosity and remembered only by the people who played it tabletop.

I’m only just starting to learn 5th Edition but it seems fine, I guess?

One of the big reasons I keep going back to the Infinity Engine games after all these years is the comfort food of those 2nd Edition rules. It’s also why I love Icewind Dale, really the only game that lets you sandbox the mechanics without resorting to semi-hacks like playing “multiplayer” Baldur’s Gate with all the characters of your own creation.

Jay Rust posted:

I still cannot fully internalize thac0

Jay Rust posted:

Sometimes I’ll try to figure out how much AC an opponent has. Turning on the “hit rolls” display in-game doesn’t help: it’ll say “14 + 2 = 16 (Miss)” and I’m just left wondering, where the hell did that +2 come from? And then maybe eventually I’ll finally see a roll “18 + 1 = 19 (Hit)”... Maybe that means the target has AC 1?

Arivia posted:

the bonuses are stuff the attacker has applying to them - ability score bonuses, magic items, spell effects are the usual 3.

zedprime posted:

THAC0 is BAB but backwards because it came from wargaming algebra where you need to calculate where near missed went instead. It's a measure of your divergence causing inaccuracy instead of a measure of your accuracy causing unerring attacks. In other words high THAC0, high divergence, and you miss a lot.

d&d didn't really need wargaming algebra so BAB was a long time coming for such a no duh idea.

Jay Rust posted:

Does the +2 or whatever include my character’s base thac0, or is it just the sum of modifiers you mentioned?

Jay Rust posted:

Sometimes I’ll try to figure out how much AC an opponent has. Turning on the “hit rolls” display in-game doesn’t help: it’ll say “14 + 2 = 16 (Miss)” and I’m just left wondering, where the hell did that +2 come from? And then maybe eventually I’ll finally see a roll “18 + 1 = 19 (Hit)”... Maybe that means the target has AC 1?

Arivia posted:

THAC0 was actually a step towards simplifying and making the game more accessible - AD&D 1e had all these pages of lookup tables for specific weapons versus armour. (Nevermind that something akin to THAC0 was already being used in Basic D&D.)

Just the sum of modifiers.

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

You'll need to compare those rolls against the characters thac0. Your required to hit roll is your thac0 minus the target's AC. For simplicity's sake, let's assume your example has the character missing on 17 and hitting on 18; then we know your to hit roll would be 18. Then you can look up your character's thac0, and let's say it's 19. You have to subtract 1 from 19 to get 18, meaning that the target's AC would be 1 in that case. If your character's thac0 was 15, the target would have an AC of -3, et cetera.

In your example we don't know if the to hit roll would be 17, 18, or 19, meaning that we could only establish a range from 0 to 2 or -4 to -2 or whatever, but the principle is the same.

FishMcCool posted:

Pathfinder however is exhausting. I almost dread gaining a level in Kingmaker since it means going through the whole process for every character in the party.

Jay Rust posted:

I agree that once you get over the quirk that lower number equals gooder, it’s not a problem at all, the computer handles the calculations and I’m happy with that. The game is consistent, even when it says “+2 bonus to AC” or “save versus Spell with a -2 penalty”, the words “bonus” and “penalty” in those contexts smooth things over. But sometimes I also like knowing the hows and whys, like most recently I wanted to find out what I would need to roll to hit the dwarf bounty hunter in Beregost and how much he needed to roll to hit me. And with 2e, figuring that stuff out takes some work, at least for me...

v1ld posted:

Arivia posted:

Yes, the IE games don't make it very easy to calculate what an enemy's AC is. (In person you say "I hit AC 5" to the DM and they go "nope, that's a miss", since things are slower and more easily digestible a group of engaged players can figure out an enemy's AC after a round or so.)

Ginette Reno posted:

I haven't played in a few years (I should rectify that) but don't they have a setting to turn on hit rolls in the feedback window? I thought you could see the hit rolls if you turned that on, but maybe I'm thinking of some other game.

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

It is an acronym for "to hit armor class 0" and represents the d20 roll one would need to hit a target whose armor class is 0.

goblin week posted:

ah i see

how does one roll a -5

goblin week posted:

ah i see

how does one roll a -5

FishMcCool posted:

Honestly, I like *a lot* of what Kingmaker does, it's a pretty magnificent piece of work, but boy am I exhausted with the hyperfocus on every single +1 source.

Ginette Reno posted:

I never found 2e that ridiculous to understand. At least, not for CRPG purposes. I quickly grasped even as a dumb child playing bg in 1998 or whatever that lower thac0 = better and lower armor class = better. You really don't need to know anything more than that for Baldur's Gate. Equip the weapon that makes your thac0 the lowest and equip the armor that makes your ac the lowest. If you know to go by those rules you don't even necessarily need to know why something is good or bad.

v1ld posted:

For e.g., I think it was 3e that introduced Finesse(?) that lets you use Dex as your damage stat - it's a cool idea, but you now have an entire multiplicative layer of complexity in builds that you need to plan way ahead for because Finesse isn't available at the start of the game.

goblin week posted:

ah i see

how does one roll a -5

Terrible Opinions posted:

Finesse is dex to hit and available from the very beginning, dex to damage is far harder to acquire has no consistent name and is usually not available at level 1. Finesse training, agile, and <fighting style name> grace are all different ways to get dex to damage.

v1ld posted:

I'm having too much fun with BGEE on the PC. Almost talked myself into picking up the Switch version right after wrapping up a session with the game on the PC. Will pick it up if it goes on sale in the next month, I think.

Jay Rust posted:

I still cannot fully internalize thac0

Vargatron posted:

Subtract the enemies AC from your THAC0 to get the number you must meet or exceed to hit. The lower the AC, the better the armor is. Negative AC increases your THAC0.

Glimpse posted:

It’s a little easier to get your head around if you add the target’s AC to your to-hit roll. Then negative AC actually makes sense.