While everyone has been talking about Baldur’s Gate 3, I decided to cave in and started a replay of Divinity: Original Sin 2. Well, yea, I got a ten years old PC and a Ps4!
I’m sure your PC could run Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2… 😉
Inherited from naval wargaming, where it came about because first rate ships of the line had better armor than second rate etc. so armor class scaled inversely. That meant THAC0 was the best way to figure out what you needed to roll to get a hit.
It’s also not functionally that complicated (your THAC0 minus target AC), just weird and confusing if you try to understand why it works that way.
I can kind of get that, if they kept 1 as the hard cap on AC. But they have 0th rate as the reference point, and then bizarre instances of negative AC. A minus third rate ship reads like a dingier third rate ship, not better than a first class ship.
I’m sure your PC could run Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2… 😉
I would not wish Advanced D&D THAC0 mechanics on my worst enemy
I only had to Google it like 7 times to get it straight.
all these years later and i still cant fathom why they went with an inverted dc scale
Inherited from naval wargaming, where it came about because first rate ships of the line had better armor than second rate etc. so armor class scaled inversely. That meant THAC0 was the best way to figure out what you needed to roll to get a hit.
It’s also not functionally that complicated (your THAC0 minus target AC), just weird and confusing if you try to understand why it works that way.
I can kind of get that, if they kept 1 as the hard cap on AC. But they have 0th rate as the reference point, and then bizarre instances of negative AC. A minus third rate ship reads like a dingier third rate ship, not better than a first class ship.