Divinity
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OU Ariakas
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This is a retarded fight from those grumpy old men talking about THAC0 being "easy." Of course it is easy to you, you lived and breathed it for decades. So did I, but I remember there being a THAC0 chart in the 2e PHB because it was fucking complicated in that each class had a different THAC0 progression AND the fact that, in a game with almost universally applied rules to additive bonuses, armor and swords with positive bonuses made AC and THAC0 both go DOWN.
So when you are in combat that is getting complicated and you are a Druid that is was blessed by your cleric and using a +1 bow with +2 fire arrows attacking a half plate wearing evil fighter that is on a hill above you but the ground is muddy... the problem is that SOME of the bonuses are actually subtracted from numbers in the calculation. That is absolutely a worse system than AC going up, all bonuses being added, penalties being subtracted, and a single number to meet or beat falling out of the equation.
So when you are in combat that is getting complicated and you are a Druid that is was blessed by your cleric and using a +1 bow with +2 fire arrows attacking a half plate wearing evil fighter that is on a hill above you but the ground is muddy... the problem is that SOME of the bonuses are actually subtracted from numbers in the calculation. That is absolutely a worse system than AC going up, all bonuses being added, penalties being subtracted, and a single number to meet or beat falling out of the equation.
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Do you stare off blankly into space if you ask the time and they say "10 til 2" or "its a quarter til 9"
Does your imbecilic brain just explode on the spot because they didn't say its 1:50 or its 8:45? I wont even bring up military time i don't want to confuse you.
If subtracting from 20 instead of adding to 20 hurts your brain then please, just watch other people play video games, you may hurt yourself
Does your imbecilic brain just explode on the spot because they didn't say its 1:50 or its 8:45? I wont even bring up military time i don't want to confuse you.
If subtracting from 20 instead of adding to 20 hurts your brain then please, just watch other people play video games, you may hurt yourself
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Hateyou
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yerm
Avatar of War Slayer
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Not even the weirdest hill I'd die on this week. welcome to foh. And no, im not wrong.
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I think the first time I ever played d&d A2ndE was in eighth grade, and at first thaco seemed counterintuitive but it's not like it was difficult. I do think the newer third edition and beyond method for calculating armor class is superior.
I guess the first TTrpg I cut my teeth on was RIFTS back in I think sixth grade maybe, and if you want to get into complicated systems, that goddamn wonderful game held all the marbles. Mega damage versus SDC, percentile skill checks on everything, and we didn't even know what the hell we were really doing, but it was a lot of fun. I even had a D100 die that was a goddamn golf ball basically.
Ahhh, the good ole days.
I guess the first TTrpg I cut my teeth on was RIFTS back in I think sixth grade maybe, and if you want to get into complicated systems, that goddamn wonderful game held all the marbles. Mega damage versus SDC, percentile skill checks on everything, and we didn't even know what the hell we were really doing, but it was a lot of fun. I even had a D100 die that was a goddamn golf ball basically.
Ahhh, the good ole days.
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Koushirou
Log Wizard
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Grabbit Allworth
Confirmed J6 Insurrectionist
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2e is what I cut my teeth on and will always be my favorite edition. It has so much incredible lore and worldbuilding (as does 3e) in the mountain of content available for it and the art is some of the best that has ever been painted for D&D. For those of you that haven't visited the D&D thread in the tabletop forum, you won't have seen the photos of my absolutely fucking ridiculous D&D collection. I've got more than 500 hardbacks from 1e to 5.5 and triple that in softcovers, boxed sets, etc. I also have a physical copy of every Pathfinder 1e adventure path. It's absolutely retarded how expensive some of those 96 page softcovers have gotten.
I have everything ever printed for Dark Sun, Planescape, Al-Qadim, most of Ravenloft and The Forgotten Realms (there's just so much for this setting and not all of it was good). I have a few things for Dragonlance, but not much because it's an amazing setting to read about, but not so much to play in. Almost nothing for Birthright and Eberron because neither of those settings ever appealed to me. I always thought Spelljammer was gay so I don't have a single piece for it and the other super small print-run settings like Mystara.
Not bragging -- just pointing out that I'm a superfan. Although I wish I could turn off my collecting habit since the entire TTRPG industry has become terminally infected with Leftist cancer.
Anyway, regarding Thac0, it always made sense to me because I viewed AC -2 as a penalty to my attacks because the NPC was heavily armored/difficult-to-hit and that's exactly what negative AC was supposed to represent. I don't think AC being negative was ever the real point of contention. The thing that confused people a little is that each character's Thac0 had its own scale based off class/level.
For example - A Fighter's Thac0 improved by 1 every level and a Wizard's improved by 1 every three levels. Rogues and Clerics each had their own scale. Still, it wasn't something super archaic. Your character sheet had a field called Thac0 and you just updated it when necessary. Just like you do for Hit Points or Proficiency Bonus in 5e.
I genuinely believe that people who were (or are) confused by Thac0 are legitimately dumb because no one that ACTUALLY played D&D 1e/2e was confused by it. There has always been a shitload of people who know what D&D is (and may have even bought some of the books), but never really played the game and I'm almost positive that they're where most (if not all) of the confusion stems from.
TL;DR -- if you play(ed) D&D 1e/2e and you're confused by Thac0, you're probably a potato, but if you haven't played 1e/2e -- understandable.
I have everything ever printed for Dark Sun, Planescape, Al-Qadim, most of Ravenloft and The Forgotten Realms (there's just so much for this setting and not all of it was good). I have a few things for Dragonlance, but not much because it's an amazing setting to read about, but not so much to play in. Almost nothing for Birthright and Eberron because neither of those settings ever appealed to me. I always thought Spelljammer was gay so I don't have a single piece for it and the other super small print-run settings like Mystara.
Not bragging -- just pointing out that I'm a superfan. Although I wish I could turn off my collecting habit since the entire TTRPG industry has become terminally infected with Leftist cancer.
Anyway, regarding Thac0, it always made sense to me because I viewed AC -2 as a penalty to my attacks because the NPC was heavily armored/difficult-to-hit and that's exactly what negative AC was supposed to represent. I don't think AC being negative was ever the real point of contention. The thing that confused people a little is that each character's Thac0 had its own scale based off class/level.
For example - A Fighter's Thac0 improved by 1 every level and a Wizard's improved by 1 every three levels. Rogues and Clerics each had their own scale. Still, it wasn't something super archaic. Your character sheet had a field called Thac0 and you just updated it when necessary. Just like you do for Hit Points or Proficiency Bonus in 5e.
I genuinely believe that people who were (or are) confused by Thac0 are legitimately dumb because no one that ACTUALLY played D&D 1e/2e was confused by it. There has always been a shitload of people who know what D&D is (and may have even bought some of the books), but never really played the game and I'm almost positive that they're where most (if not all) of the confusion stems from.
TL;DR -- if you play(ed) D&D 1e/2e and you're confused by Thac0, you're probably a potato, but if you haven't played 1e/2e -- understandable.
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Rajaah
Honorable Member
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Trying out Divinity 2 for the first time ever. What's up with these difficulty levels? "Story" is last but I have a feeling it isn't the hardest one. Classic could be medium or it could be like, classic hard difficulty.
This game has a free PS5 upgrade now, and it looks super good.
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I think they're like this cause they were added over time. Explorer is easy, classic is normal, tactician is hard(it was added later in a patch, changes some encounters to add more mobs and different mechs and what not) and story mode I don't remember but if I had to guess it's journalist difficulty aka no combat.
Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
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I just started with my wife on classic as well... Well, 30 hours ago, but as you know with these games that's basically the tutorial.
Definitely similar to BG3 but much simpler in many, many ways. You can tell where bg3 came from.
Since every encounter is hand crafted (no random encounters, no respawns), I highly recommend starting on Tactician. It makes the first zone somewhat hard (but doable), however once you hit act 2 and get into that a bit, anything else than tactician feels much too easy. Combat is fun in the game and tactician also makes upgrades feel more valuable. It's a very large game (easily 100+ hours), so feeling that you need to restart after 20+ hours and having to redo everything isn't that fun. You can turn down the difficulty from Tactician, but you can't go up to it once having started on a lower difficulty without restarting.