Great deepdive into AD&D combat. You are right when you say no one EVER talks about this. Something else no one EVER talks about is the random encounter tables. I would love to see a substantive deepdive and analysis of the random encounter tables. Some say that random tables are for lazy DMs, but I think that creating random tables is an art form, and the random tables in AD&D were really something in those days.
You can take a look at the "Example of Melee" on p. 71 of the DMG, in particular paragraphs 1, 4, and 7 in the right column. (Do check out the errata for this page before proceeding as there are MANY mistakes here in earlier printings of the DMG). There you can see that positive AC Armor Adjustments modify the To-Hit roll directly, but negative adjustments modify the target's AC class instead. Using the Combat Computer (Dragon #74) can speed up the calculations and save a ton of table lookups and minimize the confusions. However curiously the instructions in the Dragon article actually tell you to apply all AC Armor Adjustments to the To-Hit rolls only... Otherwise the tool is "safe" to use as long as you adhere to the original rules in the DMG.
There's an online version of the combat computer floating around. Printed it and used it to great effect. A useful tool and it just makes combat more interesting.
@@nerzenjaeger There is also an enhanced and updated version on the grogtalk dis-cord (seems spelling the word right will get the post deleted by YT. weird...)
And just like that, the weapon vs armor table went from table bothersome to use, to an amazing mechanic in the game. It's interesting how rules like these, can change the entire scope of the game and how we interact with it.
What really sold adnd to me was the first time we did a big battle and everything translated to fighting groups of 25 bandits seamlessly. All the finicky bits suddenly made combat exciting and dynamic and the whole system as a glorious masterpiece really shines through. Thanks for all you do!
@@TheJoyofWargaming i think acks is supposed to do it as well? But I haven't really looked at it much. It feels like a void worth filling with the current explosion of new rpgs and game design novelties.
There's even more complexity. I made a combined combat matrix with all the official AD&D classes to eliminate looking at multiple tables. I also added the AD&D classes from Dragon, leaving out the jokes like accountant and jock. That combined matrix shows that the game design started to break down with Oriental Adventures. Prior to OA, all official classes could be charted easily with a single entry. OA started introducing situations where certain classes had "to hit" bonuses in specific situations so it becomes necessary to give them multiple entries on the chart. The magazine classes had this problem, too, but they were homebrew creations of fans rather than creations of professional game designers so that's to be expected. The tail was wagging the dog by the time OA came out and has been ever since. There was a long discussion about adjustments being assigned to AC or die rolls in the GrogTalk Discord a couple years ago. Two conclusions were reached. 1. The preponderance of evidence shows that adjustments should be made to AC. 2. It's easier to apply adjustments to die rolls and usually doesn't make much difference.
One thing that I was frankly too chicken to comment on, the fact that the AC adjustment table lists pluses on the AC 10 column, but Gary explicitly says AC can't be worse than 10. In that case you have an important question: do you ignore any bonus that raises AC above 10, or do you apply those bonuses to the die roll? It's a bit academic. The answer isn't going to break anyone's game. It is something different to talk about though.
Thanks for going through this. I can see this adding a lot more depth to character creation and will really make you think strategically when choosing weapon proficiencies.
Thanks. So many critics nevery actually read the rules to AD&D, much less played it while at least _attempting_ RAW. The nuance of a wargame's rules set truly only comes out through careful rules inspection and actual play. You can't wing it by just skipping a third of the book, as most people who play modern RPGs do.
I think adnds biggest problem is it's archaic formatting. Osric I think fixes some of these issues if I recall. Making it easier to use the adnd system. But I could be wrong.
@@noodles2459but I think osric doesn't include the ac vs. Weapon adjustment chart. And being the first "retroclone" they were worried about WOTC so they changed a lot of the numbers for things.
The to hit system of Ad&d is a trophy, in the parlance of our times. There are a lot of in and outs and what have yous, it's just not as simple. She hit herself man.
Reminiscences of the man to man table from Chainmail. Looking at the open hand, you can see why even the monks will want to look at their list of allowed weapons. I remember see someone making a list of all the monster in the MM to work out their equivalent armour type for if one wanted to use it for all monsters. That would indeed make the fighters weapon selection a way to shine.
If you roll with the player facing abilities add to the the die roll that would mean a 1st level fighter with 18/00 STR hits AC -8 on a natural 20 and only -9 becomes unhittable, a thief on a backstab could likewise hit AC -8 in a 20. Then some interesting questions arise, a rear attack from a non thief is probably not a player facing adjustment, so that would be an adjustment to the AC. Is the bonus from charging player facing (probably not ). The is it in the PHB is probably a good guideline to use, especially given Gary's thoughts about players reading the DMG (which suddenly make more sense). So, here's the question, magic sword, player or GM facing? Does this change when the item is identified? So many more questions. Good work on this one.
This definitely puts the “Advanced” in AD&D. I wouldn’t introduce this system to newbies. Though I now wish I knew how this system really worked back in the day.
Aw man. No AC10 discussion. It's the other edge case. In that case you have to apply the positive to hit bonus to the AC10 to-hit number as the tables have no AC greater than 10 to shift the column. Nothing better than shivving a magic user with your dagger and getting a massive bonus.
The only other place I've seen this mentioned in detail is on Delta's D&D blog "The Big Mistake in Weapon vs Armor" back in 2021, however he's quite harsh on them for being a mis-interpretation of a similar set of tables in Chainmail.
A post with which I strongly disagree. Delta attempted to reverse engineer an algorithm and when it didn't work he blamed Gygax for not sticking with Delta's erroneous assumptions. That's not how this works. Delta is really good at number crunching and analysis of mathematical models (gotta give him credit for that). Unfortunately, we're not discussing brownian movement of smoke particles in a black box. We are discussing the rules to a game written by a guy who is not shy about injecting his own biases into the rules he writes. Gary might have had a mathematical model in mind, but once the Swiss Landsknechts show up for example, his rules go full fangirl mode. That is part of the charm.
Osric was written to allow people who already know and use AD&D to publish AD&D-compatible modules and such, legally, by saying they are written for Osric. The fact people use Osric as a set of game rules by itself is more a side-effect, so don’t assume it’s a pure substitute for the original rules. It’s a “close enough” version for its intended purpose.
The combat matrices in OSRIC are good. Thief, Cleric, M-U are unchanged. Fighter table is smoothed out, but statistically the same. In AD&D the fighter gains 2 on the die roll every two levels. In OSRIC, he gains 1 every level. OSRIC does not use weapon vs. AC adjustments. It needs to be added.
Dear Mr. Wargaming, Not sure where to ask this so I'll post it here. DMG p28, “Helmets”. How do you interpret and apply this rule? It feels like Arneson showed up for this one. It sounds like its asking you to be sure to buy a helmet. Which makes sense since Gygax goes out of his way to make sure that PCs are removing their helmets to listen at doors and that great helms have restricted vision. Therefore, there must be consequences to not wearing a helmet. So what happens when a kobold smashes your thief in his un-helmeted AC 10 head? I guess, since this smells like Arneson, we should reference OD&D Blackmoor. There it is something like if a headshot deals 15% of max hp, the head is destroyed and you’re toast. But more importantly, for this purpose, are there targeted (called) shots in real AD&D (apart from some random monsters in the MM)? I have to know!
"1 blow in 6 will strike at the AC 10 head, unless the opponent is intelligent, in which case 1 blow in 2 will be aimed at the AC 10 head." In those rare cases where somebody is caught bare-headed, I roll a d6 along with the attack roll. If the d6 comes up 1 (or 1-3 for intelligent attackers), then you use the AC10 to determine whether the blow hits. I would have the players do the same thing. You have to remember that one minute combat rounds preclude the practice of "called shots". You takes what you can gets, and in the swirl of melee, there's no guarantee that a player can line up that perfect 360 no-scope head-shot. But players should have the same ability to take advantage of bare-headed foes and get that 50-50 shot at an easier hit.
@@TheJoyofWargaming Roger that. So it's not a matter of figuring out if a head shot means more damage, it's just an easier AC that they may get a chance to hit if your fighter is caught listening at a door by a Piercer or Bugbear. Don't leave home without the headgear...
The attack bonus produced can be added up with magic bonuses, strength bonuses, and specialization bonuses and written on the character sheet. A total attack bonus is then added to a simple d20 and the inverted ac is the target number😊
Great deepdive into AD&D combat. You are right when you say no one EVER talks about this. Something else no one EVER talks about is the random encounter tables. I would love to see a substantive deepdive and analysis of the random encounter tables. Some say that random tables are for lazy DMs, but I think that creating random tables is an art form, and the random tables in AD&D were really something in those days.
Random tables are how the DM creates the world. If someone thinks they’re for “lazy” DM’s they do not understand the game, and/or aren’t good at it.
You can take a look at the "Example of Melee" on p. 71 of the DMG, in particular paragraphs 1, 4, and 7 in the right column. (Do check out the errata for this page before proceeding as there are MANY mistakes here in earlier printings of the DMG). There you can see that positive AC Armor Adjustments modify the To-Hit roll directly, but negative adjustments modify the target's AC class instead.
Using the Combat Computer (Dragon #74) can speed up the calculations and save a ton of table lookups and minimize the confusions. However curiously the instructions in the Dragon article actually tell you to apply all AC Armor Adjustments to the To-Hit rolls only... Otherwise the tool is "safe" to use as long as you adhere to the original rules in the DMG.
There's an online version of the combat computer floating around. Printed it and used it to great effect. A useful tool and it just makes combat more interesting.
@@nerzenjaeger There is also an enhanced and updated version on the grogtalk dis-cord (seems spelling the word right will get the post deleted by YT. weird...)
@@009N900 Thanks, I will have to get my hands on that.
And just like that, the weapon vs armor table went from table bothersome to use, to an amazing mechanic in the game.
It's interesting how rules like these, can change the entire scope of the game and how we interact with it.
Thanks for illustrating this, including the “20 zone”, I think people don’t really understand that, typically.
What really sold adnd to me was the first time we did a big battle and everything translated to fighting groups of 25 bandits seamlessly. All the finicky bits suddenly made combat exciting and dynamic and the whole system as a glorious masterpiece really shines through. Thanks for all you do!
I've never played an RPG that scaled up as seamlessly as this one.
Thank you for sharing your experience.
@@TheJoyofWargaming i think acks is supposed to do it as well? But I haven't really looked at it much. It feels like a void worth filling with the current explosion of new rpgs and game design novelties.
There's even more complexity. I made a combined combat matrix with all the official AD&D classes to eliminate looking at multiple tables. I also added the AD&D classes from Dragon, leaving out the jokes like accountant and jock. That combined matrix shows that the game design started to break down with Oriental Adventures. Prior to OA, all official classes could be charted easily with a single entry. OA started introducing situations where certain classes had "to hit" bonuses in specific situations so it becomes necessary to give them multiple entries on the chart. The magazine classes had this problem, too, but they were homebrew creations of fans rather than creations of professional game designers so that's to be expected. The tail was wagging the dog by the time OA came out and has been ever since.
There was a long discussion about adjustments being assigned to AC or die rolls in the GrogTalk Discord a couple years ago. Two conclusions were reached. 1. The preponderance of evidence shows that adjustments should be made to AC. 2. It's easier to apply adjustments to die rolls and usually doesn't make much difference.
One thing that I was frankly too chicken to comment on, the fact that the AC adjustment table lists pluses on the AC 10 column, but Gary explicitly says AC can't be worse than 10. In that case you have an important question: do you ignore any bonus that raises AC above 10, or do you apply those bonuses to the die roll?
It's a bit academic. The answer isn't going to break anyone's game. It is something different to talk about though.
Thanks for going through this. I can see this adding a lot more depth to character creation and will really make you think strategically when choosing weapon proficiencies.
Thanks. So many critics nevery actually read the rules to AD&D, much less played it while at least _attempting_ RAW. The nuance of a wargame's rules set truly only comes out through careful rules inspection and actual play. You can't wing it by just skipping a third of the book, as most people who play modern RPGs do.
I think adnds biggest problem is it's archaic formatting.
Osric I think fixes some of these issues if I recall. Making it easier to use the adnd system. But I could be wrong.
@@noodles2459but I think osric doesn't include the ac vs. Weapon adjustment chart.
And being the first "retroclone" they were worried about WOTC so they changed a lot of the numbers for things.
The to hit system of Ad&d is a trophy, in the parlance of our times. There are a lot of in and outs and what have yous, it's just not as simple. She hit herself man.
Reminiscences of the man to man table from Chainmail.
Looking at the open hand, you can see why even the monks will want to look at their list of allowed weapons.
I remember see someone making a list of all the monster in the MM to work out their equivalent armour type for if one wanted to use it for all monsters. That would indeed make the fighters weapon selection a way to shine.
If you roll with the player facing abilities add to the the die roll that would mean a 1st level fighter with 18/00 STR hits AC -8 on a natural 20 and only -9 becomes unhittable, a thief on a backstab could likewise hit AC -8 in a 20. Then some interesting questions arise, a rear attack from a non thief is probably not a player facing adjustment, so that would be an adjustment to the AC. Is the bonus from charging player facing (probably not ). The is it in the PHB is probably a good guideline to use, especially given Gary's thoughts about players reading the DMG (which suddenly make more sense). So, here's the question, magic sword, player or GM facing? Does this change when the item is identified? So many more questions. Good work on this one.
That’s why it’s ad&d my old dm would say😂
This definitely puts the “Advanced” in AD&D. I wouldn’t introduce this system to newbies. Though I now wish I knew how this system really worked back in the day.
Go for it Fluid Druid man.
Aw man. No AC10 discussion. It's the other edge case. In that case you have to apply the positive to hit bonus to the AC10 to-hit number as the tables have no AC greater than 10 to shift the column. Nothing better than shivving a magic user with your dagger and getting a massive bonus.
The only other place I've seen this mentioned in detail is on Delta's D&D blog "The Big Mistake in Weapon vs Armor" back in 2021, however he's quite harsh on them for being a mis-interpretation of a similar set of tables in Chainmail.
A post with which I strongly disagree. Delta attempted to reverse engineer an algorithm and when it didn't work he blamed Gygax for not sticking with Delta's erroneous assumptions. That's not how this works.
Delta is really good at number crunching and analysis of mathematical models (gotta give him credit for that). Unfortunately, we're not discussing brownian movement of smoke particles in a black box. We are discussing the rules to a game written by a guy who is not shy about injecting his own biases into the rules he writes. Gary might have had a mathematical model in mind, but once the Swiss Landsknechts show up for example, his rules go full fangirl mode. That is part of the charm.
Love this video
I wonder how accurate osric is to this. I always assumed it was adnd but with better formatting.
Osric was written to allow people who already know and use AD&D to publish AD&D-compatible modules and such, legally, by saying they are written for Osric. The fact people use Osric as a set of game rules by itself is more a side-effect, so don’t assume it’s a pure substitute for the original rules. It’s a “close enough” version for its intended purpose.
The combat matrices in OSRIC are good. Thief, Cleric, M-U are unchanged. Fighter table is smoothed out, but statistically the same. In AD&D the fighter gains 2 on the die roll every two levels. In OSRIC, he gains 1 every level. OSRIC does not use weapon vs. AC adjustments. It needs to be added.
Dear Mr. Wargaming,
Not sure where to ask this so I'll post it here.
DMG p28, “Helmets”. How do you interpret and apply this rule? It feels like Arneson showed up for this one. It sounds like its asking you to be sure to buy a helmet. Which makes sense since Gygax goes out of his way to make sure that PCs are removing their helmets to listen at doors and that great helms have restricted vision. Therefore, there must be consequences to not wearing a helmet.
So what happens when a kobold smashes your thief in his un-helmeted AC 10 head? I guess, since this smells like Arneson, we should reference OD&D Blackmoor. There it is something like if a headshot deals 15% of max hp, the head is destroyed and you’re toast. But more importantly, for this purpose, are there targeted (called) shots in real AD&D (apart from some random monsters in the MM)? I have to know!
"1 blow in 6 will strike at the AC 10 head, unless the opponent is intelligent, in which case 1 blow in 2 will be aimed at the AC 10 head."
In those rare cases where somebody is caught bare-headed, I roll a d6 along with the attack roll. If the d6 comes up 1 (or 1-3 for intelligent attackers), then you use the AC10 to determine whether the blow hits. I would have the players do the same thing.
You have to remember that one minute combat rounds preclude the practice of "called shots". You takes what you can gets, and in the swirl of melee, there's no guarantee that a player can line up that perfect 360 no-scope head-shot. But players should have the same ability to take advantage of bare-headed foes and get that 50-50 shot at an easier hit.
@@TheJoyofWargaming Roger that. So it's not a matter of figuring out if a head shot means more damage, it's just an easier AC that they may get a chance to hit if your fighter is caught listening at a door by a Piercer or Bugbear. Don't leave home without the headgear...
Invert AC to positive, subtract thaco from the number 20for an attack bonus, give a +5bonus if a nat 20 is rolled.......
The attack bonus produced can be added up with magic bonuses, strength bonuses, and specialization bonuses and written on the character sheet. A total attack bonus is then added to a simple d20 and the inverted ac is the target number😊
this chart just makes the Fighter even weaker than the Wizard. wizard spell is a save not a TO-Hit Roll