AD&D 1e Combat Tables and THAC0 explained with examples
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- I explain how the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Second edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons combat tables and THAC0 works, and how they are essentially the same thing. In either system, once you know the THAC0 of a character, you can easily calculate the to hit number.
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Ah yes my favorite fast-food restaurant; Thac’o Bell! 🤣👍.
THACO - Roll = AC hit. Prevents telling PC what the true AC is. 🤓But using these attack matrices prevents un-hit-able targets without using the 'Nat 20 always hits' rule. Repeating 20's fixes this all lower levels for sure! Thnx for this!
You did a really good job of explaining THAC0, and illustrating it from Monsters in the Fiend Folio was a great idea.
I never see anyone say this, but the way we did it was their AC became the bonus to your d20 roll. So if you need 10 to hit AC 0 and they have AC 5 then you roll d20+5 and need to get 10 or more. I know it’s exactly the same as subtracting 5 but we found it more intuitive.
Written directly beneath Table I.B is the following:
"Special Note Regarding Fighters' Progression: This table is designed to
allow fighters to advance by 5% per level of experience attained, rather
than 10% every 2 levels, if you believe that such will be helpful in your
particular campaign. If you opt for a per level advancement in combat
ability, simply use the table but give a +1 "to hit" bonus to fighters who
attain the second level of experience shown in each group of 2 levels, i.e.
1-2, 3-4, etc. You may, of course, elect not to allow per level combat advancement"
It's a Gygaxian typo fest as he means to say the table accomodates 10% advancement per two levels but has the situation reversed. That said increasing THACO by one step per level is a valid alternative and not a house-rule you would need to make up.
Tables in earlier editions were actually pretty weird, since they showed some not that intuitive progressions of to hit numbers for really high or really low ACs. You can see in many cases it's not consistent with just subtracting target AC from the 0 line.
It became pretty streamlined with AD&D 2nd Edition, when thac0 was just a function of your character level and the group it's class belonged to: all started at 20 at 1st level, then the different groups dropped a specific number of points at a specific level increment.
Warriors dropped 1 per level, as you noticed, priests dropped 2 points every three levels (no fraction allowed), rogues dropped 1 point every two levels, and wizards dropped 1 point every three levels.
Later there was also a function for the psionicist group and class, which I don't remember at the moment, but it was similar to the rogue progression.
You could figure out your thac0 from the table or just calculate it yourself with ease. No need for complex tables and no weird results when hitting caps.
Yes, having THAC0 being a simple math problem made it faster. The combat wheel in 1st edition definitely helps me move combat along.
@james Deer That's a bit inaccurate. The default rule in 1E is that because there are repeated 20's on the table, you CAN hit AC's well below what you otherwise would be limited to, and you are adding every bonus possible to increase that die result _above_ 20. So, you roll the die, add your bonuses to that and then consult the table to see if you hit the AC you need to hit. That means that, glancing at the tables, a 1st level fighter or cleric - without any bonuses whatsoever - needs a 20 to hit AC0, but they still only need a 20 to hit AC -5! Now what kind of campaign is anyone running where 1st level characters need to hit AC -5 in the first place, but that nobody ever has any bonuses to hit either? Virtually none. But 1st level fighters and clerics can do that while adding all the bonuses they can muster to get above 20. Only AC-6 or lower is "unhittable" without having any bonuses, but the chances of that kind of situation should be UTTERLY impractical anyway. It's just not gonna happen. And thieves and magic-users are only 1 point off what fighters and clerics can hit.
But by the time fighters get to 7th level, they can hit ANY AC, without ANY bonuses. They'd need a result of a natural 20 on the die to do it - but they can hit AC-10, which is the maximum AC possible in 1E. With strength and magical bonuses they're going to be _capable_ of hitting AC-10 long before then. Even opponents wearing +5 plate and +5 shield only comes to AC-8 and again, no 7th level party should be needing to deal with NPC's wearing that kind of incredibly powerful armor (not if the DM is sane). But if the DM is insane enough to put 7th level PC's against an NPC with AC-8, that NPC is NOT unhittable. The repeating 20's ENSURE that.
The ALTERNATIVE rule in 1E (from DMG p.82) is that you instead add all bonuses from strength and magic to the die roll, but that combined result is then CAPPED at 20. If you need a result of 21 or better on the table, then you have to have bonuses from OTHER sources to apply. That's a rule that was aimed at preventing player characters with a lot of great stats and gear from running roughshod over a game - IF the DM felt that kind of constraint was needed.
So while the 1E tables had a POSSIBILITY for "unhittable" opponents - it was never a _practical_ possibility and the tables actually ENSURED that it wasn't a practical possibility. Only if you used the alternate rule was it more likely for an opponent to be "unhittable" but that rule wasn't meant to apply to most campaigns.
What people then overlook is that with the change to 2E's completely thac0 based to-hit table, those repeating 20's are GONE. That means that MORE opponents became "unhittable", not fewer. The value of bonuses was effectively increased because there was no longer any artificial extension of being able to hit lower AC's even with the same limited bonuses that low-level PC's in particular would be limited to. To hit a lower AC you HAD to have better bonuses. End of story. A fighter might have a +2 to-hit for strength at 1st level, but then can only hit AC-2, whereas in 1E that fighter would be able to hit AC -7! That's _because_ of the repeated 20's in the 1E combat tables. Now it's still crazy for 1st level fighters to NEED to hit AC-2 opponents, but the changes in how hits in combat are determined between 1e and 2e are definitely more subtle and significant than most people understand. But it IS simpler in 2E than it was in 1E, and at some point TSR just gave priority to simplicity for their revised rules.
It's not as if it made a huge practical difference between editions IME. RARE was the time in EITHER game that PC's wound up _unable_ to hit opponents - although the opposite was hardly uncommon where weak opponents eventually found it impossible to hit PC's with low AC's from lots of magic [that is, once PC's started hitting AC-6 or so in 1E (like +4 plate/shield without other bonuses...) they became immune to hits from 1 HD monsters unless the DM could work in bonuses for those monsters. And yet the simpler calculation for 2E STILL has people wailing about how THAC0 was... I guess still too complicated, or clunky, or... I don't personally understand what anybody's issue WOULD really be with Thac0 - other than possibly that _AC_ was still routinely given in negative integers. :)
THACO was not used until 2nd edition. 1st edition used charts based on character class and level against AC.
THAC0 was definitely in 1e... I even remember it specifically pointed out in one of Frank Mentzer's modules he did for the RPGA members... in one or all of the R1-4 modules, I am almost positive. 100% prior to 2e. Oh... it was used in UK7 too (and maybe more random places), which was a 1e module.
Not being able to handle THAC0 is essentially admitting that grade 1 math had defeated you.
Thac0 shows up in the Masters Set (the black box) for "basic." Thac0 was derived from the tables as an easy way to get the numbers without looking it up, but it's actually a simplification -- for some extreme ACs it breaks down as the tables repeated numbers like 20, 25, 30, and so on (I think a predecessor to natural 20s being special).
@jamesdeer3129 What are you talking about? I only ever played 1E and we used THAC0. It was short hand for the tables and allowed one to not have to keep going back to the tables. You subtracted the AC and used your modifiers.
2E took what was already being done by players and from several of their publications and revised it in 2E. You just do not find the acronym THAC0 in the 1E rules.
This was a good explanation but you kind of gloss over the fact that there was a bit more to it in second edition, you not only considered the Thaco and AC to come up with the "to hit" number, you also need to consider the modifiers which can lower or raise the to hit number quite a bit. For example, the fighter's strength and situational modifiers such as the attacker being on higher ground, rear attacks and whether the target is surprised, just to name a few. These are in chapter 9 of the PHB for 2e. Not sure if these are factored in also in 1st edition, I'd have to look at my old books.
1e and Basic really just used the combat tables. Although what they had was the foundation for THAC0 in 2e. There was no accounting for height, facing, etc.
@@CraftDD Just look how their to hit progression looks in those tables and you have THAC0.
I always pronounced it "Thwacko". 😂
I'm honestly blown away that TSR employees apparently pronounced THAC0 different! lol I never heard that before. Someone needs to ask one of them for a definitive answer about that. I need to know now! lol :-)
The reason 2nd ed was not a best seller? Ya you don't need it if you have the 1st Ed. books.
I also enjoy playing 2nd edition, although it has been a few years.
I still cannot fathom why they decided a lower armour class would be "better". Why wilfully go into the negative for no reason?
I liked lower AC. Just makes it more exciting and more of a milestone for me when my character hit the negatives. But yes, ascending is easier to understand and teach to others.
@@CraftDD If crossing a threshold is good why not cross from negative to positive as your AC improves?
@@Treblaine That would be cool too.
@james Deer Your grammar is atrocious.
But the armor class is a property of your enemy, not the player character. So the "positive is good" aspect is inverted.
You're a total hypocrite, immediately after saying d20 players lack understanding you then commend THAC0 for working with people who don't understand math.
You want realism in a game creatures die based on simply not having enough hit points.
@Treblaine Because the basic structure of rolling to-hit against an initial AC range of 10 (worst) to 1 (best) was a mechanic actually borrowed from a naval combat game. That mechanic originally didn't NEED to account for a huge amount of improvement to that AC or adjustment to the to-hit rolls because at that point in history the game wasn't that advanced yet. Characters barely had any modifiers to apply AT ALL, much less routinely push numbers into negatives. It was rules being tacked on to other rules one bit at a time, and it was all being made up or borrowed from here and there and everywhere. By the time there were actual formally printed D&D rules, rather than tear the structure down and start over, they printed what Frankenstein combinations of stuff had been accumulated to that point. That didn't change until 3rd Edition which actually DID tear the structure down and rearrange it based on more user-friendly principles of game design (and up to that point, *RPG* game design was still _being_ _invented_ with every new version of D&D).