Quote from: sureshot;1063645I would say Thaco. Not os much the mechanic as how TSR explained it in the core books and how they implemented the formula. It works yet t could have been designed so much better.

That's one thing that annoyed me in the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook. THAC0 is a core mechanic, but they didn't explain how it works in the front of the book, or in the glossary. Instead, they buried it in the middle of a paragraph in a subsection in the combat chapter. On top of that, they described it poorly. First of all, tell people to don't subtract their opponent's AC from THAC0, that's a completely unnecessary inversion. Just add your opponent's AC to your roll. Secondly, for everything except AC, they used general terms like "apply the modifiers", instead of saying precisely what number you're supposed to modify, and whether you add or subtract that number. The whole book was really confusing to read, and unnecessarily so. What they should have done is state specifically whether the numbers are added or subtracted, and whether those operations are performed on the 1d20 roll or THAC0 itself, every time. That constant reinforcement would have made the somewhat backward application of numbers easier to readers to grasp. They also never used alternate methods of conveying the information, like a diagram or a simple equation, nor did they pull it out or emphasize it any way (I remember having to flip through the section multiple times to find, it never just jumped out at me.

THAC0 is simple. Roll 1d20, and add your opponent's AC and any other situational modifiers to the roll. If your modified roll is equal to or higher than your THAC0, you hit. If you have any modifiers to hit that last for a long time, like a bonus from a magic sword or a high Strength, then it makes sense to modify the THAC0 number itself. But in that case, you have to subtract. A +1 sword and +2 to hit from Strength means you subtract 3 from THAC0, before writing it on your character sheet. In equation form, it's 1d20 + opponent's AC + situational modifiers >= your base THAC0 - any permanent modifiers.

Not to mention that THAC0 itself is unnecessary. All you need to do is write down all the ACs from -10 to 10 on your character sheet, and the number you need to hit that AC below them. Presto, no subtracting ACs from THAC0, or adding ACs to the 1d20 roll. Subtraction (or addition) are replaced with a simple one-row table lookup.

Quote from: Malleustein;1063684This. With no exception.

Actually I am a big fan of the GM given a limited number of rerolls per session. You get all the benefits of dice fudging with none of the cheating.

I'm not a fan of card-based randomizers, this goes double if it has intricate permutations for suits and other weirdness (Shadows Over Sol being my primary example).

Quote from: Rhedyn;1063699Actually I am a big fan of the GM given a limited number of rerolls per session. You get all the benefits of dice fudging with none of the cheating.

GM can't cheat, bro.

Quote from: Brad;1063707GM can't cheat, bro.

Sure they can. They tell the players the rules are one thing and then they do something else. Still cheating, especially if you tell the players that you are following a particular set of rules and then just don't.

Dice pools, hate them. They seem like a decent enough concept, but in practice I find they have tons of issues. They scale poorly (big leaps in ability), and they are not intuitive, 3d6 is much less than 1/2 as good as 6d6. At this point as soon as I see a game uses a dice pool mechanic, I lose interest.


In the past I would have said class / levels but I've softened on this one. Class / level systems have developed considerably since the days of AD&D. Still not a preferred mechanic but I no longer mind it.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1063685It could be expressed purely mechanically, e.g. "you take a -2 penalty to all checks to intimidate others, who are as likely to laugh at you as feel afraid of you."

Which is actually how most disad systems I've run across work it. I've never seen one that says a player has to act out the speech impediment, and never been in a group that would expect that.

This sounds like an issue with a very specific game. To me this would be along the lines of saying because a PC is illiterate, the player isn't allowed to read his character sheet or look stuff up in the books.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1063710Sure they can. They tell the players the rules are one thing and then they do something else. Still cheating, especially if you tell the players that you are following a particular set of rules and then just don't.

You sure you're playing RPGs and not some sort of double-blind boardgame?

Quote from: Brad;1063718You sure you're playing RPGs and not some sort of double-blind boardgame?

Yes. You sure your playing RPGs and not being read the DM's novel?

Quote from: Rhedyn;1063720Yes. You sure your playing RPGs and not being read the DM's novel?

Nahh man, I play actual RPGs where the game is refereed by the GM and doesn't adhere to some set of immutable rules. If the GM changes something behind the scenes, how am I to know?

Quote from: Rhedyn;1063699Actually I am a big fan of the GM given a limited number of rerolls per session. You get all the benefits of dice fudging with none of the cheating.

That sounds pointless to me.  It is cheating if you accept that the Referee is bound by the dice rolls.  You have simply made it acceptable to cheat by giving the Referee do-overs.

It works for you.  It wouldn't for me.

Quote from: Brad;1063718You sure you're playing RPGs and not some sort of double-blind boardgame?

Look at the getting millennials to play thread. I'm not saying the OP there does it, but that is one way that house rules and GM-created monsters can go, which is one of the things the players there did not like.

I guess the real question is:  Is the table having fun?  And if the answer is Yes, then who cares?

I dislike roll-under mechanics where the lower you roll the better, simply because it seems counterintuitive to me.  (Probably shaped by the fact that I'm old enough to have gotten into gaming with first edition AD&D, and the visceral thrill of rolling the natural 20 has never, ever worn off for me as the greatest adrenaline hit of gaming.)

Something I've come to dislike as a corollary of the above is the wholly separate damage roll.  A 20 to hit and a 1 on damage is almost more frustrating than not rolling the 20 in the first place.  I am now much more enamoured of games which connect degree of hit success to amount of damage in some way.

Classes in themselves, as a character construction model, I hate less than the insane volume of specific capability lists built around most modern iterations thereof, as well as the overcomplicated progress structures.  Designing a single high-level NPC shouldn't take more time than writing the rest of your adventure, and I shouldn't need to have every single sourcebook you've ever published to know what all the listed abilities in a character stat block are.  (Online SRDs help with this, but even there, lookup time and learning can make it prohibitive.)

Initiative mechanics that place the onus on the GM to resolve conflicts. In my experience the single biggest cause of game-stopping arguments ever is the GM ruling that something unpleasant happens to a character before they have a chance to try to react to it or avoid it. Give me a die roll or resource spend I can point at.

Passive defense difficulties in combat, like the D20 AC.  I much prefer being able to roll to save my ass; it gives me the illusion of being more in control of my own fate (a corollary to the above phenomenon).

Probability curves that are too flat and easy to calculate (personally, this is one reason I like die pools, as the opacity of the probabilities reinforces the illusion for me).  I love so much else about the GUMSHOE system that its single-D6-plus-spent-points always annoys me. The only single-die roll I've ever liked was D&D's original single d20.

"Unusual Background" or analogous character ability "surtaxes".  It may be a little spectrum-y of me, but in my view a point is a point is a point; if 100 points' worth of one kind of ability just isn't considered as "powerful" (i.e. potentially in-game effective) as 100 points' worth of another kind, then your problem is with your basic pricing structure, not how "unusual" a particular concept is or isn't.

Quote from: Malleustein;1063725That sounds pointless to me.  It is cheating if you accept that the Referee is bound by the dice rolls.  You have simply made it acceptable to cheat by giving the Referee do-overs.

It works for you.  It wouldn't for me.

Actually that is my point. The issue of "cheating" is whether or not you are lying to your players.

If you tell the players your GM dice rolls matter, and they don't, then you are cheating and lying.

If you tell your players your GM dice make nice sounds when they hit the table and that is all they are meant to do, then you are not lying or cheating.

If you have a mechanic that gives the GM a set amount of rerolls per session, then that is just a rule.

If you lie and cheat as the GM and the players and you are having fun, then you have won RPGs. I don't personally enjoying cheating or lying to my players out-of-character. Ergo, GM meta currency is a fine mechanic.

Quote from: Malleustein;1063684This. With no exception.

Absolutely.  GM metacurrency is ridiculous and contradictory to the concept of roleplaying.

Player metacurrency, that allow characters GM-type control or the power to cheat rules or dice, is just as bad - and probably somewhat more annoying because it is more common.