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| A warrior surrounded by enemies, untouched - Understanding THAC0 and AC - |
(Summary
TL;DR)
. Combat in AD&D was an abstraction, not the simulation of
reality. One round represented 1 minute in the game world, while in
most modern games, one round last around 5 to 10 seconds.
. A character's action was not the only action he would do in one
round, but only the focus of its attention. In a round, a character
would do many actions that would go without saying.
. THAC0 was an amalgamation of a character's skill, technique, luck,
positioning, strength, reach, stamina, and all other qualities
necessaries that would make a person able to deliver damage dealing
blows.
. AC was the capacity of resisting the force of an impact, foresee
the enemy's moves, the extension of how much the armor was covering
the character's body, how tough was the material, how hard was it to
hit the target (in terms of size, speed and mobility) and how thick
was the armor's covering layer.
!As always, remember to comment and tell what you though about the subject!
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I wish to discuss in this post about something that I find much
necessary, at least for those who still play Old School rpgs or read
about them. I heard many a time – and I believe that many of you
might have heard something similar – about how 'unreal' or
'incoherent' combat is in D&D, specially with old school D&D
(like 1 st edition and AD&D). I heard things like: 'how can a
human warrior fight against a gigantic colossus without the creature
just kicking him away?'; 'what about those hit points? As long as you
have 1 hit point, you are fine, even if you lost 100 of them'; 'how
the heck does having high armor makes you harder to hit?'. Many
answer such remarks saying that 'D&D is a heroic game', using
that as an excuse.
And, even so, when we face old editions – like AD&D – we see
things that even D&D gamers find hard to believe. For example,
there were no targeted attacks in AD&D (unless you were using
optional rules found elsewhere the Dungeon Master Guide). Another
example would be with the bonus of Dexterity in AC was not lost if
you were using heavy armor, even full plate. Such things seem to put
AD&D's combat in a very conflicting position with reality.
Here is the point: combat in AD&D, although it might seem at
first glance unrealistic, it truly is not. I would even dare to say
that AD&D is more realistic than 3 rd edition D&D and even
Gurps (gasp! I know, I might be overstating just a little bit here,
eh?). But hold on a minute, allow me to elaborate that argument by
discussing about the two main aspects of combat in D&D – Attack
(THAC0, in AD&D) and Armor Class (AC).
But before talking about those two, the first thing to notice is how
much it takes a Round in AD&D to complete, a detail many times
forgotten. In most contemporary rpgs, a round takes about 5 to 10
seconds to complete. In Gurps, it's just 1 second; in d20 D&D,
it's 6 seconds. But, in old AD&D, it took 1 MINUTE. Yes, 1
minute; or 60 seconds; or 60 times longer than GURPS, 10 times longer
than d20 D&D.
With that said, we clarify an important aspect of AD&D – it
tries not to emulate the reality of every single blow and action a
character does during a round, but, in fact, it's an abstraction of a
combat situation. When during combat you declare your intention, this
does not mean that your character will do ONLY what you said, but
that it will FOCUS on what you said. So, if you say that your
character will drink a potion, your character will have to take it
off from its bag, look around, wait for an opportunity, take off the
lid, drink it, all of that while evading, parrying and dodging
attacks.
Based on that idea, we can finally understand what THAC0 meant in
AD&D. It was everything concerning the capacity of a character to
deal a damaging blow in one opponent: its size, strength, skill,
technique, positioning and stamina. Because of that, a Troll with
THAC0 13 (+7 attack) would be as capable in combat as a warrior of
level 7. Its ferocity, size and brutality were counted on its THAC0.
When you would make an attack roll using your THAC0, that did not
mean you were delivering ONE single blow, but, in fact, that you were
engaging in direct combat with many maneuvers, feints, blows and, in
case of a hit, the damage would represent the sum of all those
strikes that connected and all the damage the warrior was able to
inflict. It's for that reason that AD&D did not have rules for
targeted attacks – the attack roll meant the best attack that you
could have made during your turn.
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| A Leviathan AC does not mean that it's hard to hit... but that it is hard to hurt! |
In the same way of THAC0, AC was not only the type of armor you wore,
but also how thick was a monster's hide, how hard it was to be struck
(because of size, speed, mobility), how much did it cover its body
and other factors like those. Everything that could make it hard for
a blow to cause real damage to a creature was part of its AC. That is
the reasoning behind the base 10 of AC – it depicts a person trying
to evade and not be hurt, a creature blocking and enduring damage.
That's why a whale had AC 4 in AD&D (16 in ascending rules) –
not because it was hard to hit it, but because its sheer size and
thickness made it very hard to cause real damage do the creature.
Meanwhile, the Will-o-wisp had AC -8 (28), because it was very agile,
tiny and its body was
made of electricity and light.
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| The macabre Will-o-wisps from AD&D - The Balls of Steel - |
Until then,
Valete!
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