Avoid Mistakes: Mastering TO HIT Calculations | D&D 

I remember the time I got so fascinated by the 2E and the Black Box D&D as well that I always tried to play those games in a simplified homebrew version back when I discovered them. First Quest and Basic D&D are my favorite role-playing games to this day because of their old school vibe and the modularity they have. 2E is such a funny little guy thanks for all the different alternative mechanics proper for any given situation in the game you can use whenever convenient and how weird yet intuitive THAC0 is.

This is a great video on THACO. I myself started in 2e. One good thing about THACO is DMs can hide the armor class of creatures. So you just would say I can hit armor class. And if you have trouble subtracting in your head. Just write at the bottom of your sheet the THACO results to prevent any slowdown. I prefer a little mystery in my game. Why would characters know the AC of a creature. There is definitely a schism in D&D. I would say from OD&D Up through 2e, you can see the wargame DNA. With 2 e being a perfect mix of wargaming a narrative play. 3e was the end of the Dungeon MASTER and more adjudicating based on rules lawyering whats in the book. 4e was just trying to make D&D like an MMORPG and 5e is making the most vanilla every one can do everything game with no danger.

As kids, we jokingly called it "THWACK-0", because you were rolling to "thwack" the monsters. Learned it at 10, taught it to my 8 year old brother. Decades later, still love using THAC0.

Yup! Mystery AC is awesome!

Awesome. I may have to look back into 2e... 🤘

THAC0 is great i fell in love when i went back to 2e after playing 3.5 for years

Love it. I feel like 2nd edition (er...after 4th) gets the most amount of hate and has a funky reputation. But I also have a lot of love for it! The art, the sprawling, endless settings, the THAC0. Hope you do more 2nd Edition content!

AD&D 2nd Edition wasn't my first game, but it was the first D&D I played. That was...geez, '89? 90 at the latest. We said [THACK-oh] back then, and I still do. I dig you on how 2nd Edition gives you what you need; with its simple rules and bevy of options, it's easy to make the game go how you want. It's ⅓ of my favorite D&D, the others being BECMI/RC and Castles & Crusades.

Thac0 and Level drain - the source of the most gripes in the old school! The First Quest method is for keeping the target AC secret. If you don't want to reveal it, then your player needs to subtract the die roll from THAC0 to reveal the best AC they hit.

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When I was a teenager I used to be able to run 2e one-shots from memory for my pals. Filled up my brain with useless life stuff in the meantime.

i'll never think THAC0 the same again

I'm a big fan of 2nd edition. I'm running OSE right now, which I'm finding great for beginners and really good for me to get back into D&D after being away from it for 15 years. At the same time I'm seeing how AD&D was adding wrinkles and complexity that really make the "Basic" D&D game a bit more interesting. I'm starting to adopt AD&D features bit by bit where I feel they are needed in my OSE game. Looking forward to hearing more about AD&D e2 from you!

2E was never meant to be an "edition" in the current sense of 3.5 -> 4E -> 5E. According to TSR, it was a new printing of the same game with extra stuff TSR had come up with or that had been submitted by players to give new options or revamp rules to accommodate new ideas in the TTRPG world. THAC0 was a patch on the core system and intended as extra value to make AD&D more competitive in a market that had moved ahead of their 1E product in the intervening years. And it was a brilliant patch. It originated as a shortcut at game conventions, since the D&D sessions were often overbooked and had little time to spare. THAC0, as you mentioned, replaced the 1E hit tables without much alteration to the outcome and that made running combats a little bit faster. In my groups, what we did was roll, add/subtract modifiers, then subtract that roll from our THAC0. So if I rolled a total of 12 and my THACO was 15, I got 3, and told the DM I hit AC 3 or lower. It was actually weird (but not wyrd) for me to hear it explained the other way around by adding the AC and comparing to the THAC0 number. Same math, different direction.

thac0 was the Reason why OSE sat on my shelf for nearly a year before I even played it. Took me a while to realise, that there was a Ascending Armour alternative rule 😂 love you Bro, but you will never sell me on Thac0 😂

Awesome explanation of THAC0 and also of the importance of aspiring to keep some "mystery and magic" in our game. Weird in a good way! And what about those 2d8+2 type of dice rolls. Or 2-7 and 2-8 ? It's part of the insider "secret knowledge" of the game that I personally just love!

I played in a 1e Basic game way back when, THAC0 was told me very poorly. I was explained that the lower my AC the harder it was to hit me and that's it, but I didn't understand the matrix of it at all (I'm terrible at math too, but 3e/5e helped that) Fast Forward to me getting OSE, I've found out that THAC0 isn't that hard. OSE simplified it, but I read 1e/2e AD&D rulebooks and it seems complicated, but it's simple, it's just over explained.

🤘

It's just a shorthand and yeah it's fun and wyrd.

I havent played AD&D 2e since the late 90's, but I've been looking at it a lot lately. A lot of people badmouth Thac0, ascdnding AC is better and easier, bla bla, attack bonus, bla bla. Thats all good and fine, but Thac0 was part of the feeling of D&D, in my opinion 🤷‍♂️

I always pronounced it "THAC0."

Good video and interesting point about the "weird" aspect of 2e… I agree that all the unexpected, discontiguous and heterogeneous little subsystems in 2e go a long way to breaking the routine, rationalized experience of AD&D as a "mere game"… common core mechanics just kill the "magic" for me because players quickly learn how to control the odds, but that isn't really possible when there is no single system that controls everything. By the way, for the last three decades we have always pronounced it THAY-CO, as you do ("A" as in "AC"). The first time I heard of THACKO was on an internet forum in the 2000’s. Perhaps it just depends upon where one grew up or what their first group used? It was always and still is THAY-CO to us.

Agreed i started on BX and AD&D 1 edition but really dug my claws into the second edition that's also when I started DMing and it is the biggest edition library I own lol but I prefer and still play the second edition your right it is Magic to me was then still is now is it the best for everyone no and that's a good thing but for me, I love the second edition THACO warcry lol

Personally, I don't find the math to be the problem. Its the logic. Its incredibly counter intuitive, but that may just be me. You count up with your dice, and down with the AC, but rolling high is still good, but you want to "hit" 0, be sure to add negative numbers... Its just not cognitively accessible without rewiring your brain, where as just adding a floating modifier--even if that's in the double digits--to your roll to beat a target number just makes sense. Number go up. More number good. But again, that's just my experience. You seem to love it exactly for the reason I don't, and thats great! I've never thought about trying to mechanically integrate the numinous (what I would define as the sense of awe that is inspired by the wyrd and the unknown) into the game in such a way, and especially to introduce obtuseness or cognitive load _on purpose_ to this effect. I'll have to think on this.

I used both pronunciations interchangeably.

i em 3 years into my current 2e campaign. My group of 5 players is extremely varied in ages. from late 20's all the way up to my 50 year old grognard ass. We play 5 hrs every week. I started playing in 1988 with 1e. Was so happy when 2e came out a year later was sooo much easer to run. any way. of my players only 1 had played 2e before, 1 was a 5e DM, and the other 3 were new to ttrpgs. None of them have struggled with THAC0. and the 5e DM claims to prefer it to ascending. i also find that the edition bridges the gap between, older, and more modern player sensibilities, both in terms of play style, and in whether or not you shit your pants when you saw what the new orcs look like, and dwarves in Birkenstocks. personally i like it all. but 2e has its gritty dungeon crawls, slavers, and chain mail bikinis, and you can Tiefling your brains out in plainescape, or ride your giant space hamster in spelljammer. the multiverse of the great wheel cosmology is an incredible large sandbox to play in, and realistically is going to be diverse. there is going to be Bad ass stuff, dark stuff, and cute stuff too. hell its even probable that you might just find some bio diversity in the races planet to planet, and Plaine to Plaine. orcs just might have pig noses one place, and be sexy on another. Now most of us old players could play D&d the rest of our lives without buying a wotc book, and their is no one standing over your shoulder telling you what orcs have to look like in your game. So i get the impression that most of this kind of complaint is simply thinly vailed bigotry, and you can't cure that. But if you have a diverse group and you want to scratch everyone's itch. 2e is fantastic. Also supports high-level play just about better then any edition. yha would love to see more 2e content from you. its really hard to find.

Started in Basic then moved to B/X then to 1st ed. I don't know much about second edition only that Planescape 2e is the best campaign setting ever written! But I too like THAC0 more than ascending AC. Why? It just looks cooler on paper. There is just something more bad ass about seeing that negative sign in your character's AC.

Yep, 5e is overly predictable.

Thac0 is simple compared to Hero Systems combat value system. Which is my favorite ttrpg AC system

1:05 thac0 a as in apple

Weird that it says a 1st level Ftr's THAC0 is 19. I believe it's 20 in both 1e and 2e. All 1st level PCs start with a 20.

Red Wizards of THAC0 is the "proper" pronunciation. The Black Box did give the best explanation, but Zanzer Tem was a coward and wasn't worthy to lick Bargle's boots. Dicebag broke the rotation; he didn't pass to DM Zoth. No TAC0 for Dicebag.

I find either way easy once you get used to it.

8:39 You might be interested to know who that there is a real game company called Wyrd Games

Did you backlight the OSE poster? I want to get a museum style frame with little led light strips lining it, that have black lights included

I don’t get it…it’s basic arithmetic. I like Thac0. If people Don’t like thac0 and don’t vibe with it, that’s cool. However-when people-make excuses like: it’s too much math…Come on Bro lol.

Dude, I'd watch a 20-minute video where you didn't cut the puffs. ... Is that weird? 😂

Blasphemy! The only way to run combat in D&D is 2d6 on the man to man Chainmail tables and lots of d6 for mass combat.

I loved the artwork from the 2e era. When I look at the new WOTC artwork is is super cringe and does not evoke a sense of adventure. I repurchased a bunch of 2e books over the past few months so I had what I lost from the early 00's.

THAY-ko. Thack-o is whacko!

Wtf is wrong with youtube. Over 60 people have commented on this video & im pretty sure a lot more people have seen this video. Im starting to think that you only get views if the algorythm believes your title to be evocative instead of truthfully...

Just convert it to AAC

... see, the thing is, there are two arguments about THAC0 and they're both true. 1) the math is really, _really_ not that much harder and 2) there is literally no logical reason to _prefer_ THAC0 to BAB. none. whatsoever. There's no reason for BAB versus THAC0 to even _be_ an argument except people who love D&D are shitty nerds looking for an excuse to tell other nerds why the wrong version of their favorite thing sucks. simple as. there's no reason to complain about THAC0 if you're running an old game, very little reason not to just _convert_ THAC0 to BAB if it bugs you, and _no reason at all_ to convert BAB back to THAC0. it's like rolling into spanishland trying to show everyone how hard you are by putting extra mayonnaise on your chimichanga. you know how you 'calculate' your to hit rolls using THAC0 while you're actually playing AD&D? _you don't._ you pick one edge of your character sheet (or two) and you write your THACO in the _middle_ of that edge, and then on _either side of it_ you write down the number you need to roll _on the d20_ to hit every AC between 10 and -10. You don't _subtract_ anything. You don't _add_ anything. You look at the number on your d20, you compare it to the number on your character sheet, and you tell the DM the lowest possible AC you hit. It's like Rolemaster. Rolemaster's crunchy, but it's not _hard._ Everyone who bitches about Rolemaster being hard is doing so... to make a game that's _harder than Rolemaster_ look better. You add... a d% roll to some double-digit numbers and you compare the result to a chart. People whine that it's _'too hard'_ to flip back and forth between all of those charts in the book. That's because those people are _stupid._ Too stupid to _photocopy_ the chart before the game, like absolutely everyone who _enjoys_ Rolemaster does.