Mearls just tried his best, it says it here:

[Zinegata]

Regardless of whether or not THAC0 was a sacred cow, it was changed to something that was not dissimilar in terms of player actions (roll D20, modify based on bonuses and penalties, compare against target number).

But the 3.X version was much less confusing because in the new system all bonuses were positive and all penalties were negative, as opposed to the old system where it was backwards in some places and not intuitive.

It was ultimately an improvement to a "sacred cow". Not burning it in favor of, say, switching to rolling a pool of ten D6s and counting the hits.

[tzor]

THAC0 was the sacred cow of pre-3rd edition D&D. It's the mechanic which gave D&D its reputation as a convoluted an math-heavy game even in far-detached sources like the Straight Dope. It was not a 2E-only invention, either.

If THAC0 is not a sacred cow then nothing is. The only two things that were more ingrained into D&D culture until then are plussed magical items and dwarves/humans/elves being core.

THAC0 was invented in 1E. Since there were different tables for every character class, THAC0 was designed for the NPC table only.

THAC0 was not the "sacred cow." THAC0 was the "extra sauce," the thing that made 2E easier than 1E (where everything was a lookup table). There clearly were sacred cows in D&D, but THAC0 was not one of them.

[Zinegata]

THAC0 was invented in 1E. Since there were different tables for every character class, THAC0 was designed for the NPC table only.

THAC0 was not the "sacred cow." THAC0 was the "extra sauce," the thing that made 2E easier than 1E (where everything was a lookup table). There clearly were sacred cows in D&D, but THAC0 was not one of them.

Eh? I was under the impression that THAC0 was a holdover from D&D's wargame roots, which generally has huge Combat Resolution Tables.

[Centurion13]

THAC0 was invented in 1E. Since there were different tables for every character class, THAC0 was designed for the NPC table only.

THAC0 was not the "sacred cow." THAC0 was the "extra sauce," the thing that made 2E easier than 1E (where everything was a lookup table). There clearly were sacred cows in D&D, but THAC0 was not one of them.

Eh? I was under the impression that THAC0 was a holdover from D&D's wargame roots, which generally has huge Combat Resolution Tables.

THAC0 was what 'saved' our campaign, what made it so fast that we referred to it as 'turbo AD@D' in the late 1980s when I played it it in Japan. I mean, it was light-years ahead of anything we'd ever seen before.

Imagine taking the hard-to-read hit tables away from the GM and looking up your own damned hit numbers for an encounter? We thought the GM might be a little miffed, but it turned out he was tickled to not have to provide all that data every time he looked up. The burden was on us - all we had to do was memorize a formula.

And to be honest? That formula was not any more difficult that anything else we had to memorize back on the ship (I was in the Navy, stationed at Yokosuka at the time) and once done, made the game much faster.

So it might not be the cat's meow now, but when we first encountered it, THAC0 was the shit. It certainly superseded its predecessor.

Cent13

[Kaelik]

who aren't in the same state as him.

??? I'm calling you stupid for saying something that is objectively stupid.

You are the one who thinks whether or not you'd beat me up if we were in the same room matters.

Hint: You would not, not because I'm extremely tough and could kick your ass, maybe I can't, maybe I can, I don't know you, but it doesn't matter, because if I called you a stupid dumbfuck and told you your idea was stupid to your face, I truly believe based on the lack of internet access in prison, that you would not immediately violently attack me.

If you think your claim that the change from 2e saving throws to 3e saving throws was less sacred cow killing than the change from 3e saving throws to 4e attacks is not stupid, then defend your stupid idea, and call me all the names you want while you do it, but if you can't defend your idea, then why bother posting?

[Zinegata]

THAC0 was what 'saved' our campaign, what made it so fast that we referred to it as 'turbo AD@D' in the late 1980s when I played it it in Japan. I mean, it was light-years ahead of anything we'd ever seen before.

Oh. So it was a simplification of the even more labyrinthian Combat Resolution Tables that generally characterized war games.

[Centurion13]

THAC0 was what 'saved' our campaign, what made it so fast that we referred to it as 'turbo AD@D' in the late 1980s when I played it it in Japan. I mean, it was light-years ahead of anything we'd ever seen before.

Oh. So it was a simplification of the even more labyrinthian Combat Resolution Tables that generally characterized war games.

Probably. It's where the FRPG game came from, after all. I would be surprised if there were NOT signs of a gradual evolution over time. THAC0 was overtaken in its turn (no arguments here about the counter-intuitive AC ratings of AD@D). The main differences, for us, was that it took the burden off the GM's shoulders and gave him time to tell the story a bit better - and got the combat sequences moving quite a bit faster, as the bottleneck of huge tables/GM's attention was alleviated.

I have a copy of Chainmail somewhere; also a copy of the early Arduin books. Real heavy on tables, and how. Not all games were like this, but most, yeah; that was their way of portraying 'reality' inside the game.

Cent13

[Username17]

First, the major change of 4E is the power system, ditching vancian casting. That's what everyone complains about.

4e has Vancian casting. That is what a Daily ability is.

Actual attempts to get rid of Vancian Casting include the 3e Warlock, not the 4e Warlock. And while various people nerdrage about them being overpowered or some shit, the reality is that despite the fact that they are weak as shit and live in an obscure supplement that has basically nothing else in it that anyone cares about - the Warlock was so popular they decided to bring him in as one of 4e's core classes. And they only had 8 fucking core classes!

People complain about 4e Powers because they are bland and shitty, not because they are fundamentally different from Spells, Invocations, or Martial Adept Maneuvers.

-Username17

[Centurion13]

People complain about 4e Powers because they are bland and shitty, not because they are fundamentally different from Spells, Invocations, or Martial Adept Maneuvers.

-Username17

So... it's not that any cows were harmed during the making of 4e, it was that their replacements were inadequate and unfulfilling. As I worked out above with THAC0, all the basic elements are still there. You're saying it's just that their replacements don't satisfy?

I will buy that. It seems reasonable. I got the impression 4e was for the WoW generation. And my own experience has been that, to a point, the simplification of a system tends to make it more and more bland.

Cent13

[TheFlatline]

THAC0 was invented in 1E. Since there were different tables for every character class, THAC0 was designed for the NPC table only.

THAC0 was not the "sacred cow." THAC0 was the "extra sauce," the thing that made 2E easier than 1E (where everything was a lookup table). There clearly were sacred cows in D&D, but THAC0 was not one of them.

Eh? I was under the impression that THAC0 was a holdover from D&D's wargame roots, which generally has huge Combat Resolution Tables.

THAC0 was what 'saved' our campaign, what made it so fast that we referred to it as 'turbo AD@D' in the late 1980s when I played it it in Japan. I mean, it was light-years ahead of anything we'd ever seen before.

Imagine taking the hard-to-read hit tables away from the GM and looking up your own damned hit numbers for an encounter? We thought the GM might be a little miffed, but it turned out he was tickled to not have to provide all that data every time he looked up. The burden was on us - all we had to do was memorize a formula.

And to be honest? That formula was not any more difficult that anything else we had to memorize back on the ship (I was in the Navy, stationed at Yokosuka at the time) and once done, made the game much faster.

So it might not be the cat's meow now, but when we first encountered it, THAC0 was the shit. It certainly superseded its predecessor.

Cent13

I could still probably calculate all of the THAC0 tables for the core character classes if I really, really put my mind to it.

Fighters were easy: 20 minus (your level - 1) is your THAC0.

I want to say... thieves THAC0 dropped 1 every 3 levels. Wizards 1 every 4 or 5, and the secondary martial characters dropped one every 2 levels.

For it's time, THAC0 had some logic behind it. However, the overall 3.x solution was more elegant. It really never was much of an issue. Most character sheets had THAC0 charts on them, and you changed them up once every few levels ahead of time.

Frank's right. What sucked about 4e powers was that they're bland. I don't *feel* much of a difference between different classes. Which is a nebular term, but is important. Too much homogeneity is bland and boring. Too little and you're memorizing a book of exceptions in order to play. The sweet spot is a unified mechanic (Stat + Bonus + d20 against target number), and you create "minigames" around what the melee, ranged, and magic users can do, so that an archer feels different than a magic user spamming his at-will.

[Lokathor]

Warrior: 1/1
Priest: 2/3
Rogue: 1/2
Mage: 1/3

[Username17]

People complain about 4e Powers because they are bland and shitty, not because they are fundamentally different from Spells, Invocations, or Martial Adept Maneuvers.

-Username17

So... it's not that any cows were harmed during the making of 4e, it was that their replacements were inadequate and unfulfilling. As I worked out above with THAC0, all the basic elements are still there. You're saying it's just that their replacements don't satisfy?

I will buy that. It seems reasonable. I got the impression 4e was for the WoW generation. And my own experience has been that, to a point, the simplification of a system tends to make it more and more bland.

Cent13

The deaths of sacred cows are basically completely meaningless. People will flock to a system if it is better, whether sacred cows die or not. People embraced D&D3e's BAB, people embraced SR4's fixed target numbers. The deaths of sacred cows are used as post-hoc rationalizations for why people don't like things, but they do not in and of themselves factor large into the real decision making process. People will sometimes say that nWoD's fixed target numbers is what makes them hate the game, but really it's just that NWoD is on the whole a shitty product.

Now, a sizable number of people really do hate and fear change. And those people will flip their shit over frankly inconsequential sacred cow assassinations. Shadzar lost his shit over THAC0 going away. Cain lost his shit over SR4's fixed target numbers. And so on. But these people are in the substantial minority. And the really important thing is that they will exist whether you kill real sacred cows or not! Any change, no matter how inconsequential, will be latched on by nerdraging grognards as "the reason" that they don't feel the need to switch. There are people who will go on angry tirades about why they refused to switch from AD&D to 2nd Edition AD&D. There are people who nerdrage over the differences between Champions 4 and Champions 5.

But the bottom line is that if the whole of your product is good, you can change pretty much whatever you fucking want and the people who complain about it will be inconsequential noise in the background. But you do have to make sure your product is good. If it's bad, there will just be a lot more people making that inconsequential noise and you won't even be able to listen to them to figure out why the product was bad.

-Username17

[Centurion13]

People will flock to a system if it is better, whether sacred cows die or not. People embraced D&D3e's BAB, people embraced SR4's fixed target numbers. The deaths of sacred cows are used as post-hoc rationalizations for why people don't like things, but they do not in and of themselves factor large into the real decision making process.

Yeah, agreed. Folks sometimes hanging their dislike of an entire system on a single example of change - it's just shorthand. Most folks won't have time to sit and listen to the whole explanation, so the old-school gamer picks one of the more easily recognized changes that bug him and uses that as a sort of 'handle'.

Now, a sizable number of people really do hate and fear change. And those people will flip their shit over frankly inconsequential sacred cow assassinations.... Any change, no matter how inconsequential, will be latched on by nerdraging grognards

It's prolly just the irritation of being old and having to learn a new way of saying 'I kills it with my sword'. Lord knows I have had to learn enough of them. But all of that is behind me - now I just 'kills it with my PPC' and so far, they haven't fucked too much with *that*.

There are people who nerdrage over the differences between Champions 4 and Champions 5.

Wait, there was a Champions 5? I recall the hardback version - heck, I bought it from a bin in San Diego in lessee, 2000, five years after my last Champions game and fifteen years after I actually had any real need for it. Stupid, I know, but old reflexes.... and it really does look good! It looked to me like the penultimate of the Hero System.

But the bottom line is that if the whole of your product is good, you can change pretty much whatever you fucking want...

True. Folks with a good system will put up with individual elements being less than optimal - as long as there aren't so many that the entire product ends up being substandard.

I recall well the old days, the mixing and matching and careful dovetailing as my favorite DMs dug up the gems they found in this game system or that. They washed the turds off these nuggets and then carefully polished and cut the part so it could be dropped into the Friday night game. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but I always got the impression it was a means to an end, not an end in itself.

The faster, streamlined rules were fine if speed and storytelling were what you wanted (and a lot of us munchkins did). The more detailed, table heavy rules were for folks who wanted to know just how fricken' tired they were gonna be at the end of a journey across the desert. Some of them had to know, or it wasn't 'realistic' enough for their enjoyment. And the DMs had to try to keep both groups happy.

Dungeon crawl? Engage streamlined rules. Town adventure complete with haggling over a fucking bolt of calico? Break out the complex reaction tables and maybe even (it was rumored) the sexual encounter tables for those ballsy enough to drag the rest of the group through one of their trysts.

I dunno. I always got the impression the GM just changed the shit he didn't like in the system he was playing, but there was probably more to his choosing that system in the first place. Maybe not so much stuff he would have to change? GMs can be just as lazy efficient as the rest of us.

Cent13

[tzor]

Yeah, agreed. Folks sometimes hanging their dislike of an entire system on a single example of change - it's just shorthand. Most folks won't have time to sit and listen to the whole explanation, so the old-school gamer picks one of the more easily recognized changes that bug him and uses that as a sort of 'handle'.

I'm the exact opposite. I'm just as lazy but I look for that one change that makes me go "Ah Ha" that's a definite improvement and then I'm happy. It's only later when I encounter all of the other changes in the details that actually suck does my happiness end (or just grow less).

[Swordslinger]

The deaths of sacred cows are basically completely meaningless. People will flock to a system if it is better, whether sacred cows die or not. People embraced D&D3e's BAB, people embraced SR4's fixed target numbers. The deaths of sacred cows are used as post-hoc rationalizations for why people don't like things, but they do not in and of themselves factor large into the real decision making process. People will sometimes say that nWoD's fixed target numbers is what makes them hate the game, but really it's just that NWoD is on the whole a shitty product.

The thing is that 4E is actually not a shitty product or a bad game. It's probably the most well-balanced RPG out there right now and works great for casual dungeon crawls. It's a fine product if you acknowledge what it's supposed to do and what its limitations are.

For the most part, people hate the game simply because it doesn't feel like D&D. But had the game been labeled as Dungeon Adventures RPG, it wouldn't have been nearly as poorly received.

But people feel betrayed because they're getting something that's very simplified and watered down from the D&D of prior editions.

Whenever you write a new edition or a sequel, people are expecting an improved version of the original product, not a new product. If you give them something that does not resemble the original, they will be notably upset. If you release Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 as a Starcraft clone, people just are not going to be happy with it. even if it's a very solid game, they're not getting the military shooter they wanted. And yes, they're going to be upset.

The moment you put Dungeons and Dragons on the product, people are expecting something that feels like D&D.

[Daztur]

I think that 3ed changed plenty of things but a lot of the changes are under the hood so that the average casual player who isn't playing attention to what's going on doesn't notice them as much as the change to 4ed when they're more in your face.

Sure the way that things like combat are calculated are different in 3ed, but you still walk up to the monster, roll a d20, hit it if you roll high and then roll damage for the weapon and then see if it dies or cast spells (mostly the same spells at it) and have the DM make a saving throw and hope that it fails. Even though the systems for figuring out success and failure get changed a lot, you're doing the same things. With 4ed that gets thrown out the window.

[Username17]

The thing is that 4E is actually not a shitty product or a bad game. It's probably the most well-balanced RPG out there right now and works great for casual dungeon crawls. It's a fine product if you acknowledge what it's supposed to do and what its limitations are.

No. It's supposed to be a roleplaying game divided into two parts: Combat challenges and Skill Challenges. Combat Challenges in 4e are extremely boring, since you end up doing the same fucking thing over and over again and even your special abilities are seriously not that different from the at-wills you are expected to spam 6 times a combat. The Skill Challenges DO NOT WORK AT ALL.

So half of the game is subjectively boring as shit and the other half is a total unmitigated failure that even the game's fans can no longer bring themselves to defends. That is a shitty product, by any possible measure.

-Username17

[Centurion13]

Even though the systems for figuring out success and failure get changed a lot, you're doing the same things. With 4ed that gets thrown out the window.

Agreed. One reason I disliked my encounter with 4e was because the darned thing simply did not work like I expected = I thought the sequence you mentioned above would be there, but no. I am glad that the various companies that have handled the BT IP over the years have done their best to retain the 'backward compatibility' of the basic gameplay itself.

It does make a difference. What makes me scratch my head is that with so many experienced game designers working at WOTC/TSR/Whatever over the years, you would think someone, somewhere would have discovered this and codified it somehow as a Thing to be Preserved.

This does not appear to be the case. I wonder if Frank Trollman knows anything about that?

I also wonder if he has ever considered writing a book about game design? He seems to have a mountain of facts and opinions, the one as fascinating as the other, and I get as much of a kick out of his analysis of a give game system as I do the 'take no prisoners' attitude he has while doing it.

Cent13

[Koumei]

I would buy any guide book that swears at the reader constantly.

[Maxus]

I would buy any guide book that swears at the reader constantly.

Seconded.

[Swordslinger]

No. It's supposed to be a roleplaying game divided into two parts: Combat challenges and Skill Challenges. Combat Challenges in 4e are extremely boring, since you end up doing the same fucking thing over and over again and even your special abilities are seriously not that different from the at-wills you are expected to spam 6 times a combat.

If it's just repetition that you're finding bad, that's a poor argument.

AD&D was widely successful where fighter types did nothing but say "I attack it" over and over again. 4E fighter types have actually several times the options they had in 1E/2E. Even pre-ToB 3E fighters tended to just resort to full/standard attacking things until they died. Yeah maybe you had one dude who specialized in trips or charges, but whatever, the point was that you still spammed the same move. In 4E you're encouraged to burn up your encounter powers, so that's a few turns where you're not just repeating the same move. So yeah, fighter types had not changed much at all and certainly not for the worst. That [W] damage plus a one turn status condition or push was actually more than you were ever doing in AD&D.

The main point of contention is spellcasters, and that's solely because of preconceptions of the previous edition. It's not necessarily that 4E wizards don't feel like spellcasters, it's that they don't feel like "D&D spellcasters." They play much more like a Diablo sorceress with the constant repetition of one spell. People did not like that and wanted their sacred cows to preserve the D&D feel.

Skill challenges? Yeah, they're crap. But I'd hardly call that "half the game". Skill challenges are a minor subsystem that most groups in 4E don't even use. Every 4E module I've seen uses about 1 skill challenge per adventure. Not a big deal at all.

[Username17]

Skill challenges? Yeah, they're crap. But I'd hardly call that "half the game". Skill challenges are a minor subsystem that most groups in 4E don't even use. Every 4E module I've seen uses about 1 skill challenge per adventure. Not a big deal at all.

People don't use them because they are shit. Not because they aren't half the game as sold. Skill Challenges are supposed to be the entire game outside combat. There are two kinds of encounters in the whole game. The fact that one of them does not work doesn't make it "not a big deal" because people avoid using that half. It makes it a really fucking big deal, because people avoid using that half of the game.

AD&D was widely successful where fighter types did nothing but say "I attack it" over and over again. 4E fighter types have actually several times the options they had in 1E/2E.

Well, there is attacking things with a sword and attacking things with a bow (roughly equivalent to the two at-wills that 4e characters get), but yes. Fighters in AD&D are boring. But they are still less boring than fighters in 4e, because monsters fall over dead when you hit them. An AD&D Troll has 33 hit points and regenerates 3/round. In AD&D you did a lot less damage, but still if you're doing less than 8 points per hit you're a sucker. The Troll is going down, not in six rounds of spamming an at-will, but in 6 total hits from the whole party. You have one less troll to worry about in about 2 rounds of combat.

In terms of repetition per combat, it's much less. The number of times you say "I shoot the manticore" and roll a d20 is considerably less when the manticore has an AD&D's 30 hit points and an AC of 4 than when it has a 4e's 210 Hit Points with an AC of 26.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Though for what it's worth, is a troll a Solo, Elite or Normal, and how many Trolls does AD&D say you find in one fight? Aren't most monsters found in groups of 3d6 and all that?

[Lokathor]

I would buy any guide book that swears at the reader constantly.

Seconded.

third.

[Username17]

Though for what it's worth, is a troll a Solo, Elite or Normal, and how many Trolls does AD&D say you find in one fight? Aren't most monsters found in groups of 3d6 and all that?

The 4e Manticore is an Elite, meaning that you fight 2.5 of them per "normal" fight. The AD&D Manticore has a number appearing of 1-4, meaning that you fight 2.5 of them per normal fight. Also, the AD&D Manticore is intended to be fought around the 1/3 progress mark and the 4e Manticore is intended to be fought at the 1/3 progress mark. It seriously is the closest AD&D/4e comparison monster I could find.

4e characters hit noticeably harder, but hit considerably less often. And the manticores they are trying to kill have seven times more hit points. The AD&D Manticore is also way more threatening, as it does about 40% as much damage per round to enemies who have a lot less hit points and a whole lot less healing.

-Username17