Quote from: estar;1118721I think people would had less trouble if it was properly explained in the first place.

Even without an explanation the design method and philosophy was obvious to anyone who could manage the simple contingent probabilities.

But understanding the design philosophy didn't make me like it. AC works well intuitively and systemically for determining if a 75mm HEAT round penetrates the armor on a Panzer V. But that is because Panzer V's don't try to parry opposing artillery shells. Knights do try to parry the attacks of their opponents which is why, for many people, opposing parry rules is both more intuitive and less dissociative . Parrying feels more like what your character is actually doing in combat.

Quote from: estar;1118793Do you find a flaw in the math I presenting showing how a AC system can reflect the same odds of suffering damage and the same amount of damage suffered as a armor reduces damage system?

The odds are the same only if DEX does not add to AC and if the weapon damage does not vary by weapon type. But weapon damage does vary. And in nearly all versions of D&D DEX does add to AC. To deal with variable weapon damage, one could add in a table to vary the armor class by weapon type. This would be similar to the armor vs weapon type table that early D&D created. It didn't get used a lot back in the day, in part because adding in a table lookup step complicates combat.

QuoteDefense rolls are intuitive but there are several equally good way to represent the odds of not being hit

Since we are talking about a method players use, enjoyment or the lack thereof is also a factor, so mathematical equivalence isn't sufficient for a method to be "equally good."

The advantage of opposed rolls is player involvement. The disadvantage is it slows down play relative to a static number.

As long as combat involves more than a single check (i.e. multiple rounds of combat) the opposed roll mechanic doesn't even affect the bell curve distribution of outcomes for an entire battle all that much (the multiple rolls to hit vs. a static defense will already create a bell curve in terms of damage dealt per combat).

Unless there's enough interesting ways for active defenses to affect the outcome I'd say one check per attack is sufficient, particularly if it means other player's turns come around faster.

On the other hand, no one says it has to always be the attacker who rolls. A system where all NPCs use static values while players roll both attacks against them and defenses against their opponent’s attacks would still just have one check per action (I'd also say margin of success for damage would be beneficial as then there's no need for the player to also roll damage against themselves... instead they take damage based on how bad their failure to effectively defend was.

Quote from: amacris;1118803FWIW, the book "From Sumer to Rome" convinced me that armor wasn't primarily about "damage mitigation", it was about limiting the areas where you could be hurt ("armor as defense"). The authors show with very careful calculation and empirical testing that contemporary weapons during the period simply couldn't harm a person if they hit the armor. Hitting your breastplate with my sword doesn't damage you, it damages my sword and hurts my arm. As a result, combat was about hitting the target where he wasn't armored, which could be quite challenging.

Their results help explain why:
1) Heavy infantry beat archers in the ancient world. They find that 99% of all arrows would be deflected by shields and armor, meaning heavy infantry could close long before they were attritted. Waves of arrows wiping out heavy infantry is Hollywood nonsense.
2) Casualties are so lop-sided in battles, with the winning side having so few. The vast majority of attacks by heavy infantry on heavy infantry are deflected by armor and shield and only when one side turns its (less armored unshielded) back does the slaughter occur.
Put another way, if armor *mitigated* damage, the result of battles would be for most people to have numerous holes in their armor with wounds, but if armor *prevents* damage, the result would be for most people to be unwounded, some people to be badly wounded but survive, and some people to be dead. The latter is what we actually see in history.

I agree with you 100% that there are mechanical gaps in D&D but they can all be addressed within an "armor as defense" framework should one want to achieve that outcome. But they can't be achieved if you don't understand what's being simulated, which is why I think estar's essay is valuable. It's not the answer, but it's the beginning of the answer.

I'm going to look that book up. Can never have too much reference material.

I think this is a wonderful post full of mental-grist for my mill. Because it clearly demarcates two entirely relevant and extant schools of thought in game design: Armor as Damage Mitigation and Armor as "contact denial". This speaks directly to the perception of the player to the abstraction of combat in RPGs and raises the Chicken/Egg scenario as it pertains to "Health".

Now while we're talking in parallel to AC and what that actually means, it's true you can't have the discussion at a deep level without talking about HP as an abstraction too. My issue is it takes the abstractions of what they're supposed to represent a bit too far. I'm not *necessarily* looking for ultra-realism in regards to mechanical fidelity at the table - but you're giving me a lot to consider by presenting the MacGuffin pretty clearly here.

Then the perennial question - "Is it fun? Does it rub you the right way in play?" That too has to be answered. I can think of some downstream effects using your idea here that would make Gritty Realistic games REALLY scary, because in history having plate-armor was rare for a reason. Whereas in D&D - every fighter that wants plate armor has plate armor... which further erodes the whole context the system because then it becomes a standard assumption by which all other systems become "balanced" around.

It's good food for thought in either case...

It proably needs to be reminded that 1e D&D factored in damage avoidance into their AC system with the elaborate Hit vs Armor type tables. I used to use them.

But I'm not sure if this was an outgrowth of the rational you provided ester? Because it would seem between those and the addition of the damage mitigation offered in the optional Unearthed Arcana muddies the waters of that rationalization further. The total conglomerate of this is why AC probably leaves people (such as me) a little unsatisfied.

Quote from: amacris;1118803FWIW, the book "From Sumer to Rome" convinced me that armor wasn't primarily about "damage mitigation", it was about limiting the areas where you could be hurt ("armor as defense"). The authors show with very careful calculation and empirical testing that contemporary weapons during the period simply couldn't harm a person if they hit the armor. Hitting your breastplate with my sword doesn't damage you, it damages my sword and hurts my arm. As a result, combat was about hitting the target where he wasn't armored, which could be quite challenging.

Their results help explain why:
1) Heavy infantry beat archers in the ancient world. They find that 99% of all arrows would be deflected by shields and armor, meaning heavy infantry could close long before they were attritted. Waves of arrows wiping out heavy infantry is Hollywood nonsense.
2) Casualties are so lop-sided in battles, with the winning side having so few. The vast majority of attacks by heavy infantry on heavy infantry are deflected by armor and shield and only when one side turns its (less armored unshielded) back does the slaughter occur.
Put another way, if armor *mitigated* damage, the result of battles would be for most people to have numerous holes in their armor with wounds, but if armor *prevents* damage, the result would be for most people to be unwounded, some people to be badly wounded but survive, and some people to be dead. The latter is what we actually see in history.

I agree with you 100% that there are mechanical gaps in D&D but they can all be addressed within an "armor as defense" framework should one want to achieve that outcome. But they can't be achieved if you don't understand what's being simulated, which is why I think estar's essay is valuable. It's not the answer, but it's the beginning of the answer.

That's actually a good point, and it is true that plate armor in particular was design not just to mitigate damage, but deflect blades. However, armor can still be breached and a variety of weapons--like military picks, maces and war hammers--were design for that purpose, and armor is not effective at deflecting concussion damage (which can still pass through armor) only edged attacks, particularly slashing attacks (piercing attacks may sometimes breach armor). Even long swords were designed with an extra strong tip to pierce through armor, though, it wasn't optimal for that task (hence, why knights also used maces). And in those instances, "Armor as Mitigation" still works because it reduces the damage from attacks that breach armor, which it would IRL, even if an attack managed to pass through.

But that veers into the discussion of weapon type vs armor, as well as armor durability, which is a whole other can of worms. And while I like some degree of realism or verisimilitude/simulation, keeping track of armor and specific weapon types use and how effective they are at bypassing armor can slow play down too much (more than Armor as Mitigation already does; though, I think DR's drag on game play is minimal). So it's something I struggle with, since I'd like things making "sense" in my game, but also prefer combat to keep moving.

Quote from: tenbones;1118826It proably needs to be reminded that 1e D&D factored in damage avoidance into their AC system with the elaborate Hit vs Armor type tables. I used to use them.

I mentioned the weapon vs armor type table earlier. Armor protection is not a simple linear increase in uniform protection that affects all weapons equally. Those tables were intended adjust for how different armor types and weapons interacted, e.g. a halberd or warhammer/military pick were better than a sword at penetrating plate armor whereas a sword was good against light armor or no armor and the table reflected that.

Quote from: Bren;1118830I mentioned the weapon vs armor type table earlier. Armor protection is not a simple linear increase in uniform protection that affects all weapons equally. Those tables were intended adjust for how different armor types and weapons interacted, e.g. a halberd or warhammer/military pick were better than a sword at penetrating plate armor whereas a sword was good against light armor or no armor and the table reflected that.

I've always liked this idea - but we dropped it for a reason. Do you use it in any of the systems you run? None of the systems I currently use differentiate between weapons v. armor unless it's "hard armor" vs. "soft armor" against specific kinds of attacks - so they're outliers. How granular do you like it? And does it make it to your table?

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118800I'm aware of the source material, I just don't think that AC is a good way to represent what it's intended to do and there are mechanical gaps in "Armor as Defense" that "Armor as Mitigation/DR" doesn't have.

There are consquence to both approaches including AC, but I disagree that there are mechanical gaps.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118800Part of it is a matter of stylistic preference,

This is the part where I stress again none of my point are to be construed as you should like AC because... If one likes a system one likes a system.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118800but there are also mechanical issues as well.

Lets break it down.

Armor as "Defense" (i.e. evasion or reduced hit rate) fails to account for attacks that don't do damage
knockdowns,
So AC does have one case where an actual hit is determined and that when an unarmored target suffer damage. In most editions it is modified by a dex bonus. So to make contact with a target is to roll higher than the number for AC 10 (or 9) adding the dex bonus to the target number.

So now we determined that we made contact. Now we can proceed to resolving the knockdown itself. Different RPGs have different ways of handling this. Some match strength vs strength. Some get more sophisticated and include velocity and mass like GURPS. Some add skill in and so on. But the difficulty for D&D here was determining whether contact was made. Now that out of the way you can proceed to whatever mechanics you feel accurately represent the odds of getting knocked down after contact is made.

disarms,
In GURPS disarms are a function of weapon skill. In other system they are often a critical result. As for D&D, it has weapon skill in the form of your to-hit bonus so you can adapt that if need be. Or incorporate a critical result system. Both would be consistent with the larger system even though various editions have remained silent on it.

The method I prefer, is to have character make a normal to hit roll and the target make a save. If the save fails then the target is disarmed. I don't have an issue with including armor as part of the target number. I don't view armor as protection in this instance but rather it represents the attacker in that exchange of blow landing a hit on the armor instead of forcing a disarm.

The reason for the save is that in GURPS and other system I played with detailed combat mechanics including disarm, is that disarm is nearly always more difficult then try trying to do damage. That it less likely the more skilled the target is. Saves get better as the character levels, saves are traditionally used to mitigate something bad, that something bad is encompass a variety of situation not just damaging ones, disarms are something bad. Allowing the target a save makes a disarm attempt clearly inferior to an attempt to deal damage.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1118800or damage from attacks that don't involve "to hit" rolls (such as explosions, which armor should protect you from).

In GURPS, DR (Damage Resistance) does protect against a wide variety of damage including damage. Although the GURPS hobby has debated the accuracy of this. The thing with explosion is that their force is applied all at once. I am not going to debate the particulars only to point out that the question whether armor should protect against whole body effects is not settled among various systems that use Damage Reduction.

Specific to D&D is the saving throw mechanic. Saving Throws are used to avoid or mitigate something "bad" happening to you particularly things like explosion, fire, and other effects effect the whole character at once. So if one feels that armor should mitigate some of these like an explosion, then for later editions I would apply either all of or half of the AC bonus as a positive modifier to the saving throw.  It reduces damage by helping the save.  

It may not be the way some people would do it if they were designing a system but it does accomplish mechanically the same thing and does it in a way that consistent with how D&D works.

Again none of this means you should like AC or how D&D handle things, but it should demonstrate that through an understanding the system one can handle the situation you outline in a way that doesn't feel foreign.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118802Or rather, it did (past tense). When damage was constrained to the d4, d6, d8 and d10 +/-1 from a high ability score the mechanic is sensible because the damage range is small enough (ave. of 2.5 to 5.5) that armor as percentage of hits completely stopped seems logical.

But by as early as 1e AD&D an 18/00 (from gauntlets of ogre power) dealt more static damage than the average roll of a d10 and static damage has only scaled up from there to the point that the idea was strained to say the least.

The problem with your thesis that you don't go back far enough. AD&D was a consolidation and edit of the 3 LBB plus supplements. Even the Greyhawk supplement was a tweak by subsistuting different dice for damage and hit points. You need to consider your thesis in light of just the 3 LBB by themselves along with the accounts of how Gygax used the rules..

Quote from: Chris24601;1118802When the the difference between a near miss and a minimum damage hit is 1 point of damage, AC being partly DR makes sense. When the difference between a near miss and minimum damage hit is 7+ points it stops feeling like it's partly DR and feels more like the armor is all or nothing.

In the 3 LBB you only ever did 1d6 damage and could get a +1 strength bonus. What happened is that in the Greyhawk supplement the Strength bonuses were increased and expanded, damage dice was varied with many weapons using 1d8 or 1d10. Finally hit dice now varied in dice.

It had a substantial change in the system. OD&D 3 LBB plays differently than Greyhawk onwards. I think it also illustrate the problem that afflicts later editions in that Gygax and the author lost sight of why they did what they did in the first place.

Now I don't think the Greyhawk supplement is all bad, but I found through my own playtesting that the changes are better done if you tone down the dice used and the bonuses.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118802It's compounded by the hit points = meat mentality because the hits are invariably described as actual injuries (ones that would often be fight ending because they're scaled to what they'd be on a zero-level soldier; an axe sticking in your gut as one memorable example).

It's less bad where hit points are mostly or entirely non-physical (ex. Stamina) and it's loss represents the effort needed to make a hit non-injuring (in which case AC from armor represents the times you can use the armor to deflect an attack with no appreciable effort), but still notable.

Look people bent themselves for decades to describe hit points. But in reality all they represent is how long you endure in combat until you are killed. Of all the abstraction in D&D hit points have seen little change or innovation. It still remains an extrapolation of hits to kill being replaced by 1d6 hit points. Unlike GURPS where hit points are function of a character's health. There is little you can do to equate hits to kill to actual injury like you can in GURPS. All you can reliably say that if a character has 24 hit points is that on average they will last for twice as long as a character with 12 hit points. Beyond that the referee has to salt to taste so to speak.

What I do is look at the damage being dealt in proportion to the target's max hit points. Three hit points of damage is a major injury to a target with 6 hit points, while 3 hit point to a target with 24 hit point is a bleeding scratch.

Quote from: Chris24601;1118802get that it was the original intent. I think people are just expressing that there's been over four decades of development into something else entirely and that is what the vast majority are familiar with.

ETA: if I weren't four years deep into design and playtesting and the whole system nearly written save for some fluff text and random encounter-ish tables, I'd probably do a Armor + Attribute + Skill = Defense target number with damage based on margin of success; but that's for someone else to explore I guess.

Yes but so what? It great that we have a wider variety of system to choose from with more being released every year. But D&D or Pathfinder has been the choice of the majority of the hobby for decades now. So when I read about the history of its development and dug into it, I think it not as complicated or arbitrary as people make it out to be. I don't expect anybody to like it better. But I hope it helps people understand some of the underlying rationale to D&D.

Quote from: tenbones;1118794Actually I think it does make sense in how you present it. I, personally, don't like how it "feels" as a mechanic designed to to express what is being abstracted. Rather - I don't hate it or anything, I just think my sensibilities about the degrees of abstraction-to-narrative assumptions have shifted.

Much like the ballyhooed negativity about FFG's "Narrative" die mechanics - which are only as narrative as you want them to be, since they have tables that give you static values for just about any/every roll you can make - as a parallel example.

I think there is a very good reason why people don't look at AC in the manner you're explaining - though after consideration I kinda get it. I just think it's an odd view of how to express it in Task resolution. But in fairness, i've always thought that about AC - especially, ironically, once I started playing Stormbringer and Palladium Fantasy and Talislanta back in the day. AC felt weird to me for decades as a concept. EVEN though I was perfectly fine with the math behind it.

All sounds good to me. I am not looking to convince you to like it. Only to explain that there is a rationale even if the original authors didn't follow up on it themselves. Thanks the OSR we can write our own followups branching off at whatever point one things best. For me it is the 3 LBB plus some of Greyhawk, for other it different.

Quote from: tenbones;1118826It proably needs to be reminded that 1e D&D factored in damage avoidance into their AC system with the elaborate Hit vs Armor type tables. I used to use them.

Actually it originated in OD&D Greyhawk and that table was a straight extrapolation of Chainmail's Man to Man combat table (weapon versus armor type). The problem with AD&D was they added different armors so AD&D version was somewhat nonsensical compared to Greyhawk's.

My own opinion is that Gygax should have not included it either Greyhawk or AD&D for the same reason he probably didn't include in the 3 LBB, it another damn chart and it is a pain to expand it.

What I personally came up is noting in each weapon description whether they get a bonus against a particular type of armor.

Mace, small   9d/ea.    3.0/lbs.
Damage: 1d4+1
Used since the beginning of recorded history, maces became a popular battlefield weapon when chainmail became common a millennia ago. It is still a popular choice despite the spread of plate armor and war hammers. This weapon is between 18 to 24 inches long and has a ball of metal affixed to the end. It gets +1 to hit versus opponents wearing chainmail or gelatinous creatures like ochre jellies or black puddings. It is usable in the off-hand when dual wielding.

or

Hammer, war   8d/ea.   3.5/lbs.
Damage: 1d4+1
The spread of plate armor in the last few centuries has seen the adoption of the war hammer as a weapon. This version is designed to be used by one hand. It is 18 to 24 inches long, with a hammer shaped lump of metal affixed to one end. It gets +1 to hit when used against plate armor and creatures with natural plate like armor. It is usable in the off-hand when dual wielding.

Quote from: tenbones;1118823Then the perennial question - "Is it fun? Does it rub you the right way in play?" That too has to be answered. I can think of some downstream effects using your idea here that would make Gritty Realistic games REALLY scary, because in history having plate-armor was rare for a reason. Whereas in D&D - every fighter that wants plate armor has plate armor... which further erodes the whole context the system because then it becomes a standard assumption by which all other systems become "balanced" around.

It's good food for thought in either case...

With regard to "is it fun", let me offer up some math. Let's consider two cases:
Case 1) Aragorn attacks Conan. He has a 99% chance to hit. If he hits he will do 6-15 (avg 10) points of damage. He does 10 damage per round on average. Conan has 100 hit points. It will take (100/10) = 10 attacks on average for Aragorn to kill Conan.
Case 2) Aragorn attacks Conan. He has a 10% chance to hit. if he hits he will do 100 points of damage. He does 10 damage per round on average. Conan has 100 hit points. It will take (100/10) = 10 attacks on average for Aragorn to kill Conan.

Mathematically these seem similar, but in actual play, they are very different. The first is attritional - Aragorn knows he'll hit and it's a matter of how long it takes him to whittle Conan down vs. Aragorn whiffs 9 times out of 10. Put another way, the variance of Case 2 is much greater than Case 1; Case 2 could end in one round or it could never end. Case 1 will end somewhere between 17 and 7 rounds.

In my experience I've found most players have more fun with a game like Case 1 than  Case 2. Why? I think it's because...
a) RPGs are played in a group. If damage is primarily attrititional, then each turn you have a good chance of contributing to the battle by hitting and doing some damage. On the other hand, if damage is primarily hit-kill vs. miss, then each turn you likely will achieve nothing at all. Your miss is totally unhelpful, but your hit, however small, helps a bit.

b) Players enjoy a sense of progress. Slowly whittling away at an enemy's hit points feels like progress. Whiff, whiff, whiff, KILL just feels like gambling.

c) Players want to keep their characters alive. Having the enemy whittle away your hp gives you a chance to flee. If you know you have 7 to 17 rounds to live, there's a chance. OTOH, whiff, whiff, whiff DIE is like gambling and the House just won.

With the above in mind, I think the ideal Attack System is one where:
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill weak fighters; - Conan gets to feel awesome against thugs
Elite fighters routinely hit but slowly attrit other elite fighters; - Aragorn vs Conan is an extended duel where both sides see progress and rising stakes
Weak fighters largely miss but sometimes attrit elite fighters; - Conan can be worn down by weak fighters but can be heroic without fear of insta-death
           and there seem to be two possible preferences for low level:
Weak fighters largely miss but quickly kill weak fighters - Low-level fighting is scary and deadly, and thus fun to go through as you level up (OE-3E)
Weak fighters routinely hit but slowly attrit other weak fighters - Low-level fighting feels just like high level fighter (4E)

How does that compare to existing games? Through chance, insight, or genius, D&D's attack roll & hit point system is much closer to this ideal than most other games, which I think is a large part of its enduring popularity. Few other games accomplish this.

Modern games tend to fail in two categories. Consider Cyberpunk/Traveller/RECON/Delta Green:
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill weak fighters; - FUN
Elite fighters routinely hit and quickly kill elite fighters - NOT AS FUN
Weak fighters largely miss but sometimes quickly kill fighters - NOT AS FUN
Weak fighters largely miss but quickly kill weak fighters - FUN or NOT AS FUN IF YOU PREFER 4E LOW LEVEL STYLE PLAY

Quote from: estar;1118748...
So say I have a 50% chance of hitting the target with my sword.
Let say I roll 1d10 damage
Let say the target is wearing armor that absorb 5 points of damage.

So if I hit there is a 50-50 chance of me doing any damage. If I roll a 1 to 5, the target will take nothing because the armor absorb 5 points. If it roll 6 to 10 then the target will suffer damage in the range of 1 to 5 points. (1d10-5).

So we take the 50% chance of hitting, the 50% chance of actually doing damage and multiply them. So we have a 25% chance of dealing 1d5 damage.  So I can have the player roll a d20 and if they roll a 16 to a 20 they hit for 1d5 damage.

Two different procedures both a reflection of the same reality.
...

In theory perhaps. And, I do do this kind of "folding" (and even more extreme folding, where I get it down to one die roll determining the result of back-and-forth combat)... but I want it to come out to the right overall odds.

And the D&D formula does NOT do that. To take your example, a hit on an unarmored person should range from 1-10, while the hit on the armored person should range from 1-5.

Not to mention the business where D&D at higher levels gets figures' HP up rather larger than a weapon attack can inflict, or the matter of whether damage represents injury or not, and so what are healing potions doing? Etc.

Quote from: amacris;1118803...
Put another way, if armor *mitigated* damage, the result of battles would be for most people to have numerous holes in their armor with wounds, but if armor *prevents* damage, the result would be for most people to be unwounded, some people to be badly wounded but survive, and some people to be dead. The latter is what we actually see in history.
...

This is also what I tend to see in GURPS ancient/medieval combat, where there are both active defenses and armor that mitigates damage (but it can often mitigate it enough to stop it completely).

It's ALSO what I've seen in TFT (no active defenses except using tactics to take out your opponents before they hurt you, armor mitigates damage but also messes up your DX)  when one side has some sort of superiority and uses tactics.

What both games add though are good mapped tactical combat games, which means if you move well enough and your figures are good enough, you tend to be able to avoid being hit by virtue of maneuver and handling the foes you are facing to keep them from hitting you very often (or even at all if you do it well).

Quote from: tenbones;1118823...
Then the perennial question - "Is it fun? Does it rub you the right way in play?" That too has to be answered. I can think of some downstream effects using your idea here that would make Gritty Realistic games REALLY scary, because in history having plate-armor was rare for a reason. Whereas in D&D - every fighter that wants plate armor has plate armor... which further erodes the whole context the system because then it becomes a standard assumption by which all other systems become "balanced" around.
...

There's a reason I have played TFT & GURPS 99% of the times I've played RPGs. I find the tactics and satisfying detail, grit, and making sense to me to be very fun, and the absence of the things I like in other games to become intolerable to me.

As for plate armor, it's pretty rare in most of the situations I've gamed, because in addition to the cost, or even in TFT where you have to be good enough to handle the DX reduction, it reduces your running speed, which means you may not be able to get away from threats you don't want to fight, and if your friends run away in lighter armor, you won't be able to keep up with them, and if you're racing your friends to get to the enemy, you'll get there after they do, and your ability to quickly maneuver on the field is reduced, etc. With some exceptions, most players in my games don't want to be slowed that much.

But yes, if you played with really historical values for armor (which you can do in TFT & GURPS if you simply adjust the numbers), then in the periods where good full-coverage armor was available, you'll get an experience where the people in full armor are really hard to seriously injure unless/until you can wrestle them to the ground or something.

Quote from: estar;1118833The problem with your thesis that you don't go back far enough. AD&D was a consolidation and edit of the 3 LBB plus supplements. Even the Greyhawk supplement was a tweak by subsistuting different dice for damage and hit points. You need to consider your thesis in light of just the 3 LBB by themselves along with the accounts of how Gygax used the rules.

My thesis is that the version of D&D Armor Class you're arguing for was already dead by the time AD&D 1e was published. I know what it was before then, but "before" hasn't been the experience for 45 years.

QuoteYes but so what? It great that we have a wider variety of system to choose from with more being released every year. But D&D or Pathfinder has been the choice of the majority of the hobby for decades now. So when I read about the history of its development and dug into it, I think it not as complicated or arbitrary as people make it out to be. I don't expect anybody to like it better. But I hope it helps people understand some of the underlying rationale to D&D.

I'd reverse the "so what?" You're the gaming equivalent of the guy reminding everyone that the word gay didn't use to mean homosexual.

So what if it meant that nearly half-a-century ago. Those meanings for AC and hp haven't been accurate to the popular understanding for about as long as gay has been popularly understood to mean homosexual.

Point of reference; I had to replace the term "hit points" in my system and describe the replacement as a character resource you SPEND to avoid otherwise serious or mortal injury. I had to do this because 45 years of people playing "hit points = meat points" has even D&D developers who worked on 4E deriding the Warlord class for "shouting people's hands back on" (never mind that the system itself had zero rules for dismemberment or even lasting injuries of any kind associated with hit point loss and was one of the most overt in terms of reminders that hit points are not meat points).

Regardless of how I explained it, playtest players and GMs regularly tried to associate my hit points with meat and argued, for example, that my falling rules were stupid because they shouldn't lose hit points for avoiding a fall (the mechanic was that you lost hit points equal to the margin of failure when trying to catch yourself and end up clinging to the edge... basically hit points as you understand them... you're that much closer to death, but not there yet... which you would be if you Disney-deathed yourself off a thousand foot cliff).

Hit Points just equals meat now and the more you try to make it not mean that, the more players will fight you. Saying they're abstract units of how close you are to dying and not injuries isn't any more useful to the discussion than demanding that you use the term gay to mean happy and frivolous in modern America. You can insist that calling something the Gay Festival is intended to be family fun for all ages, but that's not the meaning anyone in America would take from it.

Likewise, AC and DR have been separate things in D&D for 40 years now since a variation on DR was included for field and full plate and in popular consciousness for 20 years when 3e included DR as an explictly separate thing from AC.

Yes, AC meant something different nearly half-a-century ago. So what? Vanishingly few think of it that way now and trying to redefine it back will just confuse matters. You'd be better served inventing a new term for the old thing than trying to fight fifty years of cumulative inertia.

Quote from: amacris;1118846In my experience I've found most players have more fun with a game like Case 1 [lots of attritional hits] than Case 2 (rare, but typically lethal, hits].

Just chiming in here to say that your experience matches my playtesting. Hit rates of about two-in-three seem to be the threshold where it goes from acceptable number of misses to frustration.

Likewise, there really does seem to be something to the "three hits" rule; after three hits something should happen to change the situation. Typically this can just be "the monster dies," but could also be some condition changes... many of the tougher monsters in 4E gained some special action they could use when bloodied which reflects a similar concept.

It's kinda counter to reality (where one good hit usually just ends things), but it appeals to human psychology.