Handy Haversack wrote:

Chainsaw wrote:

When I run games, I tell people to tell me what AC they hit. Usually they roll d20, adjust for bonuses/penalties, then refer to the scale on their character sheet (if they prefer to do the math instead, I'm indifferent) and tell me "I hit AC 2" or whatever. I tell them whether that's a hit or not. Usually after a round or two, everyone zeros in on the antagonist's AC, which is fine, but at first there's still mystery around "How tough is this thing?"

Yeah, me, too, Chainsaw.

Same here.

chrisj wrote:

I use ascending AC in my campaign and find it much faster. d20 + Fighting Ability (or hit dice for monsters) + attribute bonus + magic bonus >= AC is a hit. Much easier for me to DM and for new players to learn. To compute ascending AC, I subtract descending AC from 20.

This is what I use. My group is almost exclusively 3e era friendly and on newer players. While I prefer to allure and nostalgia of descending AC, it's a minor concession for me to use Ascending AC to get them to try a game like this.  

Because I intend to use the "players roll all dice variant" I get to use both systems, intuitive to both sides of the screen. On the player end, they just add their armor+shield+DEX+other bonus to their D20 defense check vs 11+monster's to hit bonus. On my end, I get to use the monster ACs as is, adding it to their D20 roll to hit DC20.