HYPERBOREA / Ascending AC

**Posted by rhialto** 2/03/2017 8:23 pm

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.

**Posted by lige** 2/03/2017 11:29 pm

Just used Target20 for the first time in last ssession and there was no combat for about 4 hrs of the 4 1/2 hr session! But it worked for me pretty well especially for the one creature I had to run. I normally only look at the tables when somethings close anyway but still it made things easier.

**Posted by WSmith** 3/21/2017 8:36 am

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.

**Posted by Brock Savage** 8/03/2017 9:06 am

chrisj wrote:
While I vastly prefer ascending AC for play, I still tend to think in terms of descending AC. When someone says plate and shield, I think AC 2 not AC 18.

I agree. The old school armor values are burned into my mind but I'm never going back to descending AC. I don't care for the needlessly complex and "optimize or die!" feel of 3.x but it did initiate some welcome changes to the inherently clunky and unintuitive D&D system.

**Posted by Jimm.Iblis** 12/21/2017 4:12 pm

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.