AD&D rules are absurdly complicated and unintuitive

Submitted by flabberghaster in just_post

I'm playing Baldurs Gate again and some of this stuff is like... Come on.

There's five different types of saving throws, and you wouldn't know what they do from their name.

Save vs death? Sure it's for rolling death saving throws in AD&D, but in BG it's also for resisting Writing Cloud (fail, and you are slowed).

I'm glad they simplified it.

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Dogmantra wrote

I came in ready to defend THAC0 but it's ok you didn't mention that.

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flabberghaster OP wrote

I actually kind of like THAC0 conceptually, and if the computer is doing all the math I don't have to worry about it.

I think it's just a UI issue where if you get an armor that's like, Chain Mail +1 the information screen will say that it gives you +1 to your AC, which would be bad if that were true, but when you equip it it actually correctly lowers your AC. So that stuff is a UI issue but I understand and can respect the underlying mechanics. Figure out you ac and thaco and then you just need to roll one die and check if it's over or under.

What I find less intuitive is when you're reading through spells and need to figure out what status effects you need. This gives me a +1 to save vs breath weapons bit for some reason that also includes fireball spells? Also wtf pretty much only dragons have breath weapons why is this a dedicated stat? Why didn't they make breath weapons use like... AoE saves or something? (I'm pulling this out of my head, not using a real example here)

It's very complicated and unintuitive. But that's OK, I actually really like the game and the system in general!

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