I started playing a human fighter stats:

str 17
dex 16
con 17
int 11
wis 11
char 13

now when im naked i have 8 AC
when i equip Chainmail i drop to 3
a large shield 2

Why would a large shield and chainmail make me drop to 2 AC?

Yep, and as stupid as it sounds, you can even go into a negative armor class... ;)

It's the 3rd Edition (like in Neverwinter Nights) which changed AC to count upwards like one would expect.

I actually really like the 2nd edition rules, they do make a bit of sense. Fun to play with the 2nd edition back in the day.

lmao -2 AC with plate thats silly :)

NWN and custom campaigns based of a 0-10 attribute set and 2d10's are all im used too...

when i finally got a d20 i never used it, i was to fond of my d10's <3

Same here. AD&D and AD&D 2nd Ed. were what was around when I played in high school and college, so those are the editions I look back on most fondly. Yeah, they had some major problems with balance and consistency, and they were not the most intuitive to learn (as with a downward counting Armor Class), but there was a certain geeky pride one got when they finally started to make sense. At least *I* got that feeling, I can't be the only one... :P Well, it behaves exactly the same way as a 22 AC does in D&D 3.0 or 3.5 (no idea about 4.0, never played it). The whole idea, originally, was that a person would just subtract the AC of the target from their THAC0 (to hit armor class 0), and then roll that number or more on a d20 to score a hit. In 3.0 and 3.5, they just made it more intuitive by cutting out the need to add/subtract; instead they just made it a comparison between attack rating and armor class directly. Even though they got rid of THAC0 and downward counting ACs, all the math stayed identical: a d20 was still rolled for hits, a 1 was still a critical miss, and a 20 was still always critical hit (unless you had some wonky no-crit weapon, or something).

The only problem with trying to play D&D nowadays is finding people to play with and having a good DM that actually takes it seriously, I wouldn't want it all to be epic lulz where I turn into a level 25 Paladin in a week and Pwn all the baddies, that would be boring.

Agreed. When you think about it, AC means how hard it is for the enemy to hit you. It's not so much how much better your armor is in an absolute score.

So, yeah, most notation's moving away from that now, but a negative AC for armor means it's all the more difficult for attackers to hit you.

2E was great :) Much more room for imagination when rules aren't stuffed into every corner.

Yea, it took me 12 hours of playing Planescape: Torment before I noticed this quirk. Then I got pointed to some D&D 2 rule-sets and it all made sense.

Why didn't you use it? I hope you didn't use the sum of two d10s instead of one d20, as the probabilities would differ and critical failures would be impossible!

Though two d10s can and do get used as a percentile die, and as I've used a d100, I can tell you that it is a lot faster to roll two d10s. :P

There are d100s? O_o

Me wantz pix! :D

http://www.amazon.com/Role-Playing-Dice-Spherical-ZOCCHIHEDRON/dp/B0026NC8OK

Okaaaayyyy.... ;)

Impressive, though I wouldn't call it a dice. A dice needs edges, dammit! :D

Heh, yeah, not very practical, but they're a nice little novelty to suddenly whip out on your players. :)

Not sure how long they've been around, but I saw my first one back in high school, which was the early-mid 80s. My DM picked one up, along with a booklet that had tables specifically for the d100.

AFAIK, they still haven't gotten the probability distribution right on a d100. Almost, but not quite; it is hard to get 100 flat surfaces on a globe uniformly spaced. I just use two d10, where is fails in 'cool', it makes up for in 'efficient and functional". But, it certainly is cool looking, I can't argue that one :).