T is for THAC0

Am I the only person in the blogosphere that never had a problem with this?

THAC0 (pronounced like the sound of a sword hitting an orc in the head) stood for To Hit Armor Class Zero. Prior to 3rd edition, Armor Class started at 10 and went down as better defenses were applied, with an "upper" limit around -10. Hitting a target required rolling a twenty-sided die, adding modifiers, and then comparing the result to a number on a table that cross-referenced the target's armor class (AC) and the attacker's class and level. This took up as many as three pages depending on what version of D&D you played. This was a pain in the ass, but it was soon figured that since the tables' progressions were all linear, you just needed the number to hit zero and work the rest out using basic algebra.