That's the whole point. "Thak-co" is wacko. As in, don't say it that way!

"Thak-zero" deserves an automatic blow to the head, sorry. The whole point of an acronym is to be able to SAY it by substituting a letter for one or more words. If you substitute a word back in for a letter, you are defeating the purpose.

Actually, since the 0 in Thac0 is not a letter and doesn't stand for a word, the guy was more correct than us, but we don't like smart-assed pretentiousness unless it's coming from me, so we put an end to it.

Seriously, though, none of you live in a region where it's said both ways? That's just weird to me...

I guess that's what comes of being in a group of self-taught gamers. We learned out of the books, and there's no pronunciation guide (which is sad, because ioun stone is mildly confusing, to say the least), so we just all came up with our own pronunciations independantly.

Of course, the popular pronunciation isn't always right anyway - witness "drow." By the far the more popular way to say it rymes with cow (I say it that way), but it is definately incorrect. It's a twist of "trow," which is the word from whence our "troll" derives. Hence, it would sound like "crow."

I have heard both pronounciations around here... we siply reject "thak-co" as evil heresy is all.

@ pretentious

Death! Death to the Thay-co faction! How darest ye to damage the entire concept of an acronym by adding unto it another letter!

May you forever be doomed to play the hated 3rd edition.

Thak-co, Thak-co, Thak-co.

The guy from Alabama is telling me how to pronounce things...

Not really. We just pronouce the "long A" sound instead of the short. A as in Abraham, instead of A as in apple.

Of course neither are the A sound used in armor...

WhatEVER, canuck! Like your side of the continent doesn't mangle the language, too!

I've always said Thay-coe. Going by the english grammatical rule that it looked like an "o" not a "0" so emphasis was placed on the "a" and is pronounced long. Therefore it comes out as a diphthong "ay" rather than a raw vowel sound "ah".

what the hell is THACO??? If the explanantion is too long and drawn out just point me in the wrong direction and let me figure it all out.

I knew this was coming from someone.

THAC0 stands for To Hit Armor Class Zero. It's a measure of your character's combat skill in 2nd edition D&D.

You'd have to be pretty bad to miss AC 0 methinks...

In the old days, instead of starting at 10 and counting up, it counted down. AC 0 in AD&D is the same as AC 20 in 3e and 3.5. A first level character would have a thac0 of 20 (which is to say youhave to roll a 20 on 1d20 to hit AC 0, or a 10 to hit AC 10), it would then improve (the number would lower) as your skill increased. A 10th level fighter would have a thac0 of 11, meaning that on a roll of 11, he hits AC 0, and on a roll of 20, he hits AC -9.

People like to say it's complicated, but it's exactly the same system as 3e, except it counts the other way. Chain improves your AC by 5; fighters, rangers, and paladins get +1 to hit each level; etc. A few of the details are changed slightly (a 3e fighter starts with an effective thac0 of 19, for example), the the system as a whole is that same. You simple subtract your d20 roll from your attack rating instead of addding it.

Also, while thac0 was the equivalent of BAB, most people used adjusted thaco (calculating in str, magic, and whatnot), giving you the equivalent of your total attack bonus.

Thac0 replaced the old combat matrices, which were also the same system in cart form. In the really old days, you looked up your class and level on a chart, compared it to the AC of your opponent, and it gave you the roll you needed to hit. The thac0 system just gave us the math behind the charts (something many of us had worked out long ago anyway).

That was the most I've ever seen you write...ever...besides that other thing...so...wait...nevermind...I've seen you write more...yep...uselessness...long live muppets and...Canuck pronounciations.

Incidentally... how do you all pronounce "Ioun."

Everyone I know seems to go for "Eye-oon."

To keep things on track...

I was not there, but a DM of mine once spent an entire session with the party in the Abyss. Multiple layers down. Several people died.

At the end of the night, it was revealed that they'd been summoned by, effectively, an epic summoning spell. The "dead" people woke up with a headache, and the survivors had to either kill themselves, or wait around for the duration to expire.

Everyone you know is right. I went to some length a while back to try to track down the correct pronunciation. It turns out that Gygax borrowed the concept (and the name) of the Ioun stone from a series of books - with the permission of the author, of course. I can't recall what the books were called (partly because they didn't sound terribly interesting to me), but apparently the creater of the stones pronounces it EYE-oon...

...Of course, since I didn't excactly manage to track down an audio file of him talking about them, there is still some room for doubt.

Anyone who can find the actual audio file of the creator pronouncing it can have my first child along with a large cash sum.