1)My jester just went from level 18 to 19 and his thaco went down by 3?!!!! Is that supposed to happen?

2)Why is it that bows hit about 98% of the time whereas melee weapons hit considerably less than that, despite the fact that my thaco is better with the melee weapon?

1) Not as far as i know. Maybe someone with a second ed rule book will be able to say otherwise, but I think its just general weirdness. Or maybe you added a weapon proficiency and that improved your thaco or something.

2) Melee weapons appear to attack far more often than they actualy do, since having a fighter stand still 90% of the time looks really naff. If you turn on the extra combat text you can see the acutal attacks come up in the text window at the bottom of the screen and get a more accurate impression.

Oh, and your maximum hit rate should be 95% since a one always fails to hit and the dice is a d20.

1) your thaco should go down but i dont know if it should go down by that large an amount. either way the lower the better.

2)they should both hit approximately the same amount, it could differ based on the attackers skill with that particular weapon, for example if the attacker is better with sword that with bow and arrows, or vice versa the to hit probability could be better or worse based on that.

Andrewas, thanks for the info, and for correcting my math :)

On the info screen where it gives you the level-up results, it actually said THAC0 reduced by: 3. To tell you the truth though, I'm not sure if it actually DID go down by that much, and I have since done stuff, so I guess I'll never know.

<font color="lawngreen" face="trebuchet MS">Well all the better if our Thac0 went down by 3 :D .... anyway.... as for the bows... they get the Thac0 of the Bow AND the missle... so it makes it easier for them :D </font>