Me and my friends are pretty new to D&D and are likely getting the majority of the rules wrong. I believe I understand AC: an AC of 16 means you must roll a die (+modifier) of 16 or greater to deal damage, and anything over that AC is taken as hitpoint damage?
What I was wondering was, at level 1, I believe I have a d10 halberd and a +4 strength modifier. However, the guards we're fighting have an AC of 16, making it completely impossible to even get past their AC. So we played it as if we could group attack, i.e. add up all our attack scores then remove whatever was excess of the AC from HP. Pretty sure we're playing some rules wrong, could anybody shed some light on the subject?
Not sure which version of D&D I'm using. It's the free pdf version released in August: http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/PlayerDnDBasicRules_v0.2.pdf
I have read the armour class section of the rulebook. Is it perhaps that first you roll a d20 (+modififers) to see if you beat armour class, then you do a damage roll?