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Clerical Spheres.
In every other aspect, ruleswise, I consider 3.x/Pathfinder way better than AD&D (1 or 2).
AD&D1 had some great modules, and AD&D2 had some great settings, but both were, IMO, pretty weak rulesystems.
BD&D, on the other hand, is a game I've developed a taste for.
We never used xps for treasure gained, but we *did* give xp for treasure spent. This had the dual functions of pleasure in finding treasure and you only get the xps once you get it -out-. It also meant that wealth was always passing out of the PCs hands. We didn't mind whether you spent it on training or ale and babes, but as long as it was spent, you got the xps!
Sounds like a good idea.
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snip about strongholds
This is the elements which I miss most from AD&D. It gave an entirely different feel to the 'shape' of campaigns in those days.
Yeah. I had three strongholds built in my 3e days, thanks to the SBG. The system I used to look at with some longing for strongholds, though, was BECM D&D.
Don't know if it worked or not with the realm rules, but they looked fun!
All of it. I miss the feel. I miss all the great modules. I miss the silly fun injected in places to lighten the mood. I miss Gygaxian Prose. THAC0 is the coolest gaming term ever....
I miss the "You get a Keep and dudes to run it at 9th level". I like nation building and management of that style, and I haven't seen that thing in 3e or 4e at all yet.
This I do miss. I always liked the idea of a PC becoming a powerful lord by his own hand and bringing law and order to a dangerous land. I suppose it a bit of the Old West in medieval trappings, with some empire building thrown in as well. That kind of fell by the wayside in 2e, though Birthright tried using some of that.
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Originally Posted by EroGaki
I also miss cursed items. You never really see them in D&D these days.
Or as I call them, "fun for the DM". I always enjoy tossing in the occasional cursed item to liven things up. I don't like the insta-kill items too much though, they tend to be cheap ways of knocking off PCs (though I've always liked the bowl of watery death). I do use some of the old-school rules for cursed items even in later games though. For one, cursed items always mis-identify as something good. This was an unpleasant surprise when a 3e party expecting a Strength bonus found themsevles in the possession of a girdle of masculinity/femininity. Even more amusingly, the party bard got the blame and not me. I also use the old rule that cursed scrolls only need to be looked at for the curse to be effective, because otherwise, a cursed scroll isn't much of a problem at all.
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Originally Posted by ggroy
After awhile, I did away with XP altogether and did leveling up by DM fiat. Usually after about 8 or 9 encounters and/or reaching a milestone, I had the players level up. But I still had players do training for each time they level up, which required some gold to pay for. The XP numbers quoted for encounters didn't really make sense to me, other than appearing to being numbers chosen almost semi-arbitrarily.
I'm thinking of moving on to a more fiat-based leveling system myself. By the book is ok for inexperienced DMs, but I've alway disliked the default advancement rates to some degree or other.
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Originally Posted by Dragonhelm
Some of the new art is great, but artists like Elmore, Easley, Caldwell, and Parkinson really defined the game for me. Dragons will always look like Elmore's dragons.
Some of the 3e and 4e art isn't bad, but for the most part I miss the big 4, and the color plates that would appear in the 2e rulebooks.
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The other thing I miss is the sense of the fantastic. Magic items seem so stale these days, providing X bonus here, Y power there. I liked the flavor of the 2e magic items. I liked how they were sometimes downright bizarre. Flame tongues and frost brands. Gauntlets of Ogre Power combined with a Girdle of Giant Strength for warhammers. I also miss wild magic. That was so much fun.
Post-2e had more balanced items overall, and has better rules for placing things (I was always rerolling stuff on 2e tables because I was never sure how balanced it was). But there's some really cool stuff in the Encyclopedia Magica that would just never work quite right in the newer rules. And that's a shame. Some of that stuff needs to be treated like minor artifacts or something similar so that it's hard for the players to just crank the stuff out whenever they want, but still gives the DM the opportunity to throw some really weird stuff into the game.
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The mention of "Clerical Spheres" reminded me of the one thing I think 2Ed did better- the Priest class. Specifically, how the class as done in Player's Option...
....which, to a certain extent, was a precursor to how Green Ronin did priesthoods, etc. in their Book of the Righteous.
Well, as I still play it I can't really say I miss anything, even though we houseruled out ExP-for-treasure about 27 years ago.
The most regrettable change as time has gone along, I think, is the overall shift in emphasis from a character's character to a character's mechanical build. Very sad.
EDIT: Please note, for me AD&D means 2nd edition. The only AD&D I've played. (Though I played the old red set D&D before that).
I like to believe that what I loved most about it has been imported into my 3rd edition games. I still use my old 2e books for inspiration.
I miss the strong support for a lack of miniatures, 3e is much harder to run without miniatures (I still do it anyway but it was easier with the old rules).
In the MM I miss the ecology section (even those books that have an ecology just aren't quite up to the old 2e standard) and monsters that weren't just there to kill.
In the PHB I miss 80% of the rules having "optional" next to them, it just gave a different feel to the book. I also liked the swimming and running rules. I loved Non Weapon proficiencies, or for that matter the entire proficiency system.
I loved the simplicity of the rules, though I like the simulation ability of the newer more complex 3e rules.
I miss the much more free-form nature of the rules. 3e suffered from some major rules bloat, and was even comparitively rules-heavy even in the core rules. 4e has sacrificed a lot of flexibility on the altar of balance. Sometimes (a lot of the time), I just want to play, and not worry about it so much.
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Originally Posted by avin
I miss the feeling that D&D was a more mature game (Dark Sun, Planescape) than today.
I get that feeling too, but I'm not convinced that it is the game that has changed. When I started with 2nd Edition I was 12, and the game was for a slightly older age group. When 4e was released I was 31, and the game was designed for a noticably younger age group. But those two age groups are probably the same in both cases - mid/late teens.
While reading my new (and so far, excellent) Manual of the Planes last night something popped into my head that I juts knew I had to post when I got up this morning.
GATE
I miss the term "Gate". 3E started with the lame-o "portal" stuff, and I never have liked it. "Portal" does not sound nearly as menacing or otherworldly as "gate" does
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I miss the plateau effect of negative advancement. Where you got your character's up to between 10th and 15th level and simply remained there because you were constantly loosing levels vs undead or resurrection or what have you.
Seriously? I can't think of anything I hated more about AD&D.
I'll join the choir lamenting the lack of spare time to play several times a week. Apart from that I don't miss anything. The changes from one edition to the next so far matched my changing preferences.
I understand where the XP systems of 3e and 4e are coming from and, mostly, I think they achieve their goal. However, I feel that there is a unifying feature for XP=GP that is sometime sorely missed.
Interesting. Never once in all the 13-something years of OD&D/1E gaming I did, did I ever even meet a GM who used this rule.
Oh god, nothing at all; so many arbitrary and nonsensical rules.
Actually, that's not true. Well, it is about the rules, but it's not about the fun. The "go into a dungeon beat some bad guys up, nick their stuff" spirit seemed to be lost when we moved away from D&D and picked up more "realistic" games. In our striving for more and more realism in role playing we quickly lost sight of the simple fun that the old D&D modules provided. There's not ever been anything quite like Temple of Elemental Evil, Palace of the Silver Princess, Keep on the Borderlands et al, at least not in my experience, although that could be nostalgia talking.
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Interesting. Never once in all the 13-something years of OD&D/1E gaming I did, did I ever even meet a GM who used this rule.
Well, I know I never used to use xp for gp. I do now, though, once it was explained to me.
You see, I'd been thinking in simulation terms, even back in my 1e days before I knew what that meant, and I dismissed the rule. I mean, getting extra cash does not make you better at swinging a sword. It is nonsensical, and I saw that.
In fact, I should have been looking it as an intensely gamist rule which sets up a reward system to encourage a certain style of play. There's no logical world-reason to give xp for gp, but there's every reason when you want the game to reward those who seek to attain wealth with minimal risk. It's not that it makes any kind of world-sense - it's that it encourages gameplay that, for 1e, is deemed ideal. And I love it for that, which is why I use it in my 1e game now.
Well, I know I never used to use xp for gp. I do now, though, once it was explained to me.
You see, I'd been thinking in simulation terms, even back in my 1e days before I knew what that meant, and I dismissed the rule. I mean, getting extra cash does not make you better at swinging a sword. It is nonsensical, and I saw that.
In fact, I should have been looking it as an intensely gamist rule which sets up a reward system to encourage a certain style of play. There's no logical world-reason to give xp for gp, but there's every reason when you want the game to reward those who seek to attain wealth with minimal risk. It's not that it makes any kind of world-sense - it's that it encourages gameplay that, for 1e, is deemed ideal. And I love it for that, which is why I use it in my 1e game now.
-O
I am just contemplating how to bring this into D&D 4 or D&D 3.
How about using something like a quest? If you earn money worth an amount of GP equal to your level, you get XP as if you had competed a major quest of your level.
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I am just contemplating how to bring this into D&D 4 or D&D 3.
How about using something like a quest? If you earn money worth an amount of GP equal to your level, you get XP as if you had competed a major quest of your level.
I think the best solutions are...
(1) Remove all monster XP, and only give quest XP, but give a LOT of quest XP.
(2) Remove all XP calculations and just give session XP with bonuses for extremely difficult sessions, for handling obstacles in a cunning matter, and other stuff.
I don't think there's a good way to import a gp=xp system directly into 3e or 4e, because the scales are so wildly different. You'd need either a full revision of the XP tables, or else a full revision of monster xp values. Ad-hoc'ing it is probably the best approximation, IMO.
Have the PCs buy with gold their level progression at training grounds or something. Might&Magic world of Xeen used this idea.
Melf was always scrounging for gold to pay for high costs of training. The fighter training was high, but not horrible. However the magic-user costs were crippling. Training fee from the higher level MU, spell research, spellbook construction costs, buying spells from your mentor- if he was willing to sell any... And if you wanted to have travelling spell books then the costs were 10x normal. So this provided plenty of motivation to seek out treasure while adventuring. Plus as a split class I had to halve all experience points anyway- so progression was not too quick.
The gold for XP can be limited in several ways. The treasure has to transported out of the dungeon- or whatever. You can only carry so much. If you are too generous and characters gain levels too quickly- a run in with a vampire or other nasty level drain is a good solution.
A good DM makes the rules work for their campaign and does not let rules dictate the game. Guess I am a conservative gamer in that regard...
Adventurers are armed groups, brought together to face monsters and bandits in their perilous quests. Their tactics are highly sophisticated and need training so they can master the necessary team work. But when they face actual threats, this is where they can really understand the value of their art. Gaining this experience readies them for learning how to function even better in their combat. With the right offer in gold they gain access to the training grounds where they can study and grasp their new potential.
The gold for XP can be limited in several ways. The treasure has to transported out of the dungeon- or whatever. You can only carry so much. If you are too generous and characters gain levels too quickly- a run in with a vampire or other nasty level drain is a good solution.
Did that ever happen to Melf? I can only imagine he was extremely worried about energy drain, being a multi-classed character...
I also use the old rule that cursed scrolls only need to be looked at for the curse to be effective, because otherwise, a cursed scroll isn't much of a problem at all.
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