Great answers all, 2e and 5e have been the editions I’ve enjoyed with our group..with 3e and PF running a few seconds behind in the my favorite edition race for me.
D&D 2E What does AD&D 2E do better than 5E?
Jahydin
Hero
I just got done playing through the Baulder's Gate games and noticed how absurdly random some of my TPKs were. Because of the nature of video games, reloading a save wasn't a big deal, but it certainly reminded me how terrible AD&D rules were at telling stories of epic heroes embarking on quests worthy of novelization.
My experience with 2e was great because I didn't know the "right way" to run games (as taught by the Internet). The pressure was to entertain my friends - not to get the rules right.
I think how I lost that was two-fold. I got involved in online boards around the start of 3e, and I felt judged and "bad wronged funned" to win a title in my head of being a "good DM." And also, the 3.x/PF1 rules never felt intuitive to me, and they always got in the way of the fun. Actually, all the rules since 3e have gotten in the way of the fun - I guess with the exception of the 4e system (which the rules were the extent of the fun I could have).
Jahydin
Hero
Exactly my experience too. I started playing 2e when I was 7 with my older friends (10) and we had a blast. Pretty sure the only rules we followed was character generation.
Jahydin
Hero
Thought long and hard about it, and I think the most important benefit of AD&D over 5e is it demanded more of it players and taught them more about the real world.
"Demanded more" in that a good grasp of mathematics (especially probability), reading at a high level, and being at least decent at the artistic side of things: map making, world building, and campaign writing, were all important to running a good game.
"Taught more" in that D&D was connected to our past rather than just being self-referential. I feel like it was much more common for DMs to be familiar with medieval/renaissance history, folklore, and ancient religions thanks to this.
I understand many see these things as "gatekeeping", but I was grateful for it because it really propelled me past my classmates in grade school in just about every subject.
"Demanded more" in that a good grasp of mathematics (especially probability), reading at a high level, and being at least decent at the artistic side of things: map making, world building, and campaign writing, were all important to running a good game.
"Taught more" in that D&D was connected to our past rather than just being self-referential. I feel like it was much more common for DMs to be familiar with medieval/renaissance history, folklore, and ancient religions thanks to this.
I understand many see these things as "gatekeeping", but I was grateful for it because it really propelled me past my classmates in grade school in just about every subject.
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Atomoctba
Adventurer
Of course, as always, you mileage may vary, but one of the better parts of 2e for my group were just that we were not epic heroes. We were heroes. Regular (if above average) people. Not super-heroes in a fantasy setting.
Yeah, I get this. 2e made me feel like I "had to" learn more about medieval society to be good at world building. But I was excited about it!
2e "felt" more about exploration than later editions, at least tonally. Newer editions seem to have shifted the adventuring focus even more toward combat IMO.
The 2e rules were kind of a mess, but in a way it felt like that gave you more permission to wing, house rule, homebrew, or hack the rules as DM because you kind of had to. It perhaps put more work on the DM and made bad DMs worse, but it was kind of freeing at the same time. 3e+ seem (to me) to give more of a "the rules are the rules" attitude, not completely or universally, but moreso than 2e. (And that's also not to pretend there weren't a bunch of 2e rules lawyers.)
I still miss the optional rule where spells took initiative time to cast, and if the caster took damage during that interval, they lost the spell. (I know some people consider it "unfun" to have their 1st level wizard's only spell for the day wasted and be stuck throwing darts (assuming they even survived the hit with their 1d4 max HP); this is just a personal preference, but to me making casting more risky/costly makes it feel special and sometimes tense.)
But most importantly, in 5e, the picture of the invisible stalker is some kind of half-transparent creature enveloping someone; in 2e, the picture of the invisible stalker is just a blank white space.
After reading through all of these wonderful replies that make we want to play D&D right now, I tried to summarize them a bit.
The two most important items were campaign settings/lore (amount, depth, quality) and tone/power level (no superhero characters, lethality, overall simulation of the fantasy world).
These two broader areas were followed by two more rules-specific ones: specialty priests and psionics.
After that we have variety of magic items, classes, and overall ease of play.
NWPs, monsters, and the variety of adventures were also mentioned.
Luckily, the top tier items can definitely be emulated with 5E, even if it takes a bit of work. Porting over setting detail is, thanks to DMsGuild, very easy, though rules might take a bit of work. And the tone and power level of 5E can be tweaked. I have done some work in this regard, most of which is still to be seen by my players. I just have to steel myself against their lamentations after they "went soft" with 5E.
Specialty priests and psionics seem to me to represent the sheer scope and variety in rules that 2E had to offer. To this day I feel like I still continue to discover new facets of the game (though that may just be my aging brain). The sameness of spell lists is definitely one of the weak points of 5E, I think. I understand why they are there, but there really is very little to distinguish one cleric from another, mechanically.
One thing I definitely prefer in 2E is the comparative simplicity of the classes. At first glance, 5E is a simple game (though not simplistic), but when you add up all the extra abilities, feats, and multiclassing (the latter two of which I keep repeating my players are OPTIONAL), there is a lot going on with 5E characters. At the same time, I know players who feel that 2E characters can be a bit bland to play. I, too, get dazzled by all the options when making a 5E character, but when I sit down to play, I can't say that 5E characters are more fun to play than 2E ones. So I am not convinced the game actually gains anything by the extra complexity.
The two most important items were campaign settings/lore (amount, depth, quality) and tone/power level (no superhero characters, lethality, overall simulation of the fantasy world).
These two broader areas were followed by two more rules-specific ones: specialty priests and psionics.
After that we have variety of magic items, classes, and overall ease of play.
NWPs, monsters, and the variety of adventures were also mentioned.
Luckily, the top tier items can definitely be emulated with 5E, even if it takes a bit of work. Porting over setting detail is, thanks to DMsGuild, very easy, though rules might take a bit of work. And the tone and power level of 5E can be tweaked. I have done some work in this regard, most of which is still to be seen by my players. I just have to steel myself against their lamentations after they "went soft" with 5E.
Specialty priests and psionics seem to me to represent the sheer scope and variety in rules that 2E had to offer. To this day I feel like I still continue to discover new facets of the game (though that may just be my aging brain). The sameness of spell lists is definitely one of the weak points of 5E, I think. I understand why they are there, but there really is very little to distinguish one cleric from another, mechanically.
One thing I definitely prefer in 2E is the comparative simplicity of the classes. At first glance, 5E is a simple game (though not simplistic), but when you add up all the extra abilities, feats, and multiclassing (the latter two of which I keep repeating my players are OPTIONAL), there is a lot going on with 5E characters. At the same time, I know players who feel that 2E characters can be a bit bland to play. I, too, get dazzled by all the options when making a 5E character, but when I sit down to play, I can't say that 5E characters are more fun to play than 2E ones. So I am not convinced the game actually gains anything by the extra complexity.
eyeheartawk
#1 Enworld Jerk™
Let me introduce you to my pile of "Complete" class guides and Player's Options books. That's part of what makes 2E so versatile. You want all that extra complexity? We got it! You want tons and tons of choices to make your character different? We got that too (though you'll want to read carefully as some of those kits are straight peepeepoopoo)!
Not trying to stop you with such a project, but I can say from experience that attempting just one of these port overs from 2E to 5E (in my case, the entire psionics system), was a very arduous process I didn't complete.
I think it would be simpler to take the ideas you like from 5E and port them into 2E. Flip the numbers and you can get positive AC. Increase HD for player characters if it's too lethal. Advantage/ Disadvantage is so intuitive you don't even need to write it down.
Boom - that's everything good (I can remember anyway) about 5e.
