What were your 2e houserules?

[Jack Daniel]

For second edition? We didn't have too very many house rules. The tinkering really didn't begin until 3e came out. But off the top of my head,

- 1e monks were grandfathered in as a core race in the priest group, but 1e assassins were not (we used the 2e ninja instead). Barbarians, cavaliers, and thief-acrobats didn't need to be kept, because they were covered well enough by kits from the CFHB and CTHB.

- The Dragonlance tinker gnome class was used as a more general tinker class that could be taken by humans, halflings, and dwarves as well as gnomes. This made the full list of playable classes for our 2e games WARRIOR (fighters, paladins, rangers), PRIEST (clerics, druids, monks), ROGUE (thieves, bards, ninjas), WIZARD (mages and specialists), and SCIENTIST (psionicists and tinkers).

Other than a different list of classes, though, we played 2e almost entirely by the book. We never used the Players' Option stuff, but anything in the Complete Handbooks was fair game.

EDIT: Oh, except of course for the most important difference, which was no spell memorization. But then, we've never played any edition of D&D with spell memorization, so it's easy to forget to mention that part. All the wizards and priests kept spell books (and so the clerics and druids had to hunt up their spells just like the mages), but once a spell was in your book, you could just cast it by burning a spell slot of that level or higher. No memorization involved.

 

[Celebrim]

For 2e? Dragons and Bards follow the RAW. Everything else as per 1st edition.

 

[WayneLigon]

Probably my major houserule for 2E was that we 'invented' spontaneous casting for clerics, in order to give them something else to do other than carry a bunch of healing spells they might not need (Gee, sounds like a lot of modern designer talk, doesn't it?). Any Divine caster with, say, 4 second level spells could cast any four second level spells he wanted to, the same spell four times, etc. He just crossed off slots.

We never noticed any balance issues at all, and cleric/druids became much more fun to play since they got to do a lot more.

 

[Humanaut]

Wow, too much to remember but:
- Humans got +10% xp and +1 to any stat.
- Clerics spontaniously cast
-Magic-users got INT bonus spells
- +4 to all level limits on demi humans
- Monks, Barbarians, Cavaliers from an old Dragon article
- Crit charts from Dragon #39, Good Hits & Bad Misses
- THACO, save, XP charts from Dragon "5% Principle" Dec '83 issue
- Tougher Turning Undead Tables, think from a Dragon article
- Giant size wpn damage, Dragon May '86
- Poisons, Dragon Jan '84
- Train When You Gain, level advancement from old Dragon
- No massive damage rules
- Crossbows! New Point Blank range (0'-10') doing +4 hit, x4 damage! Short range was +2 hit, x2 damage! My but did they fear being surrounded by orcs with crossbows!
- Hill Dwarves +1 hit with axes, Mountain Dwarves +1 with Hammers and Picks
- Severe wpn damage reductions vs undead
- reduced wpn spec bonus for non-single class fighters
- Weapn speed "reversed" on 1st (closing) round of combat: used 12- original wpn spd. And a "readied" bow would have a spd of 2 on that first shot only.
- New Stat: Perception


All i can remember now.

ahh, memory lane...

 

[TerraDave]

Probably my major houserule for 2E was that we 'invented' spontaneous casting for clerics, in order to give them something else to do other than carry a bunch of healing spells they might not need (Gee, sounds like a lot of modern designer talk, doesn't it?). Any Divine caster with, say, 4 second level spells could cast any four second level spells he wanted to, the same spell four times, etc. He just crossed off slots.

We never noticed any balance issues at all, and cleric/druids became much more fun to play since they got to do a lot more.

I forgot this. Did exactly the same thing, our reasoning being to get some of the more obscure spells into play.

Of course 3rd ed designers realized we were on to something. Even though answer was still al little clunky .

 

[Arnwyn]

Wow... I wish I could remember. Not very many, in any case.

A couple off the top of my head:
- The Good Hits/Bad Misses from the Best of Dragon for criticals and fumbles
- Most of PO: Combat & Tactics (but none of Skills & Powers), which pretty much matched the way we were playing for years anyways.

Hmmm... there was a bit more (we used most of the splats and loved the concept of kits), but nothing that I can be too specific about...

 

[Pale Master]

I got rid of all my 2e books except for the Complete Book of Necromancers & DMG, but I seem to remember:

Individual experience awards (wizards gain xp for using their spells, fighters for defeating foes, thieves for thieving, etc.). We never played any one game long enough for it to become a balance issue though.

Kits. (Some of them were cool, but most of them didn't do much besides adding a bonus proficiency or something.)

All the bizarre Tome of Magic spheres (Numbers?). Plus the elemental mages from ToM.

Demihumans with exceptional ability scores (which, in practice, was all of them) could exceed level limits.

No "generic" clerics in my world.

Now that I'm thinking about it, one of the oddities of 2e was that, at first, Necromancy was a pretty weak school without a great variety of spells. So the Complete Wizard's Handbook rectified this by adding more spells...then Tome of Magic also rectified it by adding more spells...then of course there was the Complete Book of Necromancers...by the end of it I think there must have been more Necromancy spells than any other school.

 

[Set]

My house rules from 2e.

Max starting gold and hit points at 1st level.

Tome of Magic Spheres;

Clerics gain Major Access to the Spheres of Law or Chaos (as appropriate, Neutral Clerics get neither) and Wards, as well as Minor Access to the Spheres of Travelers and War.

Druids gain Major Access to the Spheres of Time and Wards, as well as Minor Access to the Sphere of Travelers.

Paladins gain Access to the Sphere of Law.

Rangers gain Access to the Sphere of Travelers.

Fighters;

Fighters (but not Paladins, Rangers or other Warrior sub-classes) may take Weapon Specialization as desired, even if multi- or dual-classed, past 1st level or already Specialized in another weapon.

Any Warrior class may spend the bonus Proficiency slots awarded for Intelligence on Style Specializations (Two-Weapon, Two-Hander, Weapon & Shield or One-Weapon), Hand-to-Hand skills (Punching, Wrestling and/or Martial Arts Proficiencies, Specializations and/or Continuing Specializations) and/or Ambidexterity.

Fighters only can spend bonus Proficiency slots from Intelligence for Weapon Proficiencies or Specializations and/or Tight or Broad Group Weapon Proficiencies.

The other classes and sub-classes may only spend Intelligence Bonus Proficiencies on Non-Weapon Proficiencies.

Wizards;

Wizards gain a Travelling Spell Book at 1st level with the following
number of 1st level spells in it:

Intelligence Number of Spells
9 4
10-12 5
13-14 6
15-16 7
17 8
18 9
19+ 10

These spells will always include Read Magic, and for a Specialist,
Elementalist or Wild Mage, at least one spell of the specialty (in the
case of a Zakharan Sorcerer, at least one spell of each Element chosen).
Other spells may be chosen from whatever lists the campaign and GM makes
available.

New Strength chart (we weren't fond of percentile strength scores...);

Strength chart

Ability Attack Damage Weight Maximum Open Bend Bars
Score Modifier Modifier Allowance Press Doors Lift Gates
1 -5 -4 1 3 1 0%
2 -3 -2 1 3 1 0%
3 -3 -1 1 5 1 0%
4 -2 -1 5 10 2 0%
5 -1 - 10 25 3 0%
6 - - 20 55 4 0%
7 - - 35 90 5 1%
8 - - 40 115 6 2%
9 - - 45 140 7 4%
10 - - 55 170 8 7%
11 - - 70 195 9 10%
12 - - 85 220 10 13%
13 - - 110 255 11 16%
14 - - 135 280 12 20%
15 - +1 160 305 13 25%
16 +1 +2 185 330 14 30%
17 +2 +4 235 380 15 (3) 35%
18 +3 +6 335 480 16 (6) 40%
19 +3 +7 485 640 16 (8) 50%
20 +3 +8 535 700 17 (10) 60%
21 +4 +9 635 810 17 (12) 70%
22 +4 +10 785 970 18 (14) 80%
23 +5 +11 935 1,130 18 (16) 90%
24 +6 +12 1,235 1,440 19 (17) 95%
25 +7 +14 1,535 1,750 19 (18) 99%

Edit to add: Nice! The charts didn't format. They look lovely here on the Edit screen.

 

[Inferno!]

I switched THAC0 and Armor Class so AC went high and THAC0 was an attack bonus.

Not that this was the basis for your change, but I first saw this in Gamma World (4th edition, I think). It made so much more sense and I promptly house ruled it into my games.

Other House Rules were:

No level limits
No racial class restrictions
All races could multi-class
Magic-User spell bonus based upon Intelligence
Hit points equaled CON score + HD​

 

[TerraDave]

I also had max HP at first.

Was this not an official rule by that point?