D&D 2E 2e, the most lethal edition?

Sacrosanct said:

3e is kinda tricky, because by RAW, you can have a character that mops the floor with enemies with several builds. Hardly deadly to the PCs. Then factor in you got rid of save or die, level drains, instant death at X amount of points in a single attack, and then you’re hard pressed to convince that 3e is more lethal than previous editions. In TSR D&D, a dragons breath weapon would kill most of the classes even if they made saving throws straight up

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You could build some fairly insane characters in 2e as well, depending on the material you were including. (AFAIK, most of the uber builds in 3.x weren't straight from the PHB, and if you're going to include official supplements from one edition, you ought to include the them for the other.)

Just off the top of my head, 2e had:
-Kits (many of which had huge benefits for negligible drawbacks)
-The Complete X Handbooks (particularly Complete Humanoids, as you could play as potent monsters such as Firbolgs and Pixies)
-Skills and Powers (which allowed you to point buy your class, as well as treating most ability scores as being functionally 2 points higher than what you actually rolled)

Also, as has been mentioned, Save of Die was quite prevalent in 3e. There were lots of spells and abilities that could kill you outright, and because of the way saves scaled, a high level character might very well have a terrible chance of success (unlike 2e, where saves were a TN based on character level, meaning a high level character generally had a pretty decent chance to save vs death).

3e didn't have level drain per se, but it did have energy drain which was functionally equivalent, but in some instances easier to recover from.

I could be mistaken, but didn't 3e have a death from Massive Damage rule? Or was that optional? I admittedly don't recall anymore.

While I believe 2e also had it, 3e formalized and made standard ability score drain, which could kill or seriously incapacitate even high level characters in short order.

Dragons in 3e were intentionally designed with misleadingly low CRs so that they would be seen as tough monsters, on the assumption that PCs rarely take on a dragon blindly. 2e didn't have encounter guidelines, but if you were pitting a party against a dragon that would auto kill them, then either you didn't intend a fight or you were a sadist. 3e dragons were designed to be killers within the encounter building system, particularly for a party that wasn't given a chance to prepare.

3e did have certain stereotypical tactics that could be hard for a DM to counter, such as Scry, Teleport, Kill, but I would argue that those tactics were in no small part due to the game being very swingy and deadly at high levels. In 2e, it was unlikely that your character would be taken out by poison or death, because your saving throws were solid by that point. In 3e, it was a game of rock-paper-scissors. If the death effect targeted your good save you'd probably be fine, but if it was your poor save you'd likely want to brace for imminent character death. Hence, in 3e, it was wise to not take unnecessary risks. I believe that Scry-Teleport-Kill is still technically viable in 5e, but you never really hear people complain about it anymore (AFAIK) because high level characters in 5e are hard to kill, so they don't need to resort to such tactics in order to survive.

Heh, my snark aside, it really is an attempt to compare apples and oranges. Because, sure, you had a lot of save or die type monsters in 2e and, again depending on the character stats, parties could really vary. The trick about comparing across edition is that 3e changed every single aspect of the math of the game. Sure, you could have this or that build - but, now we're getting away from low level characters, which means in 2e, the characters become very, very durable.

And, yup, dragons and giants got a serious bump in 2e. OTOH, virtually nothing else did. Humanoids were virtually unchanged from 1e to 2e. Remember that in 1e, your party of 6-9 PC's could legitimately face 20 kobolds and expect to win. 3e was far too swingy for that. Heck, let's not forget that a 3e orc can one shot a 3rd level character on a crit with a great axe. 45 points of damage potentially. From a single orc.

Even if you believe 2E was the most lethal edition, how many people remember more of their characters dying in 1E?

I know I had more character deaths in 1E than 2E, by a long shot. Since I played with mostly the same people over all those years between both editions I will rule that factor out.

And while things like having a default 3d6 for ability scores in 2E, I can't recall many players ever really using it unless they wanted the randomness and challenge. True, dragons could be much more deadly, but in 1E lower level characters could handle dragons with some chance of success, in 2E all it did was make it so characters had to be higher levels to handle them. The degree of danger remained the same IMO, just when you challenged them was different.

Those were my experiences, anyway.

Agree with the OP. I found 2e to be really deadly, especially at low and mid levels. I think part of it was the maths but I remember quite few save or die deaths.

I also found 4e to be quite deadly, despite the manifold forms of healing. I think a mid to high level the various Auras and area of effect attacks were quite tricky - or at least harder than I have found in 5e.

So for me. > 2e >1e > 4e > 3e > 5e

Raith5 said:

Agree with the OP. I found 2e to be really deadly, especially at low and mid levels. I think part of it was the maths but I remember quite few save or die deaths.

I also found 4e to be quite deadly, despite the manifold forms of healing. I think a mid to high level the various Auras and area of effect attacks were quite tricky - or at least harder than I have found in 5e.

So for me. > 2e >1e > 4e > 3e > 5e

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Stripped the color tags for you, so folks with a white background can read it

Sacrosanct said:

Is surprised me too when I double checked. But yes, Method I in 1e was 4d6 drop lowest. In 2e, Method I went back to 3d6 in order.

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No. That's incorrect. The PHB directs you to the DMG which says this...

"While it is possible to generate some fairly playable characters by rolling 3d6, there is often an extended period of attempts at finding a suitable one due to quirks of the dice. Furthermore, these rather marginal characters tend to have short life expectancy - which tends to discourage new players, as does having to make do with some character of a race and/or class which he or she really can't or won't identify with. Character generation, then, is a serious matter, and it is recommended that the following systems be used. Four alternatives are offered for player characters:"

So we see that 3d6 is the default and the four alternatives that immediately follow include alternative method I, which is 4d6 drop the lowest.

Now, as to which edition was deadliest. I had many more characters die in 1e than in 2e, and many more die in 2e than any following edition. I'm not sure if there were other rules which allowed 2e to be more survivable than 1e, but that was my experience.

1E adventures were harder.

2E adventures were narrative heavy. Not many were actually good and most of them are in Dungeon.

Maxperson said:

No. That's incorrect. The PHB directs you to the DMG which says this...

"While it is possible to generate some fairly playable characters by rolling 3d6[/B], there is often an extended period of attempts at finding a suitable one due to quirks of the dice. Furthermore, these rather marginal characters tend to have short life expectancy - which tends to discourage new players, as does having to make do with some character of a race and/or class which he or she really can't or won't identify with. Character generation, then, is a serious matter, and it is recommended that the following systems be used. Four alternatives are offered for player characters:"

So we see that 3d6 is the default and the four alternatives that immediately follow include alternative method I, which is 4d6 drop the lowest.

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Excuse me, but no it doesn't. The important part is the part that I bolded. He's specifically saying right there that rolling 3d6 is awful and he recommends that you don't do it. None of the methods that are actually recommended for the game are 3d6 in order. What you bolded is his argument about why doing it that way is terrible, not a recommendation that it's the default system and then laying out various alternatives.

3d6 in order worked fine for OD&D and Basic D&D, but not for AD&D and Gygax knew it.

Maxperson said:

No. That's incorrect. The PHB directs you to the DMG which says this...

"While it is possible to generate some fairly playable characters by rolling 3d6, there is often an extended period of attempts at finding a suitable one due to quirks of the dice. Furthermore, these rather marginal characters tend to have short life expectancy - which tends to discourage new players, as does having to make do with some character of a race and/or class which he or she really can't or won't identify with. Character generation, then, is a serious matter, and it is recommended that the following systems be used. Four alternatives are offered for player characters:"

So we see that 3d6 is the default and the four alternatives that immediately follow include alternative method I, which is 4d6 drop the lowest.

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I said method I in 1e was 4d6 drop lowest. I am in fact correct. Since you quoted the DMG, I’m sure you saw the very next sentence was how it labels method I as 4d6. Not method II or V, but the very first method. You also ignore the meat of that paragraph where it says not to use 3d6 if you want decent PCs or are serious about the game