What was so bad about the Core 2e rules? Why is it the red-headed stepchild of D&D?

[rogueattorney]

Comparing the 2e core to the 1e core, I can see why someone would prefer the 2e PHB. I don't share the opinion, but I also wouldn't argue with it. Most of the rules that I don't really like are explicitly labled as optional.

But the DMG... A big list of magic items and 200 or so pages of useless.

And the original Monstrous Compendiums were a disaster and a rip-off. You had to buy two products just to get the monsters that were just in the old 1e Monster Manual. No matter how insignificant, every monster got at least a full page, so it was stuffed with filler. After the first expansion, it was no longer possible to keep alphabetized. Eventually the pages started to fall out of the folder. By the time the much better Monstrous Manual came out, I had quit 2e.

Thus, from my perspective, as of 1989 to 1992, when I was actually running a 2e campaign, the 2e core was a significant step down from 1e.

 

[Remathilis]

There seems to be a lot of some-timers going on around 2e. Memories are fuzzy as to what exactly was/wasn't in 2e. Speaking as a purist (IE, never touched 1e...)

Things it took out -- Subclasses. Half-orcs. Monks. Gygax's voice. Clerics became priests. Didn't like initiative rules. Priest spheres were more complicated. Thief skill point fiddliness were more complicated. Demons and devils. Magic item price values. Magic item creation guidelines. Illusionists.

* Subclasses WERE there!!! The difference was they were called "groups" and encompassed classes were certain traits; warriors (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin), wizards (Mage, Specialist/Illusionist), priest (Cleric, Druid, Specialty Priest) and rogues (Thief, Bard). Classes in a group shared the same Spell Progression Tracts (Priest/Wizard), HD, Thac0, Save Chart, WP/NWP rate, and typically the same XP table (notable exception for cleric/druid and fighter and ranger/paladin)

* Half-orcs and monks did disappear and only re-appeared many, many years later. However, how utterly confusing and broken monks were ("you have to have high ability scores, but get no bonus for them") I can say not much was missing.

* While Zeb was no poet, I cannot say I lament Gygax's voice. He wrote a series of long, winding stream-of-conscious essays and called it the DMG, which was a terrible way to learn to DM. It's layout was miserable, it seemed to ramble from one topic to the next without rhyme or reason, and it was near impossible to find any given rule when you needed it. Thank god for one of the best Indexes in all of gamerdom, of the the thing would be impractical! (To be fair the 2e DMG was terrible too, but at least it was well-laid out and searchable terrible).

* Clerics were still in the game. Still called Clerics. Gained access to nearly every spell they had in 1e (and a few extras thanks to the sphere system) and had all the classic cleric trappings (turn undead, blunt weapons, etc). Most DMs replaced them with Priests of Specific Mythoi (Specialty Priests) but generic clerics still were in 2e.

* Initiative? 1d10, lower goes first. Want to add more realism? Add your weapon's speed or spell's casting time. No "always loses initiative" based on weapon size, no segments, no weapon speed to break ties, etc. Simple. Easy.

* How were Spheres of Influence complicated? Your class (be it PoSM, cleric or druid) defined access to a sphere. You either had Major access (all spells) or minor (levels 1-3). Sphere's didn't change once you picked your class. It actually gave divine characters the ability to diversify their spell access without redesigning millions of new classes. (though better rules for balancing them would have been nice).

* Seriously? Thief Skills? You have 60 points at level 1, 30 each additional, and the bonuses for race, class, and armor. It allowed thieves (like wizards with specialties, fighters with specialization or clerics with spheres) to customize and specialize in trapfinding, sneaking, pick-pocketing, etc.

* Yeah, Demons & Devils disappeared until MC8 and then again till Planescape. Baatezu and Tanar'ri didn't bother me though, would devils REALLY call themselves "devils?"

* Magic Item Prices? I thought we didn't like Magic Item Shoppes?

* Ditto with creating any magic item in the DMG. I liked that magic was soley in the hands of the DM, and that he decided cost and ritual needed to make magic. Granted, I also like Magic Shoppes too...

Bards cast more damaging fireballs and lightning bolts than magic-users of equal experience points. This gets really distorted in high-level play (which our group did a lot of). When a bard achieves 20d6 fireballs, a magic-user is casting 15d6 fireballs.

- I think that priests of specific mythoi are too open-ended for the player's handbook. I'd prefer them in the DMG along with plenty of well-balanced examples. I'd like to see only the basic cleric and druid in the player's handbook.

Bards and wizards (mages and specialists) cast at the same caster level = character level. The difference was bards started as 2nd level casters (since they didn't cast spells at 1st level) and progressed slower to new spells levels, capping at 6th. However, a 15th level bard and a 15th level mage cast fireball at 10d6 (the cap).

The Cleric was the default "priest" class. Druid was given as an example of a PoSM, along with some suggestions on how DMs could make additional PoSM. The problem was the rules were too vague to be any good, resulting in PoSM ranging from crippling weak (Complete Priests Handbook) to Godlike Strong (Faiths & Avatars). (My personal favorite was the crusader/monk/mystic/shaman classes in F&A/Spells & Magic. Balanced against the Cleric/Druid, flavorful but generic enough to work. If I ever ran 2e again, I'd use Clr/Drd/Crs/Mys/Mnk/Sha as my specialty priests and ignore PoSM).

 

[kenmarable]

Overall, I really enjoyed 2e as a system, much more than 1e (which I enjoyed much more than Basic/Expert/etc. D&D). If I were to play an older system, I would definitely be more interested in 2e than 1e. However, I felt that 3e was such an vast improvement that I would not really be interested in going back to either. No real hate for 2e, just if there's something better, why go back?

Also (and this is just IMO, of course, in case that needs to be specified), 2e is when D&D started to have a markedly different feel. Something about the tone and flavor of the books seemed to be pushing the game toward a more fluffy "storytelling" style and less of a down and dirty funhouse "crawling around in holes underground where some random crazy-ass thing can kill you at any moment" feel. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course - my own 1e game has a good amount of story and plot in it. However, it was definitely a different flavor of game, and a lot of people held onto a preference for the flavor they started out with. I know I did.

This is actually something I miss about 2e and I never realized it until I started reading some of the old adventures - especially some of the old Planescape ones. (Ah, will we ever see the likes of "Dead Gods" again?) 3e and 4e have become much more about mechanical balance - which is a good thing, of course, but some products feel like they have veered too far away from enabling free-form storytelling. In 2e you could have some crazy idea in an adventure - but with 3e it always felt like you needed to make sure there were stats for everything. Of course, I can still do whatever I like with my home game, but reading RPG books - ESPECIALLY adventures - just isn't the same as it was in 2e.

Another criticism, however, that I've heard is that TSR bent over to the religious groups by getting rid of Demons and Devils. Which I admit annoyed me, too.

I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but personally I think "baatezu, tanar'ri, and aasimon" are FAR more interesting that lame old "devils, demons, and angels". "That evil monster is a 'demon'? Gee, where'd you think that name up?"

I can never find a valid reason especially for the problems people had with THAC0. 90% of the time it involves the negative AC numbers being the problem, yet those people have no problem with any modifiers being a negative making it a penalty to hit rather than a bonus. I mean it is all subtraction.

Growing up with RPGs, I never had a problem with THAC0. However, every single new player we ever introduced got really confused with THAC0. I think it didn't help that for a bunch of your rolls you wanted to roll high, and others you wanted to roll low. I remember being elated with 3.0 when they made the obvious choice that "roll high" was always good. All of my wife's 2e sheets have little arrows she drew next to numbers to tell her whether to roll high or low.

re: the setting-proliferation issue: from a completely non-business standpoint this was a wonderful thing. You has a several high-quality setting lines that demonstrated how versatile D&D was, and reflected how diversely gamers had been playing the game all along.

Here here! I wish there was a business plan that would allow WotC to have long term support for several settings. Even with the massive d20 boom, Eberron was the only setting that came close to catching my interest as much as Planescape and Dark Sun. I love third party publishers, but only Oathbound could have been up there as well, but with so much of the world left undetailed, it didn't stand a chance. No other setting from any publisher in the d20/3.x era caught my interest at all as being interesting and unique - just more pseudo-medieval European variations. For us, Forgotten Realms fell into that niche, and nothing since really set itself apart enough to replace it as our "Generic Fantasy Setting of Choice".

Crappit, this thread is making me too nostalgic! Although I love the 3.5 ruleset the mostest (sorry 4e), I really miss the 2e campaign settings and adventures.

 

[Treebore]

When I went back and played a 2e game a year or so after the 3e rules launched, the only thing that drove me nuts was the use of proficiencies instead of skills. We loved 2e and had an absurd amount of fun playing it, clunky bits and all.

One of the reasons I think we loved 2E so much is we had a percentile based skill system. Even if we hadn't switched to 3E I was going to steal the skill system. None of the cross class nonsense, but the idea of starting with "X" number of skills at a +4 bonus and increasing by +1 with each level gain was going to happen.

 

[Herschel]

The main problem with 2E is that classes were not balanced – why play a single-classed fighter, when you could be a fighter/mage? With the XP chart, you could be a level 7 fighter, or a level 6 fighter/level 6 mage.

Because the Fighter/Mage's HP were greatly reduced from the standard fighter's if you wanted to go in to melee. You also had to be single-classed to gain weapon specialization, which made sense.

I found/find the characters to be well-balanced between 2nd and 10th level, where the vast majority of play happened. The level limits were an interesting idea to keep humans the dominant race, but I ignored them, instead using the stat roll rules in back of Unearthed Arcana for single-class human characters.

I did like the racial class limitations too. Dwarves, for example, got some nice benefits from being a "non-magical" race in the arcane sense. If someone had a good concept for making a race-bending character, then it could be allowed as a one-off, not as a general combination.

 

[Quantarum]

Just to refresh my memory I dragged my original 2E books out of the archives. They still look a chevy owners manual from the last twenty years, I keep expecting to see an illustration of a man in chain mail changing a tire.
I never enjoyed the system itself until the players option books came out, by that time the layout had improved considerably.

-Q.

 

[billd91]

That's okay, it's already been revoked and torn up. I was put on probation when I adopted 3E right away, and when I made an equally rapid switch to 4E, that was it. They sent a team of thief-acrobats after me.

It's so easy to throw off the grognard patrol. Just dump out a pile of Advanced Squad Leader chits, mixed nationalities of squads and equipment, drop some Plano boxes and some chit trays, and them watch them get into a fight over the best organizational scheme while you sneak away...

Drop a copy of the IIFT to watch it get real nasty.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Just to refresh my memory I dragged my original 2E books out of the archives. They still look a chevy owners manual from the last twenty years, I keep expecting to see an illustration of a man in chain mail changing a tire.
I never enjoyed the system itself until the players option books came out, by that time the layout had improved considerably.

LOL! Literally.

I also preferred the revised 2nd edition look. It was very attractive and easy to read.

 

[justanobody]

Growing up with RPGs, I never had a problem with THAC0. However, every single new player we ever introduced got really confused with THAC0. I think it didn't help that for a bunch of your rolls you wanted to roll high, and others you wanted to roll low. I remember being elated with 3.0 when they made the obvious choice that "roll high" was always good. All of my wife's 2e sheets have little arrows she drew next to numbers to tell her whether to roll high or low.

I don't get that bit either and my response to it is...so? Sometimes you want high numbers other times you want low. What's the problem?

You want interest rates to be high when you have money witting in the bank and making the interest for you, but do you want them high or low when you are making payments on a loan?

So yeah, sometimes low numbers are good and sometimes high numbers are good. Its just how the world works. I think some players I met just couldn't accept it with AC and such because it didn't fit their mold of the real world, I know one couldn't and preferred to watch people play any D&D, than playing himself because he just couldn't "get it". So it may be acceptance of how it is for THAC0 negative AC being better, and 5 saves/etc that have different system.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

When I went back and played a 2e game a year or so after the 3e rules launched, the only thing that drove me nuts was the use of proficiencies instead of skills. We loved 2e and had an absurd amount of fun playing it, clunky bits and all.

I had thought about using the skill system from Buck Rogers XXVc where they just made skills for everyone into thief skills. I really like the system and it has fewer problems than the 3e system.

And the original Monstrous Compendiums were a disaster and a rip-off. You had to buy two products just to get the monsters that were just in the old 1e Monster Manual. No matter how insignificant, every monster got at least a full page, so it was stuffed with filler. After the first expansion, it was no longer possible to keep alphabetized. Eventually the pages started to fall out of the folder. By the time the much better Monstrous Manual came out, I had quit 2e.

1st Edition Monster Manual 342 monsters
Vol. 1 and 2 of the Monstrous Compendium 575 monsters

There were 14 Monster Manual monsters in vol. 2 of the Monstrous Compendium which included eels, nagas, sharks, shreikers, sphinxes, violet fungi, and yellow molds.