D&D 2E Edition Experience - Did/Do you Play AD&D 2E? How Was/Is It?

[Voadam]

And unless one was quitely added somewhere, they only have the first Annual. The Annuals are all good for core 2e and have a good variety of monsters.

They did add Monstrous Compendium Annual III quietly.

It seems to have mistakenly been given a date added of Jan. 1, 2001 when it was added a few months ago so it did not show up on the recent additions.

 

[Marc_C]

Played it. Loved it. My preferred TSR edition. Used AD&D2e to run my longest and most successful campaign. Characters were a paladin, a cleric, a thief, a wizard and a ranger. It concluded properly at level 12. Only 5e may surpass it. Will know only once we can play face to face again after Covid.

 

[auburn2]

With all of the talk about the Golden Age of Gaming, and all of the retro-clones floating around, it's made me curious about the older editions of the game. I'm curious how many folks on ENWorld have ever played these older editions, and what their level of satisfaction was. Or is, if you are one of the rare birds that are still rocking it O.G. Style.

This week I'd like to examine the AD&D 2nd Edition. Have you played it before? or are you still playing it? What do you think about it?

By "played," I mean that you've been either a player or a DM for at least one gaming session. By "playing," I mean you have an ongoing gaming group that still actively plays this version, however occasionally. And for the purpose of this survey, I'm only referring to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition set, first published in 1989 and updated through 1995. You remember it; it was the version with a knight on the cover, and had "2nd Edtion" printed on it in bold red letters...this one right here:

View attachment 120691

Note that this edition is different from the 1st Edition AD&D game, which was released in 1977 and had a ruby-eyed statue on the cover. That was a completely different survey (see below).

Feel free to add nuance in your comments, but let's not have an edition war over this. I'm really just interested in hearing peoples' stories of playing the "Advanced" rules, and what they remembered (for better or worse) about it.

Next week we will tackle the post-TSR Era of Dungeons & Dragons, beginning with the 3rd Edition rules. So if that's your flavor of choice, stay tuned!

Other Surveys
OD&D
Basic D&D
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AD&D 1E
BECMI / Rules Cyclopedia
D&D 3E
D&D 4E
Survey Results (24 Apr 2020)

It is good. It is not nearly as good as 5E but it is better than 3E IMO.

2E is very close to 1E in a lot of respects and it cleaned up some of the things in 1E. I like the 2E classes and races better, but in most other respects I like 1E better. When I played it, it was early in 2E and we were using mostly 1E adventures and incoprorated the canges into an ongoing 1E campaign.

 

[auburn2]

a rogue had a 90% chance to fail on disarming a trap that would kill him the first time it happened.

My memory may be failing but I think this was 1E. In 2E a Rogue decided what abilities to invest in, so he could be much better than 10% at disarming traps at level 1.

 

[Stormonu]

My memory may be failing but I think this was 1E. In 2E a Rogue decided what abilities to invest in, so he could be much better than 10% at disarming traps at level 1.

Yeah, but it wasn't much better. I think at most you could sink 15% into the base at 1st level, at the expense of all your other skills.

I do remember one game where the player of the Thief balked about being sent first, as his chance was so low to notice the trap and if he failed, it'd kill him.

The paladin's reply was, "You have a chance. We got zip."

 

[transmission89]

Yeah, but it wasn't much better. I think at most you could sink 15% into the base at 1st level, at the expense of all your other skills.

I do remember one game where the player of the Thief balked about being sent first, as his chance was so low to notice the trap and if he failed, it'd kill him.

The paladin's reply was, "You have a chance. We got zip."

not quite. The thief by default has a base 5% chance to find/ remove traps. They can put up to 30 skill points at first level giving them a possible 35% chance (allowing for further racial/ armour modifiers). They have that chance to find the trap which takes 1d10 rounds. They can keep searching if they want to waste time. If found, they can attempt to disarm it. If the thief fails to disarm a trap, it will only spring on a roll of 96-00, only a 5% chance of it blowing up in their face. Not necessarily certain death at first level.

 

[Starfox]

I sort of liked it. It was clear that AD&D needed a revision, but I felt this one was done by people who didn't understand the game on a deeper level. But it too long ago to go into more detail. I did like the new bard, but it was bugged - at certain xp values it was a much better caster than a wizard was, and could cast in armor, had limited thief skills, and so on. Had the authors really been into 1E, they would not have made that kind of mistakes.

 

[transmission89]

I’m playing it now. I’m running a westmarches campaign in Rob Conley’s Blackmarsh setting. I’m keeping it old school, mashing in some 1e and BXisms (focusing on turns and resource management) in the dungeons and wilderness exploration. My players have a stable of three characters each. Also keeping the level limits, THAC0, everything that I guess frustrated people who played it in the day to emphasise the differences to my normally 5e players.

From modern players’ perspective, we are loving it. It give our group something we found lacking in modern editions, a sense of mortality, stakes, consequences for actions, a feel of pride at clawing for and earning levels. Acquiring treasure and powerful new magic takes work. We are loving the fast, frenetic combat and from a DM point of view, I’m loving how hackable and lightweight it can be. I love not having to calculate encounter balance, or work out monsters to the nth degree. I just draw up a dungeon, whack some creatures and environments that I feel should be there and create a wandering monster table.

If you only use the base rules (nothing optional), it actually gets pretty close to basic d&d. I use the optional group initiative with weapon speed, select kits, spells (and revised spell lists) from spells and magic, NWP, weapon specialisation, xp for gold, training etc.

I love that, to my players, it is mostly inscrutable. Roll low, roll high, why? Because I call for it. They are engaged more with the fiction and not spending time looking at their (digital) character sheets. It’s mostly me carrying the system, yet I don’t feel overwhelmed or the need to check the books in play (beyond table referencing) as I can fit it in my head.

 

[cbwjm]

2e Bards couldn't cast in armour. In general the bard would have a higher caster level than a wizard but fewer spells and generally of lower level. As is, I always felt the bard should have required more experience to advance when compared with the thief, similar to how the paladin/ranger needed more than a fighter.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I sort of liked it. It was clear that AD&D needed a revision, but I felt this one was done by people who didn't understand the game on a deeper level. But it too long ago to go into more detail. I did like the new bard, but it was bugged - at certain xp values it was a much better caster than a wizard was, and could cast in armor, had limited thief skills, and so on. Had the authors really been into 1E, they would not have made that kind of mistakes.

Given that the main author of 2e was Zeb Cook, that doesn't really hold water. The game was developed by some very experienced people. However, they had a mandate to retain a large amount of numerical compatibility with existing (1e) source material. So this put some pretty serious limits on what they could tinker with (for example all the to-hit numbers map exactly to the 1e attack tables, with a couple of minor quirks). Likewise all existing spells had to be supported, etc. although they were able to get away with dropping most of what was in later 1e supplements, and some races/classes that were deemed 'too evil' or just marginal/weird.

The 2e Bard was a pretty nice option, but their spell casting has several restrictions. It cannot be done while wearing any armor (so you are stuck with a bad AC and thus your fighting ability becomes pretty much worthless (well, it was not great to start with, but still...). Also your casting is MUCH more restricted on an equal level basis, and even on an equal XP basis. For example: a level 9 bard at 110k XP can cast 3rd level spells, but a level 8 wizard at 135k XP can cast 4th level spells (and more of them). Bards don't get a spell per level, they don't get to pick any level 1 spells, etc. While all this may or may not be a severe restriction, the fact is that the unarmored spell-casting bard can't really do much in combat, has MUCH less thief skills than a 'real' thief, and because he is a rogue his advancement is not based on using magic. Whether he even gets XP for spell casting at all is an open question! In his favor he does get some bard abilities, which can be very handy, in some situations.

Frankly I think you just didn't perhaps read the bard that carefully?

I mean, I have beefs with 2e myself. I didn't think it was a very significant update in terms of fixing real problems with 1e, and yet it did manage to eliminate a lot of the best parts of 1e, though many people who just picked up the books and assumed that it was 'tweaked 1e' probably didn't notice things like the loss of ALL the exploration rules.