D&D 2E 2E Dragonlance.

[Zardnaar]

Yes it does, but the 1e rulebook said that max level would be 18 (as a PC).
Did they do an update of the rules for 2e?
I never played it back then so my knowledge is not profound.

Yes wizards can go to level 25 in 2E maybe priests as well.

What schools they have access to varies they each get 7/8 schools.

2E had a lot of idk stuff in it.

 

[PabloM]

I bought the DL boxed set May 1996.

Tried running it back in 2E but didn't like it. A lot if the classes Dem badly designed for example the Rose Knights which have a crappy do table no spells and no weapon specialization.

There's also several weapons that seem better than the phb ones.

The Irda also seem just better than almost everything. L

Reading it now it seems a hit mess.

Tales of the Lance had really bad mechanical and narrative issues, but I inexplicably love it.
It must be the art, or the nostalgia or whatever. Anyway, I don't use it to play now. I run Dragonlance using the 3e material and the 5e mechanics.
I suppose if I wanted to play in 2e I would use the DLC 1 to 3 modules as inspiration and the PHB basics options

 

[DragonBelow]

Back in the day, things didn't have to be level between classes etc.

IIRC the MC4 came out in 1990, and Tales of the Lance in 1992. However, how characters advance between orders was never a point of confusion, and I'm sure it was explained in the Knights of Solamnia entry. Every Sword Knight started as a Crown Knight, Every Rose Knight in turn was previously a Sword Knight.

This is one of my favorite products EVER, I ran a few campaigns with it.

 

[cbwjm]

The problem wasn't in how they advanced between orders, the book explains that well enough, rather it was what was retained when they advanced. When you read the entry in the 2e tales of the lance book it reads like only sword knights have paladin abilities and spells and advancing between orders requires a large amount of experience to level once you've joined a higher order. It takes 6,000,000 experience to advance to a level 20 rose knight but if they only have immunity to fear spells, then that seems like an exorbitant amount of XP when compared to the knight of the sword. If they were keeping everything from the previous orders and gaining additional proficiencies, then the xp required might be justified, but it doesn't explicitly state this, or provide additional proficiencies in the tales of the lance book.

 

[Zardnaar]

The problem wasn't in how they advanced between orders, the book explains that well enough, rather it was what was retained when they advanced. When you read the entry in the 2e tales of the lance book it reads like only sword knights have paladin abilities and spells and advancing between orders requires a large amount of experience to level once you've joined a higher order. It takes 6,000,000 experience to advance to a level 20 rose knight but if they only have immunity to fear spells, then that seems like an exorbitant amount of XP when compared to the knight of the sword. If they were keeping everything from the previous orders and gaining additional proficiencies, then the xp required might be justified, but it doesn't explicitly state this, or provide additional proficiencies in the tales of the lance book.

This I only had the boxed set back in the day.

As written the Rose Knight seems a crappy fighter. Sword knight with weapon speciazation via crown knight seems good.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think the main problem with the knights is that you're meant to keep everything that you gained from the previous order, they also gained extra proficiencies, it's why the rose knights required so much experience to advance. Surprisingly the dragonlance monstrous compendium better explains how they are meant to work. It calls them a variant of paladins with a few changes.

• Crown knights have weapon specialisation and specifically calls out that they gain no special abilities of the paladin.
• Sword knights gain all of the special paladin abilities and spells.
• Rose knights don't say they gain anything explicitly (other than more proficiencies) but it is implied they have all of the paladin special abilities. I'd give them the sword knight spells as well, even though the books state that the sword knights are the clerical order.

Something that always struck me as weird was that the heads of the wizard orders we level 17 for red and black and level 18 for white so two of them had no access to 9th level spells. Makes more sense in the context of 1e where the orders gain spells sooner.

It's still one of my favourite settings, but yeah, you would definitely have to work on the knights a bit to make them work better.

Just had another look. Crown Knights are just a fighter then with a crappy xp table?

 

[cbwjm]

Does look that way, though they have the benefit of 2 hit dice at level 1 but not sure that would really make up for it. I think in 1e they had some cavalier abilities that might have made up for it. Probably could have given them the cavalier abilities in addition to justify the increased xp but then, looking at the book, any fighter that met the stat requirements could be a cavalier without an increase to xp apparently.

 

[cbwjm]

Dragon Magazine 143 has some sage advice on Knights of Solamnia. This magazine was from 1989 so was still 1e but sheds some light on how the knights are meant to work when advancing.

Do Solamnic knights have cavalier abilities?
Knights of Solamnia are cavaliers but do not gain the cavalier's weapon of choice bonuses until they become Knights of the Rose.

Are the abilities of each order of knights cumulative?
Yes. A Crown Knight retains his weapon specialization ability when he becomes a Sword Knight, and a Sword Knight keeps any spells earned when he becomes a Rose Knight (but he does earn more spells as a Rose Knight). - I actually wonder if they meant to write "but he doesn't earn more spells as a Rose Knight". I think I would take it at face value and allow a rose knight to continue to gain spells at the same rate as a sword knight.

What exactly are the special proficiencies in weapons and combat gained by a Rose Knight?
Rose Knights gain the cavalier's weapon of choice bonuses in addition to the Crown Knight's weapon specializations and Sword Knight's spells.

The 2e tales of the lance box set has the cavalier as a kit for both fighters and paladins. Following with what was said about rose knight's gaining the weapon of choice bonuses, I would grant crown and sword knights the other abilities of the cavalier kit (Bonuses with the lance used on horseback, resistance to mind affecting spells) with the exception of the cavalier's immunity to fear spells and the inspire confidence ability that comes with it (reserving that for the rose knight).

With this in mind, if I wanted to run a 2e game of Dragonlance, I'd do the following for the Knights of Solamnia:

Crown knights:

• weapon specialisation,
• cavalier lance bonuses,
• cavalier resistances to mind affecting spells.

Sword Knights:

• retains crown knight abilities,
• paladin abilities,
• spells (gained from spheres of Kiri-Jolith).

Rose Knights:

• Retains crown & sword abilities,
• cavalier weapon of choice bonuses,
• cavalier fear and inspiration bonuses,
• retains spells but perhaps changed to spell spheres granted by Paladine.