D&D 2E 2E Question - and maybe more to come.

[degasvegas]

Hi there, my name is Dan and I've only recently just gotten into the hobby. For years I've played the D&D videogames, but when 4E was released I decided to buy the books and give it a shot.

To be honest, all I do now is tabletop game, I barely touch videogames anymore, as I've become our groups resident DM. However 4E isn't really satisfying the D&D in me. I'm more of a Baldur's Gate kinda guy.

So I've been reading over some of the AD&D 2.5 rulebooks and I definitely want to get a game going, but some stuff in 2E is...well...confusing to me.

Encounter levels? Is there such a thing? There doesn't seem to be any way to put together a group of monsters for the players, at least none that I could find. It seems like I pretty much have to throw together a group of orcs with their troll companions, and hope it doesn't kill the party =x.

Is there any experience table that can say how much a certain party level can handle more or less?

 

[radmod]

My advice: Dump 2.x and go with 3.5.
I ran 2.0 for eight years straight. Because of it's deficiencies, like any DM, I wound up modifying it. When 3.x came out I discovered that alot of my modifications were already in it (WOTC had been smart and checked out the cons to see how people played 2.x).
3.5 is also far better defined. Usually important things mean what they mean, no more and no less.

 

[haus48]

2nd edition is much more unstructured than the later editions. The idea of "encounter levels" did not exist. The belief was that it was okay to travel out into the wilderness or dungeon and run into a vast array of creatures of very different power levels. Parties could and would commonly encounter situations where running away, trying to parley with the monsters, or begging for one's life was the only way to survive. They could also be 10th level characters and run into a dozen basic goblins they mopped up without blinking an eye. Later editions created the rough encounter level guidelines so no player would have to face an unwinable or effortless challenge in an adventure. My best advice if you chose to go with 2nd edition would be to view each encounter as a possible role playing encounter with multiple outcomes rather than an automatic 1 on 1 fight the players will either have to win or lose, that way you have more room to let the characters escape or roleplay it out depending on if the encounter turns out to be too hard or too easy.

A few things to remember:
1. Earlier editions expected characters to die more often and rolling up a new character during a session could be common depending on the DM (there is a reason it is called SAVE or DIE).
2. Earlier editions used a lot more nameless/disposable NPC helpers to join and help the party in combat. They could be hirelings, henchmen, purchased guard dogs, or just randomly encountered adventurers that offered to help and were often sacrificed in combat to save the players. (I remember a priceless cartoon in dragon where you see a porter carrying the parties supplies slipping and falling off a cliff and the caption says Gads! there goes whats his name).
3. Earlier editions had a much less formalized rule base so DM fiat was expected to be more common. Try and free yourself from the more ridged video game adventure structure and allow yourself to ad lib more, letting the players guide the adventure paths, outcomes, and goals. I would say that more than 50% of my 2nd edition adventures were random encounters, spur of the moment side treks to bail out a character that made a bad choice, or missions started by my players going off on their own direction.

You may also want to check out the new haven games website since they are playing with the 2nd edition rules right now and trying to update them for a more modern approach. Cannot comment on it though since I have not looked into it too closely.

 

[degasvegas]

Thanks so much for the replies.

You know, I've been looking into 3.5, Pathfinder, even converting 4.0 to suit more what I'm looking for.

I dislike the battle-heavy systems of 3.5 and 4, so a system like 2E where its a lot of ad-lib and on the fly is something I really want to try and see how it works. However I wasn't sure if there was a real way to tell if and how many of a certain creature I should pit up against a party. Not to mention, after playing alot of 4E - I really feel the urge to finally kill a few of my adventuring party...its so hard to die in 4E its ridiculous.

I'm going to be playing tommorrow a couple of short adventures with a few buddies to see how it goes.

 

[haus48]

Let us know how it goes and try not to be too brutal, you want the players to come back for more.

 

[degasvegas]

Oh I'll definitely let you know, I also posted in the 4E houserule forums about the conversion I'm going to attempt.

Although if all goes well tommorrow I may not have to bother heh.

 

[radmod]

Well, if it's not too late.
I tried to remember how I made appropriate encounters. Caveat: I usually had 8 - 16 PCs and my encounters tended to be pretty tough.

First, throw out the no. appearing. It's your world, do what you want to.
Second, 2e did not have class levels for monsters. I added them. Freaked out the players the first time it happened ("hey, I did 12 points to that orc - he's still standing!")

Most of my encounters were on the fly. Hell, my whole world was on the fly.
Basically, I would add up the levels of the party.
Then I would give them between 2/3 to 1 2/3 HD of monsters with no monster more than two or three levels higher than the highest PC and usually no more than twice the number of monsters as characters.
So, if you had 6 PCs averaging 4 levels, they would get 16 to 40 HD of 6 to 12 bad guys. A typical (easy) combat encounter might be an Orc patrol of:
6th level Lieutenant
4th level Sargeant
2nd/3rd level Corporal
6 x 1st level Privates or 2nd level PFCs
4th level Priest
2nd level Priest
(and the occasional enslaved Kobold Mage)

Also because I did things on the fly, I often gave them max or 3/4 max hp. I would increase ACs and such by 1 pt per level beyond 1st. Oh, and Fighter THAC0s for the big guys. It made calculations easy.

 

[Verdande]

I would like to recommend Labyrinth Lord. Screw all that other stuff. Why play diluted, over-complicated D&D when you can get the goodness straight from the source? 3.5 is a horrible mess of rules with no flavor or soul, and 4e is worse.

Anyways, the key when playing old-school games is that since there aren't any rules to hold your hand, you have to keep on your toes. If your players want to interrogate a guy, you don't have them roll their Interrogate + Charisma Bonus or whatever, you ask them what they're doing and make them punch the guy in the gut. That's roleplaying, and that's fun.

Encounter levels? Who needs em? Get a pre-published adventure and see how they roll, or make something up and see how it goes. Start with a group of three goblins, and if that's not tough enough, make it tougher. Add some dart traps while they're fighting, make them fight in the dark, have some goblins run and go get the entire goblin horde, and then you're party's fighting for their life instead of getting experience and loot handed to them at a slow, easily attainable drip.

"Modern" D&D is all about the inexorable march to success. You will win, because you're always fighting "balanced encounters" and the right number of "fights per day" to ensure that everybody gets equal kills or some crap. Don't fall for it. Games are meant to be won. If your players want to win, make them earn it. Don't be a callous douchebag, but make it challenging. Nobody's going to remember the time they had a string of easy victories, but everybody's going to remember the time that a troll effin' jumped out from the ground and critically smashed the elf's skull into three pieces before anybody else could even draw a sword.

Long story short: It depends on the players more than the characters. I've had some players that are master tacticians and can take a fighter with 3 health and kill their Strength score in orcs (14, in this case.) And I've seen a magic user that can't kill a single goblin, due to rampant idiocy. Start off slow and work your way tougher. Your players won't regret it.

 

[radmod]

Actually, forget all the crap that I, and others posted.

This is the best advice:

Start off slow and work your way tougher. Your players won't regret it.

 

[Persiflage]

I ran 2nd Edition (AD&D) for its entire operational lifespan, and there was much to enjoy. I specialised in Ravenloft games that scared the cr*p out of everyone, but I must have run almost every published setting at one point or another, in addition to homebrew game worlds and half-assed amalgamations. Personally I ended up preferring 3.5 as a DM and player both, but I suspect that's because I brought much of the on-the-fly ad-libbing stuff with me to the newer editions. As you can tell from this thread, everyone has their preferred rules-to-roleplay ratio and my threshold got exceeded by a margin too high to calculate by the release of 4E. [1]

I've got literally hundreds of supplements for AD&D, damn near every sourcebook ever published, and I haven't been able to bring myself to chuck them out so some of the old magic must still be there for me. I wish you the best of luck



[1] Not wishing to thread-derail, but I've never been able to stomach 4E. Weird really: I had about the most auspicious start imaginable... I received pre-release copies of the sourcebooks so that I could DM for a promo event at GenCon UK and actually ran a "life-size" version for some of the system's authors (I covered a field in 5ft squares and got them to wear real armour) but despite all that, I just couldn't make it work for me. The more I studied it, the more I hated it. Pity.