D&D 2E 2e, the most lethal edition?

[Maxperson]

Low level 3e characters are more powerful than 2e ones? Really? When my 2e character can kill 5 HD creatures in one round? 40+ points of damage in a single round? Things like Sleep spells being insta kill for most encounters? Meh.

Yes, really. More hit points. More spells. More damage. Better AC. Better hit rates. It took really high stats for the most part to give a bonus in 2e. In 3e it started as 12 and went up from there.

Sure, an ogre might be doing a bit less than 10xCR (although not far off either), but, a troll (a pretty common monster) at CR 5 is doing 54 damage - a bit more. A Fire Giant at CR 10 is doing 99 (before power attack). A Wyvern at CR 6 is 72 damage before poison (for a potential 24 points of Con damage, more than enough to kill any PC).

None of those creatures are doing that much damage. In the unlikely event that they hit with all of their attacks, they then also have to roll max damage on all dice. The odds of that are somewhere between 0 and nil.