2E vs 3E: 8 Years Later. A new perspective?

[Hussar]

The less you rely on random character generation, the less effective the "balancing" systems inherent in the system are. Also note that the balance wasn't necessarily based on any given moment -- it was supposed to be based over the course of the campaign (where players would be expected to run many, many characters). */snip*

Really? I know that some people played this way, but, the multiple PC's/player thing seemed to be long gone by the time 2e rolled out. The only way you were playing multiple PC's is if your last PC died.

 

[Spell]

Gothmog,

I am grateful that you took the time for such a detailed response. Thank you.

Of course you had to keep both hands on the wheel. You slayed a number of sacred cows there! Furthermore, many of them would inevitably tend to add complexity, regardless of which edition you are running.

ehm... if i'm reading his post correctly, he did say that playing the same sort of game with previous editions did NOT caused him nearly as many problems as when he tried to use 3e.
in addition, he said that his *players* agreed that the game experience was somewhat inferior.

and his post was a direct reply to your claim that whenever people are asked to compare "apples with apples" the silence is "deafening".

no, i don't care anymore for defending this or that position. what puzzles me is how you (and other posters, to be fair) seem to have so many problems with simply admitting that different people might have a different mindset, that different games have different need, and that personal experiences play a fundamental role in shaping one's perception of the game.

that is rather disappointing, especially when you look at some of the "2e defenders' " (if you want to call us that way) posts. i can talk only for myself, but i *did* accept that Voadam has valuable ideas on how to correct the game and what happens if he puts them in practice. i even went as far as admitting that i would probably enjoy to sit at his game table, should we play such a campaign. sure, i could've said: "no, you're wrong, and i can't see how that would ever work!!!" because i've never tried it myself, but... ehm... i'm more interested in a discussion that doesn't boil down to a mere: "my game is better than yours".

are you? what is your point? that everyone should play 3e because it's so much better than OD&D, AD&D, AD&D2nd edition, Hackmaster, C&C and so on? i'm honestly puzzled.

 

[Spell]

Really? I know that some people played this way, but, the multiple PC's/player thing seemed to be long gone by the time 2e rolled out. The only way you were playing multiple PC's is if your last PC died.

i think he's referring to the fact that PCs tended to die more often than in 3e, and that, at least in my campaigns, raising them wouldn't have been that easy. so, when your character died, you had to roll a new one.

i've never met anyone whose campaign allowed more than a character per player. dark sun suggested to have character trees, as far as i remeber, but you still had to choose one character per each adventure.

 

[Reynard]

Really? I know that some people played this way, but, the multiple PC's/player thing seemed to be long gone by the time 2e rolled out. The only way you were playing multiple PC's is if your last PC died.

I meant that over the course of a long campaign, players will have many characters, not all at once (although I understand this was the way it was done in OD&D by many people; I never played that iteration of the game). Sometimes it was because a character died, sometimes it was because a character was retired and sometimes it was because one of the other members of the group wanted to DM as well, in the same world and campaign but "over here". The point is, though, that minimum ability score requirements were a tool in balancing characters over the long term of a campaign, not balancing characters between one another. The same can be said for demi-human level caps (although the implementation wasn't so good -- way too low in 1e and way too high in 2e).

 

[Hussar]

i think he's referring to the fact that PCs tended to die more often than in 3e, and that, at least in my campaigns, raising them wouldn't have been that easy. so, when your character died, you had to roll a new one.

i've never met anyone whose campaign allowed more than a character per player. dark sun suggested to have character trees, as far as i remeber, but you still had to choose one character per each adventure.

This does not jive with my experience at all. I've slain a LOT more PC's in 3e than I ever did in 2e. Heck, I was averaging a PC fatality every 3 sessions in my last campaign, and these were high powered PC's where I allowed most any book they wanted to use and I was stuck with only the SRD.

2e PC's, between kits and the fact that the monsters couldn't do much damage, beyond about 3rd level were practically impossible to kill except with save or die effects.

Again, IME, YMMV and all that.

I meant that over the course of a long campaign, players will have many characters, not all at once (although I understand this was the way it was done in OD&D by many people; I never played that iteration of the game). Sometimes it was because a character died, sometimes it was because a character was retired and sometimes it was because one of the other members of the group wanted to DM as well, in the same world and campaign but "over here". The point is, though, that minimum ability score requirements were a tool in balancing characters over the long term of a campaign, not balancing characters between one another. The same can be said for demi-human level caps (although the implementation wasn't so good -- way too low in 1e and way too high in 2e).

I think you are projecting your own experience here. "Long campaign"? We know that the average 2e campaign lasted under two years. That's been shown pretty clearly. We also have a pretty good idea that many groups only had one DM. Also, with the plethora of campaign settings out there, I'm not sure how often you would see different DM's sharing the same setting with the same group. It certainly never happened IME. ((But that's just me projecting my experience ))

Minimum ability scores did not work. Full stop. As a balancing mechanic, they can only be seen as an utter failure. Other than paladins, most classes only needed average or slightly higher than average stats to begin with. Getting the rolls you needed to play a ranger or a druid wasn't all that statistically rare. Any of the base classes was a snap. You only needed a 9 Wisdom to play a cleric, for example.

The problem with the racial level limits is that players chose races where the limit would not come into play since most campaigns topped out at about 12th level. You simply chose races based on the level limits. If you wanted to play a fighter, you chose either dwarf or human. Fighter/magic user - elf or half elf. Since the level limits didn't kick in all that often, they were not terribly useful as a balancing mechanic.

And, on the point about the rarity of magic items. Again, I've pointed this out before, take a look at your 1e or 2e paladin. A paladin was limited to 10 magic items. That limit was strictly enforced. It was meant to be a limitation. That means that every other PC SHOULD have more than 10 magic items at one time, sometime in his or her career. Otherwise, the limitation is meaningless.

TEN magic items was considered a LOW limit.

 

[Spell]

The problem with the racial level limits is that players chose races where the limit would not come into play since most campaigns topped out at about 12th level.

i agree with you, but how would you have solved the problem, mechanically, in the context of AD&D?
removing the racial level limits would have taken out even the (let's face it) rather illusory and surely long term advantage that humans had on other races. just leaving things as they were without doing much would have called for a party full of demihumans... which can be good fun, but not if it becomes routine.

what i would do today, if i ever ran an AD&D game is:
1. enforcing 1e racial level limits.
2. put a penalty on XP earned by demihumans after that level.

how would you like that? i'd start with a -10% penalty for the first 3 levels after the limit, and then a further -5% for every 5 level. i think that would also reflect that the demihumans have a slower "pace of life", given that their lifespan is longer.


on a related note i would nazically enforce the fact that some races CAN NOT take a level in whatever class they choose. no dwarven paladins, please. to me, doing otherwise would kill a bit of the flavour.

on the other hand, i don't see why i can add race specific classes... "the defenders of moradin" and what not.

thoughts?

 

[Spell]

TEN magic items was considered a LOW limit.

fair enough. on the other hand, there have been campaigns i've run in which the WHOLE party didn't have, between the PCs, 10 magical items (excluding magic scrolls and projectiles/ arrows, obviously). i can't remember having a particularly thougher time running the game, nor i recall the lack of magical items brought a particularly bad vibe at the table...

 

[Hussar]

fair enough. on the other hand, there have been campaigns i've run in which the WHOLE party didn't have, between the PCs, 10 magical items (excluding magic scrolls and projectiles/ arrows, obviously). i can't remember having a particularly thougher time running the game, nor i recall the lack of magical items brought a particularly bad vibe at the table...

Oh, hey, I've done the whole miser bastard DM schtick too. It wasn't all that hard in 2e really. You just didn't use monsters that needed pluses to hit. I had scads of monster books (gotta love those loose leave binder pages - NOT ) so finding a different critter wasn't much of a challenge.

Then again, if you run 3e by RAW, you'll find that the party has very few magic items until double digit levels. 7th level has 19k gp in equipment IIRC. That's not much. We're talking a magic weapon, a magic suit of armor, a couple of odds and sods and that's it. Nothing earth shaking, and, below 10th level, if you stripped out all magic items, you might drop the effective level of your party by about one level.

Now, after 10th is a totally different story.

But, that's the point. We usually didn't play 2e after 10th. So, to compare apples to apples, you actually don't see a whole lot more magic in 3e than 2e, at equivalent levels.

 

[Hussar]

i agree with you, but how would you have solved the problem, mechanically, in the context of AD&D?
removing the racial level limits would have taken out even the (let's face it) rather illusory and surely long term advantage that humans had on other races. just leaving things as they were without doing much would have called for a party full of demihumans... which can be good fun, but not if it becomes routine.

I would play 3e?

I know that's a slick answer, but, honestly, that's the best solution I can think of. Racial level limits didn't work as a balancing mechanic. I think to balance things between the races, you need to buff up the humans considerably. Dump that horrible dual classing mechanics and allow humans to straight up multiclass.

Then again, I'm a piss poor tinker, so, someone else should give a better answer.

 

[Spell]

I would play 3e?

ark! how dare you pronouncing that name on these boards?!!?