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

[Orius]

Flipping through my Ad&D 2E stuff I realize just how elegant some of the things used to be (and some un-elegent things: THAC0 I am looking at you)

THAC0 was still better than attack matices though.

For instance, the Non-Weapon Profiency system of 2E has some simple appeal over 3E's skill systm. In 2E you just take a proficiency and are done with it; your character knows that. How good he is at it depends on level and roleplaying, you don't have to do extensive number crunching every level. 3E's skill system though, can be a nightmare. Especially when making high level pc's.

I'd say 3e's skill system can be more rewarding for a PC. It's not as heavily dependant on stats like core 2e; there you don't even want to bother with dump-stat based NWPs, since you'll likely fail most of the time. Levels have very little to do with it, since PC only get 1 new slot every 3-4 levels and that slot only adds a +1. If I were to run 2e ever again, I'd kick out the original rules and use Skill's and Power's much better system.

I also like how 2E comat's were less overpowered, and more deadly. Everyone had far fewer hitpoints, char death was at 0, and some monster abilities were brutally damaging. The system also relied far less on magic items at higher levels than 3E.

As others have said, Death's Door was in 2e (as an option), and there were plenty of monsters that required magic weapons just to hit (and if they had high magic resistance, then you needed a +3 or better weapon to kill them).

And besides, it was more balanced if one stuck with core. Once splatbooks and PO started getting in, then PCs were much more powerful than the monsters. Monsters were sill pretty much the same since the 1e MM, with nothing to compensate for increasing PC power. That was another thing 3e improved; giving monsters ability scores wit full bonuses and skills and feats made them more balanced with the PCs.

I also really like how 2E monsters had morale! I ave no idea why they removed it in 3E.

I understand it was to allow the DM to decide whether or not the monsers stick around rather than basing it merely on a die roll.

Do you think 3E was really an improvement?

Rules wise, yes 3 was an improvement. Cleaned up a lot of legacy rules that worked badly together, toughened up monsters, and lessened the impact of bad DM fiat.

However, 2e was still better in presentation.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

2e magic item creation guidelines were a pathetic joke, to put it kindly.

After finally achieving middling high level, your mighty spellcaster earns the write to beg for instructions on what bizarre random items he will need to make a single scroll.

Having achieved a level of competence in the magical arts that perhaps not one in a hundred thousand men dare dream of, you have a ~5% (or more) chance of writing a cursed scroll. But the chance to get horrifically screwed is so low if you spend quadruple on your ink.

Aha! You turned to liquid and drained away.

Serves you right for believing the lie that 2e allowed you to make magic items.

 

[Orius]

Magic item creation, for example. To scribe a scroll you might need a phoenix feather quill and giant squid ink. The poor sucker trying to make a magic sword has to find meteoric iron from deep in the bowels of the earth, quench it in a special spring, and imbue it with the "power of purity." All that stuff sounds great if you're writing Harry Potter fanfic, but it starts to wear on the nerves around the gaming table. It's like that jerk in the Burger King commercial - "get me a Whopper!" "First you have to go on a quest and then I'll assign a percentile chance and then maybe you can have your Whopper!"

That was another area where 3e improved the rules. Complicated creation for disposable items was dumb, especially when lots of potions and scrolls would turn up in treasure. It worked alright for the powerful stuff though.

And the stern admonitions about making magic too common. The whole book is insistent about how magic items are so ridiculously rare, no one would possibly buy one or sell one, PCs should feel lucky if they find a +1 sword, etc. etc. "If magic were common, you'd have a crazy fantasy world with djinni-driven steamships and crystal-ball communications networks." But of course, there are precisely ZERO guidelines as to what an "appropriate" level of magic is. When should a fighter have a +3 sword? 6th level? 10th level? Never?

And the worst part was that like 1e, modules would have lots of magic lying around anyway. At least 3e made a decent attempt to remedy it by assuming PCs would have magic as they leveled, even if it did lead to the Christmas tree.

And it's part of a bigger problem: maintaining balance through rarity, which didn't work. The same thing was true of PCs, the paladin was very powerful compared to the ordinary fighter. The only thing balancing it was a required 17 Cha and several other relatively high (13+) stats. I don't remember the exact stats, but it was at least Str and Wis too. The idea that making the paladin rare balanced it out, but it didn't because if a player did roll one up, it's extra power would still be felt in thhe campaign. And I think this lead to alignment stomping with them. The same was true of rangers, druids and bards, though I don't think druids were all that overpowering compared to the cleric (though I saw few in 2e, so I can't be sure).

The rules also based this rarity on an assumption of the old 3d6 method, but most games I played and ran used Method 5 (aka 4d6), and that tossed the whole PC class balance out the window. I had few straight fighters in my games; everyone tended to play paladins, rangers, or multiclass.

There was so much reliance on DM fiat, especially compared with 3rd edition. Some people may find this aspect appealing, but I dislike playing "mother-may-I" with the DM.

The DM is largely intended to be a neutral interpreter of the rules who also provides scenarios for play. The original rules refer to the role not as the DM, but the "referee", and that term even continued to survive into 2e's days. The problem with making the rules too loose is that it often gives bad DMs the excuse to power trip.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I love Morale rules as a concept. But those is my grognard roots showing.

It is actually somewhat realistic that small skirmish combat like D&D is extremely brutal. IME DMs get out of the habit of trying to have their monsters flee because even attempting to do so is so often futile (absent magic or special terrain).

 

[Lanefan]

THAC0 was still better than attack matices though.

Attack matrices are easy...after one or two rounds you as DM have pretty much memorized what each PC needs to roll to hit that opponent anyway, just like with 3e except in 3e it's the player doing the math. I'll take a matrix over THAC0 any day; and do, every time I DM.

And besides, it was more balanced if one stuck with core. Once splatbooks and PO started getting in, then PCs were much more powerful than the monsters. Monsters were sill pretty much the same since the 1e MM, with nothing to compensate for increasing PC power. That was another thing 3e improved; giving monsters ability scores wit full bonuses and skills and feats made them more balanced with the PCs.

Agreed; 3e gave monsters a better break, and long overdue. I'd already sort-of started doing the same thing in 1e, but nowhere near what 3e did...until I saw 3e and started swiping ideas, that is. I'm hoping 4e continues this trend of giving the opposition an even break.

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Different topic, to save another post: opening up magic item creation to PCs was outright one of the worst things 3e did. I'll stop there, on that one, before I get myself in trouble.

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Different topic again: having the rules system as tightly integrated as 3e is a nuisance for someone like me, who likes to tinker. 0-1-2e are just made for tinkering, and changing one thing doesn't (usually) have too much impact elsewhere. With 3e, some things can be independently changed (e.g. level progression rates), but most of it can't be easily tinkered with due to all the knock-on effects a change *here* causes *there*, and there, and there and there.

Lanefan

 

[Wik]

There are only a few things I liked about 2e:

The World Settings (there has yet to be a 3e world as cool as Athas)
The Historical Supplements (a few 3e products come close, but most of them focus on the rules, which is something they didn't do as much in 2e)
The generally lower-magic feel (but that was general, and it was more in the art of the books than in something inherently in the rules)

But generally, 3e *is* a vast improvement. I mean, look at the XP charts for an example - fighters level slightly faster than wizards earlier on, when wizards are the weakest character class in the game... when wizards are the strongest class in the game, they are also actually one of the fastest progressing classes as well! Never understood that.

(on that note, though, I did like how rogues leveled fast. It was almost a good balancing mechanic, that rogues would develop their combat talents almost on par with the fighters, though with a suckier AC and less damage. I have many memories of rubbing it in everyone else's faces that my rogue was level 3 and had more hit dice (and occasionally more hit points) than the fighter.

Of course, then we'd hit 5th level, and I'd become obsolete to the mage. *Sigh*)

Kits were a neat feature of 2e, and I think it'd be nice to see something similar come back. I mean, you can do it in 3e with background feats, but it's not the same. I'd like to see something more like the occupations from d20 modern. That'd be nifty.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Different topic again: having the rules system as tightly integrated as 3e is a nuisance for someone like me, who likes to tinker. 0-1-2e are just made for tinkering, and changing one thing doesn't (usually) have too much impact elsewhere. With 3e, some things can be independently changed (e.g. level progression rates), but most of it can't be easily tinkered with due to all the knock-on effects a change *here* causes *there*, and there, and there and there.

Example?

 

[Lanefan]

The rules also based this rarity on an assumption of the old 3d6 method, but most games I played and ran used Method 5 (aka 4d6), and that tossed the whole PC class balance out the window. I had few straight fighters in my games; everyone tended to play paladins, rangers, or multiclass.

We've had lots of pure fighters in 1e; more than any other class by a long way, and we use a roll-up system even nicer than 4d6. Check your numbers, if you have records of characters played...you might be surprised.

The DM is largely intended to be a neutral interpreter of the rules who also provides scenarios for play. The original rules refer to the role not as the DM, but the "referee", and that term even continued to survive into 2e's days. The problem with making the rules too loose is that it often gives bad DMs the excuse to power trip.

DM a session or two where the party decide to rip each other's throats out and you'll be soon enough reaching for the black-and-white striped shirt with the red armbands...

Lane-"holding the keys to the penalty box since 1984"-fan

 

[Lanefan]

Example?

OK...say I hypothetically want to change how skills work: in order to make every stat point important (instead of every even stat point) I want the roll to be *under* the relevant stat, modified by your skill level and a difficulty modifier applied by situation. (it also puts a crimp on roll-high cheaters if that's an issue) Sounds simple, right? Well, it's not:

Knock-on effect #1: in 3e, stats can easily get too high for this to be practical. When stats top out at about 18-20, no real problem; but in 3e a stat approaching 30 or even more is not at all unlikely, and low-to-mid 20's are relatively commonplace. Add a reasonable skill modifier and the d20 roll becomes too insignificant. How to fix: well, the only real way is to get rid of most stat-boost items and a lot of racial templates that give highly-skewed stats; a huge knock-on effect for something so trivial. Or, fix by using a bigger die - a d30, perhaps - but that increases the randomness even more; probably not a good thing.

Knock-on effect #1a: now the high stats have been reduced, the average party ability has been weakened slightly, meaning the CR numbers are now a bit skewed...does this require encounter adjustments, or ExP adjustments, or...???

Knock-on effect #2: Some stats may now not make sense to be applied to some skills; e.g. Wisdom as the base stat for Listen, and this would need a review. (side note: Listen is one skill that really doesn't tie well to *any* stat)

And so on.

The reason I use this example is that ever since 3e was released I've wanted to come up with some significant way of making an 11 more useful than a 10, or a 17 more useful than a 16, other than when taking ability damage. 3.5's setting the stat-buff spells to a fixed-number increase didn't help here!

On-the-fly thought here: one could make odd stats useful with skills simply by having the stat bonus - for skills only - become tied to odd numbers...11 = +1, 13 = +2, and so on. Hmmmm......

Lanefan

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Lanefan,

I have four issues with your example.

First of all, it is better to compare apples with apples rather than apples with palm fronds. It does not really matter how hard or easy the proposed change is in 3e unless it is demonstrably more difficult than making comparable changes to 2e.

Second of all, your example is not simple. Rewriting the core mechanics of the skill system is a big change, regardless which edition you are playing. Comparable sized changes in 2e would be just as painful or more so.

Third of all, your example is poorly framed.

The goal of making every stat point important is legitimate, and also achievable in a number of ways. The simplest would be to add 1/2 increment point circumstance modifiers, then a 13 Dex can give a proper +1.5 mod to the skill. There are other possibilities.

In the world of game mechanics, rolling under the stat is a solution in search of a problem. Insisting on a particular solution detail while being vague about the actual goal is always a invitation for trouble. It would like deciding to write a computer program in Lisp before knowing whether you are writing a word processor, a first person shooter, or a toolkit for statistical analysis; it is always doable with sufficient effort, but no one would be shocked if the end result is less than satisfactory.

There are a number of ways to control scaling. For example, you could use Stat + Skill + Mod as an index on a chart, where the chart yields as percentage chance of success. Or I could use Stat & Skill as separate indexes on a chart that yields a success chance. Not exactly elegant, but perfectly workable old school approaches to game mechanics.

It would be easier to suggest solutions if a comprehensible goal were stated.

Fourth of all, it is always possible to break something in one's first crack at a problem, and then propose "knock on effects" that involve breaking other things to find a band-aid. It is not a knock on effect just because it is the first band-aid that comes to mind. A knock on effect is something like "I want to make Cha modify the DC of all spellcasters instead of their normal primary spellcasting stat, but now I am worried that Sorcerors are too powerful relative to other spellcasters." That is a real knock on effect, and one that can be solved without rewriting the both the Ability score system and magic item availability.