Thanael
Explorer
...a great link
2e: What do I need?
- Thread starter El Ravager
- Start date
...a great link
Thanael
Explorer
Core, plus Complete Fighter,Thief, Wizard. Optional: The Complete Race books (Elf, Dwarf, Gnomes & Halflings, Humanoids) are also interesting, I'm nost sure how to rank them though. Complete Humanoids is similar to Savage Species, and is probably the weakest of the bunch. There's a Complete Half-Elf article in Dragon magazine somewhere, but it only has the character kits. The background ecology stuff is what made C.Dwarves, and C. Gnomes & Halflings great. Complete Ranger is not bad, as is the Paladin and Bard. Perhaps Complete Cleric for guidelines on making your own specialty priests. Specialty priests are way cooler than the generic core clerics imho, so either this or a setting specific book, which the OP ruled out. (Though I would still consider buying the FR Demihuman Deities and/or Faith's and Avatars, they are that good. Or you could get Legends & Lore for some real world pantheons' specialty priests. The Greyhawk pantheons specialty priests are spread far and wide between many books and Dragon/Polyhedron articles unfortunately, though they are my favorite pantheons.)
Two must haves imho are the Complete Book of Necromancers (awesome book, includes mini island campaign), and Monster Mythology (the non-setting-specific core D&D gods). Outstanding books both. The first was written by Steve Kurtz who put a Clark Ashton Smith lens on the specialist Necromancer and included the whole loosely into Al Qadim. The book is quite generic though. Monster Mythology was written by Carl Sargent who gives a face to all those generic staple D&D Deities, like the demihuman pantheons, the monster gods (from goblinoids and orcs to giants to beholders and lycanthropes), some Demon Lords and more.
I also liked the follwoing 2.5 Option books very much: Combat & Tactics (for the critical hit system, more detailed weapons and weapon proficiencies), and Spells & Magic (new spells, critical hits for spells, alternate spell systems). I did not like the Epic Option book very much, nor the other one that breaks open the class features.
But 2E's best books are the setting books. Check out Al'Qadim and Planescape, or Birthright.
Get the free stuff from WotC for previews: Previous Edition Dungeons & Dragons Downloads.
Check out the two Al Qadim downloads for a glimpse of that settings production quality and flavour goodness.
There's more fee stuff out there. If you're interested in Greyhawk check out the unpublished WGRX Ivid the Undying pdf
Oh and get some old issues of Dungeon. Emirikols complete Dungeon index should help.
Two must haves imho are the Complete Book of Necromancers (awesome book, includes mini island campaign), and Monster Mythology (the non-setting-specific core D&D gods). Outstanding books both. The first was written by Steve Kurtz who put a Clark Ashton Smith lens on the specialist Necromancer and included the whole loosely into Al Qadim. The book is quite generic though. Monster Mythology was written by Carl Sargent who gives a face to all those generic staple D&D Deities, like the demihuman pantheons, the monster gods (from goblinoids and orcs to giants to beholders and lycanthropes), some Demon Lords and more.
I also liked the follwoing 2.5 Option books very much: Combat & Tactics (for the critical hit system, more detailed weapons and weapon proficiencies), and Spells & Magic (new spells, critical hits for spells, alternate spell systems). I did not like the Epic Option book very much, nor the other one that breaks open the class features.
But 2E's best books are the setting books. Check out Al'Qadim and Planescape, or Birthright.
Get the free stuff from WotC for previews: Previous Edition Dungeons & Dragons Downloads.
Check out the two Al Qadim downloads for a glimpse of that settings production quality and flavour goodness.
There's more fee stuff out there. If you're interested in Greyhawk check out the unpublished WGRX Ivid the Undying pdf
Oh and get some old issues of Dungeon. Emirikols complete Dungeon index should help.
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Remathilis
Legend
Remathilis's guide to Complete X Handbooks
Ok, here is my personal guide to the Complete Series. I owned most of them HB (and the rest via CR2).
FIGHTERS: Serviceable. The alternate rules for called shots (for such things as disarm or trip) are simple but abusable. The kits are fine, but some are great examples of "mechanical benefit/Role-playing hindrance" which rarely balanced out. First try at martial arts is included. B+
PRIESTS: Yeechh! The idea behind the book was to expand the PoSM rules in the PHB, but they came up with an arbitrary system of granting spheres based on "combat ability". Basically, the more weapons/armors you could use, the more restricted your sphere access. The problem is they edged way too conservatively, granting most classes only 2-4 major (all spell) access and 3-6 minor (lvl 1-3) access. By the time I got to the "in order to keep balance, you must tone down the cleric" section, I was done. D-
WIZARDS: Great. New spells (with a few a bit too powerful) good kits and some of the most detailed breakdowns of wizard specialists in the game. Add on the wizard "lists" and you have one of the better of the series. A-
THIEVES: Moderate. The kits are boring (many granting no benefit other than slight shifts in thief skills) but the proficiencies, items, and guild info is great. B
BARDS: The Best! Great kits (that seem more like alt-bards than kits), good flavor, NWPs, Spells, a huge section on Role-playing (including a great personality chart) and even the 1e bard in the appendix! A+
DRUIDS: Almost as good as the bard. Alternate druids for other terrain (desert, underdark, arctic, mountain, hill), good kits, new spells and the 1e druid in the appendix. A
RANGER: Ok. New rules for favored terrain are nice, but the kits are ok and the rest seems usable. B
PALADIN: Good, with cavaet: this book WILL cause DM/PC alignment/code arguments. While most of the book focuses on knightly things (chivalry, courtly love, fealty) and paladin boosts, much is devoted to understanding the paladin code, and by doing so makes in near impossible to play a paladin BY the code. Careful with this one. B
PSIONICS: The first draft of psionics is the easiest to use, but psionics (even here) were inherently unbalanced until 3e. They also lacked any sort of flavor beyond "sci-fi" even with the attempt to insert eastern philosophy into it. Use at your own risk. B
NINJAS: The new ninja class was nothing more than a refined thief (which in and of itself made a serviceable assassin replacement). but the highlight was the martial arts table. While complex, it was a revision of the amazing Oriental Adventures MA. Good overall, but very niche. B+
BARBARIANS: Again, a new class. The Barbarian was similar to the UA barbarian, but didn't have strict taboos on who he could associate with (though a kit provided them if you wanted). They were basically fighters, lacking the "rage' mechanic of 3e but having some unique skills and such. Good info on runing primitive PCs though. A-
DWARVES: How racial books should have been done! Good flavorful kits, lots of good info without being too campaign specific, and info on nearly everything you want including names, strongholds, and female dwarven facial hair. A
ELVES: Much mocked, but still good. Most of the kits (beyond bladesinger) were fine, and the subraces weren't too bad. The writing was clearly trying to be Tolkien by way of the Realms, so elven superiority is thick. Beyond some nonsensical ideas (elves are pregnant for 2 years) its was the best elf-perspective you could find. B
GNOMES & HALFLINGS: Small races, 50/50 split. Serviceable. Each race gets its subraces, kits, general info, and a settlement. Not bad, but by smashing them together, neither stands out. That said, if you like either of them, its good. B-.
HUMANOIDS: Great, but actually a bit of mixed bag. Some races are overly powerful and have crippling balancing mechanics (from earning double XP to making the PC hard to travel with). Other races are great additions. Common sense applies. Kits are good, and the BEST NWP table in all of 2e hides here.
A-.
Ok, here is my personal guide to the Complete Series. I owned most of them HB (and the rest via CR2).
FIGHTERS: Serviceable. The alternate rules for called shots (for such things as disarm or trip) are simple but abusable. The kits are fine, but some are great examples of "mechanical benefit/Role-playing hindrance" which rarely balanced out. First try at martial arts is included. B+
PRIESTS: Yeechh! The idea behind the book was to expand the PoSM rules in the PHB, but they came up with an arbitrary system of granting spheres based on "combat ability". Basically, the more weapons/armors you could use, the more restricted your sphere access. The problem is they edged way too conservatively, granting most classes only 2-4 major (all spell) access and 3-6 minor (lvl 1-3) access. By the time I got to the "in order to keep balance, you must tone down the cleric" section, I was done. D-
WIZARDS: Great. New spells (with a few a bit too powerful) good kits and some of the most detailed breakdowns of wizard specialists in the game. Add on the wizard "lists" and you have one of the better of the series. A-
THIEVES: Moderate. The kits are boring (many granting no benefit other than slight shifts in thief skills) but the proficiencies, items, and guild info is great. B
BARDS: The Best! Great kits (that seem more like alt-bards than kits), good flavor, NWPs, Spells, a huge section on Role-playing (including a great personality chart) and even the 1e bard in the appendix! A+
DRUIDS: Almost as good as the bard. Alternate druids for other terrain (desert, underdark, arctic, mountain, hill), good kits, new spells and the 1e druid in the appendix. A
RANGER: Ok. New rules for favored terrain are nice, but the kits are ok and the rest seems usable. B
PALADIN: Good, with cavaet: this book WILL cause DM/PC alignment/code arguments. While most of the book focuses on knightly things (chivalry, courtly love, fealty) and paladin boosts, much is devoted to understanding the paladin code, and by doing so makes in near impossible to play a paladin BY the code. Careful with this one. B
PSIONICS: The first draft of psionics is the easiest to use, but psionics (even here) were inherently unbalanced until 3e. They also lacked any sort of flavor beyond "sci-fi" even with the attempt to insert eastern philosophy into it. Use at your own risk. B
NINJAS: The new ninja class was nothing more than a refined thief (which in and of itself made a serviceable assassin replacement). but the highlight was the martial arts table. While complex, it was a revision of the amazing Oriental Adventures MA. Good overall, but very niche. B+
BARBARIANS: Again, a new class. The Barbarian was similar to the UA barbarian, but didn't have strict taboos on who he could associate with (though a kit provided them if you wanted). They were basically fighters, lacking the "rage' mechanic of 3e but having some unique skills and such. Good info on runing primitive PCs though. A-
DWARVES: How racial books should have been done! Good flavorful kits, lots of good info without being too campaign specific, and info on nearly everything you want including names, strongholds, and female dwarven facial hair. A
ELVES: Much mocked, but still good. Most of the kits (beyond bladesinger) were fine, and the subraces weren't too bad. The writing was clearly trying to be Tolkien by way of the Realms, so elven superiority is thick. Beyond some nonsensical ideas (elves are pregnant for 2 years) its was the best elf-perspective you could find. B
GNOMES & HALFLINGS: Small races, 50/50 split. Serviceable. Each race gets its subraces, kits, general info, and a settlement. Not bad, but by smashing them together, neither stands out. That said, if you like either of them, its good. B-.
HUMANOIDS: Great, but actually a bit of mixed bag. Some races are overly powerful and have crippling balancing mechanics (from earning double XP to making the PC hard to travel with). Other races are great additions. Common sense applies. Kits are good, and the BEST NWP table in all of 2e hides here.
A-.
Knightfall
World of Kulan DM
I must second this suggestion for the fact you have access to several 2e books on the CDs. The Expansion CD has 20 books (text versions) on it, which includes the following:
- Arms and Equipment Guide
- Dungeon Master's Guide (revised and updated version)
- Dungeon Master's Option: High-Level Campaigns
- Monstrous Manual (updated version)
- Player's Handbook (revised and updated version)
- Player's Option: Combat & Tactics
- Player's Option: Spells & Magic
- Player's Option: Skills & Powers
- The Complete Bard's Handbook
- The Complete Book of Dwarves
- The Complete Book of Elves
- The Complete Book of Gnomes & Halflings
- The Complete Druid's Handbook
- The Complete Fighter's Handbook
- The Complete Paladin's Handbook
- The Complete Priest's Handbook
- The Complete Ranger's Handbook
- The Complete Thief's Handbook
- The Complete Wizard's Handbook
- Tome of Magic
Calico_Jack73
First Post
If you can get your hands on Core Rules 2.0 and the Expansion then you are all set to go. It still works fine on Vista.
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Dungeons-Dragons-Core-Rules-Pc/dp/B00002SX0K/ref=pd_sim_vg_1"]Core Rules 2.0[/ame]
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Dungeons-Dragons-Rules-Expansion-Pc/dp/B00004TKUU"]Core Rules 2.0 Expansion[/ame]
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Dungeons-Dragons-Core-Rules-Pc/dp/B00002SX0K/ref=pd_sim_vg_1"]Core Rules 2.0[/ame]
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Dungeons-Dragons-Rules-Expansion-Pc/dp/B00004TKUU"]Core Rules 2.0 Expansion[/ame]
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Giltonio_Santos
Hero
As a huge fan of 2E, I believe that the stuff you should be going after is anything you're able no find. The list of books that I use on each and every campaign, though, is not that much.
- The three core books.
- "Combat and Tactics" for Weapon Mastery and Combat Styles.
- Tome of Magic for a lot of new spells.
Besides that, I'm used to allow kits and non-core classes from various sourcebooks case by case. The player shows me what he wants and I see if that's going well with the kind of campaign I want to run at the time. While running 2E, 90% o the time balance isn't something I'm worried about.
Cheers,
- The three core books.
- "Combat and Tactics" for Weapon Mastery and Combat Styles.
- Tome of Magic for a lot of new spells.
Besides that, I'm used to allow kits and non-core classes from various sourcebooks case by case. The player shows me what he wants and I see if that's going well with the kind of campaign I want to run at the time. While running 2E, 90% o the time balance isn't something I'm worried about.
Cheers,
Drowbane
First Post
Some of my favorite 2e books/supplements...
~~complete series~~
Dwarves': best of the Racial books, handsdown. This book solidified the race as my personal favorite to this day (before it, I played mostly elves
).
Elves: Elves were the uber-race of the time. Rolled an 18 and didn't want to mess with the percentile? Be a "wood elf"! 19 Str... mwahahaha.
Halflings&Gnomes: I loved halflings, hated gnomes... so I had mixed feelings here. I still have anger that they lumped halflings in with the dwarf-kin-wanna-bes.
Fighter's: my first Complete book (first of the series, IIRC), new Weapon/Non-Weapon Profs (roughly similiar to feats and skill-tricks), and some decent kits. My group used just about everything in this book at least once.
Humanoid's: some great races to be had here.
Ninja's: awesome book, for the Shinobi-Thief kit and martial arts rules alone.
Psionicist's: Psi was rather... ahem... broken. But my groups at the time had alot of fun with this book.
Sha'ir's (Al-Qadim): This book, as I understand it, flew under the radar. I picked it up in 98 and it became part of my top 5 books that went everywhere I expected to play AD&D.
Thieves': mediocre kits, awesome fluff, good equipment.
~~other stuff~~
Council of Wyrms: An awesome campaign setting. See, you start out as Dragon hatchlings!! It was frickin' awesome. We eventually used it in our normal campaigns as well. A crystal-dragon-hatchling was roughly equal to a well made 4th lvl Fighter. Roughly.
Darksun: one of my favorite campaign settings of all time.
Jakandor: A group of three books detailing a small campaign setting. You had the Knorr on one side (kind of American Native / Norse "savages") and the Charonti (sp?) on the other (High magic race who use thier dead for labor and have advances in all 8 schools of magic). both human, total opposites. I know I'm not doing it justice here though, it was great stuff.
Masque of the Red Death (Ravenloft): Gothic Horror in the 1890s!! This was an amazing boxset. I regret that I didn't run this as much as I wanted to.
Planescape: best setting ever.
Player's Option: Spells&Magic was the best of the three. Combat&Tactics gave a glimpse of what where 3e would take us (heavy on the grid-combat).
Requiem boxset (Ravenloft): rules for Undead PCs. Another awesome edition to our 2e campaign.
Tome of Magic: great book
Volo's Guide to all things Magicial: love it or hate it... Spellfire Channeler rules were here. And they were badass.
~~complete series~~
Dwarves': best of the Racial books, handsdown. This book solidified the race as my personal favorite to this day (before it, I played mostly elves
).Elves: Elves were the uber-race of the time. Rolled an 18 and didn't want to mess with the percentile? Be a "wood elf"! 19 Str... mwahahaha.
Halflings&Gnomes: I loved halflings, hated gnomes... so I had mixed feelings here. I still have anger that they lumped halflings in with the dwarf-kin-wanna-bes.
Fighter's: my first Complete book (first of the series, IIRC), new Weapon/Non-Weapon Profs (roughly similiar to feats and skill-tricks), and some decent kits. My group used just about everything in this book at least once.
Humanoid's: some great races to be had here.
Ninja's: awesome book, for the Shinobi-Thief kit and martial arts rules alone.
Psionicist's: Psi was rather... ahem... broken. But my groups at the time had alot of fun with this book.
Sha'ir's (Al-Qadim): This book, as I understand it, flew under the radar. I picked it up in 98 and it became part of my top 5 books that went everywhere I expected to play AD&D.
Thieves': mediocre kits, awesome fluff, good equipment.
~~other stuff~~
Council of Wyrms: An awesome campaign setting. See, you start out as Dragon hatchlings!! It was frickin' awesome. We eventually used it in our normal campaigns as well. A crystal-dragon-hatchling was roughly equal to a well made 4th lvl Fighter. Roughly.
Darksun: one of my favorite campaign settings of all time.
Jakandor: A group of three books detailing a small campaign setting. You had the Knorr on one side (kind of American Native / Norse "savages") and the Charonti (sp?) on the other (High magic race who use thier dead for labor and have advances in all 8 schools of magic). both human, total opposites. I know I'm not doing it justice here though, it was great stuff.
Masque of the Red Death (Ravenloft): Gothic Horror in the 1890s!! This was an amazing boxset. I regret that I didn't run this as much as I wanted to.
Planescape: best setting ever.
Player's Option: Spells&Magic was the best of the three. Combat&Tactics gave a glimpse of what where 3e would take us (heavy on the grid-combat).
Requiem boxset (Ravenloft): rules for Undead PCs. Another awesome edition to our 2e campaign.
Tome of Magic: great book
Volo's Guide to all things Magicial: love it or hate it... Spellfire Channeler rules were here. And they were badass.
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Orius
Unrepentant DM Supremacist
Only have Country Sites, but there's some fun material in there, and it's all plug-and-play.
Necromancers is a very excellent book. Has lots of new spells, magic items, and kits for both necromancers and priests how serve dark gods. The mini necromancer campaign (set in Al-Qadim) is very well done and contributes to the whole overall flavor of the book. Some great NPCs for the setting that use stuff from the book, with two other NPCs for a Realms campaign. Has the best necromancer spell list outside the Wizard's Spell Compendium itself, with spells from the PHB, ToM, Wizard's Handbook, the original FR hardback, the Al-Qadim setting book, and Sha'ir's Handbook. However, I understand the book is hard to find, plus it's intended as DM only. I'd say good for campaign building and developing villains, but not as much for general use.
Monster Mythology is ok, but I suspect Demihuman Deitites covers the gods most likely to be used by PCs more thoroughly (but with the massive overpower of the series). The DM can probably skip it unless he really wants to use the standard non-human gods.
My take on the splats:
Fighter's Handbook: Best used if you're not using Combat and Tactics. Both books cover similar combat options, but do things a bit differently. The weapon list in Fighter's Handbook is unnecessary with C&T's list. Kits are mostly the generic early 2e stuff.
Thief's: Add a bunch of useful NWPs, and has good rules for thief guild generation. Some additional useful thief gear. Once again, kits are a tad bland, but overall a splat worth using.
Priest's: Way underpowered specialty priests. I found this book more useful as a DM than a player.
Wizard's: Best part are the spells. Some good breakdowns on the different schools. More generic kits You can probably live without this one too if you use the Spell Compendium.
Psionics: Needed if you want to use Psionics, but completely optional. Not a bad approach to psionics as a whole, but psionicist build can be very powerful compared to caster if min-maxed.
Bard: Great stuff for the bard player, and the first book that goes beyond the generic bland early kits. Also allows bards for races that can't take the class under the PHB rules, but with specific kit restrictions.
Dwarves: Best race splat. That's really all that needs to be said. Also useful for the DM with the stronghold creation rules.
Elves: This should have been called the Complete Book of Power Creep. Well, Elves really isn't all that bad unless you hate the whole "elves are better than j00" attitude. Even the Bladesinger isn't a bad idea, but the DM should probably tone it down a notch. Best for the subrace character creation rules.
Gnome and Halflings: Bland. That's about all, this book really doesn't help convince players that these two races aren't boring.
Humanoids: Good if you want the common humanoid races as PCs in the game, also helpful for the DM when creating NPCs.
Paladin's: Doesn't seem too bad, but then I didn't get much use out of this one. This book requires a DM and player who are willing to work together in the game; otherwise, a rule-stomping DM who wants paladins on a tight alignment leash is not good for the book.
Druid's: Great for the terrain variations. Some good material for fleshing out campaign and characters.
Ranger's: A lot like the Druid's book, once again has terrain variations, and sometimes the two books feel a lot alike.
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