D&D 2E AD&D 2E - Broken Kits

[JediSoth]

One complaint I've heard leveled at 2nd edition AD&D as I read through a bunch of different message boards these days, is that many of the kits were horribly unbalanced. However, the people making these claims fail to give examples.

Have you encountered any kits that were broken, unbalanced, or in other ways kinda were the antithesis of fair? The only one I remember people complaining about when we played 2E was the Elven Bladesinger.

I'm curious because I've been thinking of running a 2nd edition game again, and I just want to know where the pitfalls may be, but I don't want to ban kits entirely, because I have fond memories of them from back in the day.

 

[billd91]

I can think of at least two arguments about kits and balance.

1) Some kits try to balance mechanical benefits with role-played or RP-based drawbacks. The Amazon kit in Complete Fighter's Handbook, for example, gives the amazon a bonus to hit against NPCs who basically understimate women and she suffers a -3 reaction adjustment from NPCs in male-dominated societies. Given that a lot of campaigns wave off role playing mechanics like adjustment rolls, the amazon gets an unbalanced benefit, albeit a relatively minor one.
3e designers resolved to not give out mechanical benefits balanced by RP restrictions to avoid falling into the same trap of setting up benefits for no real cost.

2) Some kits were better than others. The Cavalier, also in Complete Fighter's, got bonuses to hit with a whole bunch of mounted weapons, immunity to fear, a bonus against mind-affecting magic, and a code of conduct to balance it (including restrictions on ranged weapons). In my estimation, the benefits clearly outweigh the drawback and the kit is far more powerful than most other kits. My solution would be call it a "Power Kit" and use that designation to move the fighter with the kit to the Paladin/Ranger XP table. Or disallow quite that many benefits.

That said, with a more careful eye toward balance, I think some kits were a pretty nice addition. Al Qadim's kits stand as particularly good examples. I'd find a copy of that and use those kits as guides for balancing any more general ones you wanted to use in 2e.

 

[Crothian]

Eleven Bladesinger is probably the most powerful Kit. Many kits do try to balance role playing penaties for mechanic benifits and since few people ever seemed to enforce the penaties it really made for some kits being more powerful then others. While I know many designers feel that it is bad design I always thought it was bad DMing to ignore those type of things.

Also, powerful in 2e is not like powerful in 3e. I played 2e for many years always using kits and we rarely found the blaance uissues to be so great to disrupt our games. The problem we had with kits and some books just have boring unispired kits in them. THe Bard book I love and I think all those kits do a great job of expanding the class and making great characters. On the other hand the cleric kits were some of the most boring I remember.

 

[the Jester]

Kits were so bad so often that I completely banned them. It was obvious from the first 2e splatbook, too (Complete Fighter's Handbook I think?).

If you want my advice, the book to go to for balanced kits is actually one of the generally worst 2e books- Skills & Powers. For all it did wrong, it got kits right.

 

[billd91]

Eleven Bladesinger is probably the most powerful Kit. Many kits do try to balance role playing penaties for mechanic benifits and since few people ever seemed to enforce the penaties it really made for some kits being more powerful then others. While I know many designers feel that it is bad design I always thought it was bad DMing to ignore those type of things.

I'd say that the problem with role-playing penalties resides partly with the DM, partly with the designer. Role playing mechanics are one of the elements of the game most often tossed out based on a given table's play style and always have been to my recollection. Any mechanic linked into the RP subset from outside it should be considered suspect from a design point of view.

But if a DM doesn't use RP mechanics, it really is incumbent upon him to come up with a suitable non-RP mechanic balance for the kit's benefits. Not doing so would be shirking the job. So any unbalanced kit benefit under these circumstances arises from two failures - failure of the designers to think about how users will actually make use of the game rules and failure of the DM to make the downstream adjustments when he omits a segment of the game.

 

[Crothian]

I went into my boxes to pull out a complete book to analyze the kits and the first I came to was Elves.

The Herbalist is a priest kit. It does have none magical healing and that's pretty cool. I would not consider it to be a powerful kit though.

The archer, for the warrior, might be a bit powerful. They get extra shots or a bonus to trick shots. Their negatives of very limited in melee weapons is not that bad.

Wilderness Runner is one of those kits where a hindrance might not be enforced. They get bonuses to track, and can set snares as a thief. They have practically unlimited mundane equipment because they can make things from organic materials. They can't stay in cities, dungeons, crypts, or such places for much longer then a day though. They never use mounts, and have some negative reaction bonuses to civilized elves.

Windrunner: they gain a flying mount at higher levels and take negative reaction (jealousy) from other elves. Depending on how useful a flying mount is in a campaign would determine the strength of this kit.

Spellfilcher: can cast detect magic 1/day per level. And nice bonus to find and remove magical traps. They have to be part of a guild so if that is ignored or made to easy then it could be a very good kit.

Bladesinger: Good bonus to attack and damage, bonus to do cool maneuvers, a great AC bonus (especially at higher levels) when casting spells. However, the disadvantages are big when used. "They must lend help to any elf in need." Only use a single type of weapon so if it gets lost or taken, the Bladesinger could be severely hindered. It is a powerful kit but boy can a DM mess with these hindrances to really mess with a PC.

War Wizard: to take advantage of some of the benefits they really have to jump through hoops with ability to survey and map the battle field ahead of time, hold a strategy meeting, and make Int check. Of course the real special benefit is the spell of choice. They can cast it faster and give opponents a negative to save against it. Hindrances deal with a code of conduct and they are part of a unit. It is a strong kit but the hindrances like the Bladesinger can really take a PC out of the game.

Huntsman: Nice fighter thief kit. Bonuses are not that great (plus to stealth skills and can track) but hindrances are not much either (reaction penalty from everyone)

Collector: never used a charged item, never destroy a magical item; hindrances are pretty bad for this fighter/mage/thief kit. Can potential find items and know the history of magical items so could help identify what something is and that can be huge.

Infiltrator: lots of bonus non weapon proficiencies (5!). Better at disguising himself as another race. But slowly loses elven resistance to charm and sleep.

Undead Slayer: Kit for any class. Can prepare for undead and gain bonus to attack and damage. Has a really vague ability to find the area of undead liars. Will always face undead over other enemies especially intelligent undead. Something a DM can easily exploit.

The most powerful the Bladesinger I have seen in action. It is good but we still had fun with it and no one ever complained about it being to powerful. But I can see why people think so. Also, when combined with other optional rules for the Complete Book of Elves the class gets even better as the book treats elves as superior to all other races and backs that up mechanically.

 

[pneumatik]

My favorite unbalanced kit was Myrmidon from Complete Fighter. The benefit is you get a free weapon specialization. The drawback is that you're part of a mercenary group that sometimes requires you to go someplace and fight (or whatever mercenaries are hired to do). So the drawback is either a plot hook or something that takes the PC out of the game for a while. I could never figure out a good way to use it in a game.

 

[Crothian]

More then a few seemed to have similar drawbacks. Those are the type of thigns that are completely controled by the DM and could be very unfair towards a PCs or benificial when the DM ignored it.

 

[the Jester]

The archer, for the warrior, might be a bit powerful....

Had one in my campaign. When we converted to 3e he actually became less powerful. This is a very overpowered kit.

Bladesinger: Good bonus to attack and damage, bonus to do cool maneuvers, a great AC bonus (especially at higher levels) when casting spells. However, the disadvantages are big when used. "They must lend help to any elf in need."

Yeah, but this requirement is pretty much immediately followed with:

Of course, the Bladesinger is free to determine whether there is, in fact, an elf in danger.

 

[Crothian]

Ya, there is a lot of interpretation there. AS always it is best to read the full entries for yourself and not just go by some quotes on the net! It is interesting the sentence I quoted doesn't imply danger at all. It could be an elf in need of help building a house. DMs held more power in 2e so if you have a good and fair DM then kits I think can work better.