D&D 3E/3.5 AD&D 2nd vs 3.5

[Hussar]

You guys played 2e way differently than we did. No way a 1st-level fighter in 2e could kill a troll in one round. And a 1st-level party taking on a giant is suicide.



We never really used weapon speeds in 1e or 2e, but initiative was never a problem area. Roll the dice. Modify. Done. We rather liked rolling each round. Made combat more chaotic and well...combat-like.

Umm, yes, yes he could.

1st level fighter with specs in longsword and proficiency in short sword, using 2wf from the Complete Fighter (so no attack penalties). No strength bonus.

2e troll has 6d8+6 HP so, 33 on average.

The fighter on the second round attacks three times, doing a total (before strength bonus) of 14+14+8 or 36 points of damage.

Note, I said CAPABLE not that he'd do it every time. Add in an 18 percentile strength (which was pretty much standard for any 2e or 1e fighter I ever saw) and you're whacking that troll like a pinata. That's 45 damage in a single round to a troll with any percentile strength.

But, again, these conversations get so difficult to have because I can't argue against the game you were playing at your table with your set of house rules. I can only talk about what the game actually said.

 

[Hussar]

IIRC, 3e initiative was essentially putting on paper what many 2e groups actually did. 2e initiative was extremely confusing as written. I can't recall for sure, but IME we either did initiative the 3e way, or the DM tracked it and no one else knew what was going on. Again, I think the issue is that 2e was very old, and got modded a lot, and that 3e probably resembles those mods more than the original 2e core books. Which indeed, is the natural way games evolve. (4e, by contrast, is a pretty fundamental change in direction from most of the 3e houserules and revised 3e-style games out there).

Speak for yourself. 1e initiative was wonky when it came to surprise, but 2e initiative was pretty clear cut. I mean, I outlined all the initiative rules a couple of posts back and it took about two sentences. I've never heard of anyone modding 2e initiative. Why would you? It's a pretty simple system.

And, as far as 4e goes, I'd point out that 99% of 4e actually appears in 3e in some fashion. Later supplements for 3e were the building blocks for 4e. If you were playing latter era 3e with latter era books, 4e wasn't much of a jump at all.

 

[Hussar]

I suspect that (like pre-WotC incarnations) 3e is easier to play "sloppy" and thus more people could still see in it (or make of it) what they wanted by running rough-shod over the rules. Even if this is merely a psychological impression, I think it may have had profound impact on 4e's reception.

This, I think, might have a lot to do with it. I wonder if 4e's transparency has a lot to do with people's reactions to it.

 

[Nellisir]

I suspect that (like pre-WotC incarnations) 3e is easier to play "sloppy" and thus more people could still see in it (or make of it) what they wanted by running rough-shod over the rules. Even if this is merely a psychological impression, I think it may have had profound impact on 4e's reception.

4e looks more "packaged" and harder to hack. Everything is in discrete boxes, and while it's possible to make more boxes, it's not immediately evident what the consequences of that will be. Plus, if you're making a new class, that's a lot of boxes. I extensively modified 2e and 3e, but I wasn't comfortable doing that with 4e. Combined with my post-3e number-crunching burn-out, no way was I going to sit around making little boxes, so...no gaming for me for 5 years. (Full disclosure: grad school had a lot to do with that too.)

 

[NewJeffCT]

Umm, yes, yes he could.

1st level fighter with specs in longsword and proficiency in short sword, using 2wf from the Complete Fighter (so no attack penalties). No strength bonus.

2e troll has 6d8+6 HP so, 33 on average.

The fighter on the second round attacks three times, doing a total (before strength bonus) of 14+14+8 or 36 points of damage.

Note, I said CAPABLE not that he'd do it every time. Add in an 18 percentile strength (which was pretty much standard for any 2e or 1e fighter I ever saw) and you're whacking that troll like a pinata. That's 45 damage in a single round to a troll with any percentile strength.

But, again, these conversations get so difficult to have because I can't argue against the game you were playing at your table with your set of house rules. I can only talk about what the game actually said.

Again, your 2E games differed from mine - it was rare for any warrior class to have an 18 STR, since we rolled 4d6 and kept the best 3. So, 18+ strength was the exception (18 in any ability, for that matter, unless you were a demihuman). I think you also needed ambidexterity to get no penalty to hit in 2E, which is another WP slot. Didn't ambi also have a 16 DEX requirement as well?

And, you have:
One slot for Two Weapon Specialization
One slot for Ambidexterity
Two slots for specialization in the longsword
and, you're done with your first level slots

Also, you said could beat a troll in one round, but your example has the fighter beating him in the second round. A 3.5E fighter could technically do the same as well - with the 2 weapon fighting feat and a battle axe and hand axe as weapons. Plus, the same fighter with a 17 STR in 2E is a +1 to hit and damage, but is a +3 to hit & damage in 3.5E. So, fighter hits twice in round 1, doing (8+3)x3 crit modifier + (6+1)x3 damage in round one with two critical hits, so 33+21 damage, or 54 points. In round two the fighter does the same and the 3.5E troll with 63 hit points is dead.

And, that is using core rules, not an optional rulebook.

 

[Orius]

Speak for yourself. 1e initiative was wonky when it came to surprise, but 2e initiative was pretty clear cut. I mean, I outlined all the initiative rules a couple of posts back and it took about two sentences. I've never heard of anyone modding 2e initiative. Why would you? It's a pretty simple system.

Yeah, 2e initiative is prety simple, roll 1d10 and add weapon speed or casting time, low rolls go first. There's a couple of variations, like rolling 1 init for the entire party IIRC, but nothing complicated like 1e's segments.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I've never heard of anyone modding 2e initiative. Why would you? It's a pretty simple system.

I never understood it. You can criticize my 12-year-old novitiate self if you want to. I have, however, seen this claim from others, particularly back in the early 3e days when there was more than this one thread devoted to the topic.

And, as far as 4e goes, I'd point out that 99% of 4e actually appears in 3e in some fashion.

I don't know about that statistic, but as I've said before, I think it's true on a micro level (i.e. there are subsystems and variants that resemble things in 4e,) but not on a macro level (there were no roles, tiers, and everyone was never on the same power system).

If you were playing latter era 3e with latter era books, 4e wasn't much of a jump at all.

Depends on the books. Clearly Bo9S is a big differentiating factor, that had a fanbase and was also vehemently rejected by many people and never seen by most. If you were playing with Bo9S and Dragon Magic and PHBII, you were seeing some similar things. If you were playing with Unearthed Arcana and the Complete books, you were in for a shock. In any case, if you were playing late 3e, you had an unprecedented variety of mechanical subsystems to tap into, so the idea of standardized class mechanics for everyone would be a rather large shock.

 

[pemerton]

For better or worse, a lot of people seem to feel that way about 4e. I have no real idea why, just a lot of vague suspicions.

<snip>

I suspect that (like pre-WotC incarnations) 3e is easier to play "sloppy" and thus more people could still see in it (or make of it) what they wanted by running rough-shod over the rules. Even if this is merely a psychological impression, I think it may have had profound impact on 4e's reception.

That sounds plausible enough.

While I've read your thoughts about Moldvay Basic's flavour text before, I'm not sure what you mean by "hit point heroic fantasy" model or it being generalized across across action resolution in 4e.

Hit points substitue metagame-y for gritty action resolution. 4e pushes the same way for healing, for skill checks, for the action economy, etc. Less grit/sim, more abstract but fairly simple systems that both underpin and entail heroic fantasy action.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I suspect that (like pre-WotC incarnations) 3e is easier to play "sloppy" and thus more people could still see in it (or make of it) what they wanted by running rough-shod over the rules. Even if this is merely a psychological impression, I think it may have had profound impact on 4e's reception.

I guess I'm in agreement with this, but I wouldn't characterize it as "sloppy" to "[run] rough-shod over the rules". The point of playing these games is to create your own individual experience. The relative ease of homebrewing and houseruling the rules is a desirable feature.

 

[Hussar]

Again, your 2E games differed from mine - it was rare for any warrior class to have an 18 STR, since we rolled 4d6 and kept the best 3. So, 18+ strength was the exception (18 in any ability, for that matter, unless you were a demihuman). I think you also needed ambidexterity to get no penalty to hit in 2E, which is another WP slot. Didn't ambi also have a 16 DEX requirement as well?

And, you have:
One slot for Two Weapon Specialization
One slot for Ambidexterity
Two slots for specialization in the longsword
and, you're done with your first level slots

Also, you said could beat a troll in one round, but your example has the fighter beating him in the second round. A 3.5E fighter could technically do the same as well - with the 2 weapon fighting feat and a battle axe and hand axe as weapons. Plus, the same fighter with a 17 STR in 2E is a +1 to hit and damage, but is a +3 to hit & damage in 3.5E. So, fighter hits twice in round 1, doing (8+3)x3 crit modifier + (6+1)x3 damage in round one with two critical hits, so 33+21 damage, or 54 points. In round two the fighter does the same and the 3.5E troll with 63 hit points is dead.

And, that is using core rules, not an optional rulebook.

Actually, you required ambidexterity to use weapons of equal length. So, no, you didn't need that.

But, my point is, I didn't even need a strength bonus to kill the troll. Your example needs a 17 strength and two confirmed crits from x3 crit weapons and max damage on six die rolls and the troll STILL isn't dead. It still takes two rounds to kill the troll. I just needed to hit three times and I can potentially kill an average troll. Is that a stark enough difference?

I would point out that the second round is STILL one round. The troll goes from full hit points to dead in one round. I remember playing 2e as a DM and having to max out the hit points of every monster just to make them last more than a round or two. That's kinda my point though. This is a first level character. A troll is one of the larger monsters in 2e. It's not like 3e where a troll is a low level opponent meant for 4-6th level parties. Going through the MM, a troll is one of the bigger monsters in 2e. It's certainly not meant to be a 1st level monster.

As far as 18 Str fighters go, I never, ever saw a fighter played that didn't have an 18 strength. Not once. I'm sure it happened in other groups, but, it never happened in any group I played in. I'm pretty sure there was lots of fudging of die rolls going on. I know that there was. But, it was pretty common, IME.