AD&D; Are 1st and 2nd Edition the Same?

[FormerlyHemlock]

I never liked first edition for some reason, for whatever that data point is worth. Whenever I ran across 1e stuff it felt simplistic.

I still don't understand hate for THAC0. For small, heterogenous combats, THAC0 is more work than the "positive AC is better" way. For large combats, THAC0 is easier. I still use what is essentially THAC0 in 5E games, in my head, when there are lots of enemies. The two approaches are basically equivalent, seems weird that it's such a bogeyman in popular lore.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Did you hate THAC0 because the math was different from the to-hit tables?

Nah. I hated THAC0 because I played with a math whiz who could figure out what all of our target die rolls were in a given combat with one successful hit, while I just floundered around in the metaphorical dark, rolling and hoping.

...which drew heckling from the aforementioned math whiz.

Not earth shattering nor soul crushing, just annoying. I much preferred having the tables so I could just look that stuff up, rather than cluttering my mind. Because once you know your target numbers, you get a feel for how futile a given attack option is.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Baatezu and Tanar'ri are way cooler names than boring ol' devils and demons. I think that Planescape said the fiends themselves consider the D-words racial slurs.

I have not experienced 1st edition. My major irritation with AD&D2e is "when is high/low good/bad". Of course, thief skills using percentiles when almost nothing else did.

 

[SirAntoine]

Nah. I hated THAC0 because I played with a math whiz who could figure out what all of our target die rolls were in a given combat with one successful hit, while I just floundered around in the metaphorical dark, rolling and hoping.

...which drew heckling from the aforementioned math whiz.

Not earth shattering nor soul crushing, just annoying. I much preferred having the tables so I could just look that stuff up, rather than cluttering my mind. Because once you know your target numbers, you get a feel for how futile a given attack option is.

Okay, thank you.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

2E had a functional combat system. That was the biggest change from 1E.

(snip) A Balor has 8 HD + 8 hp in 1e (so average of 44 hp), in 2e it has 13 HD (average of 59 hp) (snip)

In the case of the balor, that really was to bring it close to what it was supposed to be. In OD&D, the balor (aka type VI demon) had 8+8 hit dice but they were 12-sided giving it a bit of a hit point boost over the 1E version.

 

[Bormun]

...mostly

"The thing to remember is this: lots of people in the 80s didn't really play AD&D 1st edition as written"
This is very true.
The 1ed group I joined refused to move to 2ed specificaly "because it would require them to re-do all the house rules" they had developed over the previous 10 years.

But 2ed was very much a new edition of the same game, whilst 3ed was different enough to be a new (but similar) game: you now get to fight non-monster challenges using your non-combat skills, a concept that used to be the preserve of the thief. (The domains were also new, and allowed for all manner of cleric variants, but it made less difference that you might have thought, since you still needed to pick a priest who had the Healing domain.)

...And then late 3ed (Bo9S etc.) made it into an even more different game, which lead into 4ed, a progression that made total sense in the minds of the developers (who considered Bo9S to be normal) but which was a long way from where most of the players were (3ed core)...
[Personally, I am very glad 4ed came out, as it made me realise that I really was not enjoying fundamental parts of earlier D&D, but that is just me.]

5ed looks like it is turning into a toolbox, where each group will have its own house rules because the design allows, encourages, and helps it; rather than the 1ed situation were each group had its own house rules because the actual rules didn't work properly. Sadly, I've had far too many experiences over the years of DMs (including myself ) who were not nearly as good at house rules as we thought we were...

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I saw 2E as a cleaned-up version of the 1E rules. The flavor wasn't as good, but the mechanics were the same, just presented in a more intuitive form.

 

[Celebrim]

More or less, they are the same game. They are about as different as 3.5 is from 3.0. You think you are playing the same game and then you pay attention and realize something small and subtle changed between them. In particular, books like Unearthed Arcana and Wilderness Survival guide had already changed 1e sufficiently that you were basically playing 1.5e if you adopted them. So the changes were somewhat incremental.

Another good point is that pretty much no one was playing AD&D 1e as written. Some people were using a more BECMI combat engine with phases and so forth. Few people were tracking segments or using initiative or surprise as written. Very few people paid attention to weapon speed factors or modifiers versus different AC. Lots of people were using rules imported from Dragon or homebrewed. Some of the changes in 2e made the game more like what people were actually playing.

My group(s) stated that we were still playing 1e and still used the 1e rule books, but there is no denying that a lot of 2e got imported into the game. We accepted 2e Dragons as an improvement over the 1e originals. We liked Bard as a core class rather than a prestige class. We started using 2e style initiative rules. We used 2e as source books for NWP's and often spells and monsters. One DM allowed 2e style 'specialty thieves' to allocate their thief abilities like skill points.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

The biggest difference was that, with 2e, you could actually learn to play the game by reading the rules.

 

[Celebrim]

The biggest difference was that, with 2e, you could actually learn to play the game by reading the rules.

The biggest problem with 1e wasn't that you couldn't learn to play by reading the rules, it was that reading the rules was such a daunting challenge that almost no one - in their excitement to play - actually did so. I confess I'd been DMing for years before I actually tried to sit down and read through the 1e DMG and understand what the rules actually were rather than just assuming and guessing.