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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 3995695" data-attributes="member: 8863">I'll have to agree with the general concensus here: Paladin's Handbook was a fairly middle of the road 2e splat, not too overpowered, but useful.  However it did focus very heavily on the European knight in shining armor achetype; the full color illustration plates in the book all showed this sort of character, as well as the black and white illos, and there was at least one sidebar on the history of the European knight.  It might seem dated today, but it was typical for 2e sensibilities.  Many of the kits also fell into this sensibility, but there was the Ghosthunter or Wyrmslayer; there were also kit ideas for the DM to develop that might have been a bit more original.  And where the Bard, Ranger, and I think Druid Handbooks had kit options for those classes for races that normally didn't allow them, the Paladin's Handbook just said, "make a fighter/cleric."Ranger's Handbook was pretty solid too.  Like the Druid Handbook, it presented the core ranger as a class whose abilities were focused on a forest terrain, and added ranger versions for other terrain types like mountains, deserts, even the Underdark (IIRC).  There were companion lists that took the different terrains into account, so a mountain ranger might get dwarves rather than elves as followers, for example.  There were new spells, magic items, and equipment (much of the equipment was survival type gear).  Kits allowed for races other than human, elf, or half-elf rangers, so if you wanted a dwarf ranger you'd have to take a particular kit like Mountain Man.  Finally there was a good section on RPing rangers, and running ranger campaigns I think.Both Paladin and Ranger had an appendix which recapped the basic 1e rules on the classes.Ninja's Handbook was about the closest 2e ever got to a conversion of OA.  There were 2e martial arts rules, ninja style kits for most classes besides the ninja, a nice list of good NWPs for rogue characters, and some interesting equipment.  There was a section on running a ninja campaign which gave some great details on how a ninja character would act and how a ninja clan would be set up.  There were also rules for making characters similar to ninjas but who weren't ninjas, and suggestions for organizations that functioned in a way similar to a ninja clan (I particularly liked the Priests of Yan-Keegor (sp?)).</blockquote>

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