D&D 2E [COMPLETE] Looking back at the leatherette series: PHBR, DMGR, HR and more!

[TarionzCousin]

I played in a 2E Lankhmar "City of Thieves" campaign where all of the six PC's were built from different kits from the Complete Book of Thieves. That was fun.

 

[Alzrius]

With PHBR12 The Complete Paladin's Handbook, we come to one of the most iconic D&D character classes. While the big four (fighters, thieves, wizards, and clerics) are archetypes unto themselves, the other classes all have specific things that they're known for, such as bard's having bardic music, druids being able to change into animals, and rangers using weaponized racism.

But paladins are different. While they have a suite of powers that make up a lot of their image, they're also a class that's defined by their restrictions as much as their abilities. While various editions would play around with exactly how stringent their alignment and paladin's code are, the idea of the holy warrior who must be Lawful Good and stick to a special set of behavioral guidelines remains an enduring one. So much so that it's inconceivable that someone would need to ask "what's a paladin?" (NSFW warning for mild language)


Now, at a glance through D&D's published products, paladins might not seem to be too notable. We have a few titles that name-drop them, such as the epic adventure A Paladin in Hell, the subtitle for Defenders of the Faith is "A Guidebook to Clerics and Paladins," much like Divine Power's "Options for Avengers, Clerics, Invokers, and Paladins," and of course I'll talk about HR2 Charlemagne's Paladins later on. But while they don't get explicitly called out in too many titles besides these, the idea of the paladin remains a resonant one...as do the potential drawbacks of playing one.

But let's turn our attention to this book specifically.

One of the first things PHBR12 opens with is an acknowledgment of just how hard it is to qualify to play a paladin in the first place in AD&D 2E. It's not just that they're alignment-locked, or that they're limited to humans, but because the 3d6-in-order presumption of AD&D 2E means that meeting the ability score requirements (Strength 12, Constitution 9, Wisdom 13, Charisma 17) necessarily makes paladins quite rare, even among PCs. While the book offers a set of pre-fab ability score arrays if you want to bypass this, it flat-out admits that this is because paladins aren't balanced. These guys are just better than most other classes (certainly than other martial classes), and makes no bones about that. This was indeed a different time in the annals of D&D.

Now, this particular book wasn't one that really resonated with me, because even as a lad I preferred spellcasters to fighters (and even with the smattering of clerical spells they got starting at 8th level, nobody considered paladins to be spellcasters). However, I suspect that another part of it is simply that I'm not a fan of Rick Swan's writing style. Much like in the previous volume, he spends some time going over the existing abilities of paladins and fleshing them out.

To be absolutely clear, this isn't a bad thing. Being able to clarify the limits on how paladins detect evil, for example, or saying how their ability to cure diseases operates against magical diseases like lycanthropy (e.g. it's actually a curse, so it doesn't help) do provide some much-needed insight. It's just that this always felt like something that the main rules for the class should have made clear. It's nice to have it all in one place, of course, but I think even back then I had the nagging suspicion that pages upon pages of clarification shouldn't have been needed to begin with.

I can't quite say the same for the clarifications about the paladin's ethos, however. This one has long been a point of contention among gamers, largely due to the perception (rightly or wrongly) that you were constantly walking a tightrope, one bad decision (or vindictive episode on the part of the DM) away from losing your class features, if not permanently then at least temporarily. Here, we get some general softening of those penalties...somewhat. For instance, a division is made between chaotic violations and evil violations, with the former not having anywhere near as harsh penalties as the latter. Alternatively, four categories of potential violations are listed (in ascending orders of egregiousness), which likewise have scaled penalties and requirements for atoning.

It's here we also get a sidebar that talks about the absence of the anti-paladin in AD&D 2E. Long story short, the idea of the paladin is that goodness is supposed to be few in quantity but high in quality, whereas evil is the opposite of that. So while a paladin might stand alone against a goblin horde, the idea of singular champions for the cause of evil runs afoul of that. And this was apparently a mission statement that was followed to the letter, since other than an adventure in Dungeon #75 (where you had to prevent a "fallen" anti-paladin from completing his "redemption" quest), we never got an anti-paladin in Second Edition. (EDIT: So it turns out there was one other instance of an anti-paladin in AD&D 2E, that being one of the bad guys the PCs are meant to play in Reverse Dungeon.)

Personally, I find that explanation to be something of a square peg in a round hole. It alludes to a quasi-Christian allegory of Goodness (with a capital "g") being the natural state of things, whereas Evil is a sort of cosmic aberration, one that's able to corrupt, but with that corruption ultimately representing a loss compared to the untainted aspects of Creation. D&D, by contrast, is all about parallelism, with no substantive suggestion that any particular alignment is somehow more correct (morally or otherwise) than any other. Not to mention, you can have evil high priests, warlords, necromancers, assassins, and lots of other characters who can gain levels to match a paladin anyway. So this explanation feels kind of hollow to me.

Plus, not giving D&D its own version of Darth Vader just seems like a missed opportunity.


Moving on, the kits in this book are, for lack of a better word, "swingy." What I mean by that is that some offer very little alteration to the core paladin class (such as how the chevalier is basically just a paladin with a formal military ranking), while others make some fairly expansive changes (the ghosthunter, for instance, loses the ability to cast spells, lay on hands, and immunity to/cure disease in favor of being able to dispel evil, paralysis immunity, and a much stronger ability to turn undead). We also get rules for "demi-paladins" here, which are completely unlike the demihuman bards or rangers we've seen in previous books. Instead, if a Lawful Good demihuman multiclasses as a fighter/cleric, meets the paladin class's ability score requirements, takes a paladin kit from this book, and observes a paladin's ethos, they may take on special religious quests (once every odd-numbered level, starting at 3rd...and only as long as they can keep gaining levels in both classes) to gain paladin abilities (one per quest). It's sort of like their own version of how you became a bard in AD&D 1E.

There are also some new proficiencies and items here, but other than the alternative holy swords (which I'll confess earned my interest), most of these seem fairly forgettable. One exception (notwithstanding the aforementioned swords) is the Poetry proficiency, which is called out for how a paladin can potentially compose an poem (either lyric or narrative, wow!) in lieu of religious tithing. This just seems like a gold-mine for jokes in your campaign group, to the point where every DM should mandate that their paladins try this. I can't see how hilarity wouldn't ensue.

After this are several guidelines on playing paladins, most of which seem either convoluted or too obvious to deserve as much space as they got. To be fair, the book tries to spice these up by offering mechanical aspects to them. Fun fact: courtly love between a paladin and the object of their affection gives the paladin bonuses to a lot of die rolls, but these fade away after getting married. But at least they gain proficiency with a ball-and-chain, amirite?

So yeah, overall The Complete Paladin's Handbook wasn't one that did much for me. While it's not a bad book, there wasn't much to it that really redefined the class in my eyes, offering little in the way of enticement to play the class or alternative ways to do so.

Ultimately, I paladidn't need what was here.

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

 

[Orius]

Paladin is probably the weakest of the more specialized PHB class splats. Barbarian is IMO even weaker, but it's an update of the 1e class, and not a standard 2e class, but we'll get to that in a bit.

The holy swords were pretty good, and the NWPs weren't bad either, as they were the sort of skills that felt appropriate for an aristocratic or religious warrior. The kits were fairly hit or miss though, with some creative elements and stuff that was fairly obvious. Demihumans got shafted here though, because Bard and Ranger (and upcoming Druids IIRC) had actual kits while Paladin was just a warmed over variant rule for Fighter/Clerics.

The biggest weakness though was something that plagued 2e for a good long while, namely the insistance that campaigns should stick as close to a historical medieval Europe model as possible (and I'm saving a rant up for this when we get to the DMGR books). Now while Paladin should have at least given some nod to the medieval romances that are the primary source material for the class archetype, particularly the Matters of Britain and France, the sections on the development of knighthood in medieval Europe was little more than padding IMO, particularly since the book does give a decent bibliography of inspirational works on the Paladin. (I'd add Edding's Elenium and Tamuli trilogies to that list since they provide some excellent examples of paladins who are not Lawful Stupid, though of course those books were being published in the same timeframe as the Paladin's Handbook.)

 

[Voadam]

It's not just that they're alignment locked, or that they're limited to humans, but because the 3d6-in-order presumption of AD&D 2E means that meeting the ability score requirements (Strength 12, Constitution 9, Wisdom 13, Charisma 17) necessarily makes paladins quite rare, even among PCs.

The 2e PH had 3d6 in order as method I, but there were five other alternative dice rolling methods in the PH to generate scores. Not the same as the 1e human rolls but I would still say 2e's presumption is generally more than 3d6 in order as a baseline.

Even with these alt methods though the 17 Charisma was a real gatekeeper. Even if you rolled a 17 or 18, assigning that to Charisma would not get your combat oriented warrior character nearly the same combat bonuses as applying it to Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution.

 

[Stormonu]

The 2e PH had 3d6 in order as method I, but there were five other alternative dice rolling methods in the PH to generate scores. Not the same as the 1e human rolls but I would still say 2e's presumption is generally more than 3d6 in order as a baseline.

Even with these alt methods though the 17 Charisma was a real gatekeeper. Even if you rolled a 17 or 18, assigning that to Charisma would not get your combat oriented warrior character nearly the same combat bonuses as applying it to Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution.

Was anybody using that back in 2E? At our table we used 4d6, drop lowest and arrange to taste.

 

[Mannahnin]

Was anybody using that back in 2E? At our table we used 4d6, drop lowest and arrange to taste.

I think a whole lot of people did, as that was the default system in 1E.

I presume at least SOME people must have used 3d6 in 2E, though, as that was the primary prescribed method. Just as 4d6 drop lowest, arrange to taste was the primary prescribed method for 1E.

 

[cbwjm]

Just reading through the book of humanoids and realised how redundant some of the kits were. Wilderness warrior is a kit that effectively makes the humanoid a ranger. They have all the requirements, abilities, and restrictions of the ranger class. Who can choose it? All of those humanoid races who have ranger as an option...

I also noticed that the saurial paladin kit can't turn undead or cast cleric spells, despite the advantages section stating that they can do both of these things...

 

[Alzrius]

Having come to PHBR13 The Complete Druid's Handbook, we've hit something of a milestone. Not only are we now one-third of the way through this retrospective, we've also reached the end of the races and classes presented in the Player's Handbook (plus, you know, psionics and humanoids). While we're not quite at the end of the PHBRs yet - we still have two more books focused on bringing older classes back into AD&D 2E - the end of this largest selection of the leatherette books is in sight!

But for now: druids. AD&D's own hippy-dippy tree-huggers, these are the guys who know where the wackiest of the tabaccy grows. Of course, the game never really portrayed them that way, instead presenting them as nature priests apart from clerics, who as a consequence of their focus on the natural world have to be strictly True Neutral. The druid is also, I'm fairly confident, the only class that carried the whole "you have to win a duel to advance to the next higher level" bit into AD&D 2E. The prior edition had a few other instances of that (monks, as I recall), but here it's a requirement that only druids need to fulfill (albeit only for 13th, 14th, and 15th level). That's because the druidic hierarchy is baked into that part of the class, and there can only be so many characters occupying the attendant slots of Senior Vice President Arch-Druid, Great Druid, and Grand Druid.

To be fair, there was a caveat about advancing without a fight if someone squatting in those positions themselves advanced. But on a similar token, the PCs who reached those levels were at risk of being challenged by up-and-comers, and if you lost that fight you were kicked down a level. That part came across as being somewhat downplayed, by which I mean the possibility always seemed like something the books only passingly acknowledged, but it was still there. Needless to say, the whole "fight your way up the totem pole" thing was quickly discarded when Third Edition came out.

In the broader context of D&D, my personal opinion was that druids were very much second-stringers, mostly because their niche was so pigeonholed that they couldn't really be used for anything else. They could still be used in highly specific areas of various campaign worlds, but even then they tended to be part of the backdrop, such as in the Forgotten Realm's FR2 Moonshae, Ravenloft's Castles Forlorn, or HR3 Celts (which I'll talk more about later). It was only after later editions genericized them (which wasn't necessarily a bad thing) that they started being name-dropped in the secondary titles of books like 3E's Masters of the Wild and 4E's Primal Power.

And with that really long lead-in out of the way, let's look at this book specifically.

PHBR13 opens with the by-now-obligatory overview of the druid's powers. But before I could properly formulate my usual "I understand why it's here, but it shouldn't have to be" reaction, the book completely pulled the rug out from under me by turning around and immediately introducing "druidic branches." These are very much like Pathfinder's class archetypes in that they're thematic packages of abilities and drawbacks that replace the standard druid abilities, with the themes being different natural environments. So you have your desert druid, your mountain druid, your gray (i.e. subterranean) druid, etc. While none of these alter the base class too much, this is still an excellent - and unexpected - set of variant options for the standard druid class (which is here presented as the "forest druid"). Right away, I like what I'm seeing.

Interestingly, this is where we find a sidebar which contains the only thing this book has to say about expanding racial access to the druid class. Whereas other books created special kits to allow demihumans (i.e. bards, rangers) or gave limited class options if you followed esoteric restrictions (i.e. paladins), this book takes a more conservative approach. It notes which races from The Complete Book of Humanoids can become druids, and then lists six additional races - dryads, satyrs, elves, halflings, lizardmen, and giant-kin - that could possibly be accepted as druids (with level limits, of course). So I'm still not clear on how Pikel Bouldershoulder got away with being a "doo-dad."

And then we come to a, thankfully brief, section on - I kid you not - expanded rules for agriculture. I'm going to quote the opening sentence here, so you can see why I just stared at this when I read it:

The DM may use this expansion of the agriculture proficiency when druid characters assist a small village facing tough times or if a PC takes up farming.

"If a PC takes up farming." If your character has any inclination to do this, then I hate to break it to you, but even if you're not the DM, you're playing an NPC.

Next come the actual kits, with the book helpfully noting that yes, you can take a kit in addition to a druidic branch (though a few are restricted to particular branches). The kits themselves are a mixed bag, with kits like the Advisor or the Outlaw being "meh" in the extreme, whereas the Shapeshifter and the Totemic Druid get some impressive new/altered powers. The Lost Druid is a cool "druid goes to the dark side" kit, but it level-caps the class (and notes that if you're beyond the cap, you can't take the kit). The most PC-friendly seems like the Wanderer kit, since it gives you an excuse for being itinerant and not tied to a particular location (even if that seems like a bit of an awkward fit with all of those environmentally-focused druidic branch options). I'll also note that, in an odd tonal shift, the kits all make mention of their own sample character; no stats or anything are given, but when they talk about how the kit alters the class, they'll say "a Totemic Druid like Vanier can shapechange into the forms of his totem animal a number of times per day equal to his experience level divided by three (rounded down) plus one" instead of phrasing it in the second person. It's very odd.

The next chapter is druidic orders, and while I didn't read this section much when I first got it way back when, I recall that it was the one that blew my mind, simply because it put forward the idea that the worldwide druidic organization was monolithic only in terms of the 15th-level Grand Druid; below that, they were sub-divided into geographic regions, each of which had their own hierarchy. So rather than there only being (IIRC) three 14th-level Great Druids in the whole world, there were only three for a particular region. It opened up a lot of space - both creative and in terms of advancement - to my mind. (In fact, I have a vague recollection that I thought this was the case for Great Druids also, but the book makes it clear that's not the case; there's still just one of these guys in each campaign world.)

Oh, and did you know that there's a "Shadow Circle" within the druid organization? Yeah, the book puts forward that there's a cabal of druids (who are still True Neutral, mind you) who are staunchly anti-civilization and are trying to get their own people into positions of power. This has no mechanical representation whatsoever, and only gets a few pages of coverage before the book moves on. I wonder if their leader is the (Pipeweed-)Smoking Man.

The section on role-playing druids hits most of the expected notes. There's a bit here about worshiping Nature-with-a-capital-N versus nature deities, but that doesn't get as much coverage as I'd like, instead talking about playing your druid via various personality types, etc. It's not bad, but doesn't put a new spin on anything the way previous chapters did.

The chapter on druid magic, by contrast, gives us herbal magic. We still get new spells and magic items (with some cool options for allowing druids to link their life force to a tree, or even to become a treant), but the herbal magic section is...kind of like alchemy, actually. A tea that induces amnesia since the last time you slept? Pretty cool. Not exactly major magic, but that's kind of what you expect from herbalism.

Sacred groves are the subject of the final chapter, and these are honestly pretty cool too. It only seems to remember halfway through that these can also be magical, spending a lot of time talking about how druids will maintain and care for these places, but the powers they can have range from things like inducing prophetic dreams to natural scrying pools. And a section on cursed groves as well? Yes, please!

I'd be remiss if I didn't note that, in the book's section on references, it says that Nausicaä - the titular character from Hayao Miyazaki's film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - is a gray druid with the Hivemaster kit. No stats for Ohms, unfortunately.

Overall, this book was much better than I remember it being, and stands out as one of the better PHBRs. Almost every section tries to introduce some new twist on what druids are, do, or can be. It's a great example of "coloring within the lines," in terms of fleshing out more options without needing to invalidate the restrictions that are already here (though it does expand them sometimes). It would leaf that to future editions.

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

 

[Voadam]

The druid is also, I'm fairly confident, the only class that carried the whole "you have to win a duel to advance to the next higher level" bit into AD&D 2E. The prior edition had a few other instances of that (monks, as I recall), but here it's a requirement that only druids need to fulfill (albeit only for 13th, 14th, and 15th level). That's because the druidic hierarchy is baked into that part of the class, and there can only be so many characters occupying the attendant slots of Senior Vice President Arch-Druid, Great Druid, and Grand Druid.

1e also had the assassin.

PH page 30:

In order for an assassin character to gain experience levels above the 13th (Prime Assassin), he or she must have the requisite experience points and then either assassinate the local Guildmaster Assassin (14th level) or challenge him or her to a duel to the death. Likewise, a 14th level player character assassin can journey to the place where the Grandfather of Assassins (15th level) has his or her headquarters and slay him or her by assassination or in a duel. Note that duplicity, trickery, ambush, and all forms of treachery are considered as fair by assassins. A higher level character can accept a challenge and then have the challenger slain by archers, for instance.

And assassins similarly only went up to level 15.

 

[Alzrius]

1e also had the assassin.

PH page 30:

And assassins similarly only went up to level 15.

I thought the assassin had that in there too, but was too lazy to go check.