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

[delericho]

Now, I suppose, the only question is what series of D&D books I should go over next.

Monstrous Compendia?

 

[FriendlyFiend]

Thanks so much @Alzrius. This has been a great thread, and one that's taken me back to a completely different time in my life. You've inspired me to go out and scoop up a lot of these books again.

 

[Weiley31]

Great series of posts. I need to find where I last legit left off and resume from there. Also the detail about Spellsingers(or Dancers) is a really neat way of explaining how a backwaters village or something can last as long as it does in the world of DND. Might have to yank that idea for my games. heck, the Tasha's version of the Spellcaster sidekick class is probably the best way of representing that when making an NPC or Sidekick character.

 

[Orius]

I skipped the Realms kit books myself. I don't run the Realms so I never saw the need for them. It's a little bit of a shame if I missed good kit work there, but 2e could get really uneven with the kits.

 

[Weiley31]

Really, the big winners here are the fighters, because the book then introduces new "heroic feats" which are insanely powerful for what they can do! Not all of them, but enough. That's appropriate to the tone of the old Celtic myths, which sometimes come across like something out of a shonen manga, but even so, letting characters do these things in AD&D 2E, whose power level is decidedly not over nine thousand, is shocking.

For example, Del Chliss lets you deal double damage with a thrown spear if you beat your enemy's AC by 2 or more. I know AD&D 2E didn't presume to use critical hits, but that's like an easy-to-get critical hit. Stroke of Precision lets you, with a weapon you've specialized in, potentially land a hit that severs a limb as per a sword of sharpness. And at the top of the heap is the Gae Bolga, where you kick a barbed spear ("gae bolga" being what a barbed spear is called) so powerfully that you multiply the damage dealt by your level! I know all of these require multiple proficiency slots to take, some require proficiency checks (with greater-than-normal nonproficiency penalties for unskilled use), and even have modest drawbacks when used correctly, but still...damn!

If I ever totally get around to actually playing/running AD&D 2E one of these days, I'm gonna be insane enough to port over the Heroic feats to non-HR:3 Celts games.

And this is coming from a guy that also wants to import 5E's Advantage/Disadvantage rules over to AD&D 2E.

 

[Jasperak]

Before I go any further, it's worth mentioning that this book does have the distinction of being one of the very few AD&D 2nd Edition books to receive a web enhancement, presenting two kits that were cut for space. Oddly, it also adds some minor benefits to the "Templar" and the "Hospitaller," describing them both as "Holy Order Knights." Don't go crazy trying to find any kits with those names in the book, however. In fact, they're actually part of the Monastic Warrior kit (pg. 27-29), since you choose one of those orders when you take the kit.

I know the quoted post is about two years old, but I can't find any reference to this enhancement on the wayback machine. Does anyone happen to know where this enhancement could be found?

 

[Alzrius]

I know the quoted post is about two years old, but I can't find any reference to this enhancement on the wayback machine. Does anyone happen to know where this enhancement could be found?

The thing there is that when I originally posted that link it was active, but that was long after WotC had moved their older edition stuff to an archive, which included changing the URL to archive.wizards.com instead of just wizards.com. If you delete the "archive" from that, and search for it in the Wayback Machine, you'll find the page from before WotC archived it:

Web Enhancements - The Crusades

Web Enhancements - The Crusades

web.archive.org