Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Before getting into the next book on the list, I'm going to take a moment to rant about something that's long irked me:
The Player's/DM's/Campaign Option books are NOT AD&D 2.5!
I know that's a designation that's entirely fan-made, and which is retroactively applied, but it's always made me roll my eyes, because it's conveying upon these books - as well as AD&D 1st Edition's Unearthed Arcana, which is similarly referred to as AD&D 1.5 - with a status that they don't actually possess.
The salient factor, at least as I see it, isn't so much that these books present alterations to various aspects of the Core Rules. If that was the sole determinant, then the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana should be...I'm guessing 3.6? After all, "3.75" is widely regarded as being Pathfinder 1st Edition. So clearly there's more to it than just altering the Core Rules.
And really, Pathfinder demonstrates what the real issue is: not that aspects of the game's basic rules are altered, but that they're altered and those alterations become the default from then on. The 3.5 Core Rules replaced the 3.0 Core Rules, and "3.75" (i.e. Pathfinder 1E) replaced 3.5 for all intents and purposes (even if it was technically not the same thing, being a different game from a different company). So by that token, the various "Option" books aren't any sort of upgrade to the core AD&D 2nd Edition game; they're a series of fairly sweeping optional rules, no more and no less.
The first of which we'll look at now: Player's Option: Combat & Tactics.
For me, this book is the aperitif of the Option line, presenting a modest offering before the series would start going hog-wild with wildly different forms of magic, expansive new high-level rules, and even rearranging how characters were built under the game rules. This book, by contrast, with its various options for running combat, was by far the tamest of the series. Given that it was also the first one, I'm left wondering if it was supposed to serve as the lead-in to the larger changes, or if it was simply seen as obligatory.
That last idea, that this book had a sense of "let's get this out of the way" is almost certainly my own bias, but I can't help the impression - and I suspect I had this same reaction back when I first pick this up (I distinctly recall that, even back then, I got this mostly to complete the set) - given that some of what's here is retread ground. Weapon groups and specializing in weapons? We got that back in PHBR1 The Complete Fighter's Handbook. An expanded unarmed combat system? PHBR15 The Complete Ninja's Handbook came out at almost the exact same time as this book. Heck, I even mentioned both of those things when I covered those books back in my leatherettes retrospective.
It doesn't help that some of the book's content that are technically new retread old ground. The mass combat rules here aren't those of the Battlesystem Miniatures Rules, Battlesystem Skirmishes, or even the alternative rules from DMGR2 The Castle Guide; while I can appreciate this book being a one-stop shop for all things combat-related, and doing so without referring to another book, I can't help but think that this particular wheel didn't need to be reinvented over and over again. Don't you think so, Birthright Campaign Setting?
All facetiousness aside, there is a lot of new content here, although looking back on it now, a lot of it doesn't feel new. In this case, however, I'm aware that time has colored my perceptions: things like a +1 bonus when attacking from higher ground (hello there, General Kenobi!), attacks of opportunity, disarming enemies, etc. all make me think of D&D 3rd Edition. While this book was written well over a year before TSR would be bought out by WotC, and so can't really be said to have been floating ideas for what would make it into 3E, it's clear to me (particularly in light of having recently finished 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons, which talks about the 3E design process) that this book was very much on the minds of WotC's design team when it came time to revamp the game.
Rather oddly, one point that sticks out to me now is how there's one place where this book did include some stealth-errata: it allowed characters from the warrior class group (i.e. fighters, rangers, and paladins) who received bonus non-weapon proficiency slots from high Intelligence to spend those on weapon proficiencies, which reversed what PHBR1 The Complete Fighter's Handbook said on the subject.
Likewise, while this book goes out of its way to highlight that these rules are optional, and in many cases modular, one of the most notable changes it introduces is also one of the more subtle: it redefines the use of "rounds" as a unit of time, now calling it a "combat round." The difference being that a "round" is one minute, whereas a "combat round" is said to be between ten to fifteen seconds (though it explicitly says that five combat rounds make up one round, suggesting that they're actually twelve seconds long). 3rd Edition would shrink this down further, making rounds a six-second unit of time.
Also, I rolled my eyes a little at the period-based weapon listings later in the book. I mean, I get that if you want your game to reflect a different genre, then tailoring equipment lists is one of the ways to do that; as this book notes, it'd feel weird if a samurai fought with a pilum (though if you want your game world to have a culture that's not just a historical pastiche, liberally mixing particular elements seems like a fun way to go about doing so, at least to me). But the divisions in chapter seven feel a little too narrow to me: did we really need lists of appropriate weapons for the Dark Ages, Crusades, Hundred Years' War, and Renaissance?
Overall, I understand what this book was trying to do; the fighter (and its cousin classes) can be very boring in AD&D 2nd Edition. Heck, the mainline Core Rules don't even allow for critical hits! But while I won't say that this book is bad, the solutions it presents feel overwrought; we get pages and pages of critical hit tables for the body locations of humans, animals, monsters, all with variations depending on the type of damage dealt (i.e. slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning). It's like bringing in the Army Corps of Engineers to replace a flat tire.
Looking back now, the impression I have is that the majority of what this book offered was too much work to bring into your game, at least if you wanted to introduce anything more than a couple of small changes. The reward simply doesn't seem worth the payoff in terms of making everyone at the table relearn/remember various tweaks and tidbits. It's entirely possible that I'm misjudging this, of course, but given how prosaic many of these options are (a casualty, I suspect, of focusing so firmly on the non-magical aspects of a high fantasy world), I've never been able to get excited about what's here, neither when I first read this book nor now.
The bottom line is that the strategy involved in Combat & Tactics works, but comes across as a Pyrrhic victory.
Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.
The Player's/DM's/Campaign Option books are NOT AD&D 2.5!
I know that's a designation that's entirely fan-made, and which is retroactively applied, but it's always made me roll my eyes, because it's conveying upon these books - as well as AD&D 1st Edition's Unearthed Arcana, which is similarly referred to as AD&D 1.5 - with a status that they don't actually possess.
The salient factor, at least as I see it, isn't so much that these books present alterations to various aspects of the Core Rules. If that was the sole determinant, then the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana should be...I'm guessing 3.6? After all, "3.75" is widely regarded as being Pathfinder 1st Edition. So clearly there's more to it than just altering the Core Rules.
And really, Pathfinder demonstrates what the real issue is: not that aspects of the game's basic rules are altered, but that they're altered and those alterations become the default from then on. The 3.5 Core Rules replaced the 3.0 Core Rules, and "3.75" (i.e. Pathfinder 1E) replaced 3.5 for all intents and purposes (even if it was technically not the same thing, being a different game from a different company). So by that token, the various "Option" books aren't any sort of upgrade to the core AD&D 2nd Edition game; they're a series of fairly sweeping optional rules, no more and no less.
The first of which we'll look at now: Player's Option: Combat & Tactics.
For me, this book is the aperitif of the Option line, presenting a modest offering before the series would start going hog-wild with wildly different forms of magic, expansive new high-level rules, and even rearranging how characters were built under the game rules. This book, by contrast, with its various options for running combat, was by far the tamest of the series. Given that it was also the first one, I'm left wondering if it was supposed to serve as the lead-in to the larger changes, or if it was simply seen as obligatory.
That last idea, that this book had a sense of "let's get this out of the way" is almost certainly my own bias, but I can't help the impression - and I suspect I had this same reaction back when I first pick this up (I distinctly recall that, even back then, I got this mostly to complete the set) - given that some of what's here is retread ground. Weapon groups and specializing in weapons? We got that back in PHBR1 The Complete Fighter's Handbook. An expanded unarmed combat system? PHBR15 The Complete Ninja's Handbook came out at almost the exact same time as this book. Heck, I even mentioned both of those things when I covered those books back in my leatherettes retrospective.
It doesn't help that some of the book's content that are technically new retread old ground. The mass combat rules here aren't those of the Battlesystem Miniatures Rules, Battlesystem Skirmishes, or even the alternative rules from DMGR2 The Castle Guide; while I can appreciate this book being a one-stop shop for all things combat-related, and doing so without referring to another book, I can't help but think that this particular wheel didn't need to be reinvented over and over again. Don't you think so, Birthright Campaign Setting?
All facetiousness aside, there is a lot of new content here, although looking back on it now, a lot of it doesn't feel new. In this case, however, I'm aware that time has colored my perceptions: things like a +1 bonus when attacking from higher ground (hello there, General Kenobi!), attacks of opportunity, disarming enemies, etc. all make me think of D&D 3rd Edition. While this book was written well over a year before TSR would be bought out by WotC, and so can't really be said to have been floating ideas for what would make it into 3E, it's clear to me (particularly in light of having recently finished 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons, which talks about the 3E design process) that this book was very much on the minds of WotC's design team when it came time to revamp the game.
Rather oddly, one point that sticks out to me now is how there's one place where this book did include some stealth-errata: it allowed characters from the warrior class group (i.e. fighters, rangers, and paladins) who received bonus non-weapon proficiency slots from high Intelligence to spend those on weapon proficiencies, which reversed what PHBR1 The Complete Fighter's Handbook said on the subject.
Likewise, while this book goes out of its way to highlight that these rules are optional, and in many cases modular, one of the most notable changes it introduces is also one of the more subtle: it redefines the use of "rounds" as a unit of time, now calling it a "combat round." The difference being that a "round" is one minute, whereas a "combat round" is said to be between ten to fifteen seconds (though it explicitly says that five combat rounds make up one round, suggesting that they're actually twelve seconds long). 3rd Edition would shrink this down further, making rounds a six-second unit of time.
Also, I rolled my eyes a little at the period-based weapon listings later in the book. I mean, I get that if you want your game to reflect a different genre, then tailoring equipment lists is one of the ways to do that; as this book notes, it'd feel weird if a samurai fought with a pilum (though if you want your game world to have a culture that's not just a historical pastiche, liberally mixing particular elements seems like a fun way to go about doing so, at least to me). But the divisions in chapter seven feel a little too narrow to me: did we really need lists of appropriate weapons for the Dark Ages, Crusades, Hundred Years' War, and Renaissance?
Overall, I understand what this book was trying to do; the fighter (and its cousin classes) can be very boring in AD&D 2nd Edition. Heck, the mainline Core Rules don't even allow for critical hits! But while I won't say that this book is bad, the solutions it presents feel overwrought; we get pages and pages of critical hit tables for the body locations of humans, animals, monsters, all with variations depending on the type of damage dealt (i.e. slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning). It's like bringing in the Army Corps of Engineers to replace a flat tire.
Looking back now, the impression I have is that the majority of what this book offered was too much work to bring into your game, at least if you wanted to introduce anything more than a couple of small changes. The reward simply doesn't seem worth the payoff in terms of making everyone at the table relearn/remember various tweaks and tidbits. It's entirely possible that I'm misjudging this, of course, but given how prosaic many of these options are (a casualty, I suspect, of focusing so firmly on the non-magical aspects of a high fantasy world), I've never been able to get excited about what's here, neither when I first read this book nor now.
The bottom line is that the strategy involved in Combat & Tactics works, but comes across as a Pyrrhic victory.
Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.
