Differences between 1st & 2nd Edition?

[Lorthanoth]

Complete Book of Humanoids was great. Yay Saurial Paladins!

 

[Plane Sailing]

Did 1E have the repeating 20's on the to-hit tables? If so, that made THAC0 a bit different than the tables.

I'd forgotten about that - we never used that repeating 20's because we came from OD&D and our method of rolling to hit the higher numbers were "if you got a 20, you could roll again and add anything over 10 to your score". e.g. if you rolled a 20 and got a 15 on your reroll, it is as if you had rolled a 25. This worked well enough for us that we just continued with it.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Complete Book of Humanoids was great. Yay Saurial Paladins!

The Saurials were my absolute favorite. I was very pleased when they were reprised for 3rd Edition in Dragon Magazine.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I'd forgotten about that - we never used that repeating 20's because we came from OD&D and our method of rolling to hit the higher numbers were "if you got a 20, you could roll again and add anything over 10 to your score". e.g. if you rolled a 20 and got a 15 on your reroll, it is as if you had rolled a 25. This worked well enough for us that we just continued with it.

Add?!

Wouldn't you subtract? If rolling a 20 at 1st level was like hitting AC 0, then how does adding help the second roll?

 

[jdrakeh]

Sorry, it is a different book entirely - the Melnibonean and Cthulu mythos are absent.

As Nikosandros clarifies, those two pantheons were absent long before Legends & Lore was released for 1e (at least two printings of Deities & Demigods exist without those pantheons in their pages). [Edit: Ah. . . I just realized that you speak of the L&L book released in 1990].

 

[Lorthanoth]

@jdrakeh - No probs! Nice to have a civilized discussion!

The 3E Saurial article did give me a geek-asm. Damn, I need to lobby to play one in the next game I'm in...

 

[Angel Tarragon]

The 3E Saurial article did give me a geek-asm. Damn, I need to lobby to play one in the next game I'm in...

I allow them in my homebrew. Though I need to come up with more for evolutionary paths of other dinos.

 

[the Jester]

Add?!

Wouldn't you subtract? If rolling a 20 at 1st level was like hitting AC 0, then how does adding help the second roll?

No, you needed to roll higher to hit a lower AC.

AC started at 10, as now, but went down rather than up to indicate "harder to hit".

Thus, the lower the AC, the higher you needed to roll to hit.

One of 3e's best, easiest and most logical changes was to reverse the way AC worked so higher AC was better. Then it was simplicity to say, "Roll the AC or higher and you hit..." instead of having the messy "roll, subtract from your THAC0, and that's the AC you hit" mechanic of 2e.

 

[Wik]

Oh, God, THAC0. Having a -1 AC being good (it's like an AC of 21, but AC didn't change as much in earlier editions, so it's not quite the same as a 3e AC of 21).

*shudder*

I don't know how I did it as a kid. I really don't.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Well, in second edition, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson did not go into house where people were playing D&D and perform mummer dances. I was quite disappointed by that.