D&D 2E Edition Experience - Did/Do you Play AD&D 2E? How Was/Is It?

[AbdulAlhazred]

It might do that, definitely. We had a lot of confounding variables in play; Skills and Powers was being used, we were in Planescape, and using the Dragon magazine article that gave Skills and Powers point buy to Planescape races, so we had a lot of Planescape races being tried out. With S&P being used, the desire to MC went down quite a bit. And we only did this for a few sessions until we swapped to an Alternity game, so the sample size is really small.

Alternity, that's a bit of an obscure game, sort of Star Frontiers crossbred with Champions if I remember. The most interesting thing about it is that it was a Bill Slavicsek design. You can see some stylistic similarities here and there with the approach to 4e.

 

[Golden age Superhero]

The Second edition Monstrous Manual is still IMHO the best MM ever made.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The Second edition Monstrous Manual is still IMHO the best MM ever made.

Very little of it is new, some entries are slightly rewritten. I did think the Daemons and such were a bit improved over their 1e counterparts. Dragons kicked ass too. In terms of sheer originality though, the original 1e MM is still the best, and the Fiend Folio is a super fun book.

 

[Mannahnin]

The Second edition Monstrous Manual is still IMHO the best MM ever made.

Very little of it is new, some entries are slightly rewritten. I did think the Daemons and such were a bit improved over their 1e counterparts. Dragons kicked ass too. In terms of sheer originality though, the original 1e MM is still the best, and the Fiend Folio is a super fun book.

Totally agreed on the FF, though there's a lot of chaff in with the wheat. The weirdness quotient and originality is high, and of course the art adds wonderful flavor.

The 1977 MM has a lot of original stuff, but is also stuffed with junk in places (like the excessive dinosaur list), and has dubious stats and editing, stuff like the damage for a lot of creatures seeming to be written for OD&D rather than AD&D, and notoriously unclear/unexplained stuff like how demonic spell-like abilities are meant to work.

I think GAS has a point about the 1993 Monstrous Manual in terms of it being a well-curated list of core monsters with fewer issues than the 1977 one.

 

[TwoSix]

Although more likely to be for an OSE game, this is something that I was thinking of implementing for a 2e game.

• Classes are all available to everyone.
• Multiclassing is available for everyone, as is dual classing.
• Humans now have a racial adjustment (I'll use the OSE adjustments for simplicity).
• A 10% xp bonus is applied for following an archetype, stacking with prime requisite.
  • Humans get the bonus if single classed. They continue to gain the bonus if dual-classing.
  • Elves get the bonus if a ranger or if a fighter/mage.
  • Halflings get the bonus if a single classed thief or acrobat.
  • Dwarves get the bonus if a single classed fighter or a fighter/cleric

This means that a human fighter with 16 strength would gain a +20% bonus to earned xp, as would a dwarf fighter. An elf fighter/mage with a strength of 11 and intelligence of 16 would gain a +10% bonus to fighter experience and a +20% bonus to their wizard experience, though I'm also tempted to merge multiclasses into a single class, combining the xp for each level together but that would change how prime requisites work.

I did something similar for a planned OSE game. Any character can take up to 3 classes, at any time. You need to train for 2 weeks if you're learning a new class after the game starts. When you gain XP, you can choose any of your classes to give XP, but the split must be even. (If you're a fighter/cleric/thief, you can choose to only give cleric the XP, or cleric/fighter, but the XP must be split evenly.) The bonus XP for prereqs is calculated after the split.

If you want to be a demihuman, you must take the 1st level of that demihuman class at character creation. You can't take levels in more than one demihuman class without DM consent (and some discussion about WTF is going on. )

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Totally agreed on the FF, though there's a lot of chaff in with the wheat. The weirdness quotient and originality is high, and of course the art adds wonderful flavor.

The 1977 MM has a lot of original stuff, but is also stuffed with junk in places (like the excessive dinosaur list), and has dubious stats and editing, stuff like the damage for a lot of creatures seeming to be written for OD&D rather than AD&D, and notoriously unclear/unexplained stuff like how demonic spell-like abilities are meant to work.

I think GAS has a point about the 1993 Monstrous Manual in terms of it being a well-curated list of core monsters with fewer issues than the 1977 one.

Well, it was not bad, though the real virtue of the original MM was the lack of bloat in general. By 2e there's just way too many me too monsters. I agree on FF, lots of silly stuff but also many gems. Overall I have liked most D&D monster books, though there are undoubtedly a few duds.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I ran it online briefly, but I was even less of a fan of D&D sphere games then than I am now, and it didn't do anything to change my mind.

 

[Mannahnin]

Well, it was not bad, though the real virtue of the original MM was the lack of bloat in general. By 2e there's just way too many me too monsters. I agree on FF, lots of silly stuff but also many gems. Overall I have liked most D&D monster books, though there are undoubtedly a few duds.

Speaking of the FF, there's a well-done solo campaign journal on Dragonsfoot where user Xabloyan runs an Appendix P adventuring party through an Appendix A solo dungeon, and he uses the FF encounter tables, so those monsters show up a lot.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Speaking of the FF, there's a well-done solo campaign journal on Dragonsfoot where user Xabloyan runs an Appendix P adventuring party through an Appendix A solo dungeon, and he uses the FF encounter tables, so those monsters show up a lot.

So it is sort of the 'goofy monster of the day' dungeon. Should be fun, though eventually you get to "ANOTHER Flail Snail???!!! Really?" lol. I guess there's always a few Gith and weird not quite demons to make higher levels fun!

 

[Mannahnin]

So it is sort of the 'goofy monster of the day' dungeon. Should be fun, though eventually you get to "ANOTHER Flail Snail???!!! Really?" lol. I guess there's always a few Gith and weird not quite demons to make higher levels fun!

Remember that those encounter tables are inclusive of the 1977 book.