Help me get excited about 2nd Edition.

[rounser]

I understood you from the beginning. I still don't agree. Prestige classes serve a lot of different purposes, but they are not kits. Nor is there any real need for kits in 3E.

Good impression of an ostrich with it's head in the sand, there. Look at the splatbooks being released - just because the 3E designers intended for prestige classes to be used for specific roles in a world and not as kits hasn't stopped people from trying. They want a hammer, but the nearest thing they have is a wrench, so they're hammering in nails with that.

Those pages of pseudo-kit prestige classes are a far better argument for a need for something kit-like in 3E than any I could muster.

Not all swashbucklers have levels in the Duelist prestige class. You don't need levels in the Duelist prestige class in order to be a swashbuckler. There is no official stamp of swashbucklerdom (or of any other character concept). That's what I think you're not understanding.

I still think you're wrong. Suppose my character concept is an Assassin, and I load my PC up with feats and skills to support that concept. I'll still have to tell the other players that either I'm too low level to take the class, or that I don't want to take the class. Either way they'll view my character as a "virtual assassin", but because of the existence of the prestige class named that, I won't ever be viewed as a rules-endorsed bona fide Assassin. It's awkward - you may even have to end up explaining to new players that your character concept is an assassin, and that's what you do, but you don't have the prestige class. It's like taking levels of ranger and cleric and saying "look, I'm a Druid!"

It's an unpleasing aspect of 3E for me, and with luck it'll be addressed next edition by not staving off rules-backed character concepts until high level.

 

[Churchill]

2e drove me away from D&D. And, since that's all the group I played with at the time was willing to play, it drove me away from gaming totally. Since 3e came out, I've been able to "kiss and make up" with D&D.

Not that there's anything WRONG with people who play 2e...

 

[Alzrius]

Here's a reason to get excited about 2E:

It's a holistic multiverse! The campaigns, despite being on different worlds, are still in the same reality, and crossovers happen.

Spelljammer and Planescape were the best examples of this, but others were out there. Sometimes they were obvious and grand (Castle Spulzeer and The Forgotten Terror, for example), other times they were very minor and hard to find (somewhere in the Wizard's Spell Compendium, under "B" for "Blackstaff" I think, was a spell made by Forgotten Realms's Khelben Arunsun that had the effect of negating any "Bigby's" spell. Why? Because (it says this there), the two met and hated each other. There's even a comment from Khelben about how Bigby had one good idea and did it to death. Gotta love that!).

It's stuff like that that I loved. If you go out on the planes, you don't have to be from the Realms to run afoul of Malar, for example (Something Wild). Or who can say if those mists creeping over you won't send you to Ravenloft? There were so many cross-campaign possibilities, all gone now.

That's a reason to be excited about 2E.

 

[Victim]

I still think you're wrong. Suppose my character concept is an Assassin, and I load my PC up with feats and skills to support that concept. I'll still have to tell the other players that either I'm too low level to take the class, or that I don't want to take the class. Either way they'll view my character as a "virtual assassin", but because of the existence of the prestige class named that, I won't ever be viewed as a rules-endorsed bona fide Assassin. It's awkward - you may even have to end up explaining to new players that your character concept is an assassin, and that's what you do, but you don't have the prestige class.

It's an unpleasing aspect of 3E for me, and with luck it'll be addressed next edition by not staving off rules-backed character concepts until high level.

And I still think you're wrong. Wizards make awesome assassins because of their scry and teleport abilities. A rogue 15 can be a damn good swordmaster. It's not a problem at all. In fact, I think it's a benefit that the classes can be used in many different ways.

Besides, in 2e, Fighters and Thieves had different swashbuckler kits. If you say that your character is swashbuckler, you still have to explain the mechanical construction of the character.

 

[rounser]

And I still think you're wrong. Wizards make awesome assassins because of their scry and teleport abilities. A rogue 15 can be a damn good swordmaster. It's not a problem at all. In fact, I think it's a benefit that the classes can be used in many different ways.

To follow your line of reasoning, a high level paladin can cast more divine spells than a low level cleric, and therefore he's "more of a cleric" than a low level cleric is. I disagree.

The ranger/cleric with appropriate feats going around saying "I'm a Druid!" is another example of what you're implying - the skill-based aspect of D&D 3E does not and cannot trump the class-based aspect of it every time without wishful thinking, because 3E is a hybrid of both, not purely skill-based.

Besides, in 2e, Fighters and Thieves had different swashbuckler kits. If you say that your character is swashbuckler, you still have to explain the mechanical construction of the character.

Yeah, well, I'm not saying bring back kits in the way they were before, just that they had a few features that haven't been replicated by prestige classes, and that some sort of kit/prestige class hybrid would serve the system better.

 

[Victim]

The high level paladin isn't more of a cleric than the low level cleric. However, he definitely has a greater connection to his diety and is trusted with more powerful spells.

If some guy was to walk into a temple and ask for some kind of healing, could he tell the difference? He'd see the cleric ask the paladin to handle the cure disease. He'd see the paladin cure more grievous wounds. Certainly he'll believe that the paladin is more gifted in divine miracles.

From the perspective of an in game observer, there's not that much difference. If that person watches a rogue take someone apart in a duel by using bluff+sneak, he'd assume that the person was a skilled warrior. Even a high level wizard would look pretty tough compared to most people. Give him/her a martial weapon proficiency and send him against some orcs and he'll look like a 8th level warrior or something.

Class is generally a purely metagame concern.

 

[rounser]

Class is generally a purely metagame concern.

Eh, I wouldn't go that far - you do have a point, but that's taking your point into the realms of the ridiculous. A much more realistic view can be had from Monte Cook on this page, and my thoughts are similar to his on the topic of what classes are to D&D:
http://www.montecook.com/arch_lineos46.html
I'm arguing that it would be nice to have the prestige/kit/class of whatever I want to play available regardless of level if it's abilities aren't clearly high level ones, like those of an Archmage. I already know he's X at first level, but the system is pretending he isn't by having this out of reach prestige/kit/class titled X. I think that's silly, but you lot are saying it doesn't matter. Fine, it doesn't matter to you, but don't you agree that it might be a better state of affairs if you could slap on that prestige/kit/class as soon as you built the character if you wanted to? "No, because it doesn't matter." (*sigh*)

 

[Cedric]

See if you can go all the way back to 1E...1E rules!

Cedric

 

[Bagpuss]

Right its starting to work, I'm definiately playing a priest.

The one thing I don't like about 3rd Edition is how generic the cleric is. Thankfully the party doesn't have a priest at the moment, so that's handy.

Since multiclassing in 2nd Edition was so abusive I might multiclass. Although since I can start around 9th level I might dual class from a fighter (remember dual-classing? What a waste of time unless you could already start at a high level).

Oh the Campaign is in Forgotten Realms, but with a Norse Mythology. So no of the benifits of cool campaign settings, we don't use weapon speeds (they never made sense anyway) or psionics (thak-god).

Half-Orc from the complete humanoids sounds like it could be fun.

 

[Kilmore]

Despite all the slagging of 2nd ed., it had a few things going for it, the first two have been mentioned, and can actually be fixed in 3E. But the third is the best thing a 2nd ed. game in the new millenium has going for it and cannot be satisfactorilly resolved with 3E.

1. Despite some balance issues, kits presented an interesting template for developing characters from first level.

2. Specialty priests were really cool.

3. If you wanna play your favorite character from 2E, or one from 1E who was easily converted to 2E, but didn't have the heart to convert to 3E (which wouldn't be so easy), 2E is the way to go.