I've introduced my 5th ed group to AD&D 2E

[deganawida]

We are having a blast with 2E. All but one of the players that is. I think she (Druid player) feels under powered compared to what shes used to in 5E.

Not surprising, as all of the classes have less overall power. However, I hope that she finds a way to enjoy it. My 18 year old’s Druid (initially 5e, then Castles & Crusades) was more fun for her after changing rules sets, as she focused more on how her abilities reacted with the world than in focusing on combat. Not entirely an apples-to-apples comparison, but there is hope.

 

[sithholocron]

AD&D is always will be D&D to me. It just feels more like an actual adventure. IMO.

AD&D 2e, is where my D&D stops. I always loathed things like feats, the elimination of importance of AC and many other things.

 

[corwyn77]

Yeah, my experience was that the victim had to be unaware of you. You had to move silently, hide in shadows, or be invisible. Which is ironic because it means the best backstabber is now the thief/magic-user with improved invisibility, and as an added bonus you get lightning bolt, mage armor, charm person, silence, knock, detect magic, alter self, etc.

Your description also seems to apply to how racial level limits worked in actual play. In my experience, every table 100% enforces racial level limits... at level 1. However, when you actually have PCs hitting the limits, the DM magically forgets that they exist. Or, sometimes, applies a penalty. 10% to 20% XP penalty seemed to be standard in my area. Because stopping progression was obviously dumb. It meant you should just retire, and neither the player, nor the rest of the party, nor the DM were ever interested in that.

Yeah, my first character was a single-class Halfling Thief named Purloin (I know, I know, I was young) because I didn't know any better. Every Thief after that was a MC Thief/MU or Thief/MU/Fighter or Thief/Illusionist. I don't think any of those games went high enough to bother about limits. The last one only went to level 7 (2e) before being converted to gurps.

 

[corwyn77]

Yep. That's just it. It's math. Some people have a good relationship with it, and some really don't. And, truthfully, some people only have a good relationship with parts of it - cross that 0 line and all hell breaks loose for them. This is why ascending ACs was such a user experience improvement in D&D.

It's still a problem for some people. Running encounters, I have had multiple players need a calculator to figure out their D20+mod to see what AC they hit.

 

[Iosue]

The idea was cribbed from a naval wargame, so the story goes. In that naval wargame, a ship's armor class was something akin to 1st rate, 2nd rate, 3rd rate, etc with 1st rate being the best and things descending in quality from there despite the numerical value ranking increasing.

The important thing to note was that, like in many wargames of the period, the most salient information was in the table referenced. With the table doing all the math, how the armor is classified is somewhat superfluous; they could have just called Armor Class A, B, C, etc. The central design conceit is that you're trying to keep the target numbers "on the die," so that you can just roll, see the result, and know the outcome. Arneson & Gygax just happened to use ordinal numbers for the classes, which allowed for further expansion using negative numbers.

THAC0, then, was just a later innovation from people noticing, "Hey, the to-hit numbers go down by one counting armor class from 0, so if you subtract the Armor Class number from the to-hit number for AC 0, you get the to-hit number for that AC." And from there, "So if you roll a d20 and subtract the result from the to-hit number for AC 0, you get the number for the lowest AC that you can hit!" And they started using that so they didn't have to reference the tables. Then, that shortcut was put into the official game.

The innovation of 3e was its embrace of "imaginary die results". By which I mean, you have an attack bonus of +7, and your opponent has an AC of 21. Not only is the target number "off the die", but so is the final result if you roll a 14 or higher. This is certainly a cromulent way of doing things (though things got out of hand in 3e and 4e, IMO, when AC and attack bonuses could be so high, that the die roll was a proportionately smaller contributor to success).

But such a system (and THAC0 for that matter) would have been thought inelegant from a design perspective in 1970s wargaming culture. Why make the participants do math in their head in the first place, when you can just get all the math out on a table, and a few plusses or minuses notwithstanding, roll the die and immediately see if you were successful or not.

 

[Mannahnin]

The important thing to note was that, like in many wargames of the period, the most salient information was in the table referenced. With the table doing all the math, how the armor is classified is somewhat superfluous; they could have just called Armor Class A, B, C, etc. The central design conceit is that you're trying to keep the target numbers "on the die," so that you can just roll, see the result, and know the outcome. Arneson & Gygax just happened to use ordinal numbers for the classes, which allowed for further expansion using negative numbers.

THAC0, then, was just a later innovation from people noticing, "Hey, the to-hit numbers go down by one counting armor class from 0, so if you subtract the Armor Class number from the to-hit number for AC 0, you get the to-hit number for that AC." And from there, "So if you roll a d20 and subtract the result from the to-hit number for AC 0, you get the number for the lowest AC that you can hit!" And they started using that so they didn't have to reference the tables. Then, that shortcut was put into the official game.

The innovation of 3e was its embrace of "imaginary die results". By which I mean, you have an attack bonus of +7, and your opponent has an AC of 21. Not only is the target number "off the die", but so is the final result if you roll a 14 or higher. This is certainly a cromulent way of doing things (though things got out of hand in 3e and 4e, IMO, when AC and attack bonuses could be so high, that the die roll was a proportionately smaller contributor to success).

But such a system (and THAC0 for that matter) would have been thought inelegant from a design perspective in 1970s wargaming culture. Why make the participants do math in their head in the first place, when you can just get all the math out on a table, and a few plusses or minuses notwithstanding, roll the die and immediately see if you were successful or not.

Good post!

I will note that a draft version of OD&D actually used exactly a THAC0-style calculation for Fighter (Fighting-Man) attacks of 5%/+1 to hit per level, which wound up being collapsed into irregular tables in the published OD&D, so the later "innovation" of THAC0 was more of a return to the original idea. Lawrence Schick, who claims responsibility for the appearance of THAC0 in the monster stats appendix at the back of the 1E DMG (before THAC0 actually became a rule in 2E) says he thinks he got the idea from a Judges' Guild product. But it turns out Gary originally did it that way.

Why Did Armor Class Descend from 9 to 2?

One of the great riddles that has vexed D&D players for generations is this: why did armor class in original D&D descend from 9 to 2 inst...

playingattheworld.blogspot.com

 

[DarkCrisis]

Update: The Druid player (who until know inly ever played 5th) still isn't digging it. She doesn't like that she's the main healer and feels she has to use all her spell slots for Cure spells.

I've expressed to her that she is the main healer. The only other is the Cleric/Mage. 2E is more about scrolls and potions and wands etc and less about having a ton of spell slots and extra powers. I reminded her that the group does in fact have several cure potions and scrolls and she should feel free to use her spell slots for whatever spells she wants.

Everyone else, still loving it. The excitement the Fighter got when he rolled HP at level up and got a 9! People love the level up because it mens more survivability. Never saw that in 5E. The Cleric/Wiz is just praying for the day he gains a few levels under each class..

 

[James Gasik]

Update: The Druid player (who until know inly ever played 5th) still isn't digging it. She doesn't like that she's the main healer and feels she has to use all her spell slots for Cure spells.

I've expressed to her that she is the main healer. The only other is the Cleric/Mage. 2E is more about scrolls and potions and wands etc and less about having a ton of spell slots and extra powers. I reminded her that the group does in fact have several cure potions and scrolls and she should feel free to use her spell slots for whatever spells she wants.

Everyone else, still loving it. The excitement the Fighter got when he rolled HP at level up and got a 9! People love the level up because it mens more survivability. Never saw that in 5E. The Cleric/Wiz is just praying for the day he gains a few levels under each class..

That's rough. I've encountered this with Druids before, they have a lot of cool spells they can cast, yet, just like Clerics, are expected to fill every spell slot with "Cure X Wounds", as if they are some kind of healing potion dispenser.

What I've always seen as part of the problem is that player characters who have ready access to healing tend to take silly risks, and ones that don't have to learn to be cautious.

What worked for me was the time I played the Cleric of a Neutral deity, who demanded a small tithe for the use of "her" magic (my Cleric being but the vessel), so I carried a small pouch specifically for donations to the faith.

This led to some irate players, but I told them it was out of my hands, it's what the Goddess demanded. Once there was an actual cost to healing ("my precious golds!"), the party started to use their brains more, lol.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Baldurs Gate introduced me to the rules of AD&D.

So I load up the game and make a fighter and start off next to the inn.

I go in and buy some leather armor and equip it…. Why did my Armor Class go down? I figured I wasn’t trained to use it yet and took it off and went about my way to explore..

I remember when I looked at the gelatineous cube and saw AC 6 along with the other stats and thought: wow, hard for that CR until I realized, how bad AC 6 is in 5e...
Even though it is 22 years ago that I last played 2e, I read AC below 10 as improvement on first glance, because it is so rare in 5e.

 

[Velderan]

Update: The Druid player (who until know inly ever played 5th) still isn't digging it. She doesn't like that she's the main healer and feels she has to use all her spell slots for Cure spells.

I've expressed to her that she is the main healer. The only other is the Cleric/Mage. 2E is more about scrolls and potions and wands etc and less about having a ton of spell slots and extra powers. I reminded her that the group does in fact have several cure potions and scrolls and she should feel free to use her spell slots for whatever spells she wants.

Everyone else, still loving it. The excitement the Fighter got when he rolled HP at level up and got a 9! People love the level up because it mens more survivability. Never saw that in 5E. The Cleric/Wiz is just praying for the day he gains a few levels under each class..

Keep the updates coming! I miss playing 2E and wish my group would give it a try. Most of the group started with 3.5E, with 1 person having 5E being their first so there isn't really the nostalgic curiosity to want to see if it holds up.

What type of campaign are you playing? Dungeon crawl, mostly outdoor, etc? Is this the DL group you mentioned in another thread? As someone mentioned, my fuzzy memory of 2E druids were they had some pretty key stuff that made them fun to play in the outdoor wilderness but limited them in a dungeon crawl to basically being healers.

How have you been doing initiative? Wasn't RAW something like everyone declares their action then everyone rolls initiative, so for instance if a caster gets a bad roll they risk getting interrupted on their spell by a quick attack? I think my group back when I played used to just simplify it and keep the same roll each round and still having people declare actions before resolving them according to the rolled order. Maybe less risky if you already knew your base roll, but sped things up a little bit.