An amusing breakdown. The 3e version seems a bit snarkier than the others, but in general, it comes off as a fairly accurate representation of how the game was played. In the old days, the M-U simply knocked everything out with
sleep and the rest of the party slaughtered them. Leaders just tacked on a few extra HD. There were lots of save or die traps to do in the thief.
The 2e version might have come off better if it was set in the Realms. Every other adventure in 2e was in the Realms.
And yeah, there was tons of extra useless flavor that made little difference (like the part about the secret passage; how is that ever going to matter to the players?). And the bit about weapon specialization was spot on. The tables skewed toward longsword, but IME, nobody use longswords in 2e, many fighters preferred bastard swords instead, probably because it could be used both one handed and two handed, and had different damage potentials like that.
Wik said:
Fair enough. It is true, that there were different kinds of poison. However, as the Auld Grump pointed out, most monsters and adventures inflicted type F (that was the poison kind, right?).
And many of the others were save or die types in a different form - paralysis or unconsciousness, or sleep... and I think there was even a Petrification one, as well. So, yeah, poisons could be pretty harsh.
In any case, both my personal experience, the RAW, and the poisons included in TSR published adventures tended to focus on death-dealing poisons. And, in 3e, death-dealing poisons... aren't. Which is something I'm very glad to see, truth be told.
I know I'm jumping in late here, but yeah Type F poison (inflicted by wyverns, among other things from what I remember), was set up as very common, and it was definitely save or die. I don't know the 1e poison mechanics, but I remember 2e vaguely. They were divided into 3 categories, Ingested, Injected, and Contact, and F was an Injected save or die. A LOT of monsters that had posion attacks had Type F.
Fifth Element said:
This is D&D. There is always an inn.
I couldn't have said it better.
VirgilCaine said:
I've heard it said that in 2e there were more rules for everything--multiple, contradictory rules in some cases--and I've heard it said of 2e there was a total or near-total lack of usable information in the DMG, except for the treasure and combat tables.
So it ended up there was a lot of DM Fiat in 2e.
The biggest problem with 2e was the fact that it was intended for "intermediate and expert" players from the start (it says that right on the covers of the original 2e PHB and DMG). The idea was for newbies to get started with BECMI or the Rules Cyclopedia, then move up to AD&D. However, by the time 2e reached it's midpoint, the old Basic game had pretty much died out, and AD&D was all that was left. So the DMG was intended for players who learned to DM through BD&D, and wasn't that helpful for novice DMs. It didn't try to teach DMs how to DM, it just said, "go read Dragon, there's lots of advice in there". At least while Monte Cook's 3e DMG admitted that it was difficult to teach DMing, it made an attempt to offer pointers to both novice and experienced DMs.
To be fair, after the death of BD&D, the D&D team put out at least 3 introductory products intended to help newer players get into the game, and the revised DMG does steer new DMs towards the first such product, but small introductory boxed sets really didn't have the scope of the old Basic game.
Wik said:
Once we go beyond core, I have to start complaining about the weird BECMI classes that got introduced, attack ranks (is that what they were called), 1e UA oddities, 2e`s love for kits, kits, and more kits, not to mention the god-awful skills and powers expansions... and some of the power-creep to be found in feats (and if we let third party sources in on this, it gets even stranger!)
Well, I can't speak for the early stuff, but yes 2e kits could get off the wall. They weren't bad early on, and Skills and Powers made a decent attempt at standarizing the more common kits, but the later Complete Books had some really unbalanced ones (*cough* Bladesinger). Skills and Powers had some good ideas, like the proficiency system (sort of a proto-3e skill system), and revamped the psionics system, but the biggest problem was the subabilities. Another problems is that some of that 2e stuff was freelanced and there wasn't any sort of central design team trying to keep things relatively balanced.
I do prefer the 3e rules, but honestly, I've been kind of out of the loop with how the game developed ever since the 3.5 revision; my rulebooks are all 3.0 stuff.
But let`s consider a scenario: the PCs open up a chest, and find a weapon they`ve never seen before. Let`s say it`s a Ranseur, or something like that.
BECMI: The fighter, elf or dwarf picks it up and can use it. The cleric can`t because it inflicts stabbing, the wizard can`t because it`s not on his list, and halfling can`t because it`s too big. Easy enough.
1e (prior to UA): Pretty much the same goes. Someone picks it up, and has fun with it.
2e: Odds are, no one has the item, and since there are no rules for selling items (and it seems to be suggested in the DMG that selling items is WRONG!), the item has little worth. So, the DM fudges things - which is what 2e is about, apparently - and changes the weapon type. Not a big deal, but still.
3e: The weapon is a martial weapon, meaning a lot of different classes can use it. No one has Weapon Focus in it, of course, but that`s not going to stop the fighter from using it, at least until he gets a weapon he`s specialized in (and then he`lll just sell the silly thing, and use the extra money to buy some nice items). Easy fix.
IN this particular case, random weapon determination only truly sucks if you`re playing 2e. One of the pecularities of the system, that you`ll see reflected in the adventures.
Yeah, the 2e weapon proficiency rules were very restrictive. Basically, a DM if he knew what he was doing would simply swap out a weapon no one was proficient with with something more useful. Otherwise the party would be stuck with it if the DM was either inexperienced, or was just a mean rat bastard. The weapon rules in 3e did fix that with the Simple, Martial, and Exotic weapons, it went back a bit to the Fighter being able to use most weapons, and Exotic weapons also helped keep weird weapon choices under control IME.
