Kai Lord
Hero
Wow, thanks for posting the link to "Adventures Dark and Deep" (nice initials, heh heh.) I'd never heard of that unofficial expansion but now I'm off to hunt for reviews on YouTube.
D&D 2E On AD&D 2E
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
ValamirCleaver
Ein Jäger aus Kurpfalz
You're welcome, unfortunately there's not a lot of YouTube material for "ADD". I linked to some reviews in this post I made & you can find more info on the author's blog/homepage. If you're interested in some more in depth information feel free to directly ask me.
EDIT: Also the author published his own take on Castle "Greyheim" (totally not Greyhawk
).
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Scars Unseen
Hero
Honestly one of the big positives of the older editions in my opinion. Newer D&D campaigns feel like their on fast forward to me.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
I mean this is up to personal taste, but the play loop of D&D gets old fast when there is no real "traction" or sign that your character is actually improving. Especially in 2e, when the primary means of earning xp is monsters (everything else is optional in the DMG).
And as a DM, I kind of got tired of having to treat the PC's with kid gloves at the early levels where a thrown spear can kill them, forcing them to make a new character, making it take even longer to actually be able to take a hit, to the point that I just stopped having "level one" be a thing in my AD&D games.
Though if I had to do it over again, I'd steal the "hit point kicker" from Hackmaster 1e instead.
cbwjm
Seb-wejem
I think a quite common houserule back then was full hit points at level 1, now I think I might grant 2 hitdice at level 1 as well as max hit points just to make that 1st level more survivable. I do the same with 5e when starting at level 1.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Yes, in fact, it was so common, I never played a AD&D character that had to roll their hit points at level 1. When 4e came out and basically said "uh, why don't we start characters out with 20-30 hit points?", I damn near applauded.
But tastes vary, as I said, some people prefer PC's who are always one die roll away from bleeding out on Death's Door, lol. Heck, I wish I had the link; a few months back, there was a poster who felt the hit points an AD&D Fighter could have was downright ludicrous! One of my longest running characters started with an 18 Con, and when he passed the 100 hit point mark, suddenly several of my DM's started getting very grumpy about it.
Nothing has changed much though, a few years back, I was running a Fighter/Rogue archer in Adventurer's League, and I ended up with an Amulet of Health, boosting my 14 Con to 19. One session, the DM got it into their head that they were tired of me shooting arrows at monsters with impunity, and decided to pressure me. I just drew my short sword and held them off, and after a few turns, the DM gave me this odd look and said "uh, how many hit points do you have left?".
"Well, last turn got me down to 57, I figure I'll Second Wind this turn and start taking the Dodge action until the rest of the party can get to me."
"That can't be right, let me see your character sheet."
slides it over
"ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN HIT POINTS?!" hands the sheet back in disgust
Scars Unseen
Hero
Contrariwise, when the party starts out as a band of nobodies and then is capable of taking on a small dragon in the span of a couple of months in game, it sucks all my suspension of disbelief right out. So if you're leveling ever couple of sessions (as a lot of WotC campaigns do), either your characters are growing at a video game/anime rate of speed or your campaign is racing through time to compensate (i.e. moving in fast forward). Neither of those appeal to me at all. I've never gotten attached to a character in 3E and later editions like I did back in 2E when I might be playing the same character for a year or more.
"Improvement" came from forging a reputation, making contacts, relationships. It came from the stories we told through the sessions of play. And yes, greater capabilities as we grew in level as well. But it's not like there was nothing to the game except level increases. If that's all D&D was, I'd go play a dungeon crawler. Less scheduling conflicts.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Yes, but at least early on, you don't make much of those (reputation, contacts, stories). Thinking of my longest running character, the stories I have of levels 1-5 are:
*Getting mauled by a bear.
*Getting mauled by a shark.
*Getting backstabbed by my own party member.
It's that last one that was a turning point, and set him on a new path, but ultimately, the only thing that allowed for even those feats were several levels of gained hit points. I'm not here to say I think my way of running games is superior; but ultimately how long the process of going from zero to hero should take is entirely subjective; there's no timeline that says "you must spend X months to reach level Y", since level is a completely abstract concept.
You can't look at a decorated soldier in our world and say "ah, he's obviously level 7" and equate his age to how long it took him to reach his current status; if anything, his abilities may have degraded from disuse or lingering wounds, things that D&D characters don't typically have to worry about.
Fiction and mythology are full of many fantastic warriors who accomplish great feats at an early age; perhaps spending several months in a high risk environment dealing with lethal foes would force you to get skilled or perish.
It depends entirely on the story you want to tell. I have a character I've played on and off since about 1991, and still occasionally do to this day. In the campaign he's in, xp and gold and even most magical treasure have long since ceased to have any real meaning.
I had a character in 4e that got to level 22 inside of a year, fending off dragons and githyanki and demigods. I don't see the story of one as being superior to the other. I've been in games where three months can go by without seeing a level or a magic item. I've been in games where you get about half a level a session.
I don't see one as superior to the other; in fact, in these days, I've noticed you might as well start at level 3-5 and hand out xp like candy, because if a game lasts more than 6-7 months, that's incredible. Real life ends games way faster than running out of levels, or even getting to the levels where the DM might toss in the towel because the characters are difficult to challenge (the last time that happened to me was after 2 years, and in all honesty, it wasn't that I couldn't challenge the group, it's more that I didn't have the mental energy at that time to continue).
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deganawida
Legend
After some reminiscing over the weekend in our group's chat, and how we all miss 2e, I'm seriously tempted to take 2e and houserule the fool out of it, to make it fit what I think it should have been. One thing that has always bothered me is that there are specialty priests and wizards, but no specialty warriors or rogues. What if Cook had done specialty warriors and rogues, and just included ranger, paladin, and bard as examples?
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Interesting idea. It seemed like they wanted to go that way at least partially, what with the different class groups.
