D&D 2E On AD&D 2E

[Reynard]

I don't know, I have some good 3rd party products from the AD&D era, like Arch Magic, Fantastic Treasures, and Grimtooth's Traps.

Which a list of like 50% of the available 3rd part products.

 

[teitan]

On a scale from 1-10, how much do people like THAC0?

8.5

 

[teitan]

I need to preface this post with a disclaimer. I love 2e. I played it for a very long time. But it has warts, and whether something is a bug or a feature is often in the eye of the beholder, so to speak.

2e is a very different game. It has tons of splatbooks to draw from, potentially giving you a bewildering array of options that is at least equal to the 3.5 era. You don't have to use them all, of course, but I played in a few campaigns where "if TSR wrote it, it's legal for use" and the disparity between a guy who plays a Fighter from the PHB to someone who is a specialty priest out of Faiths and Avatars, has psionic wild talents, a kit, and has a cracked-out race from outside the PHB like Sylvan Elf, Tiefling, Aasimar, or something from the Complete Book of Humanoids, is telling.

You have Elven Dualist Wizards, Wild Mages, Viking Rune Magic, Spellfire Wielders, Psionicists, Quest Spells, Elven High Magic, Elementalists, Sha'ir, and probably seven or eight even more esoteric powers I'm forgetting that are potentially available to players. The game can run from magic-high (Forgotten Realms), magic super-high (Arcane Age), magic-low (your typical Ravenloft game), and weird hybrids like Dark Sun (magic super low to Dragon Kings).

Just about every rule in the PHB can be bent or broken in later books (my Paladin can't have weapon specialization? I can't dual-wield long swords? I can't be a multi-classed Bard? Hold my ale!), and only once did TSR ever try to rebalance things (Complete Priest's Handbook)- most books are pure power creep. So you can embrace the gonzo madness, or try to lock things down to the bare essentials, as you like.

Character classes aren't balanced against each other, even if the different xp tracks might lead you think so. Some classes are useless until about level 5. Thieves can't reliably do anything at low levels (even with the best possible race/Dex combo in the PHB, it's going to take til level 4 to get to 95% hide and move silently, as examples, and you're going to be terrible at anything else).

Warrior classes are beasts for a good while, with ever-increasing saves, great hit points, and reliable damage....then one day out of the blue, spellcasters are able to break reality in half...or not, since "save neg." relegates many spells to worthlessness, and the game isn't shy about giving out immunities and magic resistance like candy.

Everything is slave to RNG- your character can be puny or godlike based on random chance, and random chance can fell even the most powerful character, forcing many to try and make ever stronger characters.

And you will find out quickly that, despite what the books claim, you can't just make whatever character you want- system mastery permeates the game, from what ability scores are best for you, to even what weapons you should use (longswords yes, two weapon fighting, yes, two handed weapons, no).

And finally, well, about Thac0, I'm not going to weigh in on whether it's good or bad, but instead I'm going to bring up how horribly it's presented, thanks to D&D-isms that were present from day 1.

As you level, your Thac0 goes down. And your AC goes down. But rather than subtract from Thac0, your ability scores and magic items increase your die roll. Your Dexterity defense mod. is a negative value, which makes sense, since it lowers your AC. But just about any other beneficial modifier to AC is represented as a positive value!

I've had new players express confusion that somehow a Shield +1 isn't a cursed item!

Combine this with the fact that you want to roll high on saving throws and attacks, but low on ability checks and Non-Weapon Proficiencies...and other times, rather than use a d20, the game wants you to use d%, and it's more than a little oblique to new gamers.

Oh and about those Non-Weapon Proficiencies- it's always interesting that the more books you use, the less characters can do without proficiency! Soon you need proficiencies to notice things, to observe things (not the same!), to fast-talk, intimidate, gather information, loot treasure quickly, beg for coin, mimic the sounds of animals, guide a boat down a rapid stream (no, sorry, Seamanship doesn't apply!), Acting, seduction, pretending to be asleep, walking on water, or even (a personal favorite), Giant Kite Flying!

All in a system that gives most characters 3 proficiency slots at level 1 and a new one every 3 levels! Oh sure, maybe your Class (Bard) or Kit gives you a few free ones, and you can always choose to know less languages, but there's no way you're going to get more than a few of these, and the system for improving proficiencies is, well, pretty draconian, to say the least. Oh and some proficiencies cost more than one slot!

(And while the PHB claims that proficiencies are optional, that flies out the window with the very first splatbook, lol).

TLDR: 2e has a great deal of charm, gonzo insanity, and wild ideas a plenty. It's also a hot mess of a system. If you're familiar with all of it's idiosyncrasies, you probably love it. Or hate it.

Most likely, a mix of the two. It's likely the most house-ruled version of the game that has ever existed, to the point that any two random players will have incredibly different experiences playing the game.

When it was good, it was and incredible, amazing experience. When it was not good, it was wretched, bitter experience.

And I haven't even gotten into Dragon Magazine content or the "Player's Option" books yet!

In this post you reminded me why I prefer 1e.

 

[teitan]

As an example, let's say I make up a new spell called Bravery of Tempus (Tempus being the CN god of War in the Forgotten Realms). The spell gives you +2 to hit, +2 to damage, +2 to saves vs fear, and +2 to AC.

Does the spell actually lower your AC because Tempus is shielding you from harm, or does it raise your AC because it makes you reckless and Tempus likes his blood sports? When written like that it's ambiguous. In 3e, a spell giving +2* to AC is unambiguously good.

* It would likely be further defined with a bonus type, but that's beside the point.

3 of those are die rolls and one is not. That’s a key to understanding AD&D. If you roll the die you add it. If it is a static number you subtract it. Even with NWP. You take an NWP that is +2 STR it’s rolling under your STR+2 and if your STR is 12 that is a 14. But with AC it’s a static number so it’s subtracted.

When you look at 1e for a different example, the weapon vs armor table. You see certain weapons get a bonus vs armor types and what appears a penalty against armor types but that isn’t actually how the table works. This is the key to understanding how AC works and the standardization that occurred in 2e and why it is confusing.

On that table the + is added to the attackers die roll but the Penalty is actually an AC adjustment for the defender! It’s mathematically the same but strategically different. It emulates the effect of the weapon Vs the armor.

Chainmail wasn’t a +5 to Armor class. It was AC 5. A Shield was an adjustment to AC, as was a dex bonus. So Chainmail with a dex of 15 and a shield was an AC 3. (Not accurate numbers most likely). The AC charts listed Armor types. You’ll also note in 1e they didn’t have a 20 was always a hit, they had to hit numbers above 20 on the charts and that was with the Weapon vs armor type charts taken into account. So some weapons we able to with the bonus to hit, strike those unhittable target numbers because of the weapon vs armor type modifications and it is why some monsters were described as have natural armor like “Chainmail” for instance.

In 2e it was changed to AC +5 because it was mathematically the same but in 0e and 1e the emulation was a different effect. They effectively say the same thing but the change in how they presented it made it needlessly more confusing in 2e.

 

[teitan]

Naw, just new art and layouts for the most part. IIRC it was done to present the Player's and DM options book as looking "core" alongside it.

They were uglier and had poorer fonts that resulted in blindness.

 

[Mark Hope]

They were uglier and had poorer fonts that resulted in blindness.

And communism.

 

[teitan]

And communism.

LEEEEEENNNNNNNNNIIIIIIINNNNNN SHHHHHEEEEEEETTTTTTS!

 

[Jasperak]

Specialist Priests, World Builder's Guidebook, Habitat/Society and Ecology sections in the Monster Compendiums, The Complete Book of Villains.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

On a scale from 1-10, how much do people like THAC0?

Shouldn't it be on a scale from 1 to 20?
I say 1. The best!

 

[Andvari]

Shouldn't it be on a scale from 1 to 20?
I say 1. The best!

Maybe 1-12? That die needs some love.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Maybe 1-12? That die needs some love.

I think you missed the joke, but otherwise I fully agree.

 

[annamarks]

A friend of mine asked, rather out of the blue, what edition of D&D I would use for my "last D&D campaign ever" and I answered, without hesitation, 2nd Edition AD&D. I kind of want to examine that a little bit, and thought here would eb a good place.

1. For sure there is a lot of nostalgia involved. While I was a "BECMI kid" -- we started with B and kept going knowing with nothing else for years -- it wasn't until I discovered 2nd Edition that the whole D&D thing blossomed for me. We played a tiny bit of 1E but discovered it so late that 2E was out within 6 months. Suddenly all the impenetrable esoterica of 1E was gone and the game made sense. Moreover, we could use the truly awesome bits of BECMI without any trouble at all, particularly the Domain rules and the War Machine.
Nox Vidmate VLC
2. 2E is so broadly written that it covers almost any subgenre of fantasy you can think of. You can still 1E dungeon crawl with it, but you can also Lord of the Rings with it and Game of Throne with it.

3. THAC0 is not hard. It's subtraction. Stop it.

4. This goes back to 1 above a bit, but my longest running campaign (20 years) started with 2E and even though it went through 3E and 3.5 and even Mutants and Masterminds (when the campaign world advanced to the super hero age) it still had its heart in 2E.

5. I feel like I could bolt any system from any D&D edition or any other game onto 2E and never worry about "balance." I could add advantage/disadvantage and it would work fine. I could include item creation from 3.x. I could, as mentioned, implement the BECMI domain management and mass combat rules. People sing the praises of a integrated core mechanic, but I thing a solid game with disparate systems lends itself to infinite hacking, which is a core tenet of D&D.

6. That Monster Manual is a thing of beauty.

7. There was SO MUCH STUFF for it. I know that wasn't good for TSR, but it was freaking great for my table and campaigns.

Anyway, I just felt like articulating the things I love about 2E. Carry on.

Do not particularly miss tracking experience gains across a multiclass character with different level costs, class rewards, and prime requisite bonuses, but can't argue that it at least encouraged play beyond the three pillars of combat, combat, and combat.

 

[Kai Lord]

I read so many 2E books cover to cover

That truly is a lost joy of the TSR era of D&D IMO. Books that were equally fun to just sit down with and read as they were to use in play.

 

[R_J_K75]

That truly is a lost joy of the TSR era of D&D IMO. Books that were equally fun to just sit down with and read as they were to use in play.

Just played my first 2E game last night since the year 2000. It was fun, but a very different game. Me and a friend who I used to play with in the 90s introduced my neighbor to it last night and he got it. Hes about 10 years younger than, but he has the D&D mindset. Half the fun was us arguing and bitching about the rules when none of us bothered to read the books. I bought a PHB on ebay for the table, which to my surprise we used. Glossary in the front is great.

 

[Kai Lord]

Just played my first 2E game last night since the year 2000. It was fun, but a very different game. Me and a friend who I used to play with in the 90s introduced my neighbor to it last night and he got it. Hes about 10 years younger than, but he has the D&D mindset. Half the fun was us arguing and bitching about the rules when none of us bothered to read the books. I bought a PHB on ebay for the table, which to my surprise we used. Glossary in the front is great.

I definitely need to track down another copy of the original 2E PHB with the good art.

 

[R_J_K75]

I definitely need to track down another copy of the original 2E PHB with the good art.

Jeff Eaaley if Im correct

 

[Micah Sweet]

That truly is a lost joy of the TSR era of D&D IMO. Books that were equally fun to just sit down with and read as they were to use in play.

That is what made me fall in love with D&D in the first place, and its relative lack in current WotC productions is a big reason why I stopped buying their stuff.

 

[deganawida]

That truly is a lost joy of the TSR era of D&D IMO. Books that were equally fun to just sit down with and read as they were to use in play.

I loved the Complete books just for reading. Some of them were very well researched, and presented things that I had never considered (paladins having silverware kit, and so forth), or even known at the time.

 

[Andvari]

Jeff Eaaley if Im correct

I really loved the "realistic" style of Elmore, Easley and Clydewell. Obviously it was still fantasy, but they made it look as though the characters were real people in real environments, even if that environment had a dragon and the characters were wielding magic swords and casting spells.

 

[RuinousPowers]

Do not particularly miss tracking experience gains across a multiclass character with different level costs, class rewards, and prime requisite bonuses, but can't argue that it at least encouraged play beyond the three pillars of combat, combat, and combat.

I just added the exp from each level together (a fighter/cleric needs 3,500 exp for 2nd, 7,000 for 3rd, 14,000 for 4th, etc) and lost bonus exp for Prime Requisite.