D&D 2E On AD&D 2E

[cbwjm]

Weird. Conan wore armor all the time in the original stories.

He'd wear whatever Armour he'd find, but as James mentioned, seemed to lose it just as often, and the artwork would often show him as a stereotypical barechested barbarian.

 

[Alzrius]

I was always a little disappointed that the no/lightly armoured warrior never quite worked in 2e without magical items.

Isn't that the case for most editions of D&D?

 

[cbwjm]

Isn't that the case for most editions of D&D?

Yeah it is, i think 4e and 5e have been the best for playing armourless/lightly armoured warriors but since the 90s was when I started DnD (Becmi to 2e) and some of the 2e art, as well as the media that I was consuming at the time, didn't match up with how dnd really played when it comes to no armour, it was then that it really stuck out for me.

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah it is, i think 4e and 5e have been the best for playing armourless/lightly armoured warriors but since the 90s was when I started DnD (Becmi to 2e) and some of the 2e art, as well as the media that I was consuming at the time, didn't match up with how dnd really played when it comes to no armour, it was then that it really stuck out for me.

There were some options for it over the years (infamously the Monk), but there were other classes that could get an unarmored AC in 3.x. Pathfinder 1e had a few ways to go about it, but to keep up with someone just wearing plain old armor usually required a lot of optimization.

D&D doesn't often map out the real reasons someone would go without armor into combat, like say, needing to move quickly, or deal with uneven terrain. And it tends to really fall apart in situations where you wouldn't be wearing armor at all, like say, on the deck of a ship or attending a fancy ball, lol.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That was fuel, like healing potions so we could keep playing, LOL.

I just talked to my group, and we all agreed that were going to switch over to 2E, so I'm excited to dig out my books and start refreshing my memory on the rules. I think they are so ingrained in my mind that it wont take long. I think one reason that I've had trouble keeping rules straight from 3E forward was that subconsciously my brain was always trying to interpret and resolve things in 2E terms.

My wife was a 3.5 player, and has the same issue keeping rules straight in 5e. For me, I started in BECMI/1e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Thats what I thought, makes sense because I think the players options books came out about the same time. I understand that the amount of releases was what killed TSR, but It really is a shame that WotC doesnt release more varied products like TSR did in 2E

It is the  best part of 2e from the consumer side. So much great content! So much creativity!

 

[cbwjm]

There were some options for it over the years (infamously the Monk), but there were other classes that could get an unarmored AC in 3.x. Pathfinder 1e had a few ways to go about it, but to keep up with someone just wearing plain old armor usually required a lot of optimization.

D&D doesn't often map out the real reasons someone would go without armor into combat, like say, needing to move quickly, or deal with uneven terrain. And it tends to really fall apart in situations where you wouldn't be wearing armor at all, like say, on the deck of a ship or attending a fancy ball, lol.

Yeah, it was something that really stood out to me back when I started playing DnD, nowadays I just accept the hit to AC when my fighter goes without armour.

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah, it was something that really stood out to me back when I started playing DnD, nowadays I just accept the hit to AC when my fighter goes without armour.

My friend is working on his own system where armor provides DR but limits your ability to dodge attacks (so you get hit more often) and he's having a heck of a time trying to balance the two extremes. I keep shaking my head and pointing out that AC is certainly weird, but there's a reason it's endured for so long.

The ability to not get hit at all is always going to be better than getting hit easily and taking less damage, unless the amount of damage reduction is monstrous. Like even in 5e, where Barbarian rage means you're taking 1/2 damage, if you ignore your AC and use reckless attack all the time, you will fall over if you take enough hits; high AC is just better, and armor is the easy path to get it.

 

[Scars Unseen]

It is the  best part of 2e from the consumer side. So much great content! So much creativity!

Honestly, you can say what you want about the quality of specific products, but on the whole, 2E was pretty much the golden age of D&D in terms of settings and fluff. There were definitely some questionable decisions with the rules themselves, and I imagine most (who were playing back then) would place the golden age for adventures at around a decade prior, give or take, but between all of the setting sourcebooks and the monster ecologies articles in Dragon, there was practically no end of material to use either whole cloth or as inspiration for homebrew.

Granted, this is only when considering 1st party. The OGL definitely changed things in terms of 3rd party options.

 

[James Gasik]

Honestly, you can say what you want about the quality of specific products, but on the whole, 2E was pretty much the golden age of D&D in terms of settings and fluff. There were definitely some questionable decisions with the rules themselves, and I imagine most (who were playing back then) would place the golden age for adventures at around a decade prior, give or take, but between all of the setting sourcebooks and the monster ecologies articles in Dragon, there was practically no end of material to use either whole cloth or as inspiration for homebrew.

Granted, this is only when considering 1st party. The OGL definitely changed things in terms of 3rd party options.

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.