D&D 2E Tell me about your AD&D 2E Houserules

[cbwjm]

The only houserules I can recall using are maximum hit points at level 1 and wizards gained the same number of bonus spells as priests but based on intelligence instead of wisdom. We also didn't use level limits for demihumans but in reality that wasn't an issue anyway since we never reached a level where it mattered. I think in all our years of playing, the highest we ever reached was level 10.

If I was going to play now, I'd probably make the following changes in addition to the above:

• Wizard attack cantrips, perhaps requiring a wand as their "weapon".
• Castles and Crusades style multiclassing (no fighter 1/wizard 1, instead you are a fighter/wizard 1 and you level both at the same time).
  • Also, multiclassing and dual-classing for all.
• Adjusted hovering on deaths door to allow a negative number of hit points equal to your constitution score.

I'd probably also do something for humans, perhaps similar to Zardnaar's +1 to any ability but keep a maximum of 18.

 

[DammitVictor]

My biggest house rule change in 2e is replacing all of the racial class restrictions. Got sick of 90%+ of PC races being Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Fighter/Cleric, Fighter/Thief and very few races having any Mage or Bard option.

So now, the PHB classes are the human classes, and all human mages are specialists. Humans can combine just about any two classes.

Every nonhuman race has its own set. Dwarves are basically still just Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Fighter/Cleric, Fighter/Thief except their Fighters, Clerics, and Thieves are slightly different than the human versions, and they get Battlerager and their version of Paladin. Elves can't even be Fighters, Clerics, or Thieves; Elves are always multiclassed Warrior/Mage or Warrior/Priest, and they have a couple of options in each category.

And so on.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[Weiley31]

I'll be honest: I've never played 2E even though I was fully aware of aspects of its rules via Baldur's Gate 1&2, Planescape, and the Icewind Dale games. It is, however, one of the editions of DND that I've always wanted to play when it comes to the older editions. Since I'm a 5E player, a number of House Rules would be 5E like in aspect.

-So there would be an Advantage/Disadvantage system in it.(one of my fave rules in 5E itself.)

-HP gains per level up would be maxed based on the class hit die+CON modifier. So Fighters gain 10 hp +CON modifier per level, Wizards gain 4 HP+CON modifier per level, etc,etc, etc,

-Critical Hits are like 5E: two damage die: First die is maximized already(5E House Rule in itself) while the second damage die is rolled. Critical Fumble, that damn 1, would pretty much give you 5E Disadvantage on your attack rolls/skill checks on your next turn.

-Ability Score increases just like how 5E does at certain levels. Either follow how the classes does it exactly, or for balance sakes, every four levels you get an Ability Score increase.

-Cantrips which are one of the best ideas from 4E in regards to magic users, but I don't know how you would reverse engineer 5E Cantrips to 2E


Those are the top four that pop to mind. Probably change the AC to ascending or something.

 

[el-remmen]

Whether you are currently playing it (or an simulacrum) or left it behind years ago, tell me about the house rules and other things you have used to make 2E work for you, and why.

Thanks.

EDIT: House rules I find interesting from posts below, just so I can start to collect them. I won't necessarily use them all but these are the ones that strike me as worth considering.

1. Max hit points at 1st level.
2. Clerics do not have to prepare spells in advance.
3. No demi-human level limits.
4. Allow humans to multi-class. (see my post below about multiclassing)
5. Critical hits.
6. Death's Door rules.

I have an entire Aquerra Player's Guide 2E printed out somewhere (computer files long gone) that has all the house rules we used for 2E right up to July 2000. It is just a couple of hundred pages including custom specialty priests for individual gods of multiple pantheons

EDIT: I take it back. Just went looking for it and remembered I chucked it all in the recycle bin like an idiot when I was purging some stuff in storage recently. Sigh.

 

[cbwjm]

Ive already commented a while back but I think that i would add the cleave rules from ACKs to replace the ability of a fighter to make an attack against all creatures with less than 1 hit die. Basically, it allows you to make a single cleave attack whenever you drop an enemy up to a maximum of your level (so even a first level fighter could make a second attack if they killed a kobold). I'd probably also open this up to other warrior groups whether or not they have the ability in 2e (which I think was optional anyway).

Weappn groups would be used, much like the Baldur's Gate games and specialisation would be specialisation in the weapon group rather than an individual weapon.

 

[see]

Use THAC10.

The way you calculate your THAC10 is simple enough; subtract 10 from the THAC0. Now, for every point of AC the target has under 10, you need to roll 1 more than your THAC10 on the d20.

Swapping a subtraction operation (subtract AC and compare to THAC0) with a counting operations is much, much easier for most people to do correctly.

Now, swapping to ascending AC and "attack bonus" (calculated by 20 minus THAC0) works even better, but is also more prep work.

 

[Stormonu]

I partly kept the demi-human limits in - raised the "max" by two levels and just made it they needed double XP past the "max" level to keep advancing.

Also used "open-ended" rolls for attacks - if you rolled a 20, you hit and rolled an additional attack. This could lead to more attacks/hits - I think the record was somewhere around six 20's in a roll.

Also had a "critical failure" table too, though I can't seem to find it.

 

[Jack Daniel]

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[Mannahnin]

House rules I remember from our 2E days:

-Max HP at 1st level
-Roll 4d6 drop the lowest for ability scores, and roll three sets, choose the one you like
-Clerics don't have to prepare spells
-Flanking. We did combat on a hex map- for each additional attacker (beyond the first) engaging a single defender, each attacker gets +1 to hit, to a max of +5.

Optional rules from the actual books that I remember being important were-

-Death's Door (death actually occurs at -10 HP, not 0).
-Trading Non-weapon Proficiencies for additional weapon profs (per the Complete Fighter's Handbook, IIRC)
-The rules for creating your own character class from the DMG. After a while our main DM fell in love with these, and we began using them almost exclusively instead of the regular classes. He also used this as a vehicle for detailing his campaign worlds, and he created expanded charts for each new campaign, with tons of custom abilities you could choose, varied spell progression charts, etc.