Things I miss from 2nd edition

[Vaxalon]

I miss all the weapons and equipment...the equipment now just seems so generalized...

How many different weapons did the characters in your game use?

If you ask me, I like the fact that you can give a good reason to wield every weapon in the list. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses.

In 1e and 2e there were no reasons to use many of the weapons on the long, long lists.

 

[Psion]

Skills & Powers chargen (yes, it was hosed. But once you tuned it up, it gave you lots of flexibility)

Clerics (3e Domains were a big gripe point for me since my thiefy goddess and my illusion goddess had the exact same domains. I am a little happier now I have bolstered the domains list.)

Planescape (okay, its not gone gone, but until the 3e PS campaign setting comes out [coff... Ashy ... coff] it is difficult to run.)

 

[Staffan]

I think specialty clerics were better in 2e sure they was not core mechanic and in a book like Faith and Avatars some specialty clerics were hideously over-powered while some weren't worth the trouble but overall you could get quite a bit of flavor into the cleric. Flavor that the domain system hasn't been able match yet.

Specialty priests were a core mechanic, it just wasn't very fleshed-out. The PHB section on priests was basically: "Pick a few spheres to match the deity, let the priest use a few weapons and some armor, and give him a granted power or two. Oh, and here are two examples: the cleric and the druid." The Complete Priest's Handbook went a little further, and codified Poor/Medium/Good combat abilities that corresponded to a certain number of spheres each (ignoring that some spheres were far bigger than others - compare Astral and Combat, for example) as well as give ~80 examples. Various setting books gave priest stats for those settings (starting with Forgotten Realms Adventures, I believe), Legends & Lore gave stats for real-world pantheons, and finally Spells & Magic had a point-based system you could use to design your own specialty priests.

The big problem was that these systems were all unbalanced with one another - compare a priest out of the Complete Priest's Handbook (the "weakest") with one of the monsters from Faiths & Avatars (the "strongest").

 

[Holy Bovine]

I miss the old saving throws and THACO. Granted, I know they weren't the easiest to pick up, but it was what I was raised on.

I just about fell out of my chair when I read this one

Can't say I'll ever miss THACO or 2E save tables.

I even had two players in my group who, after 8 years of playing 2E AD&D STILL hadn't mastered THACO (even with nifty little tables that I had printed out just for them - maybe they were just stupid ). They aren't in my campaign now but I think they wouldn't have had as much trouble with BAB. I picked up on it pretty fast (as did my less-than-mathmatically-inclined group).

About the only thing I can say i miss was the specialty priests but the new domains in Defenders of the Faith and the Divine & Defeated Scarred Lands book have more than made up for it IMO.

As far as weapons lists and such I too found that the vast majority of them were ignored in favour of the high/damage/speed weapons like swords, flails and daggers.

And I like the 3E artwork (certainly more than 1E and about the same as 2E) but that is a very subjective thing.