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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
Thinking of doing up some 2e house rules.
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<blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 6129192" data-attributes="member: 8863"><p>Some of that I'm considering, and some of that I'm not. I'll get to specifics once I crack open the rulebooks and take a look at them. I also don't necessarily want to turn the whole thing into a 2e/3e hybrid, though 3e does have some good ideas, and early 3e felt like an attempt to clean up some of the long-standing problems of 2e. So 3e's approach makes a good baseline, but there's also ideas from Basic, 1e, 4e, and Next that can be useful as well.</p><p></p><p>Anyway Dragon 264's 10 3e inspired house rules for 2e. It was partially meant as a preview for 3e, but since I'm familiar with what 3e eventually and actually did, I won't use all of these as written. </p><p></p><p>#1: This is the ascending AC bit I mentioned above.</p><p></p><p>#2: Basically says to ignore all class restrictions and level limits on demihumans, and give a 20% XP penalty to all new classes added after the first. </p><p></p><p>I am not going to approach things exactly like this. Level limits will still be in, while class restrictions will be discarded. Human will have to get a new racial ability to compensate though, and an XP bonus is one of the things I'm considering.</p><p></p><p>#3 Use Scarlet Brotherhood for monks and assassins. Yeah, this is usually mentioned when people think of going to 2e, so it's pretty much standard. Unfortunately I don't have Scarlet Brotherhood. That's not a big deal though, monks aren't that important, and there's plenty of kits and class variants for assassins in 2e.</p><p></p><p>#4: 4d6 for stats. Yeah, that's in the 2e PHB, and it was the method I had in my games.</p><p></p><p>#5: Ignore Exceptional Strength, and have 19+ Strength start at the first percentile category. This is a pretty simple way of dealing with Exceptional Strength, but it's also vague. What do we do when we get to 25 Str? Do we stop there and ignore the unused parts of the table (because 2e stats had a range from 1-25), or do we keep going up from 25 until we get to the end of the table? I'll look at it more closely when I start examining the rules in detail.</p><p></p><p>#6: Refocus and delay options for initiative. Basically this is roll only once in combat for initiative, and sacrifice a turn to go first or last in later rounds. This one is really dependant on if I decide to roll init every round or not. It's also not a really good representation of how 3e init works either, and doing 3e init in 2e can be handled better than this if I wanted.</p><p></p><p>#7: 6 second combat round. Again this one is no big deal, you just got to make sure all the time dependant stuff with spells and such aren't messed up. And decide if spell durations should be rounds or minutes.</p><p></p><p>#8: Bonus spells for high Int or Wis. This is give all casters the same bonus spells priests get for high Wis, except wizards and bards get it from Int. I might make bards dependant on Cha instead.</p><p></p><p>#9: Rolling a 20 is a crit threat, and rolling a hit makes a crit for double damage. This is pretty close to 3e, except there's no bigger crit ranges or triple/quadruple damage. It would be no big deal to just use the 3e crit rules with 2e (or for more fun, use them together with Combat & Tactic's crit system).</p><p></p><p> #10: Spontaneous casting of healing spells for clerics and druids. Clerics and druids can sacrifice a memorized spell to heal 1d8 points of damage per spell level. <strong>Big</strong> problem here: it makes every <em>cure _ wounds</em> spell besides <em>cure light wounds</em> in 2e almost useless. This is because of how much those spells heal: cure moderate is 1d10 + 1, cure serious is 2d8 + 2, and cure critical is 3d8 + 3. Even worse, cure serious is level 4 and cure critical level 5, so priests can cure similar amounts at much lower levels. And 3e druids don't even spontaneously cast healing spells either. Needless to say I won't be using this rule. I'll probably tweak the cure spells as well: bump cure moderate to 2d6, and drop cure serious and cure critical 1 level.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Orius, post: 6129192, member: 8863"] Some of that I'm considering, and some of that I'm not. I'll get to specifics once I crack open the rulebooks and take a look at them. I also don't necessarily want to turn the whole thing into a 2e/3e hybrid, though 3e does have some good ideas, and early 3e felt like an attempt to clean up some of the long-standing problems of 2e. So 3e's approach makes a good baseline, but there's also ideas from Basic, 1e, 4e, and Next that can be useful as well. Anyway Dragon 264's 10 3e inspired house rules for 2e. It was partially meant as a preview for 3e, but since I'm familiar with what 3e eventually and actually did, I won't use all of these as written. #1: This is the ascending AC bit I mentioned above. #2: Basically says to ignore all class restrictions and level limits on demihumans, and give a 20% XP penalty to all new classes added after the first. I am not going to approach things exactly like this. Level limits will still be in, while class restrictions will be discarded. Human will have to get a new racial ability to compensate though, and an XP bonus is one of the things I'm considering. #3 Use Scarlet Brotherhood for monks and assassins. Yeah, this is usually mentioned when people think of going to 2e, so it's pretty much standard. Unfortunately I don't have Scarlet Brotherhood. That's not a big deal though, monks aren't that important, and there's plenty of kits and class variants for assassins in 2e. #4: 4d6 for stats. Yeah, that's in the 2e PHB, and it was the method I had in my games. #5: Ignore Exceptional Strength, and have 19+ Strength start at the first percentile category. This is a pretty simple way of dealing with Exceptional Strength, but it's also vague. What do we do when we get to 25 Str? Do we stop there and ignore the unused parts of the table (because 2e stats had a range from 1-25), or do we keep going up from 25 until we get to the end of the table? I'll look at it more closely when I start examining the rules in detail. #6: Refocus and delay options for initiative. Basically this is roll only once in combat for initiative, and sacrifice a turn to go first or last in later rounds. This one is really dependant on if I decide to roll init every round or not. It's also not a really good representation of how 3e init works either, and doing 3e init in 2e can be handled better than this if I wanted. #7: 6 second combat round. Again this one is no big deal, you just got to make sure all the time dependant stuff with spells and such aren't messed up. And decide if spell durations should be rounds or minutes. #8: Bonus spells for high Int or Wis. This is give all casters the same bonus spells priests get for high Wis, except wizards and bards get it from Int. I might make bards dependant on Cha instead. #9: Rolling a 20 is a crit threat, and rolling a hit makes a crit for double damage. This is pretty close to 3e, except there's no bigger crit ranges or triple/quadruple damage. It would be no big deal to just use the 3e crit rules with 2e (or for more fun, use them together with Combat & Tactic's crit system). #10: Spontaneous casting of healing spells for clerics and druids. Clerics and druids can sacrifice a memorized spell to heal 1d8 points of damage per spell level. [b]Big[/b] problem here: it makes every [i]cure _ wounds[/i] spell besides [I]cure light wounds[/I] in 2e almost useless. This is because of how much those spells heal: cure moderate is 1d10 + 1, cure serious is 2d8 + 2, and cure critical is 3d8 + 3. Even worse, cure serious is level 4 and cure critical level 5, so priests can cure similar amounts at much lower levels. And 3e druids don't even spontaneously cast healing spells either. Needless to say I won't be using this rule. I'll probably tweak the cure spells as well: bump cure moderate to 2d6, and drop cure serious and cure critical 1 level. [/QUOTE]
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Thinking of doing up some 2e house rules.
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