D&D 5E what is it about 2nd ed that we miss?

[TwoSix]

I remember greatly enjoying them when we played them, but looking back it seemed like a powergamer's playground...

Oh, it was.... <nostalgic sigh>

 

[Ancalagon]

The High Level Campaigns book still sees use behind the scenes at my table, and I liked a lot of stuff from Spells & Magic. The only one I had no real use for was Combat & Tactics, to be honest.

I haven't looked at it in *ages* but I remember thinking at the time that the high level campaign book was pretty stellar - useful for any campaign as soon as you hit level 7-8 really, at least in the advice on how to organize and run thing. A lot of that stuff should have been in the DMG

Though I remember a game I joined a while after it began; I took over an NPC kobold thief. The rest of the party consisted of a "paladin," a "wizard," and a "cleric" - in quotes here because they had all used the point building system to hybridize the living daylights out of the classes.

They could all do everything but sucked at EVERYTHING. My kobold ended up being the most effective character in the group, and I also leveled circles around them.

That to me was the biggest problem with the Player's Option stuff - it just wasn't very good at doing what it was supposed to do.

Good times.

That is... peculiar. I remember building a fierce cleric of doom that was basically *almost* as good as a fighter but with, you know, clerical magic. All you had to do was sacrifice half of your sphere and there you go. The 3.0 battle-cleric, you could build that in 2.5.

Are you sure they weren't a bunch of bards?

 

[billd91]

I understand your notion, but I disagree that the options were bad/harmful.

D&D needed to give players options to remain competitive in the entertainment industry. Internet, nintendo, cd players, xbox, shopping malls, after school activities all "give the players options" for entertainment, without requiring books, gasoline, or 8 hours of scheduled gametime.

I feel that the argument would be better said as "The lack of player options, lack of internet, lack of competition in entertainment industry, and low cost of living allowed D&D and Creative Roleplaying to thrive". I would strongly agree with that !

I'd argue that Skills and Powers was horrible. It masqueraded partly as a system for building races but really screwed the pooch on it, as far as I was concerned. The min-max heavy dual stats didn't help either. It cured me of any interest in the PO line.

 

[billd91]

Now that is one house rule i would love to live by.....

EDIT: did any of you 2E veterans, managed to pull off a 1E ranger in 2E? And how?

We converted the surprise abilities to the d10 system used in 2e and used the rest of it straight up. Worked just fine.

 

[pemerton]

It led to the greater focus on tactical battlemat play over TotM, and a focus on greater amount of player-driven build customization. Both concepts that, in the '90s, were exactly what I was looking for D&D to do.

Oh, it was.... <nostalgic sigh>

I played a S&P campaign back in '96-'97. My cleric was pretty broken (d10 hp, good weapon spec options, maybe fighter THACO? - I can't remember that one; but I do remember lightning bolts as cleric spells).

I don't think the customisation options, and the balance between them, had been fully thought through!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't think the customisation options, and the balance between them, had been fully thought through!

That's a bit of an understatement. Using those customization options, you could turn a cleric into full fighter (plus some spells), or into a wizard with plate armor and better HP; they just had so many useless spheres that you could trade away! And I don't think I ever saw a weapon-user lacking specialization once that option became available.

 

[Henry]

I played a S&P campaign back in '96-'97. My cleric was pretty broken (d10 hp, good weapon spec options, maybe fighter THACO? - I can't remember that one; but I do remember lightning bolts as cleric spells).

I don't think the customisation options, and the balance between them, had been fully thought through!

Our group had one of my friends playing a character that was cherry-picked "built" using those rules. He was a dwarf who could use weapons like a fighter, spells like a mage (except for the scalpel-like cutting out of schools he never used anyway) and a little bit of clerical healing to boot. (I honestly can't remember the specifics since it was 20 years ago now, just the effects of what he could do). We never called the character by his name, we always called him the player's "dwarf thing," because he wasn't a fleshed out PC so much as a Frankenstein's Monster of class features.

As in,

"Hey, Joe, are you playing your Dwarf Thing for tonight's game?"

 

[pemerton]

We never called the character by his name, we always called him the player's "dwarf thing," because he wasn't a fleshed out PC so much as a Frankenstein's Monster of class features.

As in,

"Hey, Joe, are you playing your Dwarf Thing for tonight's game?"

My cleric didn't have this problem, at least. He had a name (Thurgon) and a personality and was a pretty core PC in the game.

I should add, though, that part of his personality involved being a religious fanatic, for which I earned some bonus build points!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

He was a dwarf who could use weapons like a fighter, spells like a mage (except for the scalpel-like cutting out of schools he never used anyway) and a little bit of clerical healing to boot. (I honestly can't remember the specifics since it was 20 years ago now, just the effects of what he could do). We never called the character by his name, we always called him the player's "dwarf thing," because he wasn't a fleshed out PC so much as a Frankenstein's Monster of class features.

To be fair, this is a failure on the part of the DM and the player to integrate this class variant into the world. If the class is common enough for a player to be one, then there should be a whole organization full of those somewhere in the world.

Really, aside from the massive balance issue, the real problem with Skills & Powers was that it was labelled "Player's Option" - as though the players could just unilaterally opt into using whatever they wanted, regardless of whether it made sense for the world. I mean, the option to play a cleric with wizard spells and fighter THAC0 had always existed in 2E, but nobody made much use of it while it was relegated to one massive sidebar in the DMG.

 

[Bera]

I played a S&P campaign back in '96-'97. My cleric was pretty broken (d10 hp, good weapon spec options, maybe fighter THACO? - I can't remember that one; but I do remember lightning bolts as cleric spells).

I don't think the customization options, and the balance between them, had been fully thought through!

So, the character you describe is relatively similar to the Crusader option, but on steroids. It looks possibly broken on the surface because of the warrior thac0, but not actually bonus attacks. As someone who played some of the Spells and Magic classes, you really do feel the pinch of a small spell selection, so the pre-made crusader, monk, and shaman classes are about on par with the other classes of 2nd edition. Unless you swap most of your small selection of crusader spells out for wizard spells and gain bonus attacks for specialization, in which case you're just a slightly watered down fighter who advances like a cleric and casts pretty strong wizard spells.

The system worked fairly well when it was guided by roleplaying concerns and character concepts, but could be horribly broken if the players picked things for pure power and worked up a concept after the fact.