What was so bad about the Core 2e rules? Why is it the red-headed stepchild of D&D?

[Hussar]

2E core rules stripped out too much and left it flavorlless. I was actually very happy when 2E came out because I could confidently stop buying anything from TSR and save some money.

Things it took out -- Subclasses. Half-orcs. Monks. Gygax's voice. Clerics became priests. Didn't like initiative rules. Priest spheres were more complicated. Thief skill point fiddliness were more complicated. Demons and devils. Magic item price values. Magic item creation guidelines. Illusionists.

Like a lot of off-edition tweaking, it seemed to make fiddly changes in systems without understanding the intent or integration of the original system.

Funnily enough, everything you list as a negative, I think of as a positive, save the whole demons/tanari thing.

One thing I'm curious about though, what difference do sub-classes make? Did it make any difference that rangers were listed as a thing as themselves, rather than a sub-class of fighter? That's one change that seems so innocuous.

 

[RFisher]

I mean just the basic 2e rules. What was so bad about them?

Haven’t we already had multiple threads about this recently? Can’t someone with search permission just post some links to ’em?

My short summary of my position: 2e had a lot of good ideas, but I found very few of them to pan out well in play.

2. Non-weapon proficiencies were formally introduced and gave just the right amount of flavor to a character, without giving it a burdensome mechanic at the same time.

From the beginning, I always saw NWP as a sad kludge. Still, I fully embraced them. In the end, though, I felt that neither the flavor nor the mechanics were sufficiently better than what you could do ad hoc to make them worthwhile.

I liked 2e well enough. I happily upgraded when it came out. It was a 2e campaign that started me back towards being a D&D fan again. It just happens to now be my least favorite edition of the game. (Well, except maybe for 4e. I still don’t have a firm opinion about it.)

 

[Spatula]

I mean just the basic 2e rules. What was so bad about them?

They published the monsters in a looseleaf format, allowing you to expand your monster "book" with supplements, rather than lugging around multiple books and wondering which one has which monsters (good). But they put different monsters on both sides of the pages, sometimes ones starting with different letters (i.e. there's no "X" or "Y" monster in this supplement, so a page has a "W" monster on one size and a "Z" monster on the back), making it impossible to actually organize the pages (bad).

Also the silly demon/devil skittishness.

Other than that, I think that you're asking after a ghost - who is actually complaining about basic 2e, aside from perhaps some fringe 1e grognards or Gygax worshippers? It's been remarked before that 2e more or less reflected the house rules of your average 1e game, and I think that's accurate enough.

Now, one could point out flaws in the system, but they would be equally applicable to 1e.

 

[2WS-Steve]

Echoing some of what's been said --

1) I was expecting/hoping for bigger changes
2) It felt more vanilla than 1e with all it's unusual classes and calling a demon a demon (though the setting books that came later were often cool).

That said, it was a cleaner rules-set and if we played D&D we played 2e.

I think there was another effect at least for me and my group -- when 2e came out we had grown into our college years and were looking for more experimental stuff.

D&D was what we played as kids, and 2e getting rid of demons at that time made it even more the case that it seemed to be moving toward kids as we moved towards being adults.

By the time 3e came around we were no longer concerned with being 'adults' so that problem went away.

And I suspect that a lot of gamers picked up the hobby at around the same age as my group since that was the 80s heyday of D&D, and if a bunch of them transitioned to college age at the same time as us and had a set of similar psychological changes, then maybe that's part of the explanation.

That was also the time frame where more 'mature' games like Vampire: tM and experimental games like Ars Magica exploded.

 

[delericho]

To a certain extent, I think 2nd Edition suffers for being the 'in-between' edition. Those looking for an old-school game will naturally gravitate towards 1st Edition, BECM D&D or OD&D. Meanwhile, 2nd Edition doesn't have the cleaned up mechanics of 3e and beyond. As such, it's not going to have too many fans.

Personally, I never played 1st Edition, but came to 2nd from BEC D&D (we never quite got to 'M'). At the time, it felt like a massive improvement on what we had had before. With hindsight, I think that while AD&D was, overall, a better game, a lot of the so-called 'improvements' were nothing of the sort (Exceptional Strength, all those fiddly little modifiers for ability scores, the broken multiclassing, and others). I think most of them were AD&D elements, though, and not unique to 2nd Edition.

(Incidentally, this also mirrors my feelings about 3.5e. On balance, I think it is a better game than 3.0e. However, many of the 'improvements' that were introduced were nothing of the sort.)

Specific weaknesses of 2nd Edition:

The DMG is almost completely useless. Apart from the treasure tables and the lists of magic items, there is nothing of value therein.

The Monstrous Compendium was a good idea in principle, but a total failure in practice. As was mentioned, as soon as loose-leaf sheets contained different monsters on each side, it was impossible to keep them organised, defeating the purpose of the folder. This was, however, massively improved when they replaced the MC with the Monstrous Manual.

 

[MyISPHatesENWorld]

For starters, 1e books felt like manuals for adventuring. 2e books felt like instructions for a game.

A big dislike was the stuff removed, Assassins, Half-Orcs, the three-class Bard, Monk, psionics, everything from Unearthed Arcana, etc.

1e wasn't a system in the way people tend to look at RPG systems today, or even the way they were looked at at the time 2e was published. It was a collection of text, rules, charts and tables that enabled simulating going on adventures.

2e feels like they put more emphasis on making it look like nice, neat and orderly than making an improvement or expansion of AD&D. Then they removed some things that didn't appeal to some people and added a few bits here and there to spruce it up. But it still wasn't a system, just a collection of text, rules, charts and tables edited for (bland) style over substance,

It was like someone trimmed an apple tree into a pretty shape as you would a hedge, then hung some lights on it. It looks nice and some people like that, but you lose a lot of fruit.

2e was my least favorite edition of DND. Not counting that Basic, Expert, Cyclopedia stuff, which I consider to be some kind of "Joanie Loves Chachi" spin-off.

 

[avin]

My knowledge of AD&D is low. If I record well I've played two times on table: a Bladesinger and a Ranger, later converted to 3.0.

Played Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape CRPGs.

What I dislike:

- THACO
- Negative AC
- Different XP for different classes
- Class/race limitations (no gnome paladins)

 

[Draksila]

Demons and Devils

You know, for as much as people gripe that TSR was 'bowing to the religious groups' by renaming devils/demons/angels, I was actually glad for it. For one thing, I've spent a good amount of time living in the Bible Belt. Roleplayers are still persecuted in the American southeast, especially in the rural areas, and a lot of us were glad to have something we could refer to without the Bible-thumping kooks attacking us at every turn. In addition, I frankly found the new terms better. It has always bothered me to use Christian terminology in games set in a fantasy world that should have no vestiges of our own world attached to it. As such, I am a big fan of settings that have their own calendars and names for timekeeping, their own holidays, and their own monetary systems... and I am, to this day, a huge fan of the terms baatezu and tanar'ri. To me, those names are exotic and alien and sinister; creatures unfathomable and malevolent. 'Demons' and 'devils' just make me want to find a young priest and an old priest.

Anyway, I guess my point is that the gripe you see constantly on the internet that 'OMG 2E stoled our devilz n demunz!' isn't universal. Some people liked the change. And, as previous posters have noted, some of us liked 2E. For some reason I could run epic storylines talked about for years afterward in 2E... in 3E, I got bored and gave up by the time the party hit about 10th. Not knocking 3E, because I liked playing it. I just hated DMing it.

 

[Draksila]

My knowledge of AD&D is low. If I record well I've played two times on table: a Bladesinger and a Ranger, later converted to 3.0.

Played Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape CRPGs.

What I dislike:

- THACO
- Negative AC
- Different XP for different classes
- Class/race limitations (no gnome paladins)

I never found the math for THAC0 or negative ACs to be a problem, personally, but that last issue with class and race? It was for game balance, from the designer's viewpoint... we broke it at our gaming table all the time without any awkward effects. Initially, I was a purist and wouldn't allow combos that weren't in the core books. I then made the mistake of telling one of my players that if he got a 01 on percentile dice he could play a dwarven wizard. He made the roll (which was amusing in itself), played the character, and none of us saw what the big deal was. So we played fast and loose on it from then out, and set the level limits to a comparable class that the race did allow.

 

[Volaran]

- Bards cast more damaging fireballs and lightning bolts than magic-users of equal experience points. This gets really distorted in high-level play (which our group did a lot of). When a bard achieves 20d6 fireballs, a magic-user is casting 15d6 fireballs.

Checking my 2e PHB, fireballs, lightning bolts, etc. cap at 10d6. Perhaps this was a byproduct of a hybrid 1e/2e game?