What were the problems with 2nd ed?

[Final Attack]

I run a 3rd ed game with some of my friends. I remember playing a few 2nd ed games but never really caring about the books or the rules. I just went along with it.

Now with the release of 4th ed all my mates are snearing at information released from WotC and saying "4th is combat based", "4th makes things harder", and "4th is TOO high magic".

All flawed arguments in my book, but then I hear them harping on about 2nd ed, and how 'interesting' things where back then. How full plate mail was near the hardest thing to get, and magic items where truely rare. Pretty much giving me the impression that 2nd ed was the pinnacle of DnD.

I imagine though there must have been some problems with 2nd ed or else everyone would still be playing it.

A short bullet point list would be good. Give me something to shoot at them next time they start their trip down memory lane.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

One 'word': THAC0

 

[DeusExMachina]

Spells were even more ridiculously overpowered than they were in 3e. Charm person on a low intelligence character would last for months for example...

 

[Kvantum]

Some of the problems with 2e were the same with 1e, with the mechanics not being as elegant as they could be, six or seven different ways of doing what were very clsoely related things. There were times when you wanted to roll high, other times when you wanted to roll low, sometimes you were rolling percentiles for things, sometimes just a d6, or even rarely a d10 (surprise, for example).

Then there were the kits. Kits were what prestige classes are to 3e - ways of expanding your character beyond plain vanilla wizards or fighters or whatnot. The problem was that they were radically unbalanced,both over time and with each other. If one compared kits from the early 2e releases vs. the latter 2e books you could have extreme differences in power (not unlike 3e, just not as bad - IMO) - see some of the ones from Complete Fighter or Thief as compared to ones like Complete Bard's Blade or Complete Paladin's Wyrmslayer.

Then there were all the settings, and man, were there a LOT of them. Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, the familiar big 3, plus Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur, and Maztica, all expansions to FR set on Toril, and the other, more experimental campaign settings, such as Birthright, Dark Sun (my all-time favorite ), Council of Wyrms, Planescape (loved it!), Spelljammer, Mystara (the original D&D homeworld) and its expansion Red Steel, Ravenloft, a few Lankhmar books, and probably one or two more here and there. It was just too much to keep up with. It fractured TSR's market to the point where it was one of the things (though hardly the only thing) that helped bring the company down.

Beyond a few kits that were never really given a good conversion, and some of the settings that have never been given a (formal) conversion worth a damn, there really isn't a whole lot in 2e that I can say I wish was available for 3e. Planescape, or at least more notice of the planes sure would be nice, as would a Dark Sun conversion that I actually liked, though I'm beginning to suspect that just maybe that one's impossible under any sort of 3.X rules system.

The planes, incidentally are one of the few things that's been essentially constant and continuous since 1e, more or less unchanged for those using the Great Wheel cosmology in 3e (other than the poor modrons, crushed beneath the jack-booted heel of those damned Arcadian interloper bugs, err, formians), and that's one of the reasons why I'm sitting out 4e, myself.

Anyway, back to the 3e grognard hole I crawled out of.

 

[WayneLigon]

Oh, lordie, where to start?
* Only demihumans can multiclass
* Demihumans have limits as to the level they can attain in several classes (though, for some reason, never thief), sometimes quite low.
* Armor Class goes from 10 to -10, 10 being your bare skin.
* There's something like 9 different saving throws types, each different for every class.
* There are no hand-to-hand combat rules if you're not a Monk. Wait, there were no Monks in 2E.
* Clerics might as well never take any spells but healing spells. They can't switch out spells.
* You stop gaining hit dice after your 'name' level but that doesn't much matter since the XP tables roughly double the number of XP you need for each level; by the time you're worrying about not getting hit dice anymore you're up in the millions of XP. Very few people ever saw past about 12th level in a normal campaign. That took about 12-20 months to attain
* After about, oh, 10th level mages become the kings of the game and everyone else is support staff.

Magic items were not all that rare if you used the treasure you see in modules as an example; usually it was chock full of magic items. Mainly because unlike 3E, many monsters in 2E are invulnerable to weapons that are not over a certain '+' value.

 

[Revinor]

- variable duration rounds (spells with duration of 1 turn were 10 minutes outside combat and 3 minutes inside combat)
- too long rounds (1 arrow per 20 seconds?)
- dual classing rules
- overpowered multiclassing
- low level mages being worse than useless
- very deadly monsters without a real way to protect/heal yourself (energy drains, stat drains, aging, death poisons)
- extreme dependency on stats (fighter with 18 strength was a lot better than one with 17 str)

I could go with a list a lot longer if I would starts listing things which were NOT there.

 

[TerraDave]

One 'word': THAC0

But that is just one word.

There are many. And many threads on this topic.

The creative thing would be do somehow do paralels of the switch from 2E to 3E and 3E to 4E.

Hmm.

Before 3E, all editions of D&D where basically meant to be at least loosely compatible, and 2E AD&D was specifically designed so you could still use 1E adventures with it.

Whether it was for this reason, or for whatever reason, 2nd edition brought in a lot of rules bagage from 1E. It cleaned up some stuff, but not nearly enough. At the same time, it lost a lot of the spirit and attitude that made 1E fun.

The approach for 3E was to fix the mechanics, while trying to keep a lot of past details and even trying to get some of the spirit back. And I think it was pretty successful (though more with mecachnics then style).

What does this have to do with 4E? Basically they don't want another 2E. They learned that it was ok to try to fix gameplay and mechanics, and keep the game closer to the frontier of rpg design.

But they seem to have gone farther in that goal, tweeking more details then basically any past new edition. And, they have even tried to update the attitude!

I think willingness to take on sacred cows will work well for 4E. As for the new flavour they are adding, I am not so sure. But I always have my first edition books and (gods forbid) my own imagination for that.

 

[MichaelK]

Iterative attacks which featured 2 attacks 1 round, 1 attack the next, then 2 attacks again.

Awkward multiclassing/dualclassing rules.

Limited extra options for characterisation with no prestige classes, no feats.

Saving throws were very specific with a lot of overlap, for example paralyzation/poison/death magic, rod/staff/wand, spell, breath weapon and I think another one. This wasn't as easy to use as reflex, will and fortitude.

Demihuman level limits.

Psionics really were busted back in 2e.

Druids having to replace their superiors to gain a level.

Complex tables for attributes. (though some features of these tables were awesome and I miss them).

And these were the only real problems with 2nd ed in my opinion.

One 'word': THAC0

Thac0 is the DC, AC is the bonus to the roll.

I'm constantly surprised why people have difficulty with this. Not that I don't consider BAB an improvement, it's just not as difficult as everyone seems to make out. I can explain it in 1 simple sentence

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Wait, there were no Monks in 2E.

You stop gaining hit dice after your 'name' level but that doesn't much matter since the XP tables roughly double the number of XP you need for each level; by the time you're worrying about not getting hit dice anymore you're up in the millions of XP. Very few people ever saw past about 12th level in a normal campaign. That took about 12-20 months to attain.

very deadly monsters without a real way to protect/heal yourself (energy drains, stat drains, aging, death poisons)

Druids having to replace their superiors to gain a level.

Then there were all the settings, and man, were there a LOT of them. Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, the familiar big 3, plus Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur, and Maztica, all expansions to FR set on Toril, and the other, more experimental campaign settings, such as Birthright, Dark Sun (my all-time favorite ), Council of Wyrms, Planescape (loved it!), Spelljammer, Mystara (the original D&D homeworld) and its expansion Red Steel, Ravenloft, a few Lankhmar books, and probably one or two more here and there.

Not bugs. Features.

 

[withak]

I actually play 2e currently -- not by choice, mind you, but a game with friends is a good time regardless of system or edition. It's the edition everyone knows reasonably well, and the group owns tons of 2e books. Truth be told, we have a lot of fun despite the system. I hope to convince everyone to try 4e sooner or later, when it's my turn to DM.

My character is a 6th-level dwarf cleric. When the fights are tough, he's a healbot. When they're not, he's a suboptimal melee combatant.

Random thoughts, off the top of my head...

Death and dying rules are a lot harsher. Hit 0 hp? You're dead. Our DMs have houseruled this to make characters below 6th level less death-prone by adding negative hit point rules, but once you hit 6th level, you can no longer go negative. Suddenly, Mr. Cleric is much more important, and since I can't do any spontaneous casting, I basically fill up on healing spells.

We're constantly asking each other "Do I want to roll high, or low, here?" It's a source of constant confusion.

There are fewer hard-and-fast rules for skill adjudication, which leads to a lot of inconsistency. Add to this a horrid house rule: the Perception score, rolled at character creation. A single d20 determines how perceptive your character is, forever. Our scout-type characters -- the ranger and the thief -- have perception scores of 4 and 2, respectively. Needless to say, we get surprised and ambushed a lot. (Not to mention lost, because our ranger also sucks at tracking.)

Only the thief and ranger have thief-style skills readily available, and they use a wacky percentage-based, conditional system. Want to hide or sneak as a cleric? Better hope the situation is right and the DM's feeling accommodating.

Saving throw categories are seemingly arbitrary, based off of the type of item or creature that produced the effect. There are five categories (from memory): Breath Weapon, Death Magic, Poison, Rod/Staff/Wand, and... Spell?

There are different XP tables for each class. (The unified progression, along with the unified d20 + modifier mechanic, were the 'Hallelujah!' moments for me when 3e was released.) XP is handed out not only for combat, but also for various class-based goals, which, while a nice idea, leads to a lot of disparity in advancement.

The spells, and how they work, are a lot more hodgepodge and arbitrary. In 3e, you can give a spell a quick glance and know basically how it works, for the most part. There are some 2e spells that require several readings to decipher.

Initiative is rolled anew every round. In theory, this makes for more dynamic combat. In practice, it bogs things down significantly, and causes a lot of confusion. Weapons have "speeds" which affect initiative, as do casting times on spells.

THAC0. Ick. The mechanic is unintuitive, and the progression charts are nonsensical.

Percentile strength. Ick. Only a Warrior class (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin) can have "exceptional" strength, and there are various categories included in the 18 Strength score based on a single percentile roll.

I'm sure I could come up with more.