What were the problems with 2nd ed?

[kenobi65]

Are you claiming this inconsistency is a bad thing or a good thing? I'd say good.

From a flavor / fluff standpoint, it might be a good thing, if you want it to represent the idea that each spell was independently researched and developed.

From a gameplay / crunch standpoint, it's a horrible thing, because knowing how one spell worked gave you no clue as to how another spell worked. It created (IMO) more need to look everything up, which just slowed things down.

 

[jdrakeh]

Kits. I forgot about kits (or suppressed the memory). The concept of kits in and of itself was a master stroke of genius. Due to the unchecked use of freelancers, the implementation of the idea was a mechanically unbalanced nightmare with the quality of individual kits and kit books ranging from passable to game-breaking abomination (I'm looking at you Complete Book of Munchkins Elves).

 

[physics_ninja]

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.

The five saves were:

paralyzation/poison/death magic
rod/staff/wand
breath weapon
spells
petrification/polymorph

There were four types of advancement depending on your class (fighter, cleric, wizard, thief) with each class being better at one of the catagories. Clerics, for example, excelled at paralyzation/poison/death magic while wizards were good at rod/staff/wand and spells*.

However, because fighters advanced at 1 point per 2 levels, they would have some of the worst saves at 1st level and the best saves at higher levels.

The big issue was deciding if a wand of fireballs saved as a wand or spells.

*It always struck me as odd, how in 3e wizards just sucked at avoiding fireballs while in 1e and 2e they were actually quite good at it.

 

[hong]

I'm pretty sure that (in 1E, at least) saves were

Paralyze/poison/DM
Petrify/polymorph
Breath weapon
R/S/W
Spells

And you went down the list until you found one that fit the bill. So "Spells" was the catchall category for when nothing else fit.

 

[roguerouge]

Contradictory definitions of infravision and its capabilities.

Oh, heck yeah! I'll never forget being a rogue hiding in shadows against a creature with infravision. Infravision picked up heat signatures, so the best place to hide was often near a torch. Hiding from normal vision meant the shadows. Hiding in shadows specifically said that it worked against both infravision and normal sight.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

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.

*Complexity: The simple things were complex and the complex things were simple (sometimes too simple). For instance, saving throws were something used all the time but were too complex (backwards kind of like THAC0 and good luck memorizing that table!). Same with not having NWPs (what the heck were the rules for bluffing if you didn't have the Lying/Bluffing/whatchamacallit NWP?) and the spell rules weren't codified, making things harder to remember.

IMO, game rules should be simple enough to use that you don't have to look in the rule book to use them. A simple spell like Fireball, for instance, works just like that. It has a standardized range in 3e (easier to remember), standardized damage cap, standardized "spread", etc. Turning Undead was a 3.x failing, IMO, precisely because so many people couldn't memorize the table. (Doubly so, because it was actually worse than the 2e table. Liches should be hard to turn!)

Sometimes things were too simple... like monster stats. It really felt to me that every monster was the same, except for the number of hit points and (sometimes) the number of attacks.

*Ability scores. Hated them. Quick, what does Constitution 12 give you? I'd rather use lower stats that mean something that inflated stats that mean something random. Also, I like point buy, which wasn't really supported by 2e's unbalanced ability score system.

*Random irritating rules. Does anyone remember how long it took a mage to memorize their spellbook? At high levels it was a really long time! In 3.x it's one hour. A higher level mage knows more spells, but also has more experience with "cramming". A higher Int mage knows a few more spells, but their higher intelligence gives them the ability to read each spell slightly faster.

*Flexibility of classes. I blame the lack of flexibility for creating kits, which were often broken or goofy. Character flexibility seemed based on random die rolling (how well you rolled at the start, and, if a mage, what spells you rolled for ... or maybe you didn't roll for them.) 3.x wasn't that flexible but was far ahead of 2e in that area.

*Magic items: I don't know if magic items were rare, when there were no decent guidelines as to how many you should have. 3.x did me the favor of codifying this. It did me the disfavor of codifying the level so high that even giving PCs mountains of treasure (exaggeration, of course) still gave them less wealth than expected for their level. Some items were broken. I still remember a cleric I played with Charisma 5 (die rolled stats, remember?) who found an item that boost his Charisma to ... 18. What the heck?

*Armor: I don't care if AC 0 was some kind of ideal to reach. THAC0 scaled. AC did not. Same with 3.x but at least there was magic item scaling.

 

[drothgery]

In my experience, multiclassed characters were generally weaker than single-classed. They took twice as long to gain levels

Huh? The 2e XP tables were pretty much exponential until name level; multiclass characters were rarely more than a level behind the single-classed members of the party. If you didn't multiclass as a demihuman, you hadn't thought through the math.

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, what I considered problems:

Bland character classes. They tried to categorize everything into 4 archetypes - Fighter, Wizard, Mage, Rogue. Sub classes of those still existed, but they were rather bland. (Exception actually being Priests, who had some variation depending on their god, unlike the original Cleric in 1st Ed. And the Rogue too, as he could now allocate his thief skill points )

Kits - to correct the above problem (IMHO), they introduced "Kits", which were ways of modifying classes. Unfortunately, while a nice idea, in practice it didn't work so well. Some kits were incredibly overpowered

Skill System - Much like 1st Ed, skills were basically just roll under the relevent attribute to be successful. No difficulties or skill levels. And still separate from the skill system used for thief skills

 

[haakon1]

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.

Except for the part about monks and unarmed combat, that's mostly true of classic D&D (1st Edition, AD&D). It's different from 3.x, and it's more complex mechanically than the core of 3.x, but it's not like it's "wrong". The levels limits on non-humans are a game balance thing. The mages are weak at low levels (and have a low life expectancy) but strong at high levels is game balance too, I always thought (Darwinian game balance), but Gary said that hadn't been his intent in classic D&D (which 2nd was a variant on).

More interesting than classic D&D v. d20/3.x is why people who had played both AD&D and 2nd Edition "generally" (in my opinion, from my own personal views and those of everybody I gamed with) thoughts AD&D was better. That's mostly down to "feel" rather than rules:
-- Elimination of "evil" from the game, like the terms demon and evil, half-orcs, and assassins
-- Kits making stuff too powerful, though that came later
-- Writing nots as interesting, as it wasn't all Gygax

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Amen the original post. 2nd edition makes me feel like I can actually pay attention to the story instead of worrying if this thing can grapple me or not.

Contrary to popular belief, Grappling did exist in 2nd edition. It did go by a different name though.

2nd Edition PHB, page 98. Overbearing.
- Normal attack roll
- +4 or -4 to attacker for every level size difference
- -2 to attacker for every leg beyond 2 that the defender has (4 legs == -4 to attacker)
- If there are multiple attackers, use the weakest attackers attack roll, and add 1 for each attacker beyond the first
- If the attack succeeds, the defender is pulled down. A 2nd over bearing attack has the defender pinned.

The 2nd edition Combat and Tactics book adds a more detailed grappling system.

Comparing 2nd Edition Overbearing vs 3rd Edition Grapple, I make the following conclusions.

- 2nd Edition Overbearing is quicker to resolve, only use one attack roll. 3rd Edition uses two (touch attack, then opposed roll). 3 if you count the AoO.
- 3rd Edition Modifiers make a whole lot more sense. Using 2nd Edition, a Giant has a harder time succeeding with an Overbearing Attack than he would if a nearby Kobold tried to help.

Actually, the two systems are good examples of the benefits and flaws of each edition.

2nd Edition has a whole lot of rules subsystems that do not intereact with one another, and they often use mechanics that do not make a whole lot of sense. Why should a fighter with 9 Str have nearly as good a chance to succeed at Overbearing as one with 15 Str? Why does someone with 18 Str have such a huge advantage over a fighter with 15 Str, but the 15 Str fighter has no advantage over the guy with 12 Str, given the same difference in scores?

3rd Edition has a unified mechanic and subsystems that make sense and interact reasonably with other subsystems. The drawback is that some things get over complicated in practice. The difference between a 12 Str fighter and a 15 Str fighter is about the same as the difference between a 18 Str and a 15 Str fighter (example makes more sense if you call it at 12, 14, and 16). Grapple uses elements of other subsystems (a touch attack, an opposed roll). An Ogre being helped by a Kobold is going to have a better chance at winning a Grapple than the Ogre by himself (Flanking or Aid Another). Provoking an AoO makes sense given the rules set. And when you take it all into account, not only do you need to know your Grapple modifier, but you need to resolve an AoO, and make 3 or more dice rolls.

END COMMUNICATION