What were the problems with 2nd ed?

[Twowolves]

Double post, a thousand pardons.

 

[Twowolves]

I haven't read the entire thread, so please forgive me if these points are addressed elsewhere.

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.

ALL of these were like this in 1st ed, so it's not something wrong with *just* 2nd ed.

* There's something like 9 different saving throws types, each different for every class.

Five kinds, and they were the same as 1st ed again. They are the same 5 categories, but each class is better at one type than others, and they level progression is different. But again, not every class is different, every type of class is (fighters, rangers and paladins all have the same chart, rogues and bards share a chart, etc).

* There are no hand-to-hand combat rules if you're not a Monk. Wait, there were no Monks in 2E.

There were hand to hand unarmed rules in 2nd ed, right in the PHB. They were silly and ignorant, but they were in the core books. And they were expanded upon in the Complete Fighter book, and greatly expanded upon in the Complete Ninja handbook. There were also monks in the Complete Priest's book, the Complete Ninja's book, and a full 1-20 level base class in the Scarlett Brotherhood book for Greyhawk.

* 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.

Again, all of which were the same in 1st ed. I ran a regular campaign for years and the highest level PC was 9th. And we never complained about it, really. Gaining a level was a big event, and you had lots of time to get the hang of what you could do before having to rewrite your sheet the next time you level up.

The not getting more hit dice (note: you still got hit POINTS, just not dice) past name level wasn't so bad when you consider that by the time you have over 50hp, the nature of the game shifts away from the importance of hp. Instead of piling up huge numbers of hp for both PCs and NPCs/monsters, (for which clerical healing couldn't ever keep up anyway, barring Heal spells), most fights became sort of paper/rock/scissors, where you beat monsters not by doing damage to them, but by destroying them outright (Disintegrate didn't do damage, it just, well, disintegrated you), removing them from the fight (Maze, Imprisonment, Otto's Irresistable Dance), or otherwise neutralizing them (Hold Monster, Charm Monster, Otiluke's Resiliant Sphere). Rare were the high level spells that just dealt damage outright.

And any 2nd level wizard can be killed rather easily by a fighter with a Ring of Spell Storing that contains an Anti-Magic Shell, so it wasn't quite the wizard lovefest some make it out to be.

I agree that 2nd edition had some problems, most of which were grandfathered in from 1st ed. The roll high/roll low/roll % thing was a problem. The front end-loaded nature of kits was a problem. The splatbook powercreep was a problem (Complete Book of Elves, anyone?). The completely crappy adventures were a huge problem (dungeons weren't "cool" anymore, whole adventures with little or no maps but lots of boxed text were, apparantly). 3rd ed was a huge leap forward, but there is still a market for 1st/2nd style gaming, as to the popularity of Castles and Crusades will attest.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

ALL of these were like this in 1st ed, so it's not something wrong with *just* 2nd ed.

True, but some of us were introduced to DnD in 2e and have little to no knowledge of 1e. I think of this thread as a comparison between 2e and 3e (rather than 1e compared to anything).

 

[seskis281]

The one thing to say -

Many of the things "disliked" here (such as Kits, the AC, etc.) are still liked by others... just about every thing from any edition that is one person's "broken part" is fine to someone else...

...except...


THACO. This is the one thing that I have heard near universal hatred of, from OD&Ders, to 1e'ers, to d20 and 3.xers, even from devotees of 2e.

I'm sure there are a very few who go yay at THACO, but this truly is the one concept which comes closest to uniting old schoolers, new schoolers, gamists, simulationists, what have you lol.

 

[billd91]

I'm sure there are a very few who go yay at THACO, but this truly is the one concept which comes closest to uniting old schoolers, new schoolers, gamists, simulationists, what have you lol.

When THAC0 first appeared, we said "Yay, THAC0." That was because it freed us from having to look up whether or not someone hit in a table in the DMG. It also meant, when fully implemented in 2e (though it originally appeared in 1e), that there was no longer a segment of the hit chart of repeated 20s that never made any sense.

 

[Herzog]

I think the main problem with AD&D was that it focussed on restrictions and options.

The core rules contained a large set of restrictions, most of them have already been mentioned: Max lvls of demi-humans, only demi-humans can multiclass, only humans can dualclass (or was it the other way around? I forgot). You only have a small selection of weapon proficiencies and non-weapon proficiencies. If you don't have the proficiency, you can't use the weapon/skill.

Then came the options. The options focussed on expanding by introducing new rules.

What was missing was a (simple, consistent) set of rules describing what to do when someone wanted to do something for which he didn't have the option/proficiency/whatever.

Herzog

 

[teitan]

I think he means that there was no core class monk (which there wasn't).

Well certainly but the thing is that even with that the 1e stuff was still useable with 2e and even to that in the later years, they published a monk class in the Greyhawk stuff on the Scarlet Brotherhood and I believe in the FR stuff as well. Kind of why I like 1e and 2e a little better than 3e is that I could crossover the products with little to no work.

I play 3.5 but I prefer 3.0 and even then I am getting back to Old School because on one hand I look very much forward to 4e but also I am extremely hesitant about it because all the praise I have seen of D&DExp. has been about the con itself rather than the game and what I have read of the game says it doesn't reflect D&D well but is still a good game, just different.

 

[teitan]

I learned how to play D&D the summer before 2e was released and when 2e was released we did NOT like it. LOL. We thought a few things were cool like the thief skills but Rangers became the suck and the Priests were cool but not clearly explained or handled in the PHB in our opinion. I had no problems with Thac0, and kind of prefer it because it isn't an issue of escalation of numbers. Nobody seemed to understand NWPs either, I had a guy DMing me in a 2e game about 2 years ago and he had been playing for almost 12 years and I had to show him that you got bonus NWPs for having a high intelligence. Almost nobody understood how they worked mechanically (and some PENALIZED YOU!!!!!). I hated the Optional "Non-optional" rules like NWPs and Priests because they were so poorly implemented. But that was just the initial reaction. We did a hybrid game for awhile. When 1e stuff started getting scarce in 1991-92 (TSR was still releasing 1e materials into the first few years of 2e) I took a second look at it and we went full conversion but I got disgusted with AD&D a few years later, in 1996 or so because of the rules bloat and all the material left out of boxed sets (like the FR boxed set which excluded information on Priests whereas other boxed sets had included that material) and the Player's Option series etc. GH98 was my final straw. It was so poorly handled...

Looking back though, I love 1e and 2e with all their warts over 3e because even with all the sub systems, it was less complicated to DM and create adventures. I even love kits. I scoff at the idea of classes being balanced because that was the DM's job and TSR's job was to give us stuff that could be fun to play and things like the Bladesinger were fun to play.