What were the problems with 2 edition D&D?

[Marthkus]

I keep hearing of some interesting mechanics, but what I don't hear about is the problems with 2e that are the reason people aren't playing it anymore.

It can't be just because it's a "dead system". Many people still play 3.5.

What were the problems?

[Darksol the Painbringer]

You're kidding, right?

2E, for me, was very confusing. Sure, I played it when I was very young, but I never really understood the game. The same goes for 1E (if I can call it that).

I mean, calculating whether you hit or not was dependant upon using the butt-backwards system that is THACO. To this day, I don't know what it means, or how it's calculated. The only game that I played using these similar rules was Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn (great game, by the way, despite how clunky it is), and I think maybe Icewind Dale.

The mechanics were very clunky, the concepts, although dark and fitting, simply became outdated. It's not exactly a great, easily-flowing system that is simple to pick up.

Granted, the Pathfinder/3.X system isn't much less complicated, it was still easier for me to follow than 2E or 1E.

[Zhayne]

What Darksol said. I doubt my group really used half the rules that were there.

I also found it very restrictive ... not a lot of customization options. The Player's Options books were a definite help with that.

[Brotato]

Skills and Powers also allowed you to make characters so overpowered there's really no comparison in Pathfinder. I find it humorous every time I hear a cry of "______ in Pathfinder is so OP, we need to get back to 2nd Ed!"

[KestrelZ]

Second edition D&D wasn't as easy to learn for some as 3.0 was. The following is just opinion talk on behalf of myself and some of my longer lived RPG friends, and I should add the caveat that it is biased. -

1. THACO, To hit armor class zero. Basically this was the old armor class system, where lower numbers are more desirable. Players wanted to have a negative armor class number. Players new to the game, or mathematically challenged experienced players loved that Palladium Fantasy had a simplified Armor Rating you would have to exceed with your rolls, and this also happened with 3rd edition. (Yes, I preferred Palladium Fantasy to 2nd edition D&D. It was 3.0 light in many ways from the mid-80s until 3.0 was invented).

2. Race and class restrictions. Third edition allowed any race to play any class, even if there was a "favored" class. Second edition restricted certain races from playing specific classes. There were no elven paladins in second edition by RAW.

3. No feats and few skills in second edition. Most skill checks were abstractions or class features. No second edition thief, no ability to open locked doors without magic / bashing them. Skills and feats in third edition made characters of the same class much more variable from each other. (though it unintentionally may have shortchanged the rogue by the time Pathfinder was released).

4. Second edition had time magic shenanigans. Very cool for the caster, a big headache for a GM. Seriously? You go back in time and negate four rounds of actions?

5. No challenge rating in second edition. Experienced payers and GMs could gauge what they could deal with. New GMs might do something like throw an elder red dragon at first level characters, and wonder why it was a TPK.

6. No gish in second edition. Seriously, mages could never hold a sword by RAW. Entire gaming groups made a game about how a party of mages could guide swords that were repelled from mages. Seriously, mages could never hold a sword because some law of nature in 2nd edition said the sword was repelled away from the hand of mages.

Final thoughts - third+ edition D&D was easier for new gamers to learn (and even easier for 4th edition), and characters were more complex and customizable in 3+ editions (yet not so customizable to negate the importance of classes, like 4th edition). Pathfinder has taken great strides to improve 3+ edition D&D for my personal play style.

[Matt Thomason]

The big thing for 3rd vs 2nd for me was that 3e felt like it had been... how do I put this politely? Meh, politeness be damned, the word I'm looking for is "Designed". 2e felt more like a mish-mash of random rules that had been bolted together. That may well be down to my preference for BECMI over 2e showing through though :)

On the other hand, where 3e had the advantage of mechanics that actually worked in a similar manner in every part of the system, for me it suffered by the sheer amount of mechanics it then threw in. So many exceptions that you had to take into account (it's this, except when that, unless you have this feat...) and tended to slow down play so much while players looked up whether they had any special rules pertaining to the specific circumstances they were currently in. Of course, as I keep telling people to this day (much to the abject horror of some) just because there are rules in the book for something, it doesn't mean you have to use them.

I still go with the Pathfinder Beginner Box rules as being far more towards my liking. I prefer rules that don't get in the way too much, provide reasonably fast task resolution, and let you focus on what's actually happening in-game rather than what's happening on paper.

[LazarX]

Marthkus wrote:

I keep hearing of some interesting mechanics, but what I don't hear about is the problems with 2e that are the reason people aren't playing it anymore.

It can't be just because it's a "dead system". Many people still play 3.5.

What were the problems?

Part of the problem was the fact that it WAS AD+D, a system that was so rigidly arbitrary in it's choices and that had been around long enough that the time was ripe for alternatives. When Second Edition came out, I myself decided at the time that I needed to play a system that had nothing to do with TSR, I was that tired of AD+D at the time. It would be the better part of a decade before I'd play any form of D+D again.

When 3.0 first came out, Gary Gygax and other old timers, panned it, claiming that it wasn't really "D+D". To a large extent, his comment had merit. Unlike the transition from First to Second, 3rd Edition was a sweeping rebuild from the chassis up. But it was too late. D+D would never have the near monopoly position it once had in the RPG field.

I know there are people who still enjoy Second Edition and even First. All power to them.

[Kthulhu]

A few quotes from other posts I've made about pre-d20 editions:

Kthulhu wrote:

Snorter wrote:

How would you explain AD&D to a young player who's only known 3E? How would you justify the convoluted, anti-intuitive mechanics, subsystems bolted onto subsystems, with no unifying core mechanic?

It's a system that, once you learn the basics, is actually much simpler. Unlike 3.X/PFRPG, it rarely lets mechanics get in the way of creativity. And you can both pick your nose and scratch your ass at first level, whereas in those other games, you need a bonus feat if you want to do that.

Kthulhu wrote:

ZanzerTem wrote:

THAC0 isn't that difficult. You just subtract their AC from your THAC0 to find your target number. Got a THAC0 of 19 and attacking an AC3 enemy? You need a modified 16 to hit. I find it funny when people whine about THAC0, yet Pathfinder has AC bonus, Dodge bonus, Luck bonus, Natural bonus, yada yada.

+ infinity. THAC0 is simple as hell. It takes more time by far to sort through all of Pathfinder's bonuses, conditional modifiers, etc than it does to do the substration for THAC0 that most of us learned how to do in first grade.

Kthulhu wrote:

Hama wrote:

Simple arithmetic is not troublesome.

Its not that the arithmatic itself is difficult. Its the fact that the d20 system has such a hardon for having every single roll affected by dozens of modifiers. You have your ability bonus, your level-based bonus, your trait bonus, your OTHER trait bonus, your holy bonus, your profane bonus, your class bonus, your conditional modifier bonus, your feat bonus, your bonus for doing it in the street, your bonus for denying another player milk, your bonus for claiming there are never enough bonuses, your bonus for having a pet within X feet of you, your bonus for knowing Bonus Round Bob, your bonus for having gotten to the last stage of Super Mario 3D World, etc, etc, etc.

Adding them all up - simple.
Keeping track of them all - a pain in the ass.

We wont even go into the bloat of classes, archetypes, feats, spells, etc.

[Simon Legrande]

And you can tell how much clearer and easier to understand the Pathfinder rules are by looking at the sheer number of FAQs, errata, and requests for rules clarifications that lead to arguments right here on the Paizo forums.

[HangarFlying]

I did purchase the 1e AD&D reprints that WotC a few months ago and I'd love to play a game for the lulz.

[Gwaithador]

Advanced D&D was a lot fun. But it had some oddness in part because of its war gaming roots. For example. Class level limitations. Take elves, by popular acclaim the more magically inclined of all the "core races" You would think the ancient elves could reach high levels of power. Nope. Capped at level 11, which, back then was good, but you humans could reach unlimited levels as magic user. Oh, and the weird rules for classes. If you thought being a monk is tough in Pathfinder, try one in AD&D or worse, try playing a bard, except, its not really a bard. It's fighter, rogue, druid bard-thingy.

Multiclassing had limited class combos (with all the weirdness today, maybe that's not a completely bad thing-joke). You had to take the classes from the start and could not add classes. Humans could not multiclass, they had to "dual class" if they did that, they had to give up their previous class forever.

Classes became out of whack with the introduction of the cavalier or more precisely, the cavalier/paladin- which was one class, except it wasn't. Sort of. Unearth Arcana tried to address the class level limitations issue but it was not a real cure, more of a topical solution.

The rules were beautifully merciless. "Save or die" was common and yes, even fun.

2nd edition's improvements were better in some regards, worse in others. Some people hated the "number lines" of figuring out what you needed to hit in first edition, and second edition's THACO was marginally better. I didn't find it troubling though I found the simpler accumulated AC stat in 3.0 and beyond a vast improvement.

For a little while, my players convinced me to play 1st edition for a bit. It was a blast for a while but then all the little clunky elements reminded me why I like Pathfinder! Honestly, I prefer to take old first edition stuff and convert it to Pathfinder. Another reason I loved Necromancer games. "First edition feel." Precisely what I wanted! Good stuff from them.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

@ Kthulhu: That explanation of THACO only confuses me even more. The BAB and other stuff is much simpler because it's calculated much more easily, and on a number line, all goes in one direction. You simply roll the dice add it all up, and then determine if it is >, =, or < than the target number.

Keeping track of modifiers isn't that tough because it's clearly defined whether something is a bonus or a penalty. You have a total penalty of X and a total bonus of Y? The grand modifier is Z then, roll the dice, add Z, and see if it's higher than, equal to, or lower than W.

THACO doesn't make that distinction, it's not clearly defined, and so we don't know how to make it work.

@ Simon Legrande: I"m sure if the internet and forums were easily accessible and had a forum for rules discussion and the such back when it was introduced, it would be the same as Pathfinder. If anything, even moreso because THACO is the most confusing thing I've ever had in any game I've played; tabletop, boardgame, card game, RPG, MMOs, FPS, etc. never had stuff that confusing. Sure, Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn and Icewind Dale (I think) had 2E rules, but since it did the calculations for us, I didn't get bogged down by "Hey, how the heck did he get that?"

[LazarX]

Simon Legrande wrote:

And you can tell how much clearer and easier to understand the Pathfinder rules are by looking at the sheer number of FAQs, errata, and requests for rules clarifications that lead to arguments right here on the Paizo forums.

That's the inevitable result of the following.

1.Pathfinder like 3.X before it is a builder based system. A system that offers more choices inherently gives more things for people to argue about and/or cheese with. There was a lot less to argue about with AD+D, BECAUSE your choices were so dammed limited.

2. The folks who run Paizo have made extra efforts to make themselves accessible. An unfortunate consequence are folks who try to bait them with thread titles begin with FAQ! This NOW!

[Alexandros Satorum]

KestrelZ wrote:

6. No gish in second edition. Seriously, mages could never hold a sword by RAW. Entire gaming groups made a game about how a party of mages could guide swords that were repelled from mages. Seriously, mages could never hold a sword because some law of nature in 2nd edition said the sword was repelled away from the hand of mages.

Multiclass fighter/mage.

[Aelryinth]

Complaining about THACO gets old fast. Come on. It's basic math. If you can't do it...well. That says something right there.

There was less class imbalance in 1E, probably because casters were rather tightly constrained in many ways. Sure, there were powerful spells...but they got less effective with your peers as you leveled, not moreso.

The monsters in 1E went basically up to level 10. If you could reach that level, you could basically hang with most of the monsters in the MM. So the requirement for ridiculous amounts of gear and unbeatable monsters wasn't the same.

Classes were never assumed to be level. Some advanced faster, some slower.

Elves were never a problem. 7/11 elven magic users could hang with archmages. Racial limits were there mainly to counter the early level advantages of being demi human (and explain why with their longer life spans they didn't rule the world). Just having darkvision was majorly powerful.

1E felt more realistic in its way. Elves were natural mages because they could wear armor and cast spells. No dwarves were wizards. Halflings were the best thieves.

Every race had a niche they were best at. Humans were the weakest from the point of racial advantages, but had the best stats and could get the highest levels. Ergo, they were never the equal of demihumans of the same level, for the most part, but could eventually surpass them in raw might. Because of that, they dominated the campaign world. But your average demihuman definitely outclassed the average human.

I think it comes down to that 'arbitrariness' and limits adding a sense of realism in and of itself.

The fact PC's couldn't easily make magic items and so the DM had control over how awesome they could get probably helped, however!

And don't poo-poo the 1E bard, Qualifying for one was nigh impossible, but if you did, it was literally the mightiest class in the game. Even druids stopped getting hit dice at 15, but bards got it for ALL levels, and that meant con bonuses, too! Since they had fighter levels, they had weapon spec, and with rogue levels, could backstab, and bard levels gained druid spells...oh, yeah, bards were loads of trouble. They harkened back to the warrior bards of celtic mythology, druid trained, instead of the 'minstrel' inspiration of the arcane bards now used, which are more akin to magical gadflies and troubadours.

==Aelryinth

[Aelryinth]

BTW, 'gish' is literally a 4/4 githyanki fighter-m-u (look it up in the 1E Fiend Folio, it's right there).

The term was co-opted to mean any class that could fight and cast arcane spells.

So, yeah, Gishes were in 1E...they are the trope namer!!!

==Aelryinth

[Alexandros Satorum]

Thaco and BAB are basically the same but backwards, If you understand thaco you understand BAB I can not see it otherwise.

=======================

AS pointed, the issue with second edition was that the rules were sometimes convolutes and most times rule A had nothing to do with rule B.

By the other hand there were actually much less rules to learn, and actually the game encorage you make your own rules on the fly.

[Eryx_UK]

2nd edition was an awesome system. I loved it and would happily play it again now despite my love of D20/Pathfinder.

[DrDeth]

WotC brought out 3.0 basically as they needed to boost sales. Other than the fact AD&D had gotten very cluttered and option heavy (just like 3.5 did and PF is rapidly becoming), there were no real problems.

THACO is not at all hard to do unless you are used to D20. It's just backwards. or you can say D20 is backwards.

Ac1= now 10 etc.
AC0 = now AC20.

[Atarlost]

Skills.

Let's take Bilbo. He sneaks into the dragon's lair with his invisibility ring. So far so good. Then the dragon smells him and he tries to delay and deceive it by answering its questions with riddles.

Obviously this is a RPing scene. The DM asks questions and the player makes up riddles. There's only one problem: the DM already knows the answers. He knows what all the riddles refer to that's supposed to be opaque to Smaug because he was there. He's the DM. He cannot look at the riddles as someone who doesn't already know the answers. He certainly cannot look at them as a dragon with centuries of experience.

Skills allow the DM to disentangle his metagame knowledge and the fact that he is not a dragon.

Skills also allow the halfling thief's player to have the assessment of his character's capabilities to make meaningful choices such as whether to use riddles to cover the truth and risk the dragon solving them or use out-right lies and risk the dragon sensing that he's lying or just stay silent and try not to be localized because he put all his points into sneaking related skills not bluff.

A robust social skill system is really freaking important. WotC D&D and PF don't have one, but even what little they do have is better than the nothing TSR D&D offered.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Aelryinth wrote:

Complaining about THACO gets old fast. Come on. It's basic math. If you can't do it...well. That says something right there.

If I knew how the system worked, then maybe I wouldn't complain as much. But the factor that it's so damn confusing to a lot of players because it's not defined anywhere, nor is it easy to remember, doesn't really do any favors of making it "better".

The same could also be said for trying to calculate Bonuses and Penalties in the D20 system; Kthulhu complaining about the D20 calculation system with so many bonuses/penalties, I find not difficult at all. It's when we get into old rules that weren't really defined anywhere, nor did anyone know how they worked half the time, bogged and killed the mood of the game.

It's probably the same reason why I absolutely liked Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn; because the bogging element of the game (which is trying to calculate using a very clunky, hard to remember system) was circumvented with the computer calculating the results, leaving me to immerse in the theme and cinematics of the game.

[DrDeth]

KestrelZ wrote:

3. No feats and few skills in second edition. Most skill checks were abstractions or class features. No second edition thief, no ability to open locked doors without magic / bashing them. Skills and feats in third edition made characters of the same class much more variable from each other. (though it unintentionally may have shortchanged the rogue by the time Pathfinder was released).

6. No gish in second edition. Seriously, mages could never hold a sword by RAW. Entire gaming groups made a game about how a party of mages could guide swords that were repelled from mages. Seriously, mages could never hold a sword because some law of nature in 2nd edition said...

3. False. Thieves had skills, everyone could have "non-weapon proficiencies " and there was "Skills and Powers" if you wanted a full out skills system.

6. False again. Fighter/Mage. Very common, esp with elves. Later, with "Skills and Powers" you could have a wizard with ability to use swords if you liked. There was a 'point buy" system. And, at no time could wizards NOT "hold" a sword.

[Alexandros Satorum]

Atarlost wrote:

A robust social skill system is really freaking important. WotC D&D and PF don't have one, but even what little they do have is better than the nothing TSR D&D offered.

A matter of taste in the end, not something that can be stated to be actually "better".

[DrDeth]

Atarlost wrote:

Skills.

A robust social skill system is really freaking important. WotC D&D and PF don't have one, but even what little they do have is better than the nothing TSR D&D offered.

"Skills and Powers" says this is incorrect.

[Sissyl]

You were locked into your class choice, unless you had ungodly stats as a human, or were a level-capped demihuman.

Your stats never changed. If you got a suck dexterity at level 1, you could hope for a magic item that gave anyone 18, but otherwise, your dex would still suck at level 20. Strength, dexterity and constitution had such items.

After level 9 or so, advancement ground to a screeching halt. Advancing took bloody years.

Hit points stopped accumulating at around level 10. Nothing except the biggest dragons had more than 100 hp. Spells did that rather easily.

With no CR system and random encounters, your fourth level party could suddenly run into three beholders. Many DMs solved this by never using many other monsters beyond low-HD monsters.

With no WBL system and no sales of magic items, a 1st level fighter could find a sunblade and "advance" several levels. By the same token, a high-level character could still drag along their short sword +1, never mind that his specialization was in long sword...

... because DR was expressed as "+X or better to hit", with monsters COMPLETELY IMMUNE if you didn't have enough plusses.

Spell resistance was a flat percentage, independent of your level. Drow fighters level 2 could put a severe smackdown on a level 7 party.

Many spells were less than optimal. Sleep had no save, but was useless after level 5. Add to this that every wizard had an absolute maximum number of spells in their spellbook for each level, and those things became problematic.

Saving throws were written on a table. There was no obvious system to it. Save or die were still common.

Nonweapon proficiencies (say that five times, quick!) started with your stat value plus a modifier. Every three levels or so, you could choose between getting another one, or add +1 to an existing one. Either your stats gave you godly ones from the get-go, or they were always going to suck. See above on stats not changing.

Oh, and THAC0.

[DrDeth]

Sissyl wrote:

Your stats never changed. If you got a suck dexterity at level 1, you could hope for a magic item that gave anyone 18, but otherwise, your dex would still suck at level 20. Strength, dexterity and constitution had such items.

Hit points stopped accumulating at around level 10. Nothing except the biggest dragons had more than 100 hp. Spells did that rather easily.

With no WBL system and no sales of magic items, a 1st level fighter could find a sunblade and "advance" several levels.
because DR was expressed as "+X or better to hit", with monsters COMPLETELY IMMUNE if you didn't have enough plusses.

There' were magic pools, wishes, Tomes, quests and what not, to the extent that almost NONE of my mid-level AD&D characters had stats that were similar to their starting stats.

False. Hit DICE stopped, not Hit points.

Still can. WBL is a "guideline".

Honestly other that "magic" (aka +1) this was not an issue. I can't think of any common monsters that required a better than +1 weapon to hit.

[Sissyl]

Yeah, about that. Wishes got you a tenth of a point beyond a certain stat value. Quests and magic pools could certainly do it, but not within any sort of rules. Tomes were rarer than hens' teeth.

As for hit points, yes, they did keep accumulating. A wizard got +1 per level and no Constitution bonus after lvl 11. A fighter got +3 after 9, I think. Everyone else got +2 per level. Meaning, 20 extra hit points for 10 levels. Yayyyyy. It... doesn't really change what I said.

It doesn't matter if you claim you could still use WBL for 2nd edition. I have no idea how you'd go about it, though, given that magic items had no sales price in the rules.

Stone golems required +2. Iron golems required +3. Various outsiders required +2. It wasn't a very rare ability. The bad thing was still the +1 or better monsters, because without magic weapons, you had nothing.

I should also add: If you didn't have at least 15 in a stat, it got you virtually nothing. It was a far harsher system.

[Matthew Downie]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Aelryinth wrote:

Complaining about THACO gets old fast.

If I knew how the system worked, then maybe I wouldn't complain as much.

THAC0 means 'To Hit: Armor Class 0'. In other words, it's the d20 roll you need to get as a minimum to hit someone with an AC of 0.

Add your opponent's Armor Class to your d20 roll, and if the result is greater than or equal to your THAC0, you hit. (Or, if you prefer, subtract your opponent's AC from your THAC0 and try to hit that number with a d20.)

A low THAC0 is good, like a high BAB in Pathfinder. A low AC is good, like a high AC in Pathfinder.

Example: An enemy in plate mail has an AC of 2. My THAC0 is 10. I roll a d20. If I get an 8 or more on the dice, I hit. If the enemy had an AC of 7, I would only need a 3.

[Sissyl]

It is literally the same thing as 3.X AC/to-hit, except going down instead of up, with 10 as the crossover point. Cthulhu knows why they thought doing it negative was a good idea, back in the 70s.

[Disciple of Sakura]

THAC0 wasn't difficult, but it wasn't intuitive, either. You got +2 Chainmail! Reduce your AC by 2!

Roll high for attack rolls, roll low for non-weapon proficiency checks (skill checks). I can't even remember if you had to roll high or low for saves, but you gotta love the six or so categories (rod, staff or wand, petrification or polymorph, death, etc).

Classes had ridiculous rules - your Druid wants to hit level 15, he better defeat another lvl 15 druid, or he drops back to 14. Neutral characters change sides to ensure "balance." Paladins have to have a Charisma 17 or higher. Unless your ability score is a 16 or higher, there's almost no mechanical benefit to having it.

The game was a mish-mash of rules. It wasn't awful as games go, and I enjoyed it in Junior High and Highschool, but by the time college rolled around, I couldn't convince anyone to play it. We wound up playing a lot of the old World of Darkness games, until 3.0 came out and I could finally, *finally* play a wizard with a sword.

[LazarX]

The part I actually hated was the decision to keep a magic item that would be potentially useful, or sell it for the Experience Points. Experience points based on treasure SOLD was the major part of advancement in those days. Which is any people would "greyhawk" places for every last copper.

Side note: Did Gary Gygax live long enough to see Greyhawk become a verb?

[Ascalaphus]

I think the weird part about THAC0 is it tells you what you need to roll to make a certain DC, while you're not actually aiming for that DC most of the time.

It's like rating your Climb skill To Hit DC 23. You're rarely actually making a DC 23 Climb check, so you're constantly calculating the difference between the actual and the theoretical DC.

The math isn't hard, but it's less straightforward than just adding your bonus to a d20 roll and seeing if that's >= the enemy's real AC. And other than nostalgia I just don't see any reason to do it in such a roundabout way.

[Kthulhu]

But aiming THAC0 at AC 0 makes the simple math even easier.

If your THAC0 is 12, and you are trying to hit AC 10, then you need to roll (THACO - Target AC) = 12 - 10 = 2.

If your THAC0 is 12, and you are trying to hit AC -5, then you need to roll (THACO - Target AC) = 12 - (-5) = 12 + 5 = 17.

Making THAC10 or something like that would involve an additional step.

[Sissyl]

See, Cthulhu did know...

[Mike Franke]

Nothing?

I think 2ed suffers when compared to 3rd but back when I was playing it THACO was an improvement over the charts of AD&D. But then I was used to the charts as well.

2ed is a bridge system. It is still essentially AD&D but it tries to smooth some things out. It worked fine.

Take a look at Castles and Crusades. It shows what 2ed/AD&D could have been with a little more thought.

[Marthkus]

Ascalaphus wrote:

I think the weird part about THAC0 is it tells you what you need to roll to make a certain DC, while you're not actually aiming for that DC most of the time.

It's like rating your Climb skill To Hit DC 23. You're rarely actually making a DC 23 Climb check, so you're constantly calculating the difference between the actual and the theoretical DC.

The math isn't hard, but it's less straightforward than just adding your bonus to a d20 roll and seeing if that's >= the enemy's real AC. And other than nostalgia I just don't see any reason to do it in such a roundabout way.

It seems more straight forward from a GM perspective to me.

1) Know everyone's THAC0
2) Know monster AC
3) Write THAC0 - AC next to player names
4) Have them roll a d20 for attacks, if the die roll is higher or equal to the number you put next to their names, then they hit.

The players wouldn't need to do math. It's all done GM-side, which sounds faster to me. Assuming there wasn't a million and one mechanics that changed AC and THAC0.

[DrDeth]

Sissyl wrote:

Yeah, about that. Wishes got you a tenth of a point beyond a certain stat value. Quests and magic pools could certainly do it, but not within any sort of rules. Tomes were rarer than hens' teeth.

As for hit points, yes, they did keep accumulating. A wizard got +1 per level and no Constitution bonus after lvl 11. A fighter got +3 after 9, I think. Everyone else got +2 per level. Meaning, 20 extra hit points for 10 levels. Yayyyyy. It... doesn't really change what I said.

It doesn't matter if you claim you could still use WBL for 2nd edition. I have no idea how you'd go about it, though, given that magic items had no sales price in the rules.

But a whole point under that. And wishes were more common.

No, what I am saying is that WBL is just a guideline for 3rd & PF.

[Kthulhu]

Great Kthulhu's knowledge is greater than that of the ants that infest the world that he currently slumbers.

[Marthkus]

DrDeth wrote:

No, what I am saying is that WBL is just a guideline for 3rd & PF.

Only as much as CR is a guideline.

[DrDeth]

LazarX wrote:

The part I actually hated was the decision to keep a magic item that would be potentially useful, or sell it for the Experience Points. Experience points based on treasure SOLD was the major part of advancement in those days. Which is any people would "greyhawk" places for every last copper.

That's not the way we played.

[Kthulhu]

Marthkus wrote:

The players wouldn't need to do math. It's all done GM-side, which sounds faster to me. Assuming there wasn't a million and one mechanics that changed AC and THAC0.

That largely got saved for 3.0 and it's innumerable spawn.

[Sissyl]

But the wishes got truly expensive at the levels that got you anything, so those whole point wishes didn't exactly get you much.

Exactly. But, maligned as WBL is, not having it was worse. That you can ignore the WBL system and retain the problems of magic item distribution from 2nd to 3.X doesn't exactly make the problems in 2nd better, does it?

Don't grasp at straws. 2nd edition was a system with very serious problems when compared to today's offerings. This thread is about the problems it had, but there were certainly good things about it too. The only real rules-based thing that was better back then was its more freeform nature. You could add special abilities without figuring out various stuff, and it was more expected to work outside the rules system. In the area of settings and adventures, I would say the lesser focus on constant fighting was a clear advantage for 2nd over 3rd, and the settings were more imaginative. The rules were still meh.

[JoeJ]

2e cleaned up many of the confusions and inconsistencies of 1e, but it was still basically the same game. 3e/3.5/PF is a completely different game that allows more options and in some ways is easier to play.

OTOH, while 2e didn't have as many options for players, it did give the GM more flexibility in world design, particularly in deciding what the role of magic is in the world. Using 2e I was able to run an Arthurian-flavored campaign, where PCs had essentially no access to magic beyond the Paladin's ability to heal by laying on hands. Using rules from the Historical Reference books it was possible to run a campaign with very low magic (for Conan fans, perhaps), or even purely historical campaigns with no working magic at all. Not as easy as it is with GURPS, but much easier than trying to do it with 3/3.5/PF.

The kits in the Complete Class Handbooks and Historical References allowed characters to be almost as customized as PF, although in different directions. Some of those kits were not well balanced, however, or wouldn't work well with other kits. This wasn't a big problem for experienced GMs, but made it very hard for the new ones.

As a GM, I still prefer 2e. Finding players is a lot harder, though, especially since the system isn't being supported.

[Alexandros Satorum]

Marthkus wrote:

DrDeth wrote:

No, what I am saying is that WBL is just a guideline for 3rd & PF.

Only as much as CR is a guideline.

Exactly.

[Alexandros Satorum]

DrDeth wrote:

LazarX wrote:

The part I actually hated was the decision to keep a magic item that would be potentially useful, or sell it for the Experience Points. Experience points based on treasure SOLD was the major part of advancement in those days. Which is any people would "greyhawk" places for every last copper.

That's not the way we played.

There were a lot of optional rules and those other rules that nobody cared aboout. That DM will use completely diferent rules for certaing things was almost an assumption of the game.

[Alexandros Satorum]

Sissyl wrote:

Exactly. But, maligned as WBL is, not having it was worse. That you can ignore the WBL system and retain the problems of magic item distribution from 2nd to 3.X doesn't exactly make the problems in 2nd better, does it?

Only if you start by saying it was a problem. It was a feature.

[JoeJ]

Marthkus wrote:

DrDeth wrote:

No, what I am saying is that WBL is just a guideline for 3rd & PF.

Only as much as CR is a guideline.

I do consider CR just a guideline. I also treat the stat blocks in the Bestiaries as suggestions and I consider the price list in the CRB to be a joke. But then, world building is my favorite part of being a GM.

[Vod Canockers]

Marthkus wrote:

I keep hearing of some interesting mechanics, but what I don't hear about is the problems with 2e that are the reason people aren't playing it anymore.

It can't be just because it's a "dead system". Many people still play 3.5.

What were the problems?

I liked it, or rather first edition, better than 3.X and Pathfinder.

[Kthulhu]

I personally like Bill Webb's house rules for XP.

Monsters give a very small amount of XP. Only treasure you spend on stuff according to your class gives you XP (fighters on women, wine, and song; mages on magical research; clerics on charity; etc).

[ParagonDireRaccoon]

There was a thread about recapturing the essence of AD&D not too long ago, where we waxed nostalgic for the good points of AD&D. The lack of character optimization lent itself to a focus on roleplaying- with no feats and few class features you started with a name and a few personality traits to define your character. Teamwork was a necessity, since your first level party might end up fighting an umber hulk from a random encounter table. The months or years between leveling up also lent itself to roleplaying.

The main thing us older gamers are nostalgic for is being 14 and playing AD&D with friends. Back then, playing AD&D (or Palladium or Warhammer Fantasy) was the highlight of the week. 2E had a lot of flaws- 3E improved in 2E in almost every way and PF improved on 3E almost as much as 3E improved in 2E. Some of the big issues are the skill system (non-weapon proficiencies), saving throws, no WBL, no CR system, few class features, etc. 2E had great settings (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Planescape) but it hurt sales because players would only play one setting and not buy anything set in other settings.