So, is there anything 2e has as a game, that 1e or D&D basic/expert or OD&D did NOT have, that made it really a better game?

If you believe so, besides explaining just what that something was, did that something also carry through to 3e or 4e?

RPGPundit

Well, it's about three steps from a decent game I suppose.

First off, put back in some weapon balance.  Probably not the old weapon verses armour table but a nice simple proficiency bonus like 4e uses.  If heavy crossbows were +2 to hit I wouldn't complain so much about longbows doing more damage.  Though I'd rather bump them to +1 to hit and d6+1 damage instead of d4+1.

Next up get rid of the character kits and splat books.  For every good thing they added they added five awful ones.


Then, give Wizards bonus spells for their Intelligence like Clerics get for Wisdom.

Lastly integrate the non-weapon proficiencies and theives skills as they did in XXVc. (the best published version of the D&D rules IMO)  Essentially drop the proficiencies to a percentile and allow all classes 30 points at first level and 15 for each additional level.  Theives get 60 and 30.  I'd probably say class skills can be improved by no more than 10 per level and non-class ones by 5.

I'd also get a less boring author.

I thought the old Kits system in the splat books were great. The newer way of doing it takes up so much more space and isn't half as cool, in my opinion.

There was a section in the middle of the 2e DMG which showed you how to create custom character classes. I liked that part and wish that it was ported over to 3e and 4e (I know you can figure it out, but you were never told how to "Do It Yourself").

I think 2e actually saw the maturation of adventure design at TSR. Yes, I know that the Wisconsin Adventure Railroad had gotten its full head of steam after Gary left, and really barreled down the tracks with the advent of 2e. Regardless, some true gems appeared, especially towards the end of 2e's life. I'm thinking of stuff like Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, A Paladin In Hell, Return to the Tomb of Horrors, and The Shattered Circle. They seemed to have gotten lost in the avalanche of splatbooks and stormclouds of TSR's demise, but there were a number of good, solid, interesting adventures that hit the shelves despite all the turmoil.

I actually don't think this carried over very well in 3e, except in the case of some third party adventures and a few nonesuch releases from WotC like Red Hand of Doom. I don't know about 4e, because I think 4e adventures are simply too expensive, at least the ones from WotC, and I have only bought and looked at one of them. But the game is still new and only time will tell.

Related to the above, and from which those adventures sprang, is the sheer breadth of ideas introduced in 2e. Again, this is especially true later in its lifespan. They tried out a variety of accessories like spellcards or the magic item encyclopedia that were ambitious (for TSR). They produced a number of different settings that tried using D&D in other contexts. They tried implementing ways to make PCs truly different from one another, especially with kits. All of this translated to 3e, but only the last was exploited in any depth by WotC. Well, except for the minis (being accessories), but it seemed like WotC regarded the RPG as only incidental to the minis game. Now, it seems like the attitude has reversed, with the minis being subordinated to the RPG.

4e seems almost predicated on accessories, which I like in some cases - I look forward to cards for powers, abilities, spells, and monsters, because they'll make keeping track of stuff a lot easier. In other cases, I'm not all that enthused - I'm not really interested in dungeon tiles, mostly due to the cumulative expense, and would rather just use an erasable battlemat. I DO like that non-random, and semi-random, minis are going to be released. I never got into minis before, due to either expense (in the case of buying and painting metal minis) or having no interest in chasing down rare minis.

Thieves could assign skill points in 2e.  That's a vast improvement over 1e (if one must have thieves as a class).

That's all I've got.

Quote from: RPGPundit;276153So, is there anything 2e has as a game, that 1e or D&D basic/expert or OD&D did NOT have, that made it really a better game?

If you believe so, besides explaining just what that something was, did that something also carry through to 3e or 4e?

RPGPundit

Are these serious questions, or are you just being a wise-ass? There's nothing in the core rules of 2e that needs to be "redeemed". The writing is clear and concise. The text is easy to read, and the book is well laid out. The rules are more streamlined than 1e, yet characters are provided with more customization than 1e.

I love both 1e and 3e, but I wish those games were this streamlined, with this degree of clarity. Of course, 1e and 3e both have other superior qualities to 2e, but that's barely relevant to this discussion. You almost make it sound like 2e blows chunks, when it most assuredly does not.

2e is a great game.

Hate of 2e is a mainly online phenomenon. Plenty of people still happily play it. After all, it was a nicely cleaned-up version of AD&D which did its job well until the splats of the latter part of its history made the going tougher.

The Monster Manual was a thing of beauty, with interesting bits on habits and the like. Great art too.

DiTerlizzi's art?

1e Unearthed Arcana Weapon Specialisation and PC classes, races etc were overpowered, 2e dialled WS back and eliminated Barbarians & Cavaliers, and Drow PCs as I recall.  However it did bring in a horribly overpowered 'Stoneskin' spell that ruined many a campaign.

Good things about 2E IMNERHO:

- THAC0 as the default attack method instead of combat matrices.
- 'Core' 2E (without splatbooks) is very, very close to the tried-and-true formulas of 1E, and even makes improvements on some bits.
- The various Complete splatbooks are good for cherry-picking. They're pretty horrid if you just adopt all of them uncritically, but many of them contain good stuff.
- A variety of campaign settings for people tired of Ye Olde Fake Medieval Europa. It might have been a bad business move, the adventure modules might have sucked, and getting everything for even one single setting might have been way too expensive, but you did get some interesting campaign settings to adopt or trawl for material.

Well, we had some fun under 2e. Though it did continue to do things that vexed me (flurry of different resolution systems, discarding/ignoring OA's cooler subsystems, percentile strength still an issue, dual class/multi-class dichotomy), it did some neat things mechanically (like the PHBR line, Complete Book of Necromancers (Clark Ashton Smith in a can!), and the botched Player's Options line), it was plagued with problems due to the simple fact that TSR exercised little quality control over its books and different books in the same line would be written to different standards.

What 2e did that really stood out was settings. It brought us Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, and Al Qadim, as well as revisiting Kara Tur (albeit FR-ized) and Mystara. By way of comparison, WotC seemed terrified under 3e & later to try new settings that really departed from the psuedo-medieval mold.

And perhaps they had good reason too. Sales-wise, perhaps those didn't fare so well (though I hear from some folks involved in management at WotC at the time that the business disdain for the settings was exaggerated), but these settings represent the biggest creative legacy of 2e.

Cleaner and better organised rules and mechanics, which were nevertheless pretty much entirely backwards compatible. Brilliant and innovative settings. Nice art. Loads of options, more options than you could ever dream of. Endearing disregard for game balance.

Online grognardish hatred for 2e stems almost entirely from lingering distaste over how Gary Gygax was treated and dislike of aesthetic choices. It's nothing to do with the game itself.

hmmm... It's hard to remember exactly. I ran 2e for years, but with bits of D&D, 1e, and boatloads of house rules. Getting straight what was what is difficult.

Kits were extremely cool in concept, but terribly executed. Implementation varied enormously from splat to splat. Some were excellent, and some sucked dead donkey through a garden hose. I'd strip back the core classes and mandate a kit for each character, and make them all uniform in application.

Priests were so much cooler than clerics we never ran one cleric after 2e came out. OTOH, actual religion was vital to our games.

I'd use 3e's task resolution. We did this in our houserules long before 3e.

I'd go back to the straight 3d6 rolls of D&D, but use them in any order. This allowed one to create the type of character you wanted, but without being ridiculously over-powered.

I'd change the saving throw system to something rational.

other than that, it was a fine system.

-clash