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View Full Version : Comparing systems: AD&D 2nd Edition and 3.X(I'm curious about 2nd Edition)



MonkeySage
2013-11-13, 08:47 PM
Earlier today I purchased Throne of Baal from game stop and being a 3.5 player, found the differences in systems almost shocking. This piqued my curiosity, since even though I was Introduced to D&D before 3rd edition was published, I didn't become a serious player until about three years ago, and since then have only been playing 3.5.
Since I was very young when I was first introduced to the game, i remember very little of what 2nd edition was like (I do remember having rolled a cleric, though, one i never actually got to play). It didn't help that the group I was playing with was unwilling to teach me the game prior to thrusting me into play, knowing I'd be unfamiliar with the intricacies of the rules/role playing in general, and ultimately put me off of the game until my interest was again refueled just over three years ago.

So I was wondering what you more knowledgeable/experienced players might be able to teach me about 2nd edition, keeping 3.X in mind. Particularly helpful if you were one of those who had to adjust to the then new set of rules. :)

Rhynn
2013-11-13, 10:08 PM
There's some shared terms, but everything is different. Really, you'd have to just read the PHB (and maybe DMG).

Abilities are 3-18 (19 with some racial bonuses), with a hard maximum at 25; rather than (X-10)/2 rounded down (up for penalties) for a bonus, each ability has its own set of bonuses and attributes it determines, such as Intelligence determining the highest level of spells a wizard can cast, etc.

Races have similar but different abilities, and each race but humans has minimum (and, to a lesser extent, maximum) abilities for choosing it.

Classes are chosen at the start and kept for life (except for human dual-classing, which requires very high attributes). Classes have ability requirements for choosing the, and prime requisite abilities that give you an experience bonus of 10% if you've got them at 16+. Classes are restricted by race (only humans can be any class, and only humans can be paladins). Multi-classing is also done at the start, and is only available to demihumans in certain combinations determined by race.

Experience point requirements are much higher, because 2E pretty much kept the XP requirements from AD&D 1E, but ridiculously made XP-for-Treasure an optional rule (in a high-visibility box in the unrevised 2E rules, but hidden at the end of a prose paragraph in the revised rules). This means that, by the book, PCs will advance much, much, much, much slower in 2E than they did in 1E and previous editions. (A dragon's hoard, for instance, is easily worth more XP in 1E than killing the dragon.)

Fighters can specialize in weapons (+1 to hit, +2 damage for melee, increased rate of attack). Only clerics and druids get bonus spells for a high ability score (Wisdom). Thieves (and bards) have a set of special percentile skills, such as Move Silently and Hide in Shadows (which, ridiculously, make some people think that normal people can't sneak around :smallconfused: ).

The corebook offers as a pretty much standard optional rule Weapon Proficiencies (WPs) and Non-Weapon Proficiencies (NWPs), and as an alternative to NPWs "secondary skills" (e.g. "woodworker/carpenter"). Fighters start with 4 WPs, others with less; using a weapon without the proficiency imposes a to-hit penalty based on your class. NPWs are based on an ability score and rolled against with d20.

Combat uses THAC0; Armor Class is descending (10 is unarmored, 3 is plate, etc.). At first level, you need a 20 to hit AC 0. Many people find this unintuitive, but there's an easy way to do it: if d20 + bonuses + target AC equals or exceeds THAC0, you hit. Alternatively, X = THAC0 - (d20 + bonuses), and tell the DM "I hit AC X", if the DM prefers to keep ACs secret to start. There's a stupid-complex initiative system that uses weapon speeds, etc. (but at least you can get a stab in after the wizard starts casting his spell of doom, spoiling it). There's a stupid tacked-on unarmed combat system that I never used. Saving throws are divided into five categories with a hierarchy (e.g. you use Save vs. Spells only if none of the other categories fit), and are increased based on a table.

There's less of an expectation that henchmen and hirelings are common, which is a dumb change of expectation from the older editions, but the rules are still there.

Many of the spells are the same, others are different.

If you use Player's Option: Combat & Tactics, 2E combat takes a lot of similarities to 3.X combat.


DM's side:

Monsters don't have ability scores, except in some specific cases (mostly giants and their ilk, such as ogres). Doesn't stop you from giving an orc chief Str 18/00 if you want, though.

Morale rules. These are pretty critical, IMO, because a party of 5 1st-level PCs can defeat a bunch of goblins by having the wizard cast a spell, forcing them to make a morale check, failing it, and running away. It's part of the whole "modelling a world (half-assedly), not a computer game" feel of the 2E rules.

A ton of other little stuff. Read the books, really.

MonkeySage
2013-11-13, 10:55 PM
3.5 almost seems streamlined by comparison, though a few elements seem very interesting... in particular, i was confused by the AC/THAC0 bits, until you explained them. Over all, would you say that 3e was an improvement? Anything you miss about 2e? What did you like most about 2e and which parts were you happy to be rid of in the new edition?

nedz
2013-11-13, 11:06 PM
AD&D was much more balanced. less unbalanced.

Fighters were much better, several things which are now feats were Fighter only class features.

Wizards were very weak at level 1. 1 x 1st level spell, 2 x if specialised, no cantrips. They got to be very powerful later, but there was no casting defensively. Many of the spells had drawbacks and limitations: Haste aged you a year for example.

If a Fighter closed to melee with a Wizard, the Wizard was probably dead — even at high level.

There are many other differences, it's a different game really.

Rhynn
2013-11-13, 11:12 PM
AD&D 2E is the result of 25 years of accretion of rules and elements. OD&D had four races and three classes; things were added over time. This accretion means that basically all BECM, AD&D 1E, and AD&D 2E modules/adventures can be used across editions (the biggest difference is that monster XP values are calculated differently).

Third edition was a ground-up rebuilding, using the same elements but starting over rather than adding to what existed before.

After playing third edition for over 10 years, since right after it came out, I decided I'd had enough; it's a game of heavy mechanics and dreadfully drawn-out combat. At first, I returned to AD&D 2E (core only, with proficiencies stripped off), but after becoming familiar with Adventurer Conqueror King System (which integrated or made unnecessary all my house rules), I found it provided the superior D&D experience.

At first (coming from BECM followed by AD&D 2E), D&D 3E was exciting because it was streamlined* and had a lot of mechanical depth, which I appreciated and had the patience for at the time. Over the years, my appreciation for heavy mechanics has dwindled, and now I value lighter rules that accomplish things efficiently and produce cool emergent play, both of which are lacking in 3E (the emergent play in 3E is some degree of Tippyverse, which is frightfully dull and uninteresting to me).

* By streamlined I mean the uniformity of classes, skills, and everything having the same abilities, the mathematical progression of saves, attack bonuses, and ability bonuses, etc.)

I'd frankly love some turn-based 3E and 4E computer RPGs, because heavy mechanics like that work great when you don't need to see them, but that's about it, nowadays. (Those being pretty much non-existent, I settle for the AD&D 1E and 2E -based Gold Box series.)

Edit:

Wizards were very weak at level 1. 1 x 1st level spell, 2 x if specialised, no cantrips. They got to be very powerful later, but there was no casting defensively. Many of the spells had drawbacks and limitations: Haste aged you a year for example.

NB: Unless you were cheating using alternative methods to generate ability scores, the odds were pretty low your wizard would even be able to cast 7th level spells (much less 9th), if they ever even made it past 9th level (which took a long while).

For my return to AD&D 2E, I was going with Method IV (3d6 twice, take best out of two, arrange to taste), which means decent scores but not very many high scores. In ACKS, though, I've gone with 3d6 in order (and you roll hit points at first level, you sorry sacks of blood!). I think it's great to rid everyone of the idea that you need high ability scores to have fun.

Funny thing: whereas AD&D 1E recommended 4d6 and drop the lowest, arranged to taste, and then in Unearthed Arcana produced the horrifying table of ability score generation by class (up to 9d6k3 for some ability scores), 2E defaults to 3d6 in order.

nedz
2013-11-14, 05:36 AM
I did once run a tippyverse style game back in 1E, I've no intention of doing that again. It was fun, but I've done that.

Wizards were also limited to a maximum number of spells per level based on their Int.

We dumped 3D6 in order very early in AD&D. It was fun but again: done that. There came a point where we tired of playing the mini-game of What character can I make with these stats in favour of What character do I want to play next.

CombatOwl
2013-11-14, 06:42 AM
Earlier today I purchased Throne of Baal from game stop and being a 3.5 player,

Unfortunate timing, since BG2:EE (which includes ToB and a bunch of other stuff... like working multiplayer!) comes out on Friday. While there is certainly room to debate the merits of the EE series vs. heavily modified originals, none of the mods ever fixed the multiplayer issues.


found the differences in systems almost shocking.

They are completely unrelated.


So I was wondering what you more knowledgeable/experienced players might be able to teach me about 2nd edition, keeping 3.X in mind. Particularly helpful if you were one of those who had to adjust to the then new set of rules. :)

Stats don't matter as much. Quite literally in BG2, where you have no non-weapon proficiencies. In 2e, unless your stats are very high, you gain no bonus from them at all. There are no "skills," instead you have two optional systems of handling non-combat things. You can require the players to roleplay it (their characters are limited to the skills they themselves can describe), or you can use a system of "non-weapon proficiency" where players try to roll under an adjusted value based on their stats. For example, you might have the Endurance NWP. If it ever needed to be tested, the player would need to roll under their (Constitution - 0).

Attacks are based on what's usually called the THAC0 system, where characters have a score ("To Hit Armor Class 0") which represents the dice roll needed to hit Armor Class 0. When it comes time to actually hit something, there's two ways of doing it. The complex (but less metagamey) way is to roll the dice, calculate what AC that roll would have hit, then tell the GM "I hit AC 9" or whatnot. In every gaming group I've ever played in, the GM gets tired of that after about 30 minutes and just starts telling everyone what the AC of the monsters is, and letting you figure out if you hit or not. Which works like this;

THAC0 score - Monster's AC - Applicable Bonuses = Dice Roll You Need To Hit

It actually worked out pretty well because in the end you can just make a chart that's customized to your situation and reference it. Because THAC0 won't change much unless you either get a new magical weapon, level up, or somehow gain strength, those charts can last for many, many sessions before needing an update. If the GM says "AC 5" you know that you need a 15 on the die to hit, and so on.

Magic was far more powerful and far more dangerous. A significant portion of the spellbook (which was larger, after the Wizard's Spell Compendium collection was out) carries risks to the caster, risks to the subject (of a friendly spell), or chances of horrific failure.

Powergaming was significantly harder because of the complete lack of prestige classes. You picked a class at the start, and unless you were a human with very high stats, you weren't going to change it. A large number of the techniques in 3.x which ended up completely, stupidly broken (diplomancers, for example) didn't even conceptually work under 2e. It ran faster and was a better challenge than 3.x was.

The setting material was also better for 2e than the main settings for 3e (with the possible exception of Eberron). Even just accounting for the settings that were carried forward, the materials for 2e had a much more low-key style. It's hard to describe, but they work better.

skyth
2013-11-14, 06:58 AM
Powergaming was significantly harder because of the complete lack of prestige classes.

The Powergaming was just in different areas. The biggest reason it was 'harder' was because A) The internet was in it's infancy towards the end of the 2nd edition lifetime and didn't really exist at the beginning so you didn't have as much information sharing and B) There was more of a pick and choose mentality of what rules were being followed/allowed and which weren't. Hack rules from two settings together (Bloodline powers from Birthright and rules for playing a Dragon from Council of Wyrms, for instance) and you could get some broken stuff. However, that wouldn't fly in a large portion of groups. In 3rd edition, groups are generally a lot more lenient about cross-campaign stuff being included.

Plus, being lucky was it's own powergaming with so much being randomly determined at character creation.

Amphetryon
2013-11-14, 11:23 AM
Powergaming was significantly harder because of the complete lack of prestige classes. You picked a class at the start, and unless you were a human with very high stats, you weren't going to change it. A large number of the techniques in 3.x which ended up completely, stupidly broken (diplomancers, for example) didn't even conceptually work under 2e. It ran faster and was a better challenge than 3.x was.Powergaming was significantly DIFFERENT in 2e, in part because (as skyth mentioned) the fanbase didn't have the advantage of the internet to provide a somewhat unified basis, and in part because the game allowed for different "strengths." In 2e, a Dart Specialist Fighter was one of the better options available, for example, whereas the Ubercharger route that's popular in 3.X discussions wasn't particularly viable in 2e (at least until "2.5" came out, i.e. Skills & Powers).