New to AD&D 2e/Getting Started

[Toofey]

I strongly recommend that you drop level limits and reverse the multi/dual class rules, (if not just make either open to anyone). I also recommend that you reconceptualize the round as 6 second, and change all the distances in movement to feet.

Finally, playing 2nd ed, it's important to remember that the book rules are basically suggestions. RAW mean a lot less than RADM (Rules as DMed) NOTE the 2nd ed books say outright that what the DM says goes, so if you are into RAW Rule 0 is built into the book straight away.

[Rhynn]

I strongly recommend that you drop level limits and reverse the multi/dual class rules, (if not just make either open to anyone).

It's obviously a matter of taste, but I think there are good reasons for keeping level limits and the multi/dual-classing system. (Never mind that it should take forever and a half to get to those level limits.) Using the optional raised level limits for high ability scores can help, too.

Long-winded expounding:

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Basically, non-humans are plain better. Dwarves and elves (and even halflings, really) are just better at everything than humans. Bonuses to saves, immunity to sleep, bonuses to hit with swords and bows, etc. The promise of unlimited advancement way down the line is a good motivator for playing humans (although not even close to great). I've never seen a player decide to go for a human PC because of level limits, and I don't think any AD&D campaign I've been in has ever even seen characters make it to levels where level limits were a concern.

Multi-classing, meanwhile, offers a nice compromise or consolation prize. You're going to keep advancing for twice as long, essentially (i.e. no "wasted XP"). At the very high levels (past 9-10), you're going to be behind by more than 1 level, but at those levels, differences matter less (except for spellcasters).

I do think that dual-classing needs work, though; not being able to use any of your old abilities until your new level exceeds your old is really freaking harsh if you include THAC0 and saves in those new abilities! I'm fine with small XP penalties for using wizard spells when you're trying to be fighter, etc. Dual-classing is still surprisingly awesome, though - if a campaign does go into high levels, a wizard who started out as a fighter and got to level 7-9 or so has a big advantage when he's out of spells (or spells plain won't work), and is hardly behind at all once he's past level 10 as a wizard. (Plus 7d10+28+3d4+6 hp is much better than 10d4+20.)

I also recommend that you reconceptualize the round as 6 second, and change all the distances in movement to feet.

Possibly a good idea. I think B/X doesn't have one-minute rounds anyway. It's always seemed like a bit of an AD&D oddity. I tend to figure the actual combat (especially in dungeons, where you move much slower than outdoors in combat for some reason) takes much less than 60 seconds per round, but the immediate post-combat getting-your-crap-together rounds it out to 1 minute per round of combat.

This does cause a big problem, though - a few spells give their durations in minutes, but most give them in rounds, including a lot of spells you want to use out of combat. Is their combat-duration now longer by an order of magnitude, or is their out-of-combat duration shorter by an order of magnitude? Or do spells have different durations in and out of combat? (Possibly not that big of a problem, considering characters move faster on a field outdoors than in a comparably-sized empty room in a dungeon.)

Finally, playing 2nd ed, it's important to remember that the book rules are basically suggestions. RAW mean a lot less than RADM (Rules as DMed) NOTE the 2nd ed books say outright that what the DM says goes, so if you are into RAW Rule 0 is built into the book straight away.

Strongly agree. The older the D&D version, the more it is about making it your own. Just don't front-load that work - make most changes as they are needed: when something comes up during play, make a ruling on the spot, but then discuss it afterwards with your players and make a new rule for it that steps into effect from there on.

[Thialfi]

We did away with a lot of the racial limits and class restrictions for demi-humans. We compensated by house ruling a 10% bonus to all experience earned by humans. This would, of course, be in addition to the 10% bonus that could be earned from having high primary stats for your class as detailed in the Player's Handbook.

We kept some racial class restrictions. No halfling monks or dwarven wizards.

[Rhynn]

A note: if you go with actual AD&D, rather than Myth & Magic, you'll find that you can literally use any book for any edition prior to 2E. All modules are immediately compatible. The only changes you'll need to make is recalculating XP, usually. Sometimes, you may want to ignore a bit in a stat block (like B/X "Save as" lines, although why not use those?), and a magic item or spell might work subtly differently, but mostly the modules expect you to refer to the rulebooks for those anyway.

Granted, M&M would probably require fairly little re-working, too.

This is a big advantage, given how many modules there are and the fact they're coming back on PDFs...

It's kind of a pity that 3E completely wrecked all hopes of backwards compatibility.

We did away with a lot of the racial limits and class restrictions for demi-humans. We compensated by house ruling a 10% bonus to all experience earned by humans. This would, of course, be in addition to the 10% bonus that could be earned from having high primary stats for your class as detailed in the Player's Handbook.

We kept some racial class restrictions. No halfling monks or dwarven wizards.

Sounds sensible. I think one of the motivations was to encourage human characters, in the face of demihuman superiority at 1st level - even to the point of making humans the majority (since demihumans were definitely a bit alien and unknowable, originally).

[Jay R]

I also recommend that you reconceptualize the round as 6 second, and change all the distances in movement to feet.

Why? The only effect in combat would be to have more attacks per unit movement, so you can assume most combats are over in less than a minute.

But it would cripple non-combat spells. ESP, for instance, is a 2nd level spell that lasts for 1 round per level. A 3rd level wizard can currently cast it for three minutes. Why do you want to restrict it to 18 seconds?

[Kaervaslol]

Longtime 2e DM and player here (playing for the last 6 years). I've played in most published settings: Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Birthright and DMed a lot of Greyhawk.

The difference in power between humans and the rest of the races has mattered very little in all the games I've participated. The prime concern always has been to make character that we want to play and are interesting, and the additional stuff was there, well, because it made sense. I'm a dwarf, of course I can drink 10 gallons of ale, punny elf! (Roll vs poison +4).

Take the advice of the PHB to heart and make characters and play the game before trying to fix something that ain't broken.

For the record, most of my PCs are human.

Don't change the round to 6 seconds, that sucks and takes away from combat a lot. Improvisation is a big part of the combat and the 60 second round allows for a lot of stuff to happen in there.

[thirdkingdom]

OP: For play by post gaming I would suggest Unseen Servant or RPG.net, which is where I do most of my gaming. I am not aware of a forum focusing on 2e; Dragonsfoot is mostly 0/1e.

[Toofey]

Have you ever seen a piece of fantasy fiction where demi-humans had a more limited potential than humans? In most things Elves are clearly superior, dwarves are the mightiest fighters, and halflings the most cunning thieves. Even in the materials provided by Wizards the Non-human races have resources well beyond the human empires, including in many of the setting characters that clearly are beyond the level caps presented in the players handbook.

[Scowling Dragon]

That always has bugged me. I always assumed that on another planet Klingons write about KlingDwarfs superior constitution, and KlingElfs superior intellect.

[Rhynn]

Have you ever seen a piece of fantasy fiction where demi-humans had a more limited potential than humans? In most things Elves are clearly superior, dwarves are the mightiest fighters, and halflings the most cunning thieves. Even in the materials provided by Wizards the Non-human races have resources well beyond the human empires, including in many of the setting characters that clearly are beyond the level caps presented in the players handbook.

Well, for a start, the fiction behind D&D mostly didn't involve demihumans at all (at least as heroes). They were sort of a grudging addition because the players all clamored for Tolkien elves, dwarves, and hobbits.

And there's very few pieces of fiction with characters that would be much above 10th-12th level anyway.

The D&D standard, though, is/was pretty much that the demihumans' empires and achievements have been eclipsed by the rise of humans... so they obviously have some sort of edge.

And anyway, demihumans are superior. Plus, demihuman characters in a campaign that actually spans years would reach very high levels while the humans died off around them.

I'm not sure how WotC is relevant to AD&D level limits, though.

[Oddfellow]

OP: For play by post gaming I would suggest Unseen Servant or RPG.net, which is where I do most of my gaming. I am not aware of a forum focusing on 2e; Dragonsfoot is mostly 0/1e.

Thanks for the tip, but I'm not sure if PBP system is something I'm interested in. I've never tried it, and I'd like to once at least, but I think it's missing too much of what I feel is the real D&D experience. But that's just my opinion, and I'll give it a try before I jump to conclusions. Thanks again!

[Machpants]

I've been inspired by this thread to reacquaint myself with 2E. So reading PHB and DMG, just making my way into NWP at the mo. It will be interesting once I get to the actual rules how much I am mis-remembering after all those years!

[Oddfellow]

I've been inspired by this thread to reacquaint myself with 2E. So reading PHB and DMG, just making my way into NWP at the mo. It will be interesting once I get to the actual rules how much I am mis-remembering after all those years!

Hey, that's what I like to hear! Although I'm learning for the first time, I'm making my first character as I write this, and I've just reached non-weapon proficiencies myself. Good luck!

[Rhynn]

Having now read Myth & Magic some, I'd not recommend it as an AD&D 2E substitute, although I don't doubt it can be a perfectly good game to play on its own. It's very, very 3rd edition in many ways, which complicates some things a bunch even if it "makes more sense" (in a 3rd ed. way) - for instance, all monsters have Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha, which just strikes me as unnecessary and fiddly - sure, you can now make 3rd ed. style opposed rolls, but I never found those very necessary - if a roll is needed, just roll d20 against the PC's stats...

[Oddfellow]

Having now read Myth & Magic some, I'd not recommend it as an AD&D 2E substitute, although I don't doubt it can be a perfectly good game to play on its own. It's very, very 3rd edition in many ways, which complicates some things a bunch even if it "makes more sense" (in a 3rd ed. way) - for instance, all monsters have Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha, which just strikes me as unnecessary and fiddly - sure, you can now make 3rd ed. style opposed rolls, but I never found those very necessary - if a roll is needed, just roll d20 against the PC's stats...

From what I've read of it I agree with you; I'm really into getting the full 2e experience, for better and for worse. I happen to find the not-always-perfect mechanics of 2e incredibly charming and appealing. Personally, I'm looking for a change from 3.5e, not a substitute.

[Matthew]

Dragonsfoot has a pretty large second edition subforum, at least as big as the Classic one. The first edition one, of course, is much more popular.

[Jay R]

Have you ever seen a piece of fantasy fiction where demi-humans had a more limited potential than humans? In most things Elves are clearly superior, dwarves are the mightiest fighters, and halflings the most cunning thieves.

Of course. Nonetheless, they didn't rule the world, generally; humans did. And the great heroes were most often humans. Level limits were an attempt to solve that conundrum.

Even in the materials provided by Wizards the Non-human races have resources well beyond the human empires, including in many of the setting characters that clearly are beyond the level caps presented in the players handbook.

I admit I know little about what Wizards puts out. But whatever it is, it doesn't apply to 2E, which Wizards never published (except recently, as nostalgia).

[Toofey]

Why? The only effect in combat would be to have more attacks per unit movement, so you can assume most combats are over in less than a minute.

But it would cripple non-combat spells. ESP, for instance, is a 2nd level spell that lasts for 1 round per level. A 3rd level wizard can currently cast it for three minutes. Why do you want to restrict it to 18 seconds?

it forces you to make decisions, some spells rounds refer to combat rounds, and others refer to minutes, same thing with turns. But it makes the attacks actually mean attacks, you can conceive of it as a minute of action with each person getting attack rolls to symbolize their level of success or failure over the round, but that separates the game from the action in a way that I've never really thought worked as well as making things shorter.

It is clearly a matter of taste, but I like the natural excitement of "I try this" and "X or Y happens directly as a result"


I thought using TSR would be somewhat Gosh, also I think Wizards took over shortly before the end of 2nd ed, but I'm not sure.

[Rhynn]

It is clearly a matter of taste, but I like the natural excitement of "I try this" and "X or Y happens directly as a result"

I really don't see how having longer rounds affects this. (Except that you can probably try more things and have more direct results before the dragon breathes again / the lich casts another spell...)

[Matthew]

Me neither. Combat at the rate of one orc per minute just is not swords & sorcery action adventure to me.

[Rhynn]

Me neither. Combat at the rate of one orc per minute just is not swords & sorcery action adventure to me.

I use the sweep rule in 2E - if they've got 1 HD or less, you can attack as many as your fighter level. (I think that may have been part of why 1st-level fighting men had HD 1+1, to not be sweepable?)

[Pollip]

I'm coming from the same background as OP, meaning I started with 3rd edition, but I'll be DMing my first 2nd Ed. game in a few days.

My biggest worry right now is that I'll end up killing everyone's characters. Characters have so little health in 2nd ed., and there isn't that stop-gap of 0 to -9 HP. It seems like a much deadlier game to me, which is fine, but I have some friends that are new to roleplaying, and I don't want to turn them off to it by killing them unfairly.

What can I do to keep the game challenging, but not have an immediate TPK?

[hamlet]

I'm coming from the same background as OP, meaning I started with 3rd edition, but I'll be DMing my first 2nd Ed. game in a few days.

My biggest worry right now is that I'll end up killing everyone's characters. Characters have so little health in 2nd ed., and there isn't that stop-gap of 0 to -9 HP. It seems like a much deadlier game to me, which is fine, but I have some friends that are new to roleplaying, and I don't want to turn them off to it by killing them unfairly.

What can I do to keep the game challenging, but not have an immediate TPK?

Actually, there is that stopgap between 0 and -9. It's an optional rule in the PHB called "At Death's Door" but it was de facto core pretty much since the beginning.

As for avoiding a TPK, as a new DM in the system, you will probably end up causing one by accident. Hell, veteran DM's do it from time to time. Things can get ugly real fast.

The best advice I can give you is not to fudge the game, but to, when it happens, admit that you made a mistake and offer to the group to backtrack if neccessary or otherwise "fix" it. Say the monsters take the players captive instead of killing them, or some other group has swooped in to rescue them. Or simply say "oops, my bad, that was tougher than I thought it'd be, let's backtrack there."

Don't be afraid to admit you made a mistake. You won't be perfect, don't try to be.

[Rhynn]

DMs don't cause TPKs, uncautious players do.

Seriously though, it happens. Just try to structure the game/adventure so that replacement PCs can get in naturally during the same session.

[Lapak]

I'm coming from the same background as OP, meaning I started with 3rd edition, but I'll be DMing my first 2nd Ed. game in a few days.

My biggest worry right now is that I'll end up killing everyone's characters. Characters have so little health in 2nd ed., and there isn't that stop-gap of 0 to -9 HP. It seems like a much deadlier game to me, which is fine, but I have some friends that are new to roleplaying, and I don't want to turn them off to it by killing them unfairly.

What can I do to keep the game challenging, but not have an immediate TPK?

DMs don't cause TPKs, uncautious players do.

Seriously though, it happens. Just try to structure the game/adventure so that replacement PCs can get in naturally during the same session.

Well, don't be too terribly afraid of the occasional character death, especially in the early going. While there isn't a system for lower-level characters earning more experience, you don't really need one - the experience tables in 2e mean that a PC who dies (before 10th level) and is replaced by a 1st-level character will get just about all the way up to the level of the character she's replacing by the time the rest of the party is ready to go up another level. Also, as hamlet said, "At Death's Door" is right in the books.

Also ALSO, the single most important thing to keep in mind going back to 2e is that the game is built around the idea that you're going to be adding house rules and/or making on-the-spot rulings. If you don't like At Death's Door as written, you're not bound to it. Or to death at 0 hit points. You can give them down to -Con as a limit, or have them drop at 0 but make a Save vs. Death to see if they actually die, or snag one of the Death and Dismemberment tables that the old school blogs generated over the last few years - you can find a bunch of them linked in the first sentence here.

All of that said, I understand that avoiding a TPK right off the bat would be nice. So here's some advice:

- Structure your early encounters such that retreat is not only possible but has a real, obvious chance at succeeding - make it clear that whatever they're fighting won't or can't pursue.

- Make sure that you read the morale rules and CHECK MORALE for enemies as a fight progresses. The bad guys might have to make one or more checks even in the first round of combat, and having them run away from fights will help your party remember that they can too.

[Rhynn]

The Morale rules can actually make fights against low-morale enemies surprisingly easy sometimes - taking someone out with a spell forces an immediate Morale check!

Old edition combat isn't a vidjagame slugfest to the last man. Either side can flee, someone may surrender, etc. And if they do flee, they may regroup and try again later. There's no 3E/4E style "encounters" that exist separate of the context - in a dungeon, a group of monsters or a survivor may run to get help from another group in a different room, or to alert them, and instead of encountering a bunch of orcs playing dice, the PCs encounter a big bunch of orcs that have laid an ambush... or a group of orcs in disarray trying to gather their belongings and run away!

In addition to making sure escape is possible, you should not force combat every time. Sure, a hungry giant spider is going to attack (but probably retreat as soon as it gets hurt, especially if it's alone), but a bunch of goblins may be open to negotiation, bribery, intimidation, or even cooperation (with an option for betrayal).

[Pollip]

I had no idea about the Death's door rule. Thanks for pointing that out.

Yeah, I'm realizing that you really have to treat the core gameplay differently than 3E. It's definitely going to be a more deliberate exploration of a dungeon, rather than just a gung-ho brawl, at least at early levels.

Anyway, thanks!

[Lapak]

In addition to making sure escape is possible, you should not force combat every time. Sure, a hungry giant spider is going to attack (but probably retreat as soon as it gets hurt, especially if it's alone), but a bunch of goblins may be open to negotiation, bribery, intimidation, or even cooperation (with an option for betrayal).

And you should keep in mind that this is true even when the 'bad guys' are winning. The goblins they're fighting don't necessarily want to fight to the last hit point even if they have the upper hand; there's always a risk in combat that they'll die. If they take down a couple of PCs, they may offer to let the group go - as long as they turn over some or all of their valuables and/or agree to stay away and/or do something that the goblins need done.

[MeeposFire]

It was also fairly common to start at around level 2 or 3 just to avoid the extreme fragility to 1st level characters. In fact that was core if you were playing Dark Sun. This is not an uncommon site in most versions of D&D (except 4e where 1st level characters are beefy enough to live).

Avoiding the use of the optional critical hit rules helps as does allowing things like helmets to protect against critical hits (that is technically a Baldurs Gate rule but it is a nice perk to helmets that was not in the core game).

[Lord Torath]

True, but critical hits were strictly an optional rule in 2nd Edition anyway.