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2012-04-19, 07:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Is there something like that? Basically the 2nd Edition rules, but with everything converted to be "roll equal or higher". Same classes, same chances, but an easier time to calculate if an attack or save is a success or not.
We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying
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2012-04-19, 08:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Well saves are easy it is "did your roll+mods be higher or equal your saving throw number?". So you save vs spells on a 10. You roll an 11 and have a bonus of +1 (due to a ring of protection) you succeed. It already is roll higher otherwise saves would get harder as you level (since the number goes down).
For AC you can just invert the number. For instance an AC of 0 becomes an AC of 20 (plate+3). You then take your THAC0 and change it from a number to a bonus. A Thac0 of 18 becomes an attack bonus of +2. So if said attacker attacked that defender you would need to roll an 18 to hit since 18+2 (your bonus)=20 which is the number you need to hit the AC. This is the same as using the traditional system except the math is put in a more intuitive way form most people. When using magic weapons and the like just add that number to it just like in 3e.
Many of the numbers are already done for you in 3e. It is not a coincidence that leather armor is AC 8 in 2e and a +2 bonus in 3e.
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2012-04-19, 08:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2009
Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
But... thats not a function of math. Mathematicly saves and attack rolls work exactly the same in pre-3e and in 3.x.
All that has changed is the way its written down.
If you want 3e presentation of number, you can easily do it yourself.
THAC0 - 20 = attack bonus
10 - 2e AC = 3e AC
20 - 2e save = 3e save
And thats about it (skills actually use different systems in the editions).Last edited by Zombimode; 2012-04-19 at 08:26 AM.
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2012-04-19, 08:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2009
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
I think doing the conversion myself would be pretty easy, but I was wondering if there's already a retroclone that does just that.
We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying
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2012-04-19, 08:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Castles and Crusades, I think?
I mean, I've never played it or even looked at it myself; but that's what I always heard, that it was basically 2E but with more streamlined mechanics.
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2012-04-19, 09:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2009
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
I just tried my hand at this.
And ARGH! this makes my brain hurt! Who made these tables?! They are completely random with no system behind them whatsoever!
At up to 10,000 XP, a cleric is of a higher level than a druid. From 10,000 to 1,000,000 XP, the druid is of a much higher level than a cleric. And then the druid suddenly gets stuck at 14th level and stays there for well after the cleric made 20th. What the hell?!
Last edited by Yora; 2012-04-19 at 09:56 AM.
We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying
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2012-04-19, 10:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2005
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- Vancouver, BC, Canada
Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Maybe Myth and Magic?
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/100492...-Starter-Guide
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2012-04-19, 10:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2008
Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Clerics have access to the All, Astra, Charm, Combat, Creation, Divination, Guardian, Healing, Necromatic, Protection, Summoning, and Sun spheres (with minor access to Elemental). Druids have access to All, Animal, Elemental, Healing, Plant, and Weather spheres (minor access to Divination). The much better access to spells means the Cleric requires more experience to level up, the logic goes.
The high XP for 15th level Druids are likely RP reasonings.SpoilerThank you to zimmerwald1915 for the Gustave avatar.
The full set is here.
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2012-04-19, 11:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Just like minimum ability scores for classes and max class levels.
It has been over 10 years since I took a closer look at the rules, but now I can safely say that they are horribly awful! Why have modifiers to thieves skills when the character is wearing no armor? Why not include these modifiers in the base score? Arg!
It's easy to criticize in retroperspective, but I think it would be a really hard task to screw things up this much even if starting with no baseline at all.We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying
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2012-04-19, 11:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Yup if you check out the Druid book there can be only one 15th level druid at a time and all levels after that are more abstract The complete book of Druids would be helpful on why they did the leveling that way. Plus i think with druids there are ranks to work through leading up to the Arch-druid at 15th level.
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2012-04-19, 11:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2009
Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Yeah, there is stuff that will raise eyebrows. But honestly I dont think they warrant the term "horribly awful", at least not applied to the system as a whole. Not all of the culprits affect the gameplay all that much. And on the plus side, several parts are actually better desinged than 3e: the ratio of to-hit to AC is MUCH better then in 3e, for example.
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2012-04-19, 12:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2005
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
So go play a game you do enjoy and stop raggin on one that some of the rest of us do like, maybe?
It doesn't matter what game you're playing as long as you're having fun.
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2012-04-19, 01:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2011
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Be nice. Yora wants to like it. (S)He's not insulting you for liking the game, just venting frustration.
I noticed this myself. I guess they just assume that all thieves will want to wear as much armor as they can (ie leather). I thought it would be easier to have a "Leather Armor" column instead, however.
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2012-04-19, 01:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2007
Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
"I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums. I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that." -- ChubbyRain
Crystal Shard Studios - Freeware games designed by Kurald and others!
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2012-04-19, 01:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Wasn't being mean. Just asking the honest question of why, if it's so god aweful, that Yora's fiddling with it.
Playing with the numbers won't really "improve" it, just make it more complicated and less easy to understand.
It's apparant that it doesn't work the way Yora wants, so my solution is simple: go play the game that you do like rather than suffering through one you don't.
It's the biggest reason I don't play 4th edition. I don't like it.
I play AD&D because I do like the way it works.It doesn't matter what game you're playing as long as you're having fun.
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2012-04-19, 01:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2004
Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Are you certain you want 2ed?
Part of 2ed is that being a 14th-level druid means you're "The Great Druid." It's a political position, and to get it, you had to win a duel with the sitting Great Druid--who, as a result of losing the duel, got knocked down to 13th level. You stay at 14th-level because, originally, that was supposed to be the highest you could ever get as a druid, with the Great Druid being as powerful and important as the world's highest-level clerics.
Being 15th-level or higher means you're a retired former Great Druid. At that point, thematically, you're supposed to be what 3ed calls "epic." What, you thought epic meant "Level 21 and up for all classes" in 2ed?Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2012-04-19, 05:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2012
Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
I am so completely lost on this, Yora wants soemthing that already exists in 2nd ed but yet she don't?
or what am i missing here?
Or does Yora think that teh whoel THAC0 thing is hard math? ive never really thought of subtratcion as hard but I guess for some its a bit confusing which is why 3rd ed just wnet with the +X BaB, becuase everybody knows that bigger numbers are big.
(when secretly its almots teh same exacl thing as THAC0 was...)
an easy way for me to explain to people coming orm a 3rd ed bakground or somebody completely new to RPGs is this
IN COMBAT : roll high
OUT OF COMBAT : roll low
of course there are some exceptions to the rule like trying to dive between somebody's legs as an attack ect, but when something like that comes up we will cross that bridge.
Yora i think should be more head-ached about how much deadlier things were in 2nd ed myself.
not the 'maths hard ' part.
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2012-04-19, 07:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2010
Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
The multiple dice thing is a feature, not a bug. Rolling different type of dice is fun and not that complicated, since most of the subsystem are class only (like thiefs skills) so only the guy playing thief must read those.
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2012-04-19, 10:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
I was following M&M for a while. It's not a bad game, really. It has its quirks and some tragically bad design decisions (or at least it did a few months ago), but, overall, it's a fairly decent D&D clone. And most of the bad features can be explained by saying that it's trying to emulate 2E.
In general: It's interesting how much more prominent AD&D retroclones are than 2E retroclones. Honestly, it's kind of weird, since 2E is basically just a cleaned up and rather more playable version of 1E. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that it's because AD&D was out for a (comparatively) short time, and the published rules did not change all that much during its lifespan. You had to houserule the hell out of it to put it into a playable state, but that's beside the point. 2E, though, lasted a bit longer. 2E started out as 1E but "better," but it had enough splatbooks (to say nothing of 2.5), that there's no single rules element that's especially iconic to the 2E error. Much more emblematic were the myriad of campaign settings and such, which are noticeably more rules-neutral.
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2012-04-19, 10:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
I haven't played it myself, but I've heard good things about Adventurer, Conqueror, King, and the major mechanical changes seem to be pointing in the direction of what you want.
SpoilerOriginally Posted by JaronKOriginally Posted by TyndmyrOriginally Posted by Zaq
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2012-04-20, 07:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-04-20, 07:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2009
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2012-04-20, 08:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
EDIT: I re-read your post and realized I'd misinterpreted.
Actually, I think it makes quite a bit of sense, in some ways, since the cleric by reaching later levels has just come off of a good stretch of being slower than many of the other classes.
I guess it really is easy to get the fundamentals, but then the advanced learning goes slowly until you reach . . . I don't know . . . a moment of personal apotheosis when things start to become clearer and real power presents itself.Last edited by hamlet; 2012-04-20 at 08:46 AM.
It doesn't matter what game you're playing as long as you're having fun.
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2012-04-20, 10:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
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- Mansfield, MA
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
One thing you have to understand about AD&D is that it was heavily playtested. As such, they tinkered with the xp charts until they got balance the way it felt right in actual play.
So you need to have a little trust playing AD&D that the numbers are wonky for a reason. Perfect mathematical progressions don't mean better balanced play.
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2012-04-20, 03:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-04-20, 10:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2006
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
I am still following it. There are some oddities to be sure, more or less along the lines of Path Finder, which is to say I might not want X, but it is what the community wants.
AD&D/1E was 1977-1989 and AD&D/2E was 1989-2000. More likely it is because the two are so indistinguishable that there is little need to basically rehash OSRIC. Instead, what is happening is that people are building up off AD&D (or D&D) in various ways.It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one’s own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
– Yoshida Kenko (1283-1350), Tsurezure-Gusa (1340)
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2012-04-21, 12:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
2E were the cleaned up rules; you should take a look at 1E sometime.
I could be wrong, but, I think that the idea behind sometimes roll high, sometimes roll low was to iron out any flaws in the dice being used; whether the flaws were deliberate or otherwise. This makes perfect sense from a statistical point of view.π = 4
Consider a 5' radius blast: this affects 4 squares which have a circumference of 40' — Actually it's worse than that.
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2012-04-25, 11:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2008
Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
Two reasons this sort of made sense.
1: The assumption was that clerics were mostly healbots in much the same way that wizards were evocationists. Even in 3.5 a healbot cleric is weaker than many of the "lower tiered" classes by virtue of how it works.
2: Spell saves were figured very differently in 2nd edition than in 3rd. Simply, by high levels the majority of equal or higher level enemies were saving against spells 70%+ of the time. That isn't the case in 3rd at all. This weakend casters in many ways compared to their insane power in 3.5.
(though don't jump on this statement because they are still way stronger than fighters and point 1).
As for the rest of it, I never had a problem with THACO. It is a really easy system to use not in the least because your DM screen always had the chart right there. So you could easily know which number each character needed to roll to hit the guys unlike in 3.5 where there are so many modifiers depending on how you are attacking at any given moment.
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2012-04-26, 07:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
I never made that assumption.
IN fact, clerics, IME, were vastly more powerful when they weren't run as "healbots." At 1-3 levels, a simple bless spell could do a world of difference. Or a Sanctuary spell to hold off some attackers while you did what you could to salvage a bad situation.
By fifth level, you were slinging Prayer around, about the best spell going at that level.
Many of the most powerful spells a cleric could use were specifically not healing spells. It was only uninventive players and whiney fighters who turned them into healbots.It doesn't matter what game you're playing as long as you're having fun.
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2012-04-26, 07:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: I want AD&D 2nd Edition with cleaned up math
If we are discussing using the XP tables as a balance factor
1. That would be a terrible assumption considering that is the weakest way to play and the cleric can do almost anything with its huge list of spells.
2. Why are you using spells that involve saves as clerics have large numbers of self and party buffs that are so much better? Or use spells with no saves.
The reality is that balance was haphazard back then and the rumor is that the cleric was made so powerful to convince players to play it. Clerics are more powerful than warriors at the very high levels in general at the same level so allowing them to be higher in level just seems wonky.