I don't know a whole hell of a lot about 2e, but have played a lot of 3.x. I would advise that if you use it, you play at low levels and set up xp so you stay 6 or under as long as you can. Also people who don't know much about 3e will tell you to ban classes from supplements. There's really very little class-wise that you need to worry about.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;6500312e doesn't use the matrix.  It uses THAC0.  Which does have one extra step than ascending AC (subtract from 20).  But ascending AC is the least complex. Depends on preference.

Shit...how could I forget that?  I grew up with 2E. (hmmmm...maybe I AM getting old...)

QuoteI was going to mention this, but apparently I'm a "NEXT fanatic".

If you mean when you say about NEXT, "You know, it's not so bad," and you get gang-raped after saying it, then we're in the same boat...er, prison cell...

Ahhhh, Ascending AC FTW!!!

That and converting THAC0 to BAB were two of the first things i houseruled as soon as we could.

When it comes to character customization, i find the copy-paste method of 2nd simple and quick (it would be faster if the writers knew how to organize their chapters for reader optimization) and if i felt the need for more customization beyond copy-paste, ignoring race/class requirements is just a short step away  

Human paladins only? To heck with that! Bring on the Halflings!!! Need 16 Charisma? Bleh, a paladin that trips over his tongue is just what we need for a good laugh.

Which brings another question. Are paladins chosen by their gods, or are they a higher order of knighthood? I've always liked the concept of Paladin as a "prestige class".

Sounds like you'll want to check out D&D Next, Amalgam. Seriously.

I had signed up for the playtests, but at the time i didn't live near my gamer buddies, and i only knew one other person who had also signed up for it, which made talking about it awkward considering their non-disclosure agreement.

I might just break down and DL all their released stuff and try it with our group though.

I tried playtesting it solo, acting as DM and party leader (think i used 4/5 PCs) and found the combat seemed to take way too long doing it solo. I'm generally not happy when PCs keep missing their attacks against at-level monsters. I think that must have been the second playtest, because there was one or two before it that i missed, and i haven't bothered with any since then. There are several reasons for that, one, i'm a cheapskate and the 2Ed books we used belonged to a friend of mine, two, i'm making my own RPG system and didn't want all my good ideas going into their game or having their game design overtly influencing mine, three, i didn't grow up with D&D so D&D Next isn't something i'm emotionally invested in.

I'll give it another look maybe.

Well it's basically what you prefer with ascending AC and the works, but without the uber-rules bloat and and super-optimization minigame the others have talked about re:3e. So you might want to check out the latest playtest packet. Might be to your liking, I don't know.

What I am not feeling at all is the guy who's a "walking 3e encyclopedia" by his own description who wants to play 3e with you guys who are complete noobs at it. That sounds like a recipe for him riding your collective asses pixelbitching about the rules and optimizing his characters way beyond the other players, if he doesn't pixelbitch about their characters and "helps them rebuild them" as well in the game. YMMV, of course, but that stinks to high heavens, to me.

lol! indeed. Unless he'd be willing to be DM, in which case his knowledge would be a boon, unless he's one of ~those~ DMs who plays against the players every step of the way.

Quote from: Amalgam;650112lol! indeed. Unless he'd be willing to be DM, in which case his knowledge would be a boon, unless he's one of ~those~ DMs who plays against the players every step of the way.

True. Might actually be cool if he's willing to DM without expecting you to read all of the rules books upfront. You never know. Good point.

Quote from: Amalgam;650103I tried playtesting it solo, acting as DM and party leader (think i used 4/5 PCs) and found the combat seemed to take way too long doing it solo. I'm generally not happy when PCs keep missing their attacks against at-level monsters..

I can't recall what they've changed so far, but we're not having any problems with missing all the time.  Well, except when my dice roll shitty  I think it's about the same as my AD&D experiences.

If you play like we do, and ignore the rules around movement and all that and play like AD&D, it goes by about as fast.  It only takes longer if you're making sure you're moving in 5' increments and whatnot.

If you are having a whiff factor, then lower all the monster AC's by 2 or give all the PCs a +2 hero bonus to their attack rolls.

EDIT: I had a group who played lots of Diablo and really weren't enjoying the whiffing in OD&D. Most of the monsters were being hit 33%-50% of the time, so +2 increased it to 43%-60% and that made them feel better about the game.

D&D has always been roughly a 30-40% hit rate though?

A first level fighter in AD&D needed a 13 to hit AC 7 (most stuff you meet at first level) and AC4 (chain and Shield) is the peak you tend to face and you need a 16 so 25% chance of hitting.
Clerics at 1st level are the same as fighters everyone else is 1 worse so 30-40% chance to hit is pretty good.

I use descending AC and BAB. Add BAB to AC then roll under. Sacrifices the base 55% to-hit chance for a flat 50% to-hit chance, but otherwise I find it far easier. (Besides, that baseline to-hit is easily modifiable.) Reminiscent of d% systems, keeps an explicit bounded accuracy, and generally easy to figure out probabilities for new and old players alike.

Yes, I am a D&D heretic. I've also gamed in Saudi Arabia, fwiw.

Quote from: Opaopajr;650258I've also gamed in Saudi Arabia, fwiw.

Awesome. Slight parenthesis: how was it?

Quote from: jibbajibba;650239D&D has always been roughly a 30-40% hit rate though?

Yes that is true, but Diablo does not.

If good, fun, reliable players are upset about the whiff factor, why not modify it?

Quote from: Benoist;650260Awesome. Slight parenthesis: how was it?

I was a child and my brother and his friends were just letting us dig into their material while hoping to keep us away. Once we had fun digging through the Demigods and Deities book we asked what all those stats meant and why. Then they ran a very small sample of D&D, but it didn't really grab me then as I was still under 8 yrs old (during the early 1980s Satanic Panic! ). The latter half of the 80s  decade we moved back to the states and I experienced America's schizophrenic liberality v. prudishness.

(I think it got through the religious censors, Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice guys, because it had actual mythos, like Indian, Egyptian, or Babylonian, and was thus under "age of ignorance" pre-Islamic history. Or perhaps it was seen as just a harmless game? Dunno. Mind you, the censors marked up our National Geographic ads with Western women not having covered hair and clothes up to the ankles and wrists, but Nat Geo articles with African indigenous women with exposed breasts were left unadulterated.

Also being a child I ended up 'behind the scenes' as it were with my mom and Saudi women. They often wore the latest fashion trends and definitely strong in their own household $ management -- often giving allowances to husbands, but otherwise managing the $ -- but in public covering up and public reliance upon men was mandatory. Saudi is surprisingly similar to the USA in how schizophrenic it can be.)