QuoteThe Haste aging effect was from 1e, if I remember right.

I checked before posting. 1e says: "The spell lets you age faster." It is pretty clearly implied that you age twice as fast during the spell duration, not a year.

Anyway, it´s easy as pie removing the lamificator handbrakes from the kits. And way better it was ALWAYS explicitly stated, that you should design your own kits matching your homebrew, even providing Kit-Construction rules and forms. I totally dig that vibe!

We found the 2E system to be an improvement on 1E. Didn't use any supplements, only the PHB and DMG. So we ran our game with the 2E system, 1E feel and mostly 1E adventures. Our 2E campaign of Night Below was as good as anything we've played.

I like options, so I preferred 2e. We didn't even notice the handbrakes as our game style was less epic than default 1e, and very close to 2e. The 1e DMG, OTOH, was one of the greatest game books ever. I found myself using it throughout our 2e period.

-clash

Two words: Wild Mage.

Couple the vagaries of this class with the roleplaying antics of Daffy Duck, and you've got my most favorite character (outside of my evil cleric) ever.

Me <---looks into mirror
"Calithena, Calithena, Calithena, Calithena..."

Quote from: SettembriniI checked before posting. 1e says: "The spell lets you age faster." It is pretty clearly implied that you age twice as fast during the spell duration, not a year.

I was pretty sure it was listed in the DMG...  I forget where, but I seem to remember a small table for different spells' aging costs.

-O

Why doe't anybody but me like the Player's Options books?

I liked the ideas behind Player's Option, especially the combat book.  If the point system in the Skills & Powers book had been been done a little better, I'd have used it more.  I did find it useful for creating priests of specific gods, though.  The magic book had some nifty spells and reorganized the priest spells to give the Druid back some of the spells it lost in the edition transition.

I used parts of all three for quite a while when I ran 2e.

DragonFist was the bomb!

I'm not fond of second edition AD&D at all. I did play it a few times near the end of the run there. I *did* like the "Core Rules" cd they put out, which basically had all the books, a character generator and a map-maker all put together. That was a pretty cool way to get people to play D&D.

If all you knew about D&D was AD&D 2 (or AD&D  1st Edition!), I think you might naturally be biased against it. There are some severe issues there. In AD&D you could play a wizard. You had 3 hit points and 1 spell. You ran around the dungeon behind heavily armored guys until you could cast your *1* spell, (which better the hell have been sleep, because that was the only thing that had an area of effect and made it worth the effort for the other guys to protect you). And that was it for you for the rest of the evening. And no, you didn't get a crossbow to shoot, either. If you participated at all beyond that, it was holding a dagger. THAT is tough, no matter how well it pays off to be a wizard in later sessions/levels.

So if all you knew of D&D was how it went back then? Yeah, Weird.

But after a while - an arbitrary period of say.. 5 years-- I think you either have to see what it's like now or, failing that, simply shut up about D&D since your last experience with the game was probably completely out of line with the way people play now.

The same shall hold true for all future editions of D&D, I think.  

So that's my review of AD&D2. It wasn't great.

Quote from: Abyssal MawIn AD&D you could play a wizard. You had 3 hit points and 1 spell. You ran around the dungeon behind heavily armored guys until you could cast your *1* spell, (which better the hell have been sleep, because that was the only thing that had an area of effect and made it worth the effort for the other guys to protect you). And that was it for you for the rest of the evening. And no, you didn't get a crossbow to shoot, either. If you participated at all beyond that, it was holding a dagger. THAT is tough, no matter how well it pays off to be a wizard in later sessions/levels.

Then you weren't playing the role of a budding archmage, you were playing the role of an idiot with one spell, and the rest of the party should have fed you to a pack of kobolds.

Yeah, the problem is:

AM is right somehow. The people I know who played 2e in the mid nineties were all about keeping characters down. Slooooooow advancement, "deep" characters, "you can´t wear heavy armor in this heat"-kind of players.
There was nothing like the spirit of advancement from 1e, the RC or even the computer games.

It wasn´t strategic survival horror, it was just lame playing lamers in calm Cormyr.

BUT: if you come from any other incarnation of D&D to 2e, 2e is perfectly playable! It´s the people and modules that gave 2e a bad name, and I think that´s AMs point.

I liked how Bard's became their own class in 2e.

There was also the guidelines for creating your own character class in the 2e DMG that got a lot of use.

Cantrips, they had began as a Dragon article that evolved into their own special spice to magic in 2e.


Setting-wise, 2e gave birth to Dark Sun, and what's not to love about Dark Sun...

MY experience with 2E are VERY limited.  2E came out right after I got out of high school.  There was a stint for many years where I either had "better" things to do than role play, or when I did get back into role playing I was finally experimenting with things other than D&D.  As a result, when I did play D&D it was either Basic D&D or AD&D (1st ed) for a number of years (with no internet then, the pressure to play the new and shiney wasn't so intense).  About 10 years before 3E came out I got heavily into Warhammer Fantasy Battles and played that almost exclusively for that decade.

In the end, I had about a 1 year window when 2E came into my life.  I never GMed it, but did get to play in a campaign run by my friend (the A series converted from 1E with several side treks).  I played a Fighter/Knight for the first part, and when he died I played a Warmage (I think it was called, a Mage who focused on combat magic and had some fighting skill)).  I finally broke down and purchased the PH when they reprinted them in those full color books. (Remember how freakish it was to have a role playing game book printed in full color!  Good lord, who ever thought it would become industry standard in another decade?).

In any case, other than a few things, like THAC0 and dropping the name "MU" in favor of Mage, I really liked most of the changes. The Complete series were really a cool idea (In fact, I wish they would have left the sub-classes out of the core rule book altogether and just had the 4 core ones).  I just wish I would have had more time to really enjoy the system during these years.

Of course, if I had played 2E more it would just be another system that I lament about not playing anymore...and I have enough of those to depress me.

Quote from: whiteyfatsWhy doe't anybody but me like the Player's Options books?

I did like these, particuarly for the, well, options they gave me. But I won't say I never saw someone try to twink that shit out. My good friend loved to play Fighters, and when it came out, he immedietly made one with 17's or 18's in every stat (I do not know, at all, why he thought I would think that wasn't rigged) and put every weapon knowledge slot into Bastard Sword to get 5 attacks.

Which is funny, because if he really wanted to munchkin out, I told him he'd be better off buying darts. But until he did the math himself, he didn't buy it.