2E D&D, Sourcebook Creep, and CoDzilla

[Cyberzombie]

I always played with spell memorization. I never actually knew in 2E that there was a difference for how a cleric got spells compared to how a wizard received them. We always pretty much played it as when you got a good night's sleep, you picked new spells in the morning.

[brized]

Back when I ran 2E one of my players ran a Complete Priests Handbook custom priest. I was like, "why even play a fighter?". My solution was to allow books like Combat and Tactics and let the other players in the group use the custom class guidelines from the DMG, which had similarly wonky results. IIRC the other two party members were basically a fighter/mage/thief with the XP table of a mage and a roided out custom barbarian kit. Everyone felt overpowered, so it was fun. I was starting out as a GM so it made it easier to get a grasp on combat difficulty without TPKing.

Nearly every 2E group I played in had a custom spell point system in place to avoid spell memorization. Some offset the extra flexibility by forcing specialization, but you got extra SP for it anyway.

[Stinktopus]

I always played with spell memorization. I never actually knew in 2E that there was a difference for how a cleric got spells compared to how a wizard received them. We always pretty much played it as when you got a good night's sleep, you picked new spells in the morning.

This was my experience as well.

One of the things that kept fighters relevant in my 2E groups was that certain things were just considered standard fighter equipment. At some point, the fighter was going to have a Girdle of Giant Strength, an underwater breathing helm, and an item that granted flight.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Seriously, it was less, because 90% of players didn't even realize that there were spells in the PHB Priest list that were nominally not supposed to be on the Cleric's list.

Yeah, that was one of the things that made me go WTF when I looked at my copy of the 2E D&D PHB. I have played so many D&D video games where clerics got access to every priest spell on the list with none of that sphere bullshit that I thought it was the default.

How did the priest/cleric get changed from 1E D&D to 2E D&D? Could that be the cause of the confusion?

ED: Fixed some grievous spelling errors.

[Username17]

How did the priest/cleric get change from 1E D&D to 2E D&D? Could that be the cause of the confusion?

Well, in 1st edition AD&D there's a Cleric list and a Druid list, and the Cleric gets all of their spell descriptions from 1st to 7th level and then the Druid gets all of their spell descriptions (and then the Magic User and Illusionist). In 2nd edition, the Cleric and Druid lists are combined into the "Priest List" with sphere notations to incoherently explain which spells are Cleric spells, which are Druid spells and which are available to both classes. But no one fucking understands that, because it's confusing and it's dumb. They just see that they are playing a Priest and there is a pile of spells called the "Priest List" and it seems like those would be the spells they could cast. Added points for the fact that for Mages, that is in fact exactly how it works.

No one ever played 2e by the book. Even the people who say they played it by the book really didn't. Although it sounds like Gnome Works' family played it closer than even the designers did. The simple fact of the matter is that the books were incoherent and most people get most rules wrong.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

My group played just a tiny bit of 2e before moving to 3e (we got the 2 boxed set, then the 2e books, then the 3e books came out like 6 months later). What 2e we did play we played as close to the core book as we could manage. In some parts of the book it basically says "pick an option we don't do that for you" though (NWPs, Initiative, etc).

We did use spell memorization, and we did follow the Sphere limits for Clerics. Probably had a lot to do with the fact that we were a bunch of 8-12 year olds arguing, and going "by the book" was as close to a fair resolution we could ever get. We didn't get introduced to it by parents or anything, we just got it from the book store one time.

[Voss]

What 'boxed set' are you referring to? There were a lot* of setting boxes during 2nd, but I can't remember any rules sets for 2nd, though admittedly I bought the books on day 1 and never would have looked for sets later on.

*fucktons, in fact

[Lokathor]

It was one of those introductory sets that had pre-made characters that could level up to 3rd level. There was a player's manual with a rules intro, and a GM's manual for a 1 level dungeon under a town, along with a guide for generating a random dungeon. Each character sheet had a fancy pic and was on glossy paper that opened up book-style, and double-sided (4 pages of info total per character sheet).

[JigokuBosatsu]

This reminds me, after I finish up Shadows over Stygia I'm thinking of running... "Return to the Crypts of Chaos" - any interest?

... an AD&D 2.x game...

[Hicks]

Ancient History, I'm game for a straight phb 2e human wizard (hopefully a conjurer) or cleric.

[GnomeWorks]

In 2nd edition, the Cleric and Druid lists are combined into the "Priest List" with sphere notations to incoherently explain which spells are Cleric spells, which are Druid spells and which are available to both classes. But no one fucking understands that, because it's confusing and it's dumb.

Spheres were a thing, ya.

Each deity was given a set of them, and those made up your spell list, if you were a cleric. I want to say that whatever sphere the various cure spells were in was given to pretty much every Good-aligned deity, and all the Neutral ones that he was fine with players being clerics of. But other than that, you were restricted to spells from your deity's spheres.

We didn't touch druids because he had the interpretation of True Neutral that required you to go for perfect balance, so he insisted on things like druids turning on their fellow party members when they were winning. Which basically meant no one played a druid ever.

On the alignment note, Chaotic Neutral was also explicitly disallowed, because they had to act randomly and without reason. Like basically insane instead of not giving a damn about laws or morality.

...was level loss for alignment change a thing? He did that, quite a bit, but I guess I don't know if that's core in 2e or not.

It didn't seem that complicated at the time, I guess.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Did your folks do 3d6 in order? If so, what was the policy on rerolls? Or intentionally getting yourself killed off?

Also: by the book fail! The game distinguishes between True Neutral and Neutral. Because there were definitely Neutral Evil druids in the official campaign settings.

[GnomeWorks]

Did your folks do 3d6 in order? If so, what were the policy on rerolls?

It depends on the group. He preferred that, but my mother was not so much a fan. His original group I think did the 3d6 thing, but when he came here to GB and got a group together I think there was an overwhelming response of "wtf."

I believe the most popular method was 4d6, best 3, reroll 1's (only once, I think), arrange to taste. So far as I know, that's the method they're using in their games right now.

Of course, when changing to other games that only allow one method (such as HackMaster), he specifically required you to use that method. I was playing when we had a guy who rolled up a 1st-level fighter in a 6th-level group that didn't roll a single stat above 12, and had a couple 8's and such. I know his rolls were bad enough that he could only be a fighter. Funnily enough, that character lived to like... 8th level, I think? Then got killed by some bullshit magic item in a completely and utterly bullshit manner.

[Voss]

It was one of those introductory sets that had pre-made characters that could level up to 3rd level. There was a player's manual with a rules intro, and a GM's manual for a 1 level dungeon under a town, along with a guide for generating a random dungeon. Each character sheet had a fancy pic and was on glossy paper that opened up book-style, and double-sided (4 pages of info total per character sheet).

Huh. Completely missed the existence of anything like that. Though I'm seriously puzzled by the character sheet, unless page 2 is blank aside from a 'Equipment and Magic Items' at the top, and pages 3 & 4 are just 'Spells.' Because there just isn't that much detail for 2nd edition characters.

[talozin]

Yeah, there's one way in which 2nd Edition was actually a step backward: 3d6 in order was the default character creation method. 1st Edition didn't even include 3d6 in order among its recommended character generation methods. Lots of people assumed it anyway, presumably as a leftover from White Box, but it was very specifically disrecommended by Gygax in the DMG as making it difficult to produce playable characters with a decent life span.

Besides which, White Box used a different and much more limited system of modifiers for high and low attributes (e.g., a maximum of -1/+1 hit points per die for high or low Con) under which 3d6x6 was much more reasonable. Carrying it over to AD&D's bonus/penalty scale was borderline sadistic.

[souran]

This was my experience as well.

One of the things that kept fighters relevant in my 2E groups was that certain things were just considered standard fighter equipment. At some point, the fighter was going to have a Girdle of Giant Strength, an underwater breathing helm, and an item that granted flight.

This is actually hugely improtant to understanding some of the balance points to 2E, not that they were particularly good.

Clerics and Wizards generally were given magic items that increased their spellcasting capability, rings that doubled spell levels, wands, staves, rods and scrolls.

Clerics got hand-me-down magic armor and shields from fighters.

Fighters/Paladins/Rangers got the majority share of all the other treasure in every game I ever played or heard people play for 2 reasons.

1) A lot of magic items were given stupid flags that made them not work on anybody but one specific class and all the items that really boosted combat performance were tied to warriors.

2) Warrior types basically used treasure to make up for the fact that they were not getting spells. The spell casters were going to cast spells on their turn so they didn't need winged boots, or helmets with death rays or that stuff.

Becuase of this tendancy to use magic items to turn warrior types into Iron man I saw a lot more fighter/cleric and fighter/druid characters than single classed clerics. (Single classed druids generally meant that the person HAD read the spell lists well enough to realize that clerics didn't get call lightning or entangle or any of the other druid only 1-4 spells.)

As Frank has pointed out nobody played 2E with ALL the rules. You couldn't some of them were directly contradictory. I owned complete priest and never had anybody say that they would rather play a cleric than a fighter. Then again, I also had a group of people that I played with (an infamous friends of a friend of my regular group) that let everbody have weapon specilization even before skills and powers. That table had exactly 0 fighters, it was like a preview of later editions.

I had probably been playing 2E for almost 6 years before I saw anybody cast a spell that was not from the players handbook or the tome of magic.

One thing I would like to know: How many of the other people who played 2E played (or had their parents or older siblings) run adventures from dragon magazine?

Especially as we got a little older and all the players in our group were in at least middle school we were playing lots of stuff from Dragon Magazine. For the entire life of 2E the adventures in Dragon Magazine only used spells from the PHB and Tome of Magic, Kits from the complete (PHRS I guess?) [note that no other materials in these books were allowed], weapons from "Arms and Equipment Guide" and , magic items from the DMG and Tome of Magic, monsters needed to be from the hardcover monster manual OR needed to include their full right up. Artifcats from the book of artifacts could be used but were discouraged. (As a note I know this because I had a class assignment where we had to write a formal letter to a buisness or entity and I was one of only 4 kids in class who actually got a response from the entity we contacted! TSR sent a full sized buisness return envelope with a cover letter and a 4 page submission guidelines booklet and even returned my self addressed stamped envelope. Thats actually a more exciting memory than most of my time actually playing 2E....)

Although there was not good organized play the way there is now, nor was the internet a thing that people used to dicuss D&D at the time, if you were playing a lot of dungeon adventures these could (or did for me at least) become the defacto level at which things ended up being played because it provided a lot of content that we could play through.

[Ancient History]

Ancient History, I'm game for a straight phb 2e human wizard (hopefully a conjurer) or cleric.

It'll run something like the original did, only AD&D2 style - players are allowed any options from any sourcebook or Dragon magazine or whatever, but anything they can use I can use too. I'm still debating the Player's Option stuff, and whether or not to just open up the Spell Compendiums right off the bat to save some trouble. I do know I want to allow myself the Encyclopedia Magica, 'cause I've got ideas...

More to the point, I want to avoid some of the mistakes I made with the last game I ran, to make this one more fun (and deadly!) But I won't really start to plan it out proper until the Conan/Cthulhu game finished or completely stalls out.

[GnomeWorks]

Also: by the book fail! The game distinguishes between True Neutral and Neutral. Because there were definitely Neutral Evil druids in the official campaign settings.

...seriously? I thought that was a 3e thing. I was told at the table that the True Neutral interpretation was how that alignment would be run and judged, period.

We literally never encountered a druid that was anything other than TN. He runs a homebrew setting, though, so that's not really saying much.

[OgreBattle]

Was there a description of True Neutral as "A druid that will help fight the gnolls, then help the gnolls if they're about to be wiped out because that is balance"?

I remember reading something like that in an AD&D book and feeling puzzled.

[Dean]

I only got to play one 2E game when I was quite young. I would be very interested to see what it was like. I'm gonna download some sourcebooks, I bet these sourcebooks are gonna be a nightmare to read.

[tussock]

One thing I would like to know: How many of the other people who played 2E played (or had their parents or older siblings) run adventures from dragon magazine?

My group got Dragon, but not Dungeon, so I never saw them. Mostly because I was mad keen for doing crazy amounts of world-building and adventure design all on my own self. There was always plenty of the softcover modules lying around that I could pick up and use if I got behind.

But yeh, the modules didn't really work, We powergamed, fucking great stacks of wild-psi and custom classes and race-switching and pet wyrms and "this thing from Darksun with that thing from Ravenloft" and fun with insanity tables and all the pebble-to-boulder madness ... good times.

"You're not going to be a dick if I pick up Vampirism are you."
"Of course I am, it makes you unkillable, I've got have some fun."
"... I think I can become a dracolich instead, would that be better?"
"Aren't they controllable or something?"
"Yeh, by my henchman, living in a pocket plane with no access."
"... Cool."

Which meant a lot of moving in and taking over wherever they were. Until they annoyed something with a no-save-just-die attack and had to go take over somewhere else instead. Before teleport was 100% safe too, so lots of travel scenes. And someone still had to be the Cleric, even though the party almost never took damage.

[Jeff W]

Even in the vanilla PHB there is a lot of room for optimization. Some powerful stuff:

Shorty races get big saving throw bonuses and tons of other useful bonuses.

Multiclassing is incredibly powerful because of the way the experience tables are set up--you're usually only 1 level behind(or 2 for triple class) until the experience table switches from geometric to linear progression at high levels.

Bards are powerful--they level so fast they are nearly a fighter/mage that can reach 6th level spells before a single class mage.

Tons of broken spells even at low levels: Blindness, Charm Person and Invisibility have insanely long durations. Sleep has no saving throw and Spook has a big saving throw penalty. Levitation is a save or die outdoors.

All this is stuff that is robust against DM vetoing, whereas making Pun-Pun with the DMG or Skills and Powers point buy probably isn't going to fly.

[Regularguy]

There's three, maybe four kinds of Clerics in 2nd edition. They're all pretty good, mechanically fight-winners, other than how your class has a gotcha where the DM gets to ruin your party even harder than everyone else's.

[*]There's the basic core dude who only ever casts Cure Light Wounds, Hold Person, Cure Moderate Wounds, and Cure Critical Wounds. No one actually got past 8th level, so that's it. There are better spells, but you're not allowed to cast them, healbot.

[*]There's the one saying "I bought the Complete Book of Clerics and my character got worse". Which is sad, because the Complete Book of Fighters made them into demons. Anyway, you couldn't even make a core Cleric with that book, it's harsh.

Specialty priests of the sun god missed it pretty close: handle divination like a cleric (plus prophecy); play armor-plated healbot like a cleric (with bonus points for lay on hands); turn undead when they pop up, dispel magic when it pops up, bless a crossbow bolt when a rakshasa pops up (and take aim yourself if you want, trading Mace And Sling for a big fine Bow And Spear); cast sun-and-fire spells like a cleric, do plant magic like a druid, buy an NWP on the cheap like a wizard, work infravision and secret-door-detection like a dungeon-crawl elf, and Chariot of Sustarre 1/day.