The Gaming Den

So, apparently 2nd Edition D&D is quite a bit easier at higher levels than it is at lower levels. Confirm, deny? And if so, why?

1) you can expect to make most of your saves, instead of failing most of them.

2) damage doesn't scale much, but you gain significant hp each level up to 9th.

3) spellcasters get more & better spells.

I've actually noticed this while playing Baulder's Gate. Being even just 5th and 6th level compared to being 2nd and 3rd level helps a whole lot to make combat far less swingy.

Depends on what you mean by 'easier', but saves were a big part of it.

Saves were based on character level....'save versus poison or die' was about the same whether the creature inflicting the poison had 1 hit die or 20 hit dice (there was no CR system there, the DM just had to wing it, and players had to watch themselves).

Clerics had great saves against poison, 10 or better at level 1, if I recall correctly, and 2 or better at the maximum. Other classes' saves improved, each with their own strength (eg, wizards saved well against spells).

Thing was, only a few monsters have stuff like "-2 to poison saves", and likewise only a few monsters had like "+4 to poison saves". By the time you met the former, your cleric was level 7, and had access to Neutralize Poison.

It worked for the monsters as well, so spells tended to fail alot against monsters (the cleric's "Hold Person", granting a -2 penalty if single-targeted, being an exception), above and beyond something called "magic resistance" (sort of like spell resistance but stronger).

Somehow I get the feeling I'm muddling AD&D and 2nd edition, but it seemed like both had much the same feel in this regard.

Parties ramped up in power fairly quickly, though; a third level party of characters would completely roll over a first level party. A fifth level party would take a few rounds to trash a third level party. A ninth level party would almost certainly beat a 7th level party, but if the saves were lucky, perhaps not.

Jacob Orlove hit the high points, but I'd add the fact that monsters did not scale at the same rate as PCs. Like, at all. Besides the fact that they didn't get Con bonuses to HP or magic items at comparable rates, there were things like:

a.) AC didn't scale as much...Iron Golems needed a +3 weapon to hurt them, but if you HAD a +3 weapon, they had an AC of 3 (3.5 equivalent of 17...as opposed to 30, for the 3.5 version). Purple Worms had an AC of 6 (14, as opposed to 19). Balors had an AC of -2 (22, as opposed to 35). Considering that fighters had roughly the same attack progression as 3.5 (+1 per level), and all attacks were made at full attack bonus...fighters could tear stuff up.

b.) HP didn't scale as much...Horned Devils seriously had 5+5 (8-sided) HD. Iron Golems had 80 HP. Balors had 8+8 HD.

c.) Spell-like abilities for monsters were not generally as powerful as what PCs were throwing around. Instead of crap like Blasphemy and Chaos Hammer, demons got things like Levitate and Pyrotechnics. A few had powerful stuff, but not nearly as much.

Regarding saves:

At high level, saves were easier because 2E didn't have the concept of a DC. This would be the equivalent of all 3E saves being DC 20 under all circumstances.

However, 2E also had a lot of no-save crap that would totally screw you over, and you were more likely to run into it at higher levels. So, while you'd make basic saves more often, you'd also run into crazy crap that you may or may not know how to handle. I think a huge amount of this game was supposed to be tiral and error puzzle solving.

Doom314 wrote:Saves were based on character level....'save versus poison or die' was about the same whether the creature inflicting the poison had 1 hit die or 20 hit dice (there was no CR system there, the DM just had to wing it, and players had to watch themselves).

The closest thing to a CR system was to simply look at the XP the creature was worth, although 2E didn't even offer any advice for what XP totals were good for what levels, and monster power wasn't that consistent based on XP totals alone.

Although, one issue from 2E and earlier was that it was an entirely different environment. Back then, it was pretty much understood by all the older players that you're playing in the DM's game, and metagaming and min-maxing was frowned upon. So, it was pretty hard for "good" players to watch themselves due to the variety of puzzle monsters that they "shouldn't" know about in advance.