D&D 2E Edition Experience - Did/Do you Play AD&D 2E? How Was/Is It?

[Voadam]

Yeah, but then there's 10% of Elven Chainmail which is sized for humans. And there's the question of half-elves as well.

Right, human thieves and bards in 2e can explicitly wear elven chain type armor and get better ACs than leather armor provides. Bards (who can wear normal chain too) suffer fewer thief skill penalties when wearing elven chain than chain mail. Elven chain mail also can fit under clothes so you can wear it in settings wear visible armor would not be appropriate. So there are reasons for humans to want human sized-elven chain even if they cannot cast wizard and bard spells in it.

As far as dual class humans this seems to be addressed generically too on page 62 "the character must still abide by the restrictions of whichever class he is using at the moment. A dual-class fighter/mage, for example, cannot cast spells while wearing armor."

As far as half-elves I am not sure about how you are suggesting this muddies whether non-elves can cast in elven chain. I would think either they are classified as elves and can use it, or are not and cannot. That classification call may be unclear, but once it is made the application of the elven chain rule seems clear.

So it is quite a bit less clear than it first appears.

I don't think those things make it less clear.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah the elf casting in it is an exception.

Otherwise there's all sorts of rules that differ slightly from 1E. MC fighters don't get weapon specialization but do in 1E iirc.

It specifically says elves can cast in armor and says that you cant cast in armor period so the elves are the exception with EC.

 

[Weiley31]

While I never got around to playing the actual pen and paper DND until 2019(or 2020?) with 5th edition, a lot of old school aspects that I'm familiar with, such as race restriction, came from 2E as well as the classic 2E dnd pc games we are all familiar with.

If I were to play it today, it would be via the For Gold and Glory retroclone and certain 2E books/campaign settings for fluff/pc options.

I would probably have to convert THAC0 to attack bonuses and convert/use Ascending AC tho. And the Internet DOES have conversion charts for stuff like that.

 

[Bohandas]

Question: Do the Gold Box games count as playing second edition?

 

[teitan]

While I never got around to playing the actual pen and paper DND until 2019(or 2020?) with 5th edition, a lot of old school aspects that I'm familiar with, such as race restriction, came from 2E as well as the classic 2E dnd pc games we are all familiar with.

If I were to play it today, it would be via the For Gold and Glory retroclone and certain 2E books/campaign settings for fluff/pc options.

I would probably have to convert THAC0 to attack bonuses and convert/use Ascending AC tho. And the Internet DOES have conversion charts for stuff like that.

Level limits etc were part of the game from the beginning. 2e lifted the cap and gave optional rules for lifting it higher. In actual play level limits felt like a non-issue as by the time those levels were reached it had been a LONG time or PCs were retiring in favor of new PCs. There wasn’t an endgame approach to D&D in the sense of a singular big bad. That sorta kinda started with Dragonlance where the campaign had an overarching story but wasn’t a definite thing for D&D until adventure paths became a huge thing in 3.x.

 

[ldvhl]

Played it, loved it, and will be running another campaign in just a few weeks.

 

[Orius]

I would probably have to convert THAC0 to attack bonuses and convert/use Ascending AC tho. And the Internet DOES have conversion charts for stuff like that.

Internet? I've been converting them in my head on the fly since 1999.

 

[Voadam]

I would probably have to convert THAC0 to attack bonuses and convert/use Ascending AC tho. And the Internet DOES have conversion charts for stuff like that.

Every THAC0 number below 20 is a one for one attack bonus. Also the attack bonus rate is right in the 2e PH already.

Table 54:
THAC0 Advancement Improvement Rate
Group Points/Level
Priest 2/3
Rogue 1/2
Warrior 1/1
Wizard 1/3

AC 10 is the same for both, every AC number below 10 is that much of an AC bonus to add to base 10.

 

[Azzy]

Every THAC0 number below 20 is a one for one attack bonus. Also the attack bonus rate is right in the 2e PH already.

Table 54:
THAC0 Advancement Improvement Rate
Group Points/Level
Priest 2/3
Rogue 1/2
Warrior 1/1
Wizard 1/3

AC 10 is the same for both, every AC number below 10 is that much of an AC bonus to add to base 10.

If you subtract THAC0 from 20, you get the equivalent Attack Bonus. Subtract the descending AC from 20 equals the ascending AC.

 

[el-remmen]

Despite having played 3E for the longest time in years (16), my guess is that in terms of number of total hours 2E beats it significantly because there were times where we not only played the 2E game I ran every week, but I also played in another weekly 2E game on and off and ran lots of mini campaigns and one shots + our sessions were like 6 to 8 hours back then. That kind of frequency for 11 years beats out every other week for 16 (with a 3ish year gap in there between August 2009 to October 2012) for 3E.

I loved 2E - esp. its modularity. I was never concerned with the glut of options because I ran a very hands on house ruled game and made very clear what I allowed and didn't, and did a lot of work to rewrite kits and other things to fit my homebrew, Aquerra.

For those who complain that 2E needed house-ruling to run well, that is true of every edition of D&D as far as I am concerned because to me "well" means three things: playability, fitting with the setting, and having the style/approach that you want.

While 2E was our core rules, we grandfathered stuff from 1E (like monks) and one of the reasons we jumped to 3E so easily was because we felt that we were already playing with many of its rules (or protoversions) that we took from Player's Option: Combat & Tactics (we hated Skills & Powers and eschewed anything from it).

Would I go back and run 2E? I might if I had a group interested in doing so (I never found THAC0 to be an issue, but as others have noted, switching it to ascending AC is not that hard) but I am more likely to hack 5E into a more 2E-ish game.