Is the 2nd Edition the best D&D edition ever?

It's ok. I spent my childhood playing it, and I think the system doesn't provide fun in itself. The settings are awesome though : Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer... Those are excellent products.

If you like the 3e way, 2e will probably be nice too, though if you want to go back a little earlier, and want a one-big-book thing, Rules Cyclopedia is probably a better choice, rules-wise.

>The race and class handbooks were pretty awesome.
The Elves Handbook was some OP shit, but I unabashedly loved it.

Nah, 5th edition is more like Wizard's cut off 3.5's balls and told it to act like it's older brother AD&D.

>Nah, 5th is more like Wizard cut of 3.5's SS3 bankai-tachi jutsu...
ftfy

Face the facts brah, that ability score cap and lack of material in 5th edition makes every character in 5th edition weaker than the power houses you could make in 3.5 and with the limited customization options, not stand out nearly as much either.

Wizards cut off 3.5's balls indeed. This has affected 5th edition's self-esteem so much, he hardly ever puts out new books anymore.

Best edition is BECMI/RC (the Weapon Mastery rules are IMHO unparalleled up today), But ADnD 2nd edition was a good one too. Great settings and tone.

Just, you could want to houserule level limits on non-humans, and please, at least for now, stay the FUCK away from Skills and Powers.

>implying 3.5/PF isn't the only ed for those who need to overcompensate in everything

Old school D&D is more than a bit ad hoc. Everything works a different way and the rules are more messily organic than carefully planned and structured. But despite this, play tends to be a lot quicker and easier, leaning on improvisation and DM fiat rather than complex stats and rules for everything. You surrender a whole lot of character customization, mechanically speaking, but in old school D&D, there is a much greater feeling that your character is more than just math, and the relative simplicity of the character rules makes it easier for DM to improvise things based on character background without interfering with any existing rule structure.

In 3.5 if you want to tie a knot or find water in the wilderness, there's a skill for that. In old school D&D, generally speaking, the DM just considers whether your character's background makes that sort of thing possible, and maybe assigns an arbitrary roll for it. Of course, 2e is already starting to move away from that, with nonweapon proficiencies that form an ad hoc skill system. From that standpoint (and others), it's less purely old school than 1e, OD&D or Basic.

Personally, I find AD&D to be cluttered with a bunch of rules that are not executed as the core stuff that exists in OD&D and Basic, and which are overly fiddly and don't do much to actually enhance the game (many of them amount to little more than added restrictions and adjustments). On the other hand, AD&D does have more options than Basic in terms of things like classes, spells, weapons and so forth, which can really come in handy. But since the editions are built on the same core system, they are essentially interchangeable, and it's very easy to import options from AD&D and attach them to Basic's smoother, more streamlined rules. And that's precisely what I'd recommend, if you wan to play old school D&D (well, I'd say start with straight up Basic and start adding things once you've got some experience under your belt).

Expect any DM worth his salt to tweak and add rules to old school D&D. This customization is much less complex than in 3.5, and there's a lot less danger of the changes have unforeseen and dire consequences. It's really quite liberating.

>Rules Cyclopedia is probably a better choice, rules-wise.
Why play a version of Basic that's halfway to AD&D? Moldvay Basic is the obvious choice.

>Not much material was playtested because of dumb late-TSR policies.

This could be mitigated with surprisingly few bans. Chronomancer, applied CBO Elvis cheese, Skills & Powers, DM approval on CBO Humanoids. Bam, done.

Looks like someone can't think of a good rebutthurtal for why 5e is so bland.

I'd play 3.PF if I wanted to have more fun designing a character than actually playing one

Nobody plays 5e, so bad job trying to troll your way out of defending against the otaku fanwankery that is 3.pf5

That's a feature, not a fault. Numbers bloat and completist rules were the worst thing about 3.x.

I think of RC as a bunch of optional extensions for Basic.

It's also got Mystara and the Hollow World setting.

>Being so butthurt you gotta samefag.

I've been playing 2nd edition since 1995. Last time I played was Monday. Most of my table are hardcore grogs, and the ones that aren't are powergaming rump-rangers that would rather play 3.x so they can flex their imaginary peen.

Honestly, I feel like the tightest ruleset is 4e. Fewer edge cases, much easier to design encounters, challenging to trip and fall into a completely fucking useless (or completely fucking broken) character. Early monster math is wrong, but the hotfix is obscenely simple.

Mind you, I have no hands-on time with 5e, so I don't consider myself qualified to give an opinion on it. It's also fucking impossible for me to convince my table to actually PLAY the game, as the internet has poisoned them with "WOW ON TABLETOP" and "ERRYWUN A WIZZURD". So... thanks for that, gigafaggots.

whatever helps you sleep at night, besides marathoning one piece.

5e could be good but fuck me they need to make more shit for it. At the moment it's a little too bare bones for my taste. I do like that they martials pretty good so not everyone plays a spellcaster.

Wow I can use photoshop. Everywun will beleeb me!

>secret conspiracy flubbing ip + photoshop to attack a fan-taku that thinks games w/o goku lvl characters are shit
Brilliant!

What is the hot fix for 4e? That system always irritates me because of how long it takes to hack monsters to death thanks to HP bloat, making combat take forever.
My only other real gripe is out of combat stuff. As far as I remember, there weren't many fun spells like nightmare thay required scheming, downtime rules that let me put my cohorts to work, or even cooler optional rules like base building.
I really want to get back into it so I can actually play a rogue that can teleport behind people and throw fans of knives and such instead of being useless against every other enemy in PF.

Git gud

I've been following the last few rounds of 5e spellcaster dominance debate, just to see what the arguments are and the consensus is. Again, no hands-on, no opinion. And when I said:
>It's also fucking impossible for me to convince my table to actually PLAY the game
By "the game", I mean 4e. I'd take 5e for a spin, and there's been talk of doing so after we wrap up our current adventure. I'd still rather be playing a system with deep internal consistency baked right in.

I've seen cool actual plays of 4e, but the actual corebooks are sorta hard to get through.
Never understood the complaints on 4e regarding fluff, most people create their own when they make their campaigns.

At least you connected the you line this time.

What is a Druid
What is Weapon Mastery

Truth to be told, many still prefer the levels 1-14, 1-20 tops in BECMI, too. I played as elf in a group with cleric, past 24 humans are just too much. Up to 22-22, any combination is good just good luck with the halfling.

>doesn't know the difference between board styles
>newfag confirmed
Top kek hahahaha

My gentleman of Nubian descent.

RC is the king of D&D editions.

Played both. I can see what you're saying but I fall on the other side of the fence.

I don't loath 4e the way many do, but I prefer most other systems to it.
Personally, my primary issues with 4e is its general presentation and what that means for UX, and what it inherited from 3.X--such as the cumbersome feat system and how it treats magic items. Though in fairness 4e's magical item system is a lot more sensible and flexible than 3.X's given how they're used--not to mention things like the Alternative Reward system from DMG 2 which could at least partly replace magic items as a reward. I'm glad that's been carried through to 5e.

I actually really like Gamma World's treatment of its rules, which majorly streamlines everything. For instance, no longer does it try to have an exhaustive list of basic weapons with unique, quantified properties and interactions--it instead opts for a more categorical system more inline with how the system measures so much else.

I first started playing 2E when I was a kid with my uncle. Loved it but if you are looking for another edition you should look towards 5E. It is 2E in spirit but has been modernized since there was a lot of restrictions in character building and your characters don't feel as 'heroic' as they do in later editions, some people prefer this though. 2E has a lot of high quality modules though.

The monster math hotfix from earlier MMs is to divide monster hit points by 2, and multiply their damage by 1.5. Also, free Expertise is common. There's also pic related for monster design.

>It is 2E in spirit
I don't disagree, but it's really hard to explain why.

Also if you want you characters to feel capably or notably heroic at the start of the campaign, I find starting at level 3 or 4 helps.
This goes for any version of D&D, too.

>What is a Druid
>What is Weapon Mastery
Things you don't really need.

But I agree, I like some of the optional stuff but dislike the 1-36 progression. My ideal is B/X with a couple of optionals from RC, even if you miss out on the "one book" appeal.

>stay the FUCK away from Skills and Powers.
the kits in there were fine, at least

Well, one of the great things about RPGs is that you don't have to use everything that's in the book. If I even run with the RC again, we'll likely cap at 10th level, and I probably won't use the Druid or Mystic. I might not even use Weapon Mastery, since last time we used it, it was more powerful than I had expected.

>it was more powerful than I had expected.
It is, surprisingly so (depending on which weapons they use and especially at higher levels). Effective enough that if everyone isn't on board it can make some players feel left in the dust, making tuning encounters/difficulty, etc harder.

It's shitty that they finally gave us a new gamma world, but it's made to be compatible to 4e, a system that's got zero support now.

Why is skills and powers so bad. My Dm uses that and the others like it and we do just fine.

>If I even run with the RC again, we'll likely cap at 10th level,
Even so, you need to use B/X thief skill progression to make it even considerable as an option. Hell, drop B/X thief skill progression into RC and I'll run the whole rest of book as written otherwise (ignoring the common argument that the thief as a whole was a mistake, of course).

Yeah. The OSR thread made me aware of the... stretching that occurred to spread the Thief out to 36 levels. Using the B/X progression seems like it would be the best fix.

2e is the best edition of D&D.

It has the breadth of options later editions offer, the settings that no other editions can compare to, and the simplicity/malleability of old editions.

Like Basic, you can easily houserule anything you want into 2e without worrying too much about balance. You can make things up on the fly and not be concerned with whether or not there's already a rule for it, because the crunch is all a buncha random-ass shit plugged in and every bit of it is contradicted somewhere by something else. It's got the older edition vibe of a DM's made-up rules being just as good as the game's rules. But it has the same variety for players as things like 3/4e, so you don't lose out on things for players to enjoy and customize, like you do with basic.

And 2e wins in settings. That cannot be reasonably debate by anyone, anywhere, ever. Anyone claiming something to the contrary might as well be arguing that the sky is neon orange.

2e was the last edition anyone ever needed, and the people who think they want something else are just having fun wrong.

Skills & Powers is what became 3.xpf. If you want your game to be a giant bag of shit, you might as well play pathfinder.

Never been on OSR, but are you guys talking about the circa-greyhawk thief fix to the level "wall" non-humans have? Or is that a fix to the circa-greyhawk thief?

Can 2e handle a campaign with no casters?

I would assume so, given how kits works and because they published several historical setting books where magic didn't exist, but I'm curious if anyone's actually played a game like that before.

The B/X progression is still pretty lousy. A 1st level thief has a whopping 10% chance to find/remove traps. Even with a huge circumstance bonus that's terrible. Still, it's been claimed by some that thief skills were meant as a sort of saving throw after a normal check had failed (though that begs the question of how the standard checks should be resolved). Anyway, this table combines the Moldvay Basic thief percentages with a 2 in 6 "normal" check, thus reducing thief skill failure by a third. The resulting values are much more appropriate, in my opinion, though they still start out a bit low for my taste.

This right here.

Mah nigga.

That's a funny way to spell "Moldvay B/X", senpai

Yep. Have run plenty just by happenstance (no one wanted to play one). It's a non-issue. I can remember an underdark campaign where everyone was a dwarf or gnome, in Forgotten Realms, where it worked really well. I think it was 3 fighters and a thief? Long time ago, but I remember that we had a lot of fun with it. When I run Dark Sun, we ignore psionics from player side because it's too much extra crunch, or kinda handwave it. And I've played or run a few of those with only bards, merchants and gladiators.

That's because you're spelling Mentzer incorrectly.

user-kun, there is a level cap on non humans. Comes as standard.

In Moldvay Basic (B/X), thieves reach their maximum skill potential at 14th level, the highest level the game specifically covers. In later editions of Basic--Mentzer Basic (BECMI) and Rules Cyclopedia--thief skills are slowed so that they don't reach their maximum potential until 36th level (though most skills are allowed to go well above 100%, meaning that it only takes until about 25th level to reach the same level of skill as thieves have by 14th level in Moldvay Basic).

Not sure exactly what you're talking about, though I will say that aside from halflings, the demihuman level caps in Moldvay Basic are honestly pretty appropriate if you treat 14th level as a hard cap on everybody (Moldvay Basic provides some guidelines for advancement beyond 14th level, but 14 is the highest level it really supports). A 10th level Elf or 12th level Dwarf aren't too far out of line with a 14th level Magic-User or Fighter. Halflings capping out at 8th level is pretty pathetic though.

Unfortunately, I'm not the most knowledgeable about B/X or Greyhawk, but you should definitely check out the OSR thread and ask. We're pretty chill.

One of the things about the Thief is that it's not clear on what you're supposed to do with the skills, or when you used them. People have been confused by Climb Walls since forever (which I note is Climb Sheer Surfaces on the posted table - which IS how you're supposed to use it).

I'll be saving that table and giving it a proper comparison with my Basic Fantasy RPG and RC copies (because, as I also learned on the OSR thread, Basic Fantasy makes the same exact mistake the RC does for Thief skills).

2nd edition easily survives not having magic. Combat is slightly more dangerous, and recovering from combat is much more time consuming.

The 2e splats Complete Fighter, Complete Thief, Complete Barbarian, and Complete Ranger are fantastic for non-magic campaigns (I can't recall atm whether or not Complete Ranger has a spell-less ranger variant or not, but I would not be surprised if it's in there).

>free monthly.supplements
>two splat books
>2 or more level 1 to level 10-18 adventures a year
>Loads of adventure League modules
And 3.pf faggots still bitch about the release schedule.

The thing 3eaboos don't mention is that the flow of 3e/3.5 material was more like a deluge of shit rather than anything actually worth using.

Please do not discourage people from playing 3.xpf. It's the containment board of RPGs--we don't want them leaving it.

Every book was:

>30 new feats!
>20 new prestige classes! 2/3 of them for casters!
>50 new spells!
>5 new races!

50% being unusable garbage, 20% OP full caster BS, and 30% meh.

>I don't disagree, but it's really hard to explain why.

I have a theory. Another user touched on it in this very thread, mentioning how 2e felt more ad-hoc and organic. I think 5e goes out of its way to capture that feeling. There are a lot of streamlined things, like keywords, and damage types and conditions, but a lot of monsters themselves have unique and interesting abilities found ONLY on their statblock, like most of the ghosts/specter's HP drain affects, or the Gas Spores effects. It keeps the world feeling a little more "mysterious" than 3.5 or 4e did. Especially because you can tell 5e is trying to go back more towards its Gygaxian roots.

2e also had a very deadly feeling that 5e strangely managed to capture. In 2e and lower, there were just certain things that, if caught by the effects or failing the save, you die. The end. Make a new character or fork over the dosh to get rezzed. Like being turned to stone, or being crushed by a stampede of Gorgons. 3.5 largely ruined this feeling by just making sure that everything had a survivable cap.

Pit of lava in 2e? You're dead.
Pit of lava in 3.5e? You just take some obscene, but realistically survivable, bit of damage.
Pit of lava in 4e? Terrain hazard. You take x damage per start of turn.
Pit of lava in 5e? Book doesn't say. The DMG helpfully SUGGESTS that you use some realisticly survivable yet still kind of deadly amount of damage per start of turn, but you can do whatever you feel like.

Like people have been saying, 5e is the Greatest Hits version of D&D, and as far as I've seen, that's 100% true. The bare book comes with, what, 30 or so pages of actual in-world interaction, and the rest of it is characters, backgrounds, classes, and spells. Everything else is helpfully suggested in the DMG, but ultimately you are given the reigns, and can flavor YOUR D&D to taste.

It's why I'm such an unabashed shill for 5e.

Great settings, too many fucking unintuitive rules.

If you're about to mention thac0 (aka: the exact same to-hit system used by every single edition of D&D under TSR), I will email you a kick in the nuts.

5e needs to do 4 things: Publish a Spelljammer box set, publish a Dark Sun box set, remove Tieflings and remove Warforged. You can have half-orcs back, but that's alll you get. You have to stick to the actual D&D races. And you can have Tieflings back if you're playing Planescapes, but that's as far a compromise as is acceptable.

Trips confirmed.

...

Here's ur (You)

>thac0
>every single edition of D&D under TSR
what? none of the tsr dnds used that, it didn't even exist until some comp sci students made the charts obsolete.

How does it feel to be a liar with your pants always on fire?

I know for a fact that it is the standard notation for figuring hits in 2e and is mentioned as an "Advanced" way to do so in the Rules Cyclopedia.

Pic related the Rules Cyclopedia version of.

Cause he couldn't find how to cross reference the spelling in the awful layout.

>One of the things about the Thief is that it's not clear on what you're supposed to do with the skills, or when you used them.
Another thing that was not made very clear is that they are actually a back up roll as well for normal things. So if you try and open a lock and don't make the 1-in-6 chance, you still have the % chance to rely on.

Od&d is a tsr non-thac0 game, thus your a dirty liar. I'm not even sure I can even believe the other user is a liar since your lying mouth said it.

>>Implying I am the one that said all TSR D&D had THAC0

His post said "...none of the tsr dnds used that..." My post cited two instances of THAC0 existing in TSR D&D.

So, yeah, he's flat out wrong.

you also said all tsr editions used thac0... jus sayin

I said no such thing, you do realize there are multiple posters in this thread? I responded to 's assertion that no TSR D&D used THAC0. I only said anything about 2e and the Rules Cyclopedia. I am pretty sure it is in 1e, but I do not have any 1e stuff handy and don't feel like hunting it down, so I made no assertion about it being there.

My liar line was a joke, I was referencing the Venture Brothers.

2e should be easy to learn if you know 3e. They play very differently, especially in the way characters are created, but they work from the same basics. The best thing about 2e, in hindsight, is the lack of prestige class buffets.

>Publish a Spelljammer box set, publish a Dark Sun box set
I'd love to see those, it'd be rad as fuck.
>remove Tieflings and remove Warforged
Warforged aren't actually in 5e at the moment and I feel that all that needs to change with Tieflings is the name.

Well they did go full retard with "kits" back in the day, but at least it wasn't core.

Does anyone have this rules cyclopedia pdf? Everyone always talks about BECMI and I have no clue what all these things mean since I've only played 2e with Skills n Powers

There's an OSR general with links to every old school publication you could want.

Prepare to be amazed at how many variants there are on a pamphlet published by a shoe salesman in 1974.

>I'd still rather be playing a system with deep internal consistency baked right in.
So nothing with "Dungeons" or "Dragons" or "Path" on the cover, then.

Just pick up For Gold and Glory it literally scrubs all the useless shit off the system.

4e Gamma World is a better Gamma World than 4e D&D is a D&D. 4e is at its best in the side projects, also including Dark Sun and Eberron. As a D&D it kinda sucks.

It *claims* it is a standard, but it was a shitty balance bone from Gygax, and should be tossed out on its ear.

>Pit of lava in 2e? You're dead.
Nah, lava's 3d20 a round.

>I am pretty sure it is in 1e
The DMG uses it as quick reference in the monster list in the back.

I played both. Started with AD&D and ended up moving on to 3.5, which I played the most.

I'd say 3.5 is great rules-wise. Even with its many mistakes and need for homebrew rules, you can pretty much run any kind of character and have pretty decent rules for it.

The magic of AD&D was that, having pretty basic rules, it left a lot of room for actually imagining stuff and doing a lot of things as long as the DM is ok with it. It was more freeform.

But Eberron and Dark Sun are D&D

I do agree that the points of light setting kind of sucks though

The best DnDs are BECMI, B/X and 4e.

Focused, well-designed games that know what they're doing.
Also, Dark Sun and Eberron are both good settings, although Eberron is a bit more immediately 'usable' since it deviates less from standard DnD assumptions.

Oh no, my bad for being confusing. I meant that it sucks that 7e was designed to be compatible with dnd 4e,which no longer has support. Just seems unlikely we'll get a 5e compatible soon.

More of a sore spot for me is the dependence on collectable cards.
At least you can buy official 4e PDFs now by way of drivethrurpg, but it's not like you'll have a good way to get those cards.

Fuck me, you can scratch that. I went to grab a screenshot to go along with the post and you can actually buy a complete set of power/mutation cards for only $20.
Well done, WotC.

THREE DEE SIX STRAIGHT DOWN FAGGORT