Post/Author/DateTime	Post
GaffeR 01-06-06, 11:35 PM	You know it, you love it, if you ever played it you have a soft spot for it: That wacky ole second edition. Back when D&D was a TSR affair and Hasbro was still in diapers! Well.. maybe. Anyways, I'm likely playing in a 2e campaign soon and i was wondering if any of you kind folks had some tips/tricks/builds for me, and for the 2e players out there besides myself. I hate to break the 8th Commandment, but I'm lookin for anything here. :D
Caelic 01-06-06, 11:45 PM	Consider the eighth commandment suspended. 1. Dual classing wins. If you can start a character already dual-classed, you gain massive benefits for essentially no cost. A few levels of fighter help any other class. 2. Two weapon fighting is dandy--there's really no penalty for doing so, if you have a sufficiently high dex and take the appropriate proficiencies. 3. Darts are the most lethal weapons on the planet if you have access to the Skills and Powers series. Pump proficiencies into Throwing and make sure you have an 18/XX Strength. 4. Stoneskin is godlike. 5. Druids still rock. 6. Half-elven Druid/Magic-Users also rock, as they can actually get to high level in both classes. 7. Otiluke's Resilient Sphere is tied with Stoneskin for best defensive spell in the game. 8. Resist Fire and Resist Lightning are groovy. Damage boxes rock. 9. Artificers are still godlike, albeit not quite as godlike as in 3.5.
Scottbert 01-07-06, 02:48 AM	There are Artificers in 2e? Where?
Encard 01-07-06, 04:15 AM	Take a look at psionics - if you don't mind running dry very fast and having no direct damage powers to speak of, 2ed psionics can be quite nice. Kinetic Conrol, Dimension Blade, Phase Self, and a variety of other powers can be quite handy, I seem to remember.
Slyver 01-07-06, 04:34 AM	Do you have access to skills and powers, combat and tactics? It has been a LONG time since I played 2e and don't have any of the books anymore (I wonder where they are), but I remember my last character was a theif/cleric who threw daggers and had access to some good wizard spells. Called shots are seriously sick. I had to play down my abilities on most occasions just to keep the DM from casting the your dead spell on me. Slyver
Erudite 01-07-06, 08:11 AM	Things to keep in mind when playing 2e (house rules not considered): 1. Humans suck. Half Elves rule. Multi-class your half-elf and claim he can pass as a human. 2. Play a Magic User/Cleric of War/Rogue. As long as you do not mistake yourself for Kevin Sorbo, you'll be able to do anything, and rock. The only time you should multi as fighter/xxxx is if your ability scores don't support M/C/T. In that case, xxxx can be Cleric. 3. You level so slowly that unless this game goes on for years and years, you won't need to worry about level limits. 4. Spells that cause damage rule. Lay down the carnage with your arcane magic, heal the hurt after, and sneak the heck away if things go sour. 5. Be greedy. There is no wealth by level in 2e, so grab as much as you can. 6. Making magic items gives you XP. When you can do so, do it. See #5. 7. Go to the Astral Plane. See #6.
Caelic 01-07-06, 12:43 PM	Things to keep in mind when playing 2e (house rules not considered): 1. Humans suck. Half Elves rule. Multi-class your half-elf and claim he can pass as a human. Bullpucky. See rule 1 of my post. Dual classing trumps multiclassing, and at high levels, humans aren't just the best race--they're the only race. Half-elves are, however, about as good as it gets for demi-humans. 2. Play a Magic User/Cleric of War/Rogue. As long as you do not mistake yourself for Kevin Sorbo, you'll be able to do anything, and rock. The only time you should multi as fighter/xxxx is if your ability scores don't support M/C/T. In that case, xxxx can be Cleric. Correct. Multiclassing with fighter dilutes the fighter. Dual-classing with fighter, however, gives huge advantages to the other class for minimal cost of opportunity. 3. You level so slowly that unless this game goes on for years and years, you won't need to worry about level limits. You'd be surprised. Before WotC came along and declared that "campaigns should last six months to a year," or whatever, most campaigns DID go on for years. Besides, not every campaign starts at first level. 4. Spells that cause damage rule. Lay down the carnage with your arcane magic, heal the hurt after, and sneak the heck away if things go sour. Depends very much on the spell and how well prepared your opponents are. See the Resist Fire/Lightning clause above. 5. Be greedy. There is no wealth by level in 2e, so grab as much as you can. This just makes me wonder how the 3.5 guideline as to approximately how much wealth a character should have at level X came to be taken as an absolute guarantee that every character of that level will have that much and no more. Now, all that being said, a few more odds and ends: 1. Artificers were introduced in either the Skills and Tactics or Spells and Powers volume of "Player's Option." They might properly be called edition 2.5. It's a magic-user kit. The kit is obscure and easy to overlook, but extremely powerful, as it gains the ability to quickly and efficiently pump out temporary magic items for next to no cost. Mine specialized in pumping out Arrows of Slaying for the group archer. 2. Oh, yes--Arrows of Slaying kick butt in second edition. 3. Best melee weapon in 2e: the Rod of Flailing. None of this "Dire Flail" nonsense--this is a two-headed flail that effectively doubles your attack rate.
Saracoth 01-07-06, 01:18 PM	AD&D2e's where I got my start. It has some good points. The downside is that, like 3e, you really need the official non-core books to open up the best range of options. Skills and powers lets you tweak your race and class. Spells and magic gives further options for the latter, some quite interesting. Regardless, Half-Elves do tend to rock at multiclassing (for those who never saw 2e style multiclassing, it was similar to gestalt characters, albeit with an overall XP hit). Three of the best classes at once with little penalty to level compared to the rest of the party, plus some thieving bonuses. It all depends on what level you'll be playing to. Otherwise, yes, Dual Classing a human character who starts as a fighter rocks regardless of what path you're eventually going to set on. Bear in mind, thousands of XP for Ftr at early levels doesn't mean a whole lot when you need 375,000 XP to reach the next level of Mage. Psionics were major fun. One time, two characters went up against a small army of zombies. One was a Psionicist with Kinetic Control from The Will and the Way. I mean, as Encard mentioned, that is just a cool power. Even Salvatore couldn't help but stick it in one of his novels. Hell, Drizzt would be dead if he hadn't been healed by the opposing side right after that fight. "Immune to all physical impacts" (except yourself falling) for 7 pp/rd. Absorbs half the damage to unleash later. The guy wasn't that great a combatant, but putting a little extra kinetics into every blow he did land led to all kinds of one-hit-kills on the little undead twerps. By the time he was nearly out of pps, he had enough excess kinetic energy stored up that the next zombie he jabbed with his finger turned into a fine mist. :cool: So I guess it comes back to the question of what books you have access to. The Core Rules CD's are a fairly good way of obtaining most of the good books in one go. I was even lucky enough to pick up TWatW for the short time it was free :) I loved that book. If you wanted to take three months to cut the pp cost of a power by 50% forevermore, you could (go elves!). High Sciences were pretty cool, though the "detects all smells within the area" clause of Cosmic Awareness is cause for a few laughs. X-Ray vision is pretty cool, but smell? If possible, get Skills and Powers and Spells and Magic to twink your multiclass characters. For instance, a Cleric/Mage(/XXX) may as well take an armor penalty as a cleric, which is alone enough to get you the unarmed combat skill of a monk without impacting any other clerical abilities. Remember to delay abilities appropriately to reduce their costs. For instance, a Fighter can get MR 2%/level, so why pay 10 CP for 2% at L1 when you can pay 8 CP at L1 to have more useful MR 10% when you hit 5th? In other words, done carefully, you can pretty easily invoke Wrath of DM with character point abuse. Artifice was an alternate school of magic in Spells and Magic. You could specialize in it. A number of alternate specialization options here. It's almost worth playing a wild mage specialist for the eventual (in most 2e campaigns I saw) 50% chance of controlling a Deck of Many Things each time you drew from it. Still risky, but use that 50% chance to draw Fates: 50% Avoid a bad situation 25% Good draw 25% Bad draw Draw 4 cards, you get to avoid two bad effects, but are probably only going to be hit with one. Survive the initial couple of draws, and the laws of probability do the rest. Sometimes. So, to ask the question as many other have, what do you have to work with?
NilesB 01-07-06, 01:20 PM	Be a Wild Mage, take the Witch kit. Start the game with an arbritrairly large number of Decks of many things, and the ability to control your draws from them.
Caelic 01-07-06, 01:33 PM	Oh, yes: and the single most broken thing you can do in the game is to acquire a mass number of pale green Ioun Stones and have them orbiting you like the rings of Saturn. Each one increases your level by +1, and there's no rule saying you can't have more than one. That was how I won our first annual Rules Rapist tournament, way back when.
Erudite 01-07-06, 07:27 PM	Bullpucky. See rule 1 of my post. Dual classing trumps multiclassing, and at high levels, humans aren't just the best race--they're the only race. Half-elves are, however, about as good as it gets for demi-humans. Not if your DM went by the rules for Dual Classing. When your Fighter 8 starts back at zero as a Mage 1, and can't use his fighter abilities without forfeiting XP, it bites. If you start with 500,000 XP, then Dual is a way to go (F/M/T would be my pick), but we always started at level 1. The longest game I was in was 3 years. We reached about 11th or 12th level. We felt like gods. Depends very much on the spell and how well prepared your opponents are. See the Resist Fire/Lightning clause above. One nice thing was that hit points were lower, so a 10d6 fireball had more hurt, proportionately. This just makes me wonder how the 3.5 guideline as to approximately how much wealth a character should have at level X came to be taken as an absolute guarantee that every character of that level will have that much and no more. I think they figured out what types of equipment each class would have at each level, like a +3 sword, +4 ability score item, etc, and added the averages up. It makes sense from the standpoint of designers who went throught the effort to give us ECL, CR, and such. Back in AD&D, designers thought nothing of throwing 8 brigands, a pair of wolves, and a 3rd level illusionist at a 1st level party as a single encounter. I think the encounter with the Big U (Utreshemon) in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil harkens back to this type of design. The new way of balancing encounters and treasure is not a science, and it has its ups and downs. Now, all that being said, a few more odds and ends: 1. Artificers were introduced in either the Skills and Tactics or Spells and Powers volume of "Player's Option." They might properly be called edition 2.5. It's a magic-user kit. The kit is obscure and easy to overlook, but extremely powerful, as it gains the ability to quickly and efficiently pump out temporary magic items for next to no cost. Mine specialized in pumping out Arrows of Slaying for the group archer. 2. Oh, yes--Arrows of Slaying kick butt in second edition. 3. Best melee weapon in 2e: the Rod of Flailing. None of this "Dire Flail" nonsense--this is a two-headed flail that effectively doubles your attack rate. I must have totally missed the Artificer, and I own all of the Players Options stuff. Guess I have some reading to do tonight... Erudite (who still loves 2e after all of these years).
Encard 01-07-06, 08:51 PM	A side note on psionics: Dragon Kings has a few handy things, if you can get access to it. Rigidity is a notable one - concentrating for a few rounds means the enemy can't cast spells and can barely move. Not bad at all. Dragon Kings also, if my memory serves me right, has rules for playing thri-kreen, and hey, who doesn't love four arms, good weapons, and various fun abilities? Not to mention that two of yours arms count as primary arms, I believe... The Will and the Way is extremely useful. Skills & Powers changes the psionics system from the core psionics rules, but it also gives psionicists some nice boosts (like being able to wear chainmail, the option of getting some extra PPs, and some other things), as well as removing the nasty critical failure rules. Can't remember whether MTHACO was better than stat checks, though, I'll admit. EDIT: A few powers of note: Phase essentially makes you ethereal, except it's better. Only other Phased beings (how many of those are there, really? Not ethereal - phased) can attack him with physical force or energy. He can go through solid matter or even up into the air (albight slowly). He can still use his own powers on others, though - hurrah for the mage/psionicist! Dimension Blade lets you ignore armor/natural armor to AC and gives you an attack/damage bonus. Any object you strike has to save or be sliced in half. Time Dilation is like haste with the option of ramping it up to x4. Remember that in 2ed, haste multiplies your number of attacks by two rather than giving you one extra. Especially crazy if you're playing a 'kreen. Elemental Composition can be nice - change into any element, and the power description seems to use "element" in the context of "material." Subjective Reality is just plain fun. Disbelieve something (i.e. melee weapons, arcane magic, etc) and it doesn't affect you while you maintain the power.