Rauthik´s last post: Cleric of Juiblex

My recollection of the unreachable sphere predates Dark Sun. As I think harder, I’m kind of thinking it was Krynn/Dragonlance.

Time, of course, blurs memories, and I could easily be wrong.

3.0 felt like an improvement when it first came out but I have to admit that the necessity of a map and some kind of minis robbed the game of some amount of drama.

4.0 on the other hand makes up for the things lost and has really grabbed me with its simplicity and “cool” factor.

Josh´s last post: Alhambra – Review

The change in the cosmology means two things to Planescape.

1) Instead of everything being separate planes, many are now “Astral Dominions”. This effectively means nothing, as each is self-contained just like its own plane, except that it is possible to travel between them by means other than portals occasionally.

2) The energy/elemental planes are gone, consolidated into the Elemental Chaos. Since the elemental planes on their own were usually instantly deadly, and the Elemental Chaos is not, I can only see this as a plus. All the key locations, like the City of Brass, are still there.

Heck, Sigil is detailed in the Manual of the Planes. Yeah, some of the planes have changed, but Planescape was never about what the specific planes were. It was about the adventure of traveling to new and exotic locations, as well as around Sigil.

As for Spelljammer, the Manual of the Planes describes Spelljamming on page 20, and includes stats for Spelljammers on page 159. Whether it connects to different campaign worlds, or just to your own, is pretty much left up to the DM to decide, but the ships are in the game, and listed as one of the main ways to travel the planes. So while Spelljammer (as a setting) isn’t right there, Spelljamming certainly is.

Graham´s last post: UPS? More like You Pee… Freely… or something…

My understanding was that the change in the cosmology made Planescape unrecognisable, but still present in a manner of speaking. Spelljammer, on the other hand, I thought was dead and buried. Perhaps I was wrong… (and if I was, I hope it is on both counts)

Prince of Cats´s last post: Fun in a Grown-Up’s world…

Dark Sun, I believe.

I’m rather excited that both Spelljamming and Planescape are part of core 4e, now.

Graham´s last post: UPS? More like You Pee… Freely… or something…

Personally, and this might just be me, I think the D&D progression to what is called ‘dumbed down’ is great for putting the books to one side and role-playing. I was always a story-teller (I started with WoD) more than a dungeon-keeper.

One of 2E’s other major flaws had to be the half-hour negotiations with the DM to work out which optional rules were being used.

RichGreen´s last post: 2nd Edition AD&D | Critical Hits

While magic weapons were more intuitive in that they added to your rolls to hit, because both used positive numbers to express bonuses but had opposite effects in the calculation of rolls to hit, considerable confusion was created.

This discrepancy is not present in 3e or 4e.

But like I said, it could be a pain to calculate and normally just defaulted to base weight anyway. So it was an innovative system that was too much trouble to implement correctly.

Druids – I didn’t like the fact that they were treated as just another subset of priests, like specialist wizards (although I did like the specialist wizards).

Half-orcs & Assassins – Removed for a more politically correct gaming universe. Oh well, it was the early 90′s…

Devils, Daemons, & Demons – Same thing. Glad they got over it in 3E.

Monks – Their removal firmly cemented the Eurocentrism of core 2E. And the kit in the Complete Priest book was a joke.

Kits – Horrible, nasty things. Re-skinned and presented as “prestige” classes in 3E. We hates them, yessss…

Monsterous Compendiums – Every single kid who went to school knew that the lifetime of a 3-ring binder was inversely porportional to the size of the rings. So why did they take a reference book that would be HEAVILY used, triple it’s volume, and cut it’s life expectancy in half?

THAC0 – I’m glad the easy, four-line chart from 2E replaced the huge page of numbers from 1E. THAC0 also had the added benefit of inflation containment, which isn’t something you’d think about until after 3E had been around for a bit.

By itself, THAC0 (which is the WRONG acronym for what it was actually used for) was just a way to generate a target for success. It represented the level of skill your character had acquired. As your character became more experienced, that number went down, making it easier for you kill & loot. Even if a 10th-level fighter was left without a weapon, they could still feel like they could take on a somewhat powerful enemy and get some good hits in, because no matter what, they just needed a “10″ to hit.

It’s more mental than anything else. Honestly, which character would you rather use: The guy who only needs to roll a 10 on a d20 to smack the other guy with an AC of 0, or the guy who needs to get a 20 once you’ve accounted for all of the combat modifiers? They’re the same exact thing, but one “feels” faster than the other, because there’s less thinking involved.

Thief abilities – I loved the fact that you could specialize in what you wanted your thief to be able to do in 2E.

Twin weapons – 2E had a horrible rule that, no matter how many attacks you got with your “primary” hand, you only got 1 extra with your off hand.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Maybe I’ll think of some more later.

My issue with THAC0 was that I always felt it was unnecessarily complicated, unnecessary being the key word there. I found it unintuitive because everything was based off of Armor Class 0, when there was nothing magical about 0, that’s just what everything was compared to. Essentially it’s having a statistic on your character sheet about how you work against ONE specific type of armor, instead of having a representation of your general aptitude. It may be able to be used in the same was as the newer rules, but for me that’s just a good reason to use the newer system instead.

For me we played 2e at just the right age where I considered what the DM said as fact, and really felt like there was a rigid set of rules in which we had to play. I remember day dreaming about a super-powerful character who had magical plate armor that allowed him to cast spells while wearing it, and thinking this was something nearly unattainable EVER. It’s the same sense of mystery that I had for the first few weeks that I played World of Warcraft, but was quickly replaced by repetition and a strong sense of the mundane.

Vulcan Stev´s last post: Gaming in your favorite cinema universe

Kits was the number one thing I hated about 2E. The plethora of supplements was second, though I didn’t cement my “core-only” philosophy until 3E. The race-based class and level restrictions where silly, and proficiencies didn’t go far enough.

THAC0 never bothered me, though I identify more easily with the “higher is better” AC mechanic.

Kameron´s last post: Growing an outline into a story

Stuff I Have Mixed Feelings About:

-Chronomancers. I love this book, absolutely ridiculous in play.
-The art. Boy was that all over the place. WotC’s experience with choosing a more consistent art style shows through in 3e on, whereas 2e was solidly a mixed bag for good and ill.

Instead of harping on THAC0, anyone have their own what you hated/loved/mixed?

TheMainEvent´s last post: 5 Things I Loved and 5 Things I Hated About 2nd Edition AD&D

Moreover, where I see 3+ as going badly wrong is that there are frequent mods applied to both sides of the equation, so the formula is often Roll + Fixed Number Based on Skill +/- Variable Situational Mods (e.g. -N to roll for trading off attack for damage) > Number GM announces Based on Difficulty +/- A Different Set of Situational Mods (e.g +1 to AC vs certain opponents). They really should have stuck to explaining everything in the same fashion, so that Dodge, say, was -1 to a specific opponent’s attack roll instead of +1 AC vs. that opponent.

@TheMainEvent – I don’t see it. Roll 8 + 2 for AC + 1 for Magic Sword >= THAC0 10… unless AD&D 2e had a bunch of stuff that worked a different way?

Joshua´s last post: Sure, Why Not?