Restarting & Rebooting

Is my wanting to play 2E a want to return to the nostalgia of “the good old days”?
It sure is. I have enjoyed D&D in many ways in every edition I have played and there are aspects of each I’d like to remove.
I’ve been playing D&D since I was 12, when my new friend Paul loaned me his Basic D&D Player’s Handbook. From then on I was hooked. (Technically I’d played made up games that might as well have been D&D for an 8 year old.)
I have loved the game, even when I hated it.
Every single edition has made great improvements and created its own problems.
Why can’t we take those improvements and incorporate them into one of the existing editions to mitigate the negatives of the base-edition we’re using while not mucking up the system..
2E is probably the best choice because it was written from Basic & 1E and is itself pretty malleable to option books and DM fiats.
I would not use 3E or 4E (or pathfinder) because they require too much use of time during combats (something I’ve covered more than a few times on this blog) and they are not easily changed without destabilizing the game (everything is so incredibly balanced and mathed out that any significant change would require huge effort to adjust for).
I do not consider 2E to be superior; I just feel it is best suited to accept changes without destabilizing the core of the system.

Hit points
4E gave the PCs more hit points to start. Too much in my opinion, but by the rules, the PC’s ran a risk of horrible hp to start with.
My idea, classes roll a d4 for hit point, and then add a modifier based off the die originally meant to be used.
If your class rolls 1d10 per level, instead you get this: 1d4+6
1d8 = 1d4+4
1d6 = 1d4+2
And poor 1d4 = 1d4 (I feel wizards should be a little fragile).
And for multiclass, you keep a running total and divide by the number of classes (the way 1E did it).
Pros: Prevent excessive poor hp rolls while not totally removing random chance.

Healing
I’ve talked about this idea before I think; each PC takes his total hp and divides it by two, half going into “body hp” and the other half going into “fatigue hp” (odd numbers go to body hp).
When you take damage, it comes from the fatigue hp first. When you’re out of fatigue hp you start subtracting from body hp.
When you receive healing from a spell and most other sources you heal body hp first.
After each combat, assuming you’ve had a chance to rest, your fatigue hp is returned to its max.
Your body hp will heal at a slower rate of 1 per day (though this might need to be increased to scale better for higher levels).
Pros: Allows for the party to not require a cleric to be a walking Band-Aid, and doesn’t make a healer utterly useless.

Spell slots and choices
At level 1 magic-users can only cast one spell per day. 3E improved on that, but the poor wizards still had to ration out their spellcasting pretty tightly and probably spend some ill-fated time in melee.
And some spells you would never really memorize unless you knew you would need it. Spells like Comprehend Languages and Knock were very useful, but in very specific circumstances.
If you were about to go out adventuring would a level 3 mage be more likely to memorize Sleep, Magic Missile, and Web or would he memorize Comprehend Languages, Light, and Knock?
To help with keeping magic-users alive, they need a low-powered ability that scales very slightly. I am thinking a Magic-Missile that doesn’t always hit and can be cast every round and does 1d3 damage per missile (versus 1d4+1) mainly to keep them from outpacing melee classes.
For the situational spells like Knock and Comprehend Languages, 4E turned them into rituals. I say, why not do both. You can memorize them as usual or cast them as a ritual but with a price added. I think 100gp in gems (gems for arcane, incense for divine) times the level of the spell squared (so 100gp for Comp Lang, and 400gp for knock) and a longer cast time (10 minutes per spell level perhaps).

Initiative
I liked how 3E did it. It made a list of who’s first and that’s it for the combat. 1/2E had a roll every round and you rolled a 1d10 (I think).
Why not do 3E’s way and use a 1d10 instead.
You’ll have to account for delayed actions and such, but that’s minor.

Actions
Common sense says you can only do so much during a combat round. 1E combat rounds lasted a minute and 3E combat rounds were what…10 seconds? 6 seconds?
I don’t recall what 2E round lengths are but I feel we could come up with something agreeable and realistic while not going “minor action, move action, standard action”.

Magic Items
DM’s call and 2E doesn’t have the requirement for magic items that 3/4E do.

Energy Drains
Losing a level is like a slap in the face. I’d like something simpler and less permanent.

Dump Stats
Yeah, we’ll have those, so it will be the DM’s and players’ job to police themselves for that.
A charisma of 6 makes role-playing a bit more interesting when a PC needs something.

Feats
Feats are fun, but putting them in a 2E game is just asking for problems.
To add feats to a 2E would require a ground up redesign of the game, unless the feats were so minor that they were of little or no importance that role-playing could make these changes.

Unbalanced Spells
Yeah, we’ll have to deal with those. Or not…

Priest Domains/Spheres and Magic-user schools
I think I’ll need to read up on that stuff.

Spellcasting disruption
That will require some thought. Allowing casters no chance to be interrupted while casting spells sounds a bit rough, but adding attacks of opportunity back to the game sounds scarier.
Perhaps using a readied action to disrupt spells is a plan? And that opens up other problems…decisions, decisions.

Minions
DM’s prerogative, but when I throw 100 goblins at the party, I don’t relish in the idea of keeping track of each one’s hp individually.

Less work for the players!
And a character sheet might only require 1 single sheet of paper!
When we were going through the World’s Largest Dungeon, at least half of the players paid $4 for a 16-page character booklet.

Thief and Backstab
Perhaps 3E did that one right…
Get rid of backstab for an additional 1d6 per 4 rogue levels if the rogue has some level of advantage over the target (flanking, hidden, etc.)

No Miniatures!
…Until this argument starts “But I wasn’t over there!” or “I don’t think you can run 300 feet in one round.”
So perhaps miniatures without a grid might be called for. Bonus: table space freed up.

What Happened?

Hey, what happened to your blog?


Why haven’t you posted anything recently?

Answer: I got bored of D&D, even bored of bitching about it. It wasn’t fun anymore

I was to the point that when I was at the table I was more detracting from the game than adding to it.

I spent a chunk of time updating my PC’s and would use them effectively in fights, but other than some dice rolling I would barely pay attention.

Hell I probably paid more attention to my smart-phone than the game.



So I left the group and D&D entirely.

I did leave them with a full group of people, so I figured I wasn’t hurting by disappearing.

But about half a year later the group fell apart thanks to jobs, wives, and babies.



It’s been about a year and a half and I’d like to play D&D again.

…Just not any of editions out there.

Oops? Yeah.

I’ve stated it many times but I just don’t like 4E. It’s not D&D. Never was. It’s a miniatures game. Hell, the DM is almost not even needed.

And while all of the editions have their pros and cons, no one edition makes me say “Yeah, that one”.



Getting players is going to be a problem, possibly a big one.

Several of our older players have lost interest. Maybe they’ve found another game (MMO or table-top).

Most have had real life force them to leave gaming in the manner they used to.

A lot of players play 4E or Pathfinder. And from what I’ve seen, Pathfinder looks to be fun, but it takes the things from 3.5 that didn’t set well with me (or us as we once were I suppose). It encouraged, and often required, min/maxed PC’s and munchkin attitudes.



I’ve discussed ideas with some past players and I think 2E is probably our best bet for the kind of game I’m looking for.

I have stated, prior to the publishing of 4E, I didn’t like 2E and it was the worst of the editions. But now I view it as an acceptable option that can be modified.

It will require getting used to things that 3E and newer editions have removed (the five original saving throw types), no feats, THAC0, and the like, but I think it will be minor.

We played 2E a long time, and 1E a long time before that. And those 2 editions were no more different from one another than 3E and 3.5E. And any rules that were bs or bad, we just hand-waved them away.



Is this nostalgia?

Possibly, though to me my burnout is over and I want to play a version of D&D that doesn’t require calculus level math planned out to make sure you don’t TPK.



What about 5E?

I have been so discouraged by 4E that when I look at 5E I feel absolutely nothing but despair. The last I checked, 5E is being made by many of the people who made 4E.

The only word I can think of that applies is “bleh”.



Aren’t you being a little melodramatic?

Probably. The D&D I have been playing since I was 12 (going on 30 years) is gone and is unlikely to return. Thanks to the history of TSR’s corporate stupidity, then the sale of Wizards of the Coast to Hasbro, D&D is now another “product” among many to be distilled into the maximum amount of cash so that Hasbro shareholders can reap as much from gamers as they can.



And I own a huge number of 1E & 2E books.

Dale has probably as much.

Between the two of us, we’ll have enough material to game for a decade.



And now that I think of it, all of the pros that each edition has/had, those could possibly be integrated into our new game.

Perhaps that will be my next blog entry.