Character kits/Creating new classes AD&D 2nd

[GoblinGilmartin]

Can someone explain to me the character points mechanic? I just recently got all the books for AD&D 2e, and i've been looking into it for a long time now. does anyone have a good way of explaining how to apply kits to characters or make classes?

[ngilop]

well I really do not rmember teh character point build a class system to well, ( i disliked it immensly as it made unbalanced and often time broken as in actually rea life definiton of broken characters)
SO iam not help on that but apply character kits is rather simple

Basically say your going to be a fighter, but you take the Beast Rider Kit

You look at teh kit and just write down anything it gives your character.

so you get animal handling as a bonus non weapon proficinecy as well as riding (land based) both fo these must apply to the same animal and that must be indicated owith your character

then you see that you get to start play with that very animal and that youhave telepahtic rapport with said animal then you are given a list of animals to chose from.

then you see that as a hindrace yous uffer -3 to npc reactions that are not fo your culture. and that while you start with normal gold for a fighter all you have left after buying your items in excess of 3 gold disappears.

so Bascially you look at the weapon and non weapon proficiencies and see if you get any bonuses or if you are limited to certain ones.

you make a note on your character sheet your benefits and hindraces and as well as any other relavant information.

[LibraryOgre]

Ok, there's several different questions in here, depending on what you're referring to.

Character Points were introduced in Skills & Powers (S&P) and Spells & Magic (S&M) as a means of customizing characters. In theory, you could choose from a group of abilities, building the character you wanted (i.e. your assassin character might have a better ThAC0 but lose the ability to pick pockets or read scrolls). In practice, it could also be a way to take meaningless restrictions to improve your character. As a note, I did like the use of Character points for buying proficiencies, and the proficiency system created in S&P. I just didn't like how they implemented it for race or class creation.

Now, Kits came from two different sources: The Complete Handbooks and S&P. The ones in the Complete Handbooks were pretty hit or miss, usually by book... some were way powerful, some were stupid, and some hit a sweet spot of usefulness, power balance, and novelty. They were usually class or race specific. The ones in S&P were all fairly minor tweaks of characters, with a couple discounts on skills.

A note on kits: Under no circumstances should you combine Complete kits with S&P Class Point class building in the same character. It becomes TRIVIALLY easy to circumvent the restrictions on Complete Kits with adequate class building skills. The S&P kits, however, mesh quite well.

(Aside: Many moons ago, I attempted to make my own 3rd edition D&D... before they came out with the announcement of theirs. Mine wound up with me assigning CP values to a huge number of abilities in the 2nd edition books, and creating a three-class system to allow freedom to design your own character. Looking back on it, it's a REAL mess (http://www.editors-wastebasket.org/nexx/indep.html), but a lot of its design features I've seen in other work since then. )

Lastly, however, there is a system in the 2e DMG for creating your own class. It is, IMO, woefully incomplete, and relies on the idea that "Anyone creating their own class will have it harder, and, thus, a higher XP requirement". It is not ideal, but it can serve as a framework for similar work.