changes from 2ed to 3ed

[Thames]

Hi guys,

In the Rules compendium it explains why some of the rule changes were made in the transition from 2ed to 3rd. Are there any other articles either in books or on the net which explain the changes? And though this is unlikely has anyone made a list of the significant changes?

The thing which stuck out at me was the increase in BAB for everyone but the fighter, the increase in hitpoints (due to always getting a HD with a level and not just getting bonus HP after a certain point) and the alteration in level progression resulting in wizards getting HP and BAB much faster (as well as other classes).

Was this part of what damaged the fighter types?

[jmbrown]

What damaged the fighter was, ironically, tactical combat. Movement wasn't precisely calculated, all actions were resolved at once, and there was no AoO to track. The fighter move and attack fully while the wizard had to play keep away because getting struck automatically ruined your spell and being knocked unconscious made you lose everything. 3E made it so that they had to sacrifice movement to hit and they couldn't automatically block enemy advancement which, frankly, eliminates the entire point of a defender.

The changes are too great to actually be listed. If I went chapter by chapter I would have a 100 page document. The best "reason" I can give is that Wizards wanted to go from AD&D's heroic fantasy to EPIC fantasy where people can achieve a high enough level to easily tackle gods and demon lords while flying around and casting magic without worry of failure or reprieve.

[Eldariel]

Indeed, the biggest changes that hurt the Fighter:

- They lost their unique class feature in extra attacks.
- They can't move while dealing full damage anymore.
- They can't block enemies by just...being there; due to turn structure, they can just be...passed.
- 5' steps mean they can't even threaten anyone reliably without work.
- Everyone gets high HP from high Con
- Armor was made worse (max Dex, heavy movement speed penalties, etc.) meaning they aren't really ahead of less-armored colleagues come mid-levels defense-wise.
- Everyone gets more HP; Fighters are the class that can only deal damage (this is why the few ways to optimize and really twink out the Fighter damage output or debuff enemies are so strongly suggested for optimized Fighters; they're really the only ways to counteract this).


The biggest things that helped the Wizard (and to lesser extent, other casters):

- Combined XP tables without alterations to on what levels they get stuff; 3.5 Wizards just grow in power VASTLY faster than their AD&D counterparts.
- Defensive Casting: Being next to someone is no longer any kind of a problem for casting spells
- Concentration-skill: Even being hit doesn't automatically cause you to lose your spell.
- Drawbackless Magic: AD&D had a ton of drawbacks for all the more powerful spells in the books. D&D 3.X just threw those drawbacks away without replacing them with anything.
- Fast casting: In AD&D, you spent your turn casting a spell. In 3.5, you spend one Standard Action casting, another moving and there are very few spells that can be interrupted outside readied actions.
- Bonus spells from high ability score: In AD&D, there was no way of getting more spell slots than listed. In 3.5, they took the old tables, but gave casters an automatic means of increasing their spell capacity.
- Spell DCs incorporate caster's key ability score. This change single-handedly made Save-or-X effects usable on mid-levels (though a bit weaker on low levels).
- Ability scores were uncapped and made to grow linearly and expected to grow a lot: This helps casters since casters gain much more from their key ability score than Fighters.


It really should be no surprise to anyone that if they were relatively even over their entire career in AD&D (the curve was similar, but more balanced; casters actually WERE weak on low levels back then), and everything changed in the favor of the caster with all of Fighter's unique class features being spread around evenly for every other class (while being weakened by auxillary changes) while casters' abilities weren't socialized at all, but had all their limitations removed...well, let's just say from this perspective, the source of 3.5's balance issues is pretty fcking obvious.

[Thames]

ok followup question - how much balance would it restore to use the 2ed experience table for levels on the fighter and wizard?

[Lapak]

ok followup question - how much balance would it restore to use the 2ed experience table for levels on the fighter and wizard?

A little, but not much. The problem is with how the mechanics for combat changed (more goodies for everyone, mostly at the expense of pure melee classes) and how the mechanics for magic changed (MANY more goodies for casters, taking away counters for everyone else.)

Especially with the 3E rule that lower-level characters earn more XP than their high-level buddies.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

ok followup question - how much balance would it restore to use the 2ed experience table for levels on the fighter and wizard?

I would recommend against separate XP charts for the various classes, since most of 3.0 and 3.5 assume that everyone is the same level when given a challenge. Now, switching to a slower table is progression for everyone is fine and dandy, but it gets a little wonky with different progressions.

[Aldizog]

Incidentally, the higher HP totals hurt the wizard... or at least the evoker.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

Incidentally, the higher HP totals hurt the wizard... or at least the evoker.

There are still ways to make direct damage effective, as a caster. However, it usually involves a few loopholes and metamagic abuse, and, end result, you're doing the fighter's job for him. It's just easier to do BC, buffing, or debuffing.

[Tiktakkat]

ok followup question - how much balance would it restore to use the 2ed experience table for levels on the fighter and wizard?

That is not where the problem is, so it would not really help.
What needs to be controlled with wizards, and pretty much any spellcasting class, are:

1. Spell slots, memorized or otherwise.
While by a strict comparison a 3.5 10th level wizard has only 1 extra 4th level spell by the chart, he really has 4 extra 1st level slots (reduced to being 0 level cantrips), plus 2 1st, 1 2nd, 1 3rd, 1 4th, and 1 5th level slot was well, assuming Int 20. Even more, he functionally has 2-4 times that many because 3.5 assumes the "15 minute workday" of 4 encounters per day, compared to AD&D where you were more commonly expected to slog through 10-15 encounters before resting.
Killing bonus slots is a good place to start, as would expanding the typical number of encounters expected.

2. DCs based on ability score bonuses.
While spellcasters still ruled at high level in AD&D, it remains that saves got easier to make as you advanced in level. For the most part, the opposite is true in 3.5, primarily because of the ability score bonuses to DCs. Adding in extra for the spell level does not help either.
Conversely, evasion and mettle need to go. Nothing should allow immunity to another classes primary ability like that.

3. Touch AC.
It may seem silly, but one of the bigger destabilizers to power level for spellcasters, particularly wizards, was the introduction of touch AC, which did actually start back in AD&D days. The insistence that since you did not actually have to score a full hit like a fighter with certain spells, and so should be allowed to ignore armor so the poor, pathetic, melee sucking wizard would actually have a chance to use shocking grasp successfully once in his career, has exploded to things like spellwarp sniper and the orb spells blasting things left and right despite a wizards pathetic BAB.

Other things have already been noted, particularly Eldariel's list, which I agree with completely except for the xp part. (The differences are actually not that overwhelming between fighter and wizard in AD&D. It is classes like thief and cleric that actually benefitted more from those differentials.) Unfortunately changing most of those elements would, I think, be a lot harder than changing the three I list above. Drop those down and watch spellcasters lose a ton of luster.

[jmbrown]

That is not where the problem is, so it would not really help.
What needs to be controlled with wizards, and pretty much any spellcasting class, are:

1. Spell slots, memorized or otherwise.
While by a strict comparison a 3.5 10th level wizard has only 1 extra 4th level spell by the chart, he really has 4 extra 1st level slots (reduced to being 0 level cantrips), plus 2 1st, 1 2nd, 1 3rd, 1 4th, and 1 5th level slot was well, assuming Int 20. Even more, he functionally has 2-4 times that many because 3.5 assumes the "15 minute workday" of 4 encounters per day, compared to AD&D where you were more commonly expected to slog through 10-15 encounters before resting.
Killing bonus slots is a good place to start, as would expanding the typical number of encounters expected.

2. DCs based on ability score bonuses.
While spellcasters still ruled at high level in AD&D, it remains that saves got easier to make as you advanced in level. For the most part, the opposite is true in 3.5, primarily because of the ability score bonuses to DCs. Adding in extra for the spell level does not help either.
Conversely, evasion and mettle need to go. Nothing should allow immunity to another classes primary ability like that.

3. Touch AC.
It may seem silly, but one of the bigger destabilizers to power level for spellcasters, particularly wizards, was the introduction of touch AC, which did actually start back in AD&D days. The insistence that since you did not actually have to score a full hit like a fighter with certain spells, and so should be allowed to ignore armor so the poor, pathetic, melee sucking wizard would actually have a chance to use shocking grasp successfully once in his career, has exploded to things like spellwarp sniper and the orb spells blasting things left and right despite a wizards pathetic BAB.

Other things have already been noted, particularly Eldariel's list, which I agree with completely except for the xp part. (The differences are actually not that overwhelming between fighter and wizard in AD&D. It is classes like thief and cleric that actually benefitted more from those differentials.) Unfortunately changing most of those elements would, I think, be a lot harder than changing the three I list above. Drop those down and watch spellcasters lose a ton of luster.

Two more things to tack on to reduce the 15-minute-work-day

*Memorizing a spell took 10 minutes per spell level. Not so bad at level 1 but at level 5 you're looking at 110 minutes, at level 10 you need 390 minutes, 940 minutes at level 15 and 1,620 minutes at level 20. This leads to...

*You can't swap or forget spells. You memorize it and the arcane magics are permanently ingrained into your head. The only way to get rid of it is to cast it after which you have to rest in order to refresh that slot.

Harping on Tiktakkat, magic was meant to carry you through the entire adventure. If the wizard blew his wad in the first encounter he couldn't stop to rest 8 hours then pour over his spell book. 3.5 encourages people stopping in the middle of an adventure to consult their laundry list for a spell to overcome their current situation (60 minutes to reorganize spells? Not a problem!). In AD&D you had to rest then re-memorize. Chances are you'd either end up in multiple encounters or the party would get annoyed and stomp your spellbook.

[Ravens_cry]

Reading some old Dragon magazines I picked up, I have noticed a change in philosophy. 2nd edition was more, 'If it makes sense, even if not encoded directly in the rules, go for it.' For example, an article on alternate uses for spells recommended using spider climbto palm objects. A 3e game is an attempt at a more direct simulation.
I have never actually read the 2nd edition books. Heckles cakes, 3.5 is basically before my time as far as playing experience goes.

[ken-do-nim]

The other thing that nobody pointed out (unless I skimmed too fast) was that in AD&D, though the fighter started off with the worst saves, the high level fighter had the best saves in the game. That's right, no weak will saves. The AD&D high level fighter a la Conan was nearly impossible to bring down.

It's probably easier to bring 3E rules back to 2E than to move any 2E rules up to 3E. For instance maybe you'd like to move the 3E-style ability score bonuses to your 2E game. Or the magic item stacking rules. Edit: and of course ascending armor class.

[hamlet]

It's probably easier to bring 3E rules back to 2E than to move any 2E rules up to 3E. For instance maybe you'd like to move the 3E-style ability score bonuses to your 2E game. Or the magic item stacking rules. Edit: and of course ascending armor class.

Not quite true. I've seen some good results happen when somebody brought forward a few simple rules from AD&D to 3.5. Specifically, spell memorization times, no auto-spell upon leveling (i.e., you have to find the spells you want, wizards and clerics both), spellcraft check to learn a spell and place it in your book, and one other that escapes me at the moment. That seemed to put a serious crimp in the style of 3.5 casters, though certainly not to the level that AD&D was. It helped a little.

[Jarawara]

The other thing that nobody pointed out (unless I skimmed too fast) was that in AD&D, though the fighter started off with the worst saves, the high level fighter had the best saves in the game. That's right, no weak will saves. The AD&D high level fighter a la Conan was nearly impossible to bring down.

You know, one of the first things I saw with the fighter, the very first time I cracked open the 3E books, was the weak will saves. That was a double-take for sure. I mean... fighters? Weak-willed fighters?

Give them a good Will save - it does wonders for them. Doesn't solve all the problems, but it's a start.

[Sebastian]

I agree with everything said until this point and I add:

Magic items, in 2nd edition magic items were very DM dependent, but the default was that they were hard to make, even a simple 1st level scroll needed a lot of time, money and weird ingredients, you could not load on wands and scrolls and potions to have always the right spell for the right situation.

Also, magic items were more fragile, in 3.x to break a magic item you need either an aimed attack (which nobody ever does) or an incredible bad luck with the dice, in 2nd if you are hit by, for example, a fireball and you fail a saving throw (not roll a natural 1, just fail) all your items had to make a successful saving throw (which IIRC was not dependent on your level) or being destroyed, or so damaged to stop working which is essentially the same.

[Aquillion]

There was one change between 2nd and 3rd that weakened wizards:

HP increased, but the blasting spells (Fireball, etc) retained their traditional formulas. This is part of what generally made blasting a suboptimal strategy in 3e. It's also why WotC didn't spot the problems in early playtesting -- they played their wizards like 2e wizards (where blasting was a good strategy, because saves were high and HP was low), and that concealed how powerful some of the other effects had become.

Fireball used to be a D&D wizard's defining spell. People still sometimes refer to it as if it were... but it isn't, really, in 3e. Not in terms of power, anyway, because it kept its 1d6 per level damage, and everyone's HP went up.

[LibraryOgre]

I would recommend against separate XP charts for the various classes, since most of 3.0 and 3.5 assume that everyone is the same level when given a challenge. Now, switching to a slower table is progression for everyone is fine and dandy, but it gets a little wonky with different progressions.

Actually, I've got a fairly simple method for using 3e-style multiclassing in a multiple-charts game: Simply put, you always use the most expensive chart for the next level. Want your fighter to take his next level in wizard? He has to get 2500xp, like everyone else who takes wizard.

Now, to do a lot to "fix" 2e magic to be a little closer to 3e standards, without turning on the 15-minute workday:

1) Enable 3e-style cantrips. These few little spells a day do a lot to give wizards some flexibility.
2) Add one additional 1st level spell at first level. This works similar to the cantrip idea, giving wizards more spells without going whole-hog into bonus spells. At low levels, it's functionally the same. At high levels, it keeps higher-level spells from exploding.

The other alternative is to do like they did in HMB... there are as many levels of spells as there are levels of wizard (and clerics). Clerics may cast one spell of each level. Wizards have spell points. By dividing the spells up, though, you move some of the better ones to latter levels (from 1st level to 2nd level).

[The Rose Dragon]

Fireball used to be a D&D wizard's defining spell. People still sometimes refer to it as if it were... but it isn't, really, in 3e. Not in terms of power, anyway, because it kept its 1d6 per level damage, and everyone's HP went up.

In 2nd Edition, you could kill a young dragon with burning hands, let alone fireball.

[Aldizog]

Even more, he functionally has 2-4 times that many because 3.5 assumes the "15 minute workday" of 4 encounters per day, compared to AD&D where you were more commonly expected to slog through 10-15 encounters before resting.
Killing bonus slots is a good place to start, as would expanding the typical number of encounters expected.

I've thought about this, but it's my sense that a very large fraction of gamers today envision the wizard as someone who throws a spell every round of every fight, even at low levels.

One fix might be more spells like Chill Touch or Flaming Sphere, low-level spells that have multi-round utility and require an action on the wizard's part. I suppose the Summon Monster line also works here (maybe let the wizard go a list higher by making it duration: Concentration). With these, the wizard might only use up one spell slot per fight, rather than one per round.

Reserve feats are another good fix, I think. Not sure if they're all well-designed, but a decent concept in general.

[Grommen]

My take on the massive changes is that a lot of the 3ed stuff is a natural progression of the game mechanics from 1st and 2nd. Now granted you have to look deep but it's there.

Feats are a natural evolution of the proficiencies slots. That fact that they got out of control is another issue all together.

Same with skills, they evolved out of the fact that everyone wanted a piece of the rogue skills. 2nd ed no one but the rogues and bards had skills marked down on the sheet. If your warrior wanted to be the party leader, or ended up being king for some reason their was really no measuring stick as to how effective he would actually be. You roll played it of coarse and good gamers didn't have a problem. You also used ability score checks a lot to simulate skills. Again this was not really a problem. Haveing skills, however makes it so you can design encounters with increasing levels of difficulty.

Saves in 2nd ed were quite problematic. At low levels wizards got away with murder on spells like charm person, sleep, etc. If you built your wizzie around these spells and when you got to mid and higher level life sucked. Any spell that required a save or suck just never got used cause no one sucked! Their was also a save vs spells and a save vs wands, staves, and rods. These were usually one point away from each other anyway, so why use two when you can combine them into one and call it good. Eventually this boiled down into three saves, one biased on how tough you were, how quick you were, and how mentally resilient you were. Then it looks to me like they wanted to ensure that each character would have a weakness at higher levels, so they retarded the progression of one of the saves for each class. Stacking on top of this they made the saves for higher level spells harder to deal with and made your attribute lined to the spells mean something. Down side is that warriors got the shaft. Sure they can take any abuse you toss at them, but mentally there a wreck, and their seems to be a metric Crap load of spells that prey on this weakness.

The changes to BAB are simple. Everyone wants to be Kung-fu fighting. In 1st and 2nd if you were not one of the fighter classes, you got 1 attack per round. Don't think you'll last a round with an experienced fighter if your over 10th level. They would just chew you up. Giving everyone a second or third attack, though at a lower attack bonus, makes everyone feel like they can do stuff in a battle. Giveing battlefield tactics to everyone is D&D getting back to it's war gaming roots (yes that is where it came from originally kids).

Most of the other changes are bookkeeping changes to tidy things up. Standard attribute progression makes it easy to calculate bonuses on the fly, double check math, and not crack open a book. Everything goes in one direction too. 1st and 2nd, you needed to roll low on saves and attributes, high on attacks, and skills were percentiles and who the hell knew if it was high or low !!! AC wend to -10 so half the time you added to your attack roll, the other half you subtracted. We had this funky thing called THAC0.

Clerics got 7 levels of spells, and were the lowest progressing class level wise, but by 11th or so level they shot up a level every time you sneezed. Rogues and bards shot out ahead of all the classes by 2 sometimes 3 levels, wile some classes were 2 or 3 levels behind the group.

In short streamlining all this makes it a lot easier to write material, and it made the game more versatile and gives a lifetime of options to it's players. One the down side when ever you make something this big and give it almost limitless options you will make it harder to handle. Wile 3rd ed is my favorite to play from the stand point of creativity and tweaking, it's also a nightmare to DM for the very same reason. These boards are a testament to that fact. Some of the threads I read, I wonder if we play the same game...

My take on the fighter / wizard thing is simple. All classes are equal, as long as the DM and the Players decide to play them that way. If this requires suck ass Wizard builds and fully tweaked melee classes, well then that is what is needed. I don't have a lot of power issues in my games. Mainly due to the fact that we all try to not have power issues. I see the problems with the game. That is why the game has an official referee and balancing master. He takes all the players and reigns them in making a better experience for all.

[Eldariel]

ok followup question - how much balance would it restore to use the 2ed experience table for levels on the fighter and wizard?

Well, you see my post above yours? That's only one of the dozen things that empowered Wizards and weakened Fighters. Coincidentally, the unified XP tables are needed for 3.X style multiclassing (one of the best features of the system IMHO) to work.

What you could do is slow down the progression of caster-abilities to match AD&D leveling for them. However, that would mean that casters wouldn't get 9th level spells before epic, so tread lightly. I know I would revolt if I couldn't cast Time Stop on level 20.


The auxillary option is speeding up the progression of the faster-progressing AD&D classes, but that doesn't really work all too well since gaining more than 1 BAB per level, for example, doesn't really make sense.

Eliminating individual spells and such helps a ton, of course, but fixing the underlying system would make all the problems fix themselves altogether. Unfortunately, that's not really that easy.

There was one change between 2nd and 3rd that weakened wizards:

HP increased, but the blasting spells (Fireball, etc) retained their traditional formulas. This is part of what generally made blasting a suboptimal strategy in 3e. It's also why WotC didn't spot the problems in early playtesting -- they played their wizards like 2e wizards (where blasting was a good strategy, because saves were high and HP was low), and that concealed how powerful some of the other effects had become.

Fireball used to be a D&D wizard's defining spell. People still sometimes refer to it as if it were... but it isn't, really, in 3e. Not in terms of power, anyway, because it kept its 1d6 per level damage, and everyone's HP went up.

I don't really think this weakened the Wizard; this just forced Wizard to change focus. Luckily enough, all the Save-or-X spells not dealing with damage got a huge boost meaning Wizards didn't weaken, they just switched focus. Here, the options of casters vs. lack of options of warriors becomes relevant.

Fighters and Wizards á la AD&D both got hit by the HP boost; however, while Wizard-players have realized they can simply bypass the problem by ignoring HP altogether, Fighter-players are forced to hammer their heads to a wall trying to penetrate this new, increased wall of HP. In AD&D, Wizards threw Fireballs and Fighters hacked at things. In 3.X, Wizards throw Glitterdusts, while Fighters still hack at things.


Comparatively, I find this actually strengthened Wizards since they got more HP (the difference in HP between characters is nowadays only the class HD; since everyone benefits of high Con and Con rises to insane levels on higher levels, the relative HP gap actually decreases as you level-up) and they still have all the toys that allow them not to care about HP.

I've been converting 3.5 to AD&Dish rules set, mostly reworking combat rounds and making magic more hazardous, but so far I'm not happy with it.

My take on the massive changes is that a lot of the 3ed stuff is a natural progression of the game mechanics from 1st and 2nd. Now granted you have to look deep but it's there.

Feats are a natural evolution of the proficiencies slots. That fact that they got out of control is another issue all together.

Same with skills, they evolved out of the fact that everyone wanted a piece of the rogue skills. 2nd ed no one but the rogues and bards had skills marked down on the sheet. If your warrior wanted to be the party leader, or ended up being king for some reason their was really no measuring stick as to how effective he would actually be. You roll played it of coarse and good gamers didn't have a problem. You also used ability score checks a lot to simulate skills. Again this was not really a problem. Haveing skills, however makes it so you can design encounters with increasing levels of difficulty.

Actually, there were non-weapon proficiencies. Optional rules and not well-developed, granted, but they were there.

Saves in 2nd ed were quite problematic. At low levels wizards got away with murder on spells like charm person, sleep, etc. If you built your wizzie around these spells and when you got to mid and higher level life sucked. Any spell that required a save or suck just never got used cause no one sucked! Their was also a save vs spells and a save vs wands, staves, and rods. These were usually one point away from each other anyway, so why use two when you can combine them into one and call it good. Eventually this boiled down into three saves, one biased on how tough you were, how quick you were, and how mentally resilient you were. Then it looks to me like they wanted to ensure that each character would have a weakness at higher levels, so they retarded the progression of one of the saves for each class. Stacking on top of this they made the saves for higher level spells harder to deal with and made your attribute lined to the spells mean something. Down side is that warriors got the shaft. Sure they can take any abuse you toss at them, but mentally there a wreck, and their seems to be a metric Crap load of spells that prey on this weakness.

This is true, but remember that higher level AD&D spells applied penalties to the saves so there was SOMETHING going on there. That said, yeah, in 3.X the save-mechanic actually means those spells can remain useful when used smartly, even come high levels.

The changes to BAB are simple. Everyone wants to be Kung-fu fighting. In 1st and 2nd if you were not one of the fighter classes, you got 1 attack per round. Don't think you'll last a round with an experienced fighter if your over 10th level. They would just chew you up. Giving everyone a second or third attack, though at a lower attack bonus, makes everyone feel like they can do stuff in a battle. Giveing battlefield tactics to everyone is D&D getting back to it's war gaming roots (yes that is where it came from originally kids).

AD&D gishes (Fighter/Wizards) with Mirror Image, Stoneskin, etc. matched up just fine to a straight Fighter in combat. Their offense was less impressive, but with Elven Chain (or Spiritual Armor) and the slew of incredible defensive buffs, they were much harder to hit and damage than straight Fighters.

[Roderick_BR]

Two more things to tack on to reduce the 15-minute-work-day

*Memorizing a spell took 10 minutes per spell level. Not so bad at level 1 but at level 5 you're looking at 110 minutes, at level 10 you need 390 minutes, 940 minutes at level 15 and 1,620 minutes at level 20. This leads to...

*You can't swap or forget spells. You memorize it and the arcane magics are permanently ingrained into your head. The only way to get rid of it is to cast it after which you have to rest in order to refresh that slot.

Harping on Tiktakkat, magic was meant to carry you through the entire adventure. If the wizard blew his wad in the first encounter he couldn't stop to rest 8 hours then pour over his spell book. 3.5 encourages people stopping in the middle of an adventure to consult their laundry list for a spell to overcome their current situation (60 minutes to reorganize spells? Not a problem!). In AD&D you had to rest then re-memorize. Chances are you'd either end up in multiple encounters or the party would get annoyed and stomp your spellbook.

I think they could dismiss memorized spells, but they still had to spend all that time to memorize a new one, AFTER those 8 hours of sleep. And a few spells, like ForceCage, need you to spend the material component during the memotization, meaning that if you do dismiss it, that's a lot of wasted resources...

[Zombimode]

This is true, but remember that higher level AD&D spells applied penalties to the saves so there was SOMETHING going on there. That said, yeah, in 3.X the save-mechanic actually means those spells can remain useful when used smartly, even come high levels.

I disagree that save-or-X spells were useless in high level in AD&D.
Its true that a 15 HD enemy is pretty resilent against save-or-X effects.

But comparingly low level enemies remain being a threat to higher level PCs. Those Stagbeetles will hit you (3 attacks at THAC0 13) and will hit hard (1W10/1W10/4W4), and they have enough HP to survive the fireball.
So, in my experience many foes you will encounter in highlevels are still very valid targets for save-or-X spells.
No, the Dragon wont be affected by your Confusion, but his 20 cyclops henchmen will.

And even 10 HD enemies have a 50% chance of failing their save vs. spell.
Thats pretty good in my book, even without Greater Malison.

Plus, INT 0 Monsters counted for their saves exept Death/Poison etc. only half their HD. Ok, this doesnt come up that much for higher powered enemies, but dinosaurs for instance can be dropped with save-or-X spells pretty easy.

In my experience the best spells in AD&D are save-or-X, but blasting is viable too. Much depends on the situation.

[ken-do-nim]

Actually, I've got a fairly simple method for using 3e-style multiclassing in a multiple-charts game: Simply put, you always use the most expensive chart for the next level. Want your fighter to take his next level in wizard? He has to get 2500xp, like everyone else who takes wizard.

Now, to do a lot to "fix" 2e magic to be a little closer to 3e standards, without turning on the 15-minute workday:

1) Enable 3e-style cantrips. These few little spells a day do a lot to give wizards some flexibility.
2) Add one additional 1st level spell at first level. This works similar to the cantrip idea, giving wizards more spells without going whole-hog into bonus spells. At low levels, it's functionally the same. At high levels, it keeps higher-level spells from exploding.

The other alternative is to do like they did in HMB... there are as many levels of spells as there are levels of wizard (and clerics). Clerics may cast one spell of each level. Wizards have spell points. By dividing the spells up, though, you move some of the better ones to latter levels (from 1st level to 2nd level).

Actually the best way to do 3E-style multiclassing - if that's what you want to call it - in 2E is to simply take dual-classing to its logical high-powered conclusion. You can put xp into any class at any time. Keep a separate tally of hit points for each class and your character has the highest. Likewise your character has the best to hit, best saves, all the class abilities, etc. On the downside, all the class restrictions too. There's actually precedent for this in the rules - ever check out the heroes in Deities & Demigods? Each of them has half a dozen classes.

[Aquillion]

Actually the best way to do 3E-style multiclassing - if that's what you want to call it - in 2E is to simply take dual-classing to its logical high-powered conclusion. You can put xp into any class at any time. Keep a separate tally of hit points for each class and your character has the highest. Likewise your character has the best to hit, best saves, all the class abilities, etc. On the downside, all the class restrictions too. There's actually precedent for this in the rules - ever check out the heroes in Deities & Demigods? Each of them has half a dozen classes.

Doesn't that mean that it's very easy to buy the first few levels of many different classes?

Of course, 2e classes are designed in a way that generally makes 'frontloading' impossible. But still.

[Matthew]

Actually the best way to do 3E-style multiclassing - if that's what you want to call it - in 2E is to simply take dual-classing to its logical high-powered conclusion. You can put xp into any class at any time. Keep a separate tally of hit points for each class and your character has the highest. Likewise your character has the best to hit, best saves, all the class abilities, etc. On the downside, all the class restrictions too. There's actually precedent for this in the rules - ever check out the heroes in Deities & Demigods? Each of them has half a dozen classes.

I seem to remember that was how Planescape: Torment worked as well.

Doesn't that mean that it's very easy to buy the first few levels of many different classes?

Of course, 2e classes are designed in a way that generally makes 'frontloading' impossible. But still.

Yes, but that is pretty much the way the multi-class rules work anyway. The main problem would be with situations where 8th level fighters decide to start putting their experience points into magician or whatever, as the potential is there for them to jump eight levels in magician from one adventure [i.e. instead of going Fighter 8 → Fighter 9 they go to Fighter 8/Magician 8].

[jmbrown]

I seem to remember that was how Planescape: Torment worked as well.

Torment's system was closer to dual classing except you could freely jump around (tri-classing?). You kept the highest hit dice, THAC0, and saves from your best class and you could only use abilities from your current class. It was best to find a class and stick with it because if you tried to evenly level everything you wouldn't advance at all.

[Mike_G]

I'm ok with mages getting the bonus HP from high con, I'm ok with everyone being rewarded for their stats. I'm ok with the bonus to spell DC, since a brilliant wizard should be better at succeeding than a less bright wizard.

My biggest complaint, in regards to the power gap increase, was the defensive casting options.

In AD&D, the Magic User (we didn't have no stinkin' Wizards), was still the most versitile PC, and still probably did the most to mess up the enemy. However, he had the weakness that if the bad guys, even peon bad guys, got up to melee range, he was weak, squishy, and pretty much had no chance of casting spells, having to rely on smacking bad guys with his staff and his attrocious THAC0.

(As an infantryman at heart, this appeals to me. Once you weather the storm of artillery, and overrun the battery, you get to bayonet those @#$% gunners, cackling with glee as you avenge your blown up buddies.)

This meant that the caster needed the Fighter to keep the grunts off him. and he needed to be tactically smart, to try to minimize his exposure to attacks.

In 3e, he can usually take a step back and cast, and even if he can't, the Concentration roll to cast in melee is far too easy to make. Even if you do gte hit, the Concentration roll isn't too hard to make. Letting the enemy get up to you is a minor annoyance now, not the crisis it was.

[Tengu_temp]

In AD&D, the Magic User (we didn't have no stinkin' Wizards), was still the most versitile PC, and still probably did the most to mess up the enemy. However, he had the weakness that if the bad guys, even peon bad guys, got up to melee range, he was weak, squishy, and pretty much had no chance of casting spells, having to rely on smacking bad guys with his staff and his attrocious THAC0.

Really? I must admit most of my AD&D experience comes from Baldur's Gate, but a high enough level caster there is still untouchable in melee due to Mirror Image and Stoneskin.

[Aquillion]

I seem to remember that was how Planescape: Torment worked as well.


Yes, but that is pretty much the way the multi-class rules work anyway. The main problem would be with situations where 8th level fighters decide to start putting their experience points into magician or whatever, as the potential is there for them to jump eight levels in magician from one adventure [i.e. instead of going Fighter 8 → Fighter 9 they go to Fighter 8/Magician 8.

Of course, on the other hand, they could have been a Fighter 8 / Magician 8 at that point anyway if they'd chosen to start dual-classed. So it's not particularly unbalancing, just weird.