AD&D 2e: is there any “broken” class?

[Corvus]

I've always wanted but have never had the chance to play the craziest of multiclasses - the gnome cleric/thief.

The two cheapest classes to level, though it is limited to only being a 9/13 C/T. Maybe not as powerful as the gnome illusionist/thief, but just an amusing concept, especially if you use the priest's handbook to follow the god of mischief/trickery.

[MeeposFire]

I've always wanted but have never had the chance to play the craziest of multiclasses - the gnome cleric/thief.

The two cheapest classes to level, though it is limited to only being a 9/13 C/T. Maybe not as powerful as the gnome illusionist/thief, but just an amusing concept, especially if you use the priest's handbook to follow the god of mischief/trickery.

Actually if you can only get to level 9 in cleric it is actually one of the most expensive in XP classes. A level 9 wizard is faster to obtain than a level 9 cleric. Of course not long later that changes drastically.

[Corvus]

Actually if you can only get to level 9 in cleric it is actually one of the most expensive in XP classes. A level 9 wizard is faster to obtain than a level 9 cleric. Of course not long later that changes drastically.

Up to level 7 the cleric is cheaper, then it gets more expensive up to 13, at which point it starts to get a lot cheaper.

[CE DM]

I've always wanted but have never had the chance to play the craziest of multiclasses - the gnome cleric/thief.

The two cheapest classes to level, though it is limited to only being a 9/13 C/T. Maybe not as powerful as the gnome illusionist/thief, but just an amusing concept, especially if you use the priest's handbook to follow the god of mischief/trickery.

Cleric/Thief is actually a very fun, good combo, and gnomes are fun too...however, same as before, it's a rough go under PH/"vanilla" 2e. Gnomes have -1 wisdom, and being size small & limited to the cleric list & PH weapons means all weapons are 2 handed & blunt, precluding shield or 2WC.

It was a fun combo at the start of 1e, but not for gnomes (only humans & part humans were PC clerics), but as half orcs. If you thought those level limits were low, try 4/8. This made the assassin/cleric far more desirable, at 15/4. Late 1e (1.5e) opened it up to most demihumans, with cleric levels of 7-10, and unlimited in thief.
.
post PH 2e, one can give it wings with a proper deity; Loki, Garl Glittergold, etc.
2 other gnome subraces (Svirfneblin or Forest) are on the broken/badly done up side, but terrific for the combo
planescape has tieflings for a fun cleric/thief, and so forth.
the half orc ought be there, but naw, they cut/pasted it with 1e level limits, never mind all the other races got raised 4-6 levels+

[MeeposFire]

Assuming you even play with those level limits. I have yet to play in a group that does though I know there has to be some out there. They never made much sense as a balance mechanic anyway, sure when racial bonuses are actually useful there is no penalty at all and when those racial bonuses mean almost nothing that is when you make it so they can never get stronger again. Better to just give humans some neat small boosts than use that (assuming you need even that as I know people that play humans even in a no level limit demihuman game).

[thorr-kan]

I've always wanted but have never had the chance to play the craziest of multiclasses - the gnome cleric/thief.

The two cheapest classes to level, though it is limited to only being a 9/13 C/T. Maybe not as powerful as the gnome illusionist/thief, but just an amusing concept, especially if you use the priest's handbook to follow the god of mischief/trickery.

If you ever get the chance, do it. It's a two-handed warhoot.

A few years ago I created a half-orc assassin/cleric for a 20-year-old rebooted 1ED campaign. Had a ball. When that retooled to 2ED, I retooled as a cleric/thief (shadow kit from CompHum). STILL a two-handed warhoot.

Gnome cleric/thief has gotta be at least as fun.

[Corvus]

I had a poke through my Dark Sun rules and I'd forgotten just how many unusual MC options were available in it. You could be a 1/2 Elf Ranger/Druid/Bard of all things. A thri-kreen ranger/templar. A halfling templar/defiler illusionist. (Later on they removed magic from halflings I believe.) Even an elven defiler/druid in theory though I would rule against it.

[Jay R]

Assuming you even play with those level limits. I have yet to play in a group that does though I know there has to be some out there. They never made much sense as a balance mechanic anyway, sure when racial bonuses are actually useful there is no penalty at all and when those racial bonuses mean almost nothing that is when you make it so they can never get stronger again. Better to just give humans some neat small boosts than use that (assuming you need even that as I know people that play humans even in a no level limit demihuman game).

When we played with level limits, players would always use their first Wish to eliminate the limit. Therefore the actual penalty for playing a non-human was loss of your first Wish.

[LibraryOgre]

When we played with level limits, players would always use their first Wish to eliminate the limit. Therefore the actual penalty for playing a non-human was loss of your first Wish.

1e was a bit more strict with what wishes could do with regards to level limits; BTB, a wish would let you get 1 more level.

[opaopajr]

With regard to demi-humans, I play with level limits. I also ran multi-class by the book for HP -- you get dangerously low on HP on average. And yes, I make you roll them dice. Hey, if you ignore the restrictions, no wonder certain things feel stronger!

Overall, most of the tricks are, like any game, trying to talk your GM into turning all the optional material on without control, oversight, and/or restrictions. There's few things that throw campaigns into hard-to-manage power creep, but it's mostly from the Players Options stuff and some high stat specialty classes with Kit tricks -- started at mid to high level, of course! Playing it through from 1st lvl with less generous stat generation Methods, though, is far harder.

It's usually a function of the GM dialing the dials to 11 and then finding that's not what they really wanted.

[Willie the Duck]

I also ran multi-class by the book for HP -- you get dangerously low on HP on average.

What HP rule is it that you think others don't run BTB and how do you think it makes a difference?

[CE DM]

HP/rolls are divided and always rounded DOWN (minimum of 1 though).
Combined with being lower level to begin with (as they are past L1, usually one level, but more at VHL), this means they have less (on average). It's just math/automatic/a fact

EDIT: this is a change from 1e, it's worth noting. 1e was much closer to actual mathematical rules on this, round down under.5, round up at .5 & higher.

Con mods were handled differently too, though in that, it's 2e that is more favorable in special cases (multiclass fighters with con 17+)

[Willie the Duck]

HP/rolls are divided and always rounded DOWN (minimum of 1 though).
Combined with being lower level to begin with (as they are past L1, usually one level, but more at VHL), this means they have less (on average). It's just math/automatic/a fact

EDIT: this is a change from 1e, it's worth noting. 1e was much closer to actual mathematical rules on this, round down under.5, round up at .5 & higher.

Well, as you clarified, rounding down automatically is a rule, not a fact. However, I'm questioning whether there were many people who did otherwise unless we've heard otherwise. Does anyone have the actual wording handy? Was it convoluted/easy to misinterpret?

Con mods were handled differently too, though in that, it's 2e that is more favorable in special cases (multiclass fighters with con 17+)

Now that I'm glad to hear. We ran it as you got 3+ hp for 17+ con so long as you were a fighter, not just for your fighter HD hp-rolls (although just because we got it right bitd, doesn't mean we deliberately got it right ).

[opaopajr]

Well my handy dandy 2e census data from a quarter century ago proves people misinterpre...

No. It was my experience of a lot of people talking how the smart play was multi-classing, as GMs were often generous with maxing out HP (instead of rolling) and ignoring demi-human level limits. But in practice it wasn't broken because those multi-class characters were fragile. So triple multi-classes often were very low HP.

Citation:

Multi-class Benefits & Restrictions

[...] The character's hit points are the average of all his Hit Dice rolls. When the character is first created, the player rolls hit points for each class separately, totals them up, then divides by the number of dice rolled (round fractions down). Any Constitution bonus is then added to the character's hit points. If one of the character's classes is fighter and he has a Constitution of 17 or 18, then he gains the +3 or +4 Constitution bonus available only to warriors (instead of the +2 maximum available to the other character classes).

Later the character is likely to gain levels in different classes at different times. When this happens, roll the appropriate Hit Die and divide the result by the number of classes the character has (round fractions down, but a Hit Die never yields less than 1 hit point). The character's Constitution bonus is split between his classes; thus a fighter/mage gets 1/2 of his Con bonus when he goes up a level as a fighter and the other 1/2 of the Con bonus when he goes up a level as a mage. A fighter/mage/thief would get 1/3 of his bonus when he goes up as a fighter, 1/3 when he goes up as a mage, and the other 1/3 when he goes up as a thief. [... onto optional WP/NWPs]

(AD&D 2e PHB. 1989. p. 44. third column.)

[MeeposFire]

Well yea triple multiclasses tend to be very fragile and I do not look at them as being able to fill the role of almost any single class of similar amount of XP with the exception of the thief. If you have a fighter/mage/thief in terms of party role what you have is a slow XP thief that can cast some spells and be slightly better at using weapons (though I recommend bows in that case so you can keep your low HP character away from some of the damage).


Tripple multiclasses were pretty rare to use in my experience from both a low HP and slow level up experience. Two class multiclasses do not feel that slow but a three class feels slow (though when you do level you tend to level several classes in short order but it takes a while to get there). In general I prefer the multiclass characters over dual class but that is more due to fun factor than anything. I find dual class characters to be annoying if played from start to finish though they do better when you can start a game with a higher amount of XP so you can avoid the part where you level up the first class and then have to level the second class before you can use your older abilities again.

[Willie the Duck]

Citation:

Multi-class Benefits & Restrictions

[...] The character's hit points are the average of all his Hit Dice rolls. When the character is first created, the player rolls hit points for each class separately, totals them up, then divides by the number of dice rolled (round fractions down). Any Constitution bonus is then added to the character's hit points. If one of the character's classes is fighter and he has a Constitution of 17 or 18, then he gains the +3 or +4 Constitution bonus available only to warriors (instead of the +2 maximum available to the other character classes).

Later the character is likely to gain levels in different classes at different times. When this happens, roll the appropriate Hit Die and divide the result by the number of classes the character has (round fractions down, but a Hit Die never yields less than 1 hit point). The character's Constitution bonus is split between his classes; thus a fighter/mage gets 1/2 of his Con bonus when he goes up a level as a fighter and the other 1/2 of the Con bonus when he goes up a level as a mage. A fighter/mage/thief would get 1/3 of his bonus when he goes up as a fighter, 1/3 when he goes up as a mage, and the other 1/3 when he goes up as a thief. [... onto optional WP/NWPs]

(AD&D 2e PHB. 1989. p. 44. third column.)

Hmmm. I supposed it could be differently interpreted, but I can't immediate find many ways. I guess if you started at a level higher than one, a DM might decide one way or another on whether that falls under 'Later the character is likely to gain levels in different classes at different times.'

[opaopajr]

Hmmm. I supposed it could be differently interpreted, but I can't immediate find many ways. I guess if you started at a level higher than one, a DM might decide one way or another on whether that falls under 'Later the character is likely to gain levels in different classes at different times.'

Yeah, this is during an era where contentious rules lawyering was openly derided, RAW VS. RAI was not a serious conversation, and tables were as different as individuals. So play was very fluid and a lot of 'remembered rules' were more house rules. It really helped going back (after my disgust with 3e) to read 2e core page by page and realize how much was group agreement.

It was a fun, less serious, time. (Also know as "My Youth" and damn right it was better than ye youngins! )

So I hope this helps new players interested in 2e dive in. It really doesn't have nearly as many trap or broken builds by modern standards. They were quite conscientious about applying restrictions.

[CE DM]

opaopajr/Willie the Duck: uh, the quote is only the same as I said.

I knew nobody that didn't follow the rules on HP. Even as most of us were coming from 1e, we still saw the difference/change in the rules. There was/were house rules on HP, but they weren't specific to multi-class characters, they were ones like these:
a)roll HD twice, take better roll
b)roll HD, if less than 1/2 max, take 1/2 max (d10 is min 5, d4 is min 2, etc)
etc.
Edit I should add
c) max hp/die. I thought this was only common for L1, but it's actually not a bad idea. The Balder's Gate game had max HP to L3, I took that idea for a game or 3. I personally never saw this universally applied back in the 90's, but I have considered it often this decade. It doesn't change the ratio much though.
d) actual rules: 2.75e, or character point 2e, actually has a rule to re-roll a poor HP roll for 1 CP. This was commonly done in the campaign I ran using that system, and ought be, as HP are so important to survivability/viability over time.
end Edit
This helped HP, sure, but EVERYONE'S HP.

Triple class are slightly more fragile yet, sure. But it's not that much worse. 2 classes puts a character one level back in each, usually. 3 classes put the character back 2 levels, usually. A fighter/mage/thief is on the fragile side indeed, due to LEVELS, and also the fact it's got 2/3 classes with low HD, and, of course, the 2e round down rule hurts (whereas in 1e, it's round off). The one role they really can't cover is the fighter one (armor, HP). A cleric/fighter/mage is a bit better in HP regards, but how viable they are really varies in 2e...per PH only, not very, as they are "no armor, no edged weapons". It's a mage or cleric with the "other side's" spells, in effect. Still, I've DMed numerous very potent & effective triple class characters in 1e & 2e...though I'm not sure if any were in vanilla 2e specifically (but maybe, it's a long time ago now...vanilla 2e is not a game I ever go back to, unlike 1e or 2e+)

Edit: unsolicited advice on triple (or just 2) class multis: CONSTITUTION is the primary/most important score. Not S/I/D or W/S/I. You need that 17+ con, and if u have it, u can maybe go far. Con also has extra importance with 2 classes, but it's only a bit more so than for single class characters (but is still more important), and of course, Con is pretty key to all characters (perhaps the one thing true across nearly every edition).
end edit

Ditching the "always round down" rule is a good idea. Use "rounding off in math" instead.

2e is a great game, indeed, or rather, a number of great games, as it's optional rules are, in effect, a plethora of different editions under one banner. I will note, however, that if one just stayed off the internet, the later editions have little worries about "traps" or "broken", etc, either. The internet is pretty much poison in this regard, even if it ought just be helpful. As noted, one could & did tell the book off/change or toss whatever one wanted to, let alone randos you never meet or play with, or game authors/employees of the corp.

[Willie the Duck]

opaopajr/Willie the Duck: uh, the quote is only the same as I said.

It's unclear why you put, "uh," in there. It seems like you might be trying to refute something, but it's unclear what or how.

I knew nobody that didn't follow the rules on HP. Even as most of us were coming from 1e, we still saw the difference/change in the rules. There was/were house rules on HP, but they weren't specific to multi-class characters

Alright. Honestly speaking, I'm not sure if that's good or bad. Multiclassing is such a mixed bag (good for some combos, better for others, foolhardy for certain campaigns and virtually zero-cost in others), and 'rounding down all the HD rolls' is such a linear opportunity cost, I almost wonder if eliminating that cost and making sure a character isn't runaway too-good through some other avenue might be entirely appropriate.

Ditching the "always round down" rule is a good idea. Use "rounding off in math" instead.

Ah yes, agreed then.

[Corvus]

I'm taking a nat 20 to nostalgia in this thread....

From memory, we mostly stuck to the HP rules as written (though we may have experimented a time or two with things like max hp at first level.) I do know that at one stage we had a venerable grey elf wizard who had just 10 hp at level 9. Squishy as anything but insane int and wis. Just because he could do it.

Rolling dice for stats is one of those things that kids nowadays just don't understand either.

We often used multi-class characters, even if they weren't always optimal. We did it because it was fun and because there wasn't the whole min-maxing cookie-cutter builds that had been analysed to within an inch of their lives on the internet back then.

What I really enjoyed about 2e was that dump stats weren't quite so much a thing and, frankly, NWPs were superior to the skill points that came in later. For starters, fighters actually could do stuff outside of combat as they had a higher base NWP amount than the rogues. And they had a use for taking INT, not just for the bonus NWPs it gave but given that there were a lot of useful NWPs that used int, like all the crafting skills. And CHA was also useful for warriors, given it had loyalty bonuses for hireling/henchmen/followers, which were useful to have.

[LibraryOgre]

While NWPs had their nice points, I don't know about strictly superior... they were impossible to improve, and they didn't mesh very well.

Something more akin to Skills and Powers proficiencies, which were easier to improve, but reasonably capped, were far better, IMO.

[Willie the Duck]

they were impossible to improve, and they didn't mesh very well.

You could spend a whole 'nother nwp slot for a +1, which would be exceedingly inefficient, but possible.

Overall, I liked the idea of NWPs, (and certainly that fighters got some of the best skill-support around), but the design needed a rework. Biggest for me was that being a successful scribe or scholar might need 2-3 NWPs, while being 'good at the outdoors' or the like was something like 9-12 nwps, simply because much of it was a re-do of the DSG and WSG from 1e, which focused on (and thus hair-split to high heaven) the wandering-in-the-woods-bit. Same for smithing -- not that armor/weapon/general smith is a realistic thing in real medieval times, it certainly isn't overpowered, yet it took a bizarre 6 whole nwps to get all 3 smithing styles for what was mostly a 'for-flavor' skill.

[LibraryOgre]

You could spend a whole 'nother nwp slot for a +1, which would be exceedingly inefficient, but possible.

Overall, I liked the idea of NWPs, (and certainly that fighters got some of the best skill-support around), but the design needed a rework. Biggest for me was that being a successful scribe or scholar might need 2-3 NWPs, while being 'good at the outdoors' or the like was something like 9-12 nwps, simply because much of it was a re-do of the DSG and WSG from 1e, which focused on (and thus hair-split to high heaven) the wandering-in-the-woods-bit. Same for smithing -- not that armor/weapon/general smith is a realistic thing in real medieval times, it certainly isn't overpowered, yet it took a bizarre 6 whole nwps to get all 3 smithing styles for what was mostly a 'for-flavor' skill.

Yeah, I can see that, though it somewhat depended on what you were using and how find you were cutting it.

Like, a successful scribe might just have Reading/Writing Common... or they might know several languages. A successful scholar probably had several different Ancient History NWPs, and when you got into S&M, you had Sage Knowledge as an actual NWPs.

One thing I liked about them was that they were bounded... The best Tracker in the world had a 19 Tracking skill. It was impossible to get better than that (though you might theoretically have a higher number, it mostly let you ignore penalties). Contrast this with 3e's boundless skills, where they kept trying to come up with harder and harder things to represent "I am really good at this mundane skill." I kind of wish that Thief skills had been recast in that mold... they already WERE, they just used % for legacy reasons.

[CE DM]

House rule for improving NWP in slot game

current check... +1 slot adds
8 or less:+4
9-12:+3
13-15:+2
16 or more:+1

[Corvus]

My dislike of the later skill point system was that it was very much an all of nothing thing - you either maxed out the skill or you might as well not bother. Your D20+3 wasn't going to be much good when going up against a D20+30, especially since enemies were always going to keep getting better and better with their skills the higher level they were.

And the 2 skill points the poor fighters got a level weren't really going to allow them to do much of anything - at least in 2e they had as many skills as anyone else and your 9- skill at leas stood a chance that that D20+3 didn't.

It could have done with some improvements but they just tossed the whole thing out in 3e and made things worse.

[opaopajr]

Originally optional NWPs were for professional level of competence. So you didn't roll much unless it was significantly harder than the average task. e.g. Tying a rope knot that can untie itself with the proper yank during stress, or lighting a fire in the rain (actual PHB examples, IIRC).

Adding +1 to a NWP doesn't make too much sense under those parameters -- but it was a further option made available for tables who liked more rolling. Basically it was to compensate for really low stats attempting greater than professional level tasks regularly, like a 9 DEX thief doing parkour roof tumbling cat burglary or something.

[Kurald Galain]

While NWPs had their nice points, I don't know about strictly superior... they were impossible to improve, and they didn't mesh very well.

Something more akin to Skills and Powers proficiencies, which were easier to improve, but reasonably capped, were far better, IMO.

Things I like about NWPs,

• You automatically learn new skills as you level up
• All classes benefit from having a decent int score
• For certain skills, I find it appropriate that if you've never learned, then you just can't swim; as opposed to the modern approach where everybody can make every check but highly trained characters are maybe 15% better at it. And although it's more of a worldbuilding thing, I like that characters can't automatically read.
• It's more elegant if your character has a short list of ~5 skills, than if every character sheet lists the full 40-ish skills and you have to search for your mod.

[Corvus]

I keep feel like I'm derailing the thread - maybe we need a threat for a discussion about 2e in general.

I was looking through my DMG and I can across an optional rule I had never noticed before and have never seen used. Warriors, when facing creatures of less than 1HD (ie goblins, kobolds, rats etc) can make as many attacks as their level. So a level 7 fighter, ranger or paladin could make 7 attacks in a round against a group of goblins.

There was also the optional rule about modifying the various damage types (B/S/P) against various armour types, but we never used that in all our years playing. It was certainly harsh against slashing weapons and bludgeoning weapons were the real winners.

But back to the initial question. There wasn't really a broken class in the base rules. Some were stronger or weaker n various circumstances and stages, but not so much that they couldn't be used and enjoyed and contribute.

A high level wizard certainly had powerful magic, but that was balanced against it being squishy, easy to interrupt as high level spells were generally slow to cast, took ages to memories spells after casting (you had to spend 10 minutes a level per spell to memorise, so that is an hour and a half to recover that 9th level spell) and spells took up a lot of pages in spell books so you couldn't just lug your whole library around with all your spells - usually.

A first level wizard may have seemed of little use, with their one spell a day and not much else, but a spell like sleep or colour spray could effectively end a fight at that level, they were going to have the most NWPs so they could more than pull their weight outside of combat, and if they had used up their spell, they could still help out with slings or darts. Especially darts. Even a wizard could toss off 3 of them around a turn and they were very fast, making them perfect to interrupt other spell casters, and at level 1 only the warriors were really going to have much of a better THAC0.

It wasn't until splatbooks start coming along that you did start to run into some of the more broken things. (I'm looking at you Bladesinger).

For true nastiness, if you were over in Dark Sun, you could go with a half-giant dart specialist. Or a half-giant gladiator specialised in punching. But Dark Sun was kind of over the top in that regards.

[Khedrac]

I was looking through my DMG and I can across an optional rule I had never noticed before and have never seen used. Warriors, when facing creatures of less than 1HD (ie goblins, kobolds, rats etc) can make as many attacks as their level. So a level 7 fighter, ranger or paladin could make 7 attacks in a round against a group of goblins.

There was also the optional rule about modifying the various damage types (B/S/P) against various armour types, but we never used that in all our years playing. It was certainly harsh against slashing weapons and bludgeoning weapons were the real winners.

Both of these were originally in 1st Ed AD&D - I had forgotten the multiple attacks rule made it in to 2nd Ed!

I think one of the twists of the armour penetration chart was the bludgeoning weapons generally did less damage than slashing weapons (not to mention the fact that most magic weapons were longswords) so this chart made it a trade betrween damage and the ability to penetrate armour.

One reason why I never used that optional rule was because it only applied to manufactured armour - there was no extrapolation for creature "armour" (skin etc.). Thinking back, this was one thing that RoleMaster got right - the list of armour types included things like "thick skin" so all creatures had an armour type (admittedly in RM you had to have an armour type to know which table to roll against).

[Lord Torath]

For true nastiness, if you were over in Dark Sun, you could go with a half-giant dart specialist. Or a half-giant gladiator specialised in punching. But Dark Sun was kind of over the top in that regards.

Or a Thri-Kreen gladiator with Ambidexterity specializing in Wrist Razors. Edit: Although I suppose Short Swords would be better against larger opponents.