[ADnD 2e] What's up with the Second Edition xp charts?

[PoliteNewb]

Yeah, it was surprising how little of your class you had to sell down the river to get 7th level spells early. Like, first level early.

-Username17

No, actually you couldn't. (this is from that website linked earlier)

Regardless of the amount of points paid, a priest may not have a spell-like granted power of 6th or higher level and is limited to no more than one granted power per two levels—one at 1st level, one at 3rd, one at 5th, and so on. The DM should carefully review any proposed granted powers.

That said, being able to get a 5th level spell at 1st level is still pretty boss, and amazingly cheap (25 CPs for either a constant spell or usable 6x per day for instantaneous spells...this is out of 120 total points).

[RobbyPants]

Yeah, that 120 CP was a lot to play with. I remember rolling up a storm-lord type cleric that functioned entirely off of SLAs. It got at-will flight, and some X/day things like Lightning Bolt, Gust of Wind, Control Weather, and some other goodies.

I could have made something a lot better, but I was going out of my way to keep things level-appropriate.

[Eikre]

...I don't understand this.

Well most people don't, it's sort of hard to follow, especially that first chapter. Just try and get your Read/Write bonus up a few plusses and try it again.

[CCarter]

I didn't think you could split your scores above your racial maximum. For example, an elf with an 18 Dex could split 19 Aim and 17 Balance, but a human with an 18 would be stuck at 18 Aim and 18 Balance.

Also, I never knew how to adjudicate splits on characters with exceptional strength. Basically, every warrior that could get a natural 16 in Str would end up with 18/xx Muscle and 14 Stamina, and be great at combat, and barely be able to carry their full plate and their weapon at full speed.

Here we go...

Strength: The subabilities derived from a character’s Strength score are Stamina and Muscle , and these are the only subabilities that can have scores higher than 18—provided the character is a warrior. Such characters can have exceptional subability scores, just as they can have exceptional Strength scores. If a warrior qualifies for exceptional subability scores, roll percentile dice (1d100) and consult the charts under Stamina and Muscle. A warrior with an 18 Strength score might decide to have 18s in both subabilities, at which point he would roll percentile dice for both. Or, the warrior might have a 20 Stamina or Muscle, with the other subability having a score of 16—or any combination in between.

If I'm reading this correctly, characters are still limited to 18s in their core abilities (as per the racial ability table) but warriors are specifically exempted from the 18 limit for the subabilities of Strength. Its not stated how this interacts with racial modifiers, but I suppose a reasonable interpretation might be to replace where it says 18 above with whatever your racial maximum is.

20 would be usual limit applied to Muscle because the starting score would be 18 and a character's "Stamina" and "Muscle" subabilities had to be no more than 4 points apart, but from a fairly quick rechecking I can't find any hard limit.
AFAIK a dwarf could burn 10 CPs to get the "More Muscles" racial ability and another +1 to Muscle (the racial ability also raises the limit to 5 points apart) and get to 21; or using the "Alternate Subability method" where one subability equals the initial ability score roll and the other is either +d4 or -d4 (flip coin) you could possibly get a warrior with up to Strength/Muscle 22, albeit with a 50% chance of just creating a fighter thats a useless encumberance mule with high Stamina instead.

I'm guessing that the fighters who have troubled moving are a fairly common problem in S&P; AFAIK it sounds like you were running it pretty much as intended. : )

EDIT: found the reference to racial stat modifiers and subabilities and its weirder than that. Bonuses increase the subability maximums but a subability isn't limited by racial maximum i.e. penalties.

[Lokathor]

pic

...I don't understand this.

Well most people don't, it's sort of hard to follow, especially that first chapter. Just try and get your Read/Write bonus up a few plusses and try it again.

Oh now I see what you did there.

[RobbyPants]

If I'm reading this correctly, characters are still limited to 18s in their core abilities (as per the racial ability table) but warriors are specifically exempted from the 18 limit for the subabilities of Strength. Its not stated how this interacts with racial modifiers, but I suppose a reasonable interpretation might be to replace where it says 18 above with whatever your racial maximum is.

Gaa! How did I miss that!? Oh well. Ten years to late.

[PoliteNewb]

Yeah, that 120 CP was a lot to play with. I remember rolling up a storm-lord type cleric that functioned entirely off of SLAs. It got at-will flight, and some X/day things like Lightning Bolt, Gust of Wind, Control Weather, and some other goodies.

Remember...you're limited to 1 SLA per 2 levels, max. You're basically a 2E version of the warlock.

And 120 seems like a lot, but it goes fast...look at your proposed stormlord dude:

At will Flight = 10 + 6 (3rd lvl wizard spell) +10 (constant) = 26
Lightning Bolt 3/day = 10 + 6 (W3 spell) + 7 (5 + 2 additional) = 23
Gust of Wind 3/day = another 23 (Gust of Wind was a W3 spell in AD&D)

Technically, you couldn't buy Control Weather...it's a 6th lvl spell for wizards, and 7th for priests. But let's say you ignored that...for 1/day, you're paying 22 points for it.

So just those listed cost you 26+23+23+22 = 94 points. Throw in another at-will of some kind and that's probably all your points. So you get 5 SLAs, 1 each at 1st/3rd/5th/7th/9th. And that's it, no other spells, powers, etc. You also fight like a Priest, can wear any armor and use blunt weapons, which isn't awful. But it seems pretty limited compared to actual casting.

You could also sell back some of your stuff, if you didn't care (you can get 43 points if you lose all armor/weapon proficiencies, need a special talisman, and have daily ceremony to observe).

[Kaelik]

Yeah, that 120 CP was a lot to play with. I remember rolling up a storm-lord type cleric that functioned entirely off of SLAs. It got at-will flight, and some X/day things like Lightning Bolt, Gust of Wind, Control Weather, and some other goodies.

Remember...you're limited to 1 SLA per 2 levels, max. You're basically a 2E version of the warlock.

And 120 seems like a lot, but it goes fast...look at your proposed stormlord dude:

At will Flight = 10 + 6 (3rd lvl wizard spell) +10 (constant) = 26
Lightning Bolt 3/day = 10 + 6 (W3 spell) + 7 (5 + 2 additional) = 23
Gust of Wind 3/day = another 23 (Gust of Wind was a W3 spell in AD&D)

Technically, you couldn't buy Control Weather...it's a 6th lvl spell for wizards, and 7th for priests. But let's say you ignored that...for 1/day, you're paying 22 points for it.

So just those listed cost you 26+23+23+22 = 94 points. Throw in another at-will of some kind and that's probably all your points. So you get 5 SLAs, 1 each at 1st/3rd/5th/7th/9th. And that's it, no other spells, powers, etc. You also fight like a Priest, can wear any armor and use blunt weapons, which isn't awful. But it seems pretty limited compared to actual casting.

You could also sell back some of your stuff, if you didn't care (you can get 43 points if you lose all armor/weapon proficiencies, need a special talisman, and have daily ceremony to observe).

120 is for level 1 only.

If you want to be level appropriate, you can do that an get at will flight, 6 times lightning bolt, and then as you go up in levels, get more spells.

[Lokathor]

Here I will take a moment to note, so that I don't get psychic dick punched, that I have decided to (almost for sure) go with a background system for "skill" type use.

Idea So Far:
A character begins with 2 background points, and if they take a downtime break in their adventuring career (say 3 months) they can pick up additional background points. There is I suppose no strict limit to the number of background points that a person could accumulate, because they are not tied in to your level. Backgrounds do not generally relate to combat or semi-combat abilities (Stealth/Perception specifically is not background related). If you have a background you make a check with your background bonus. If you don't have an appropriate background and you should have a background for it, you can make a check at (for example) -5. Why hand out new backgrounds for players who take down time? tones down on the adventurer rock star problem by giving players a reason to say "we're rich for now, we'll live it up a bit".

As to saves, the other issue at hand, I'm now tempted to switch to Fort/Ref/Wil (since 2e saves are basically just F/W/F/R/W anyways), but I'm note sure how to handle multiclassing at the moment so that affects how the bonuses will be handed out (per group or per class; per class would allow for classplosion and eliminating multiclassing by just making a class for whatever combo you wanted).

Part of the problem is that 2e really has no concept of level appropriate anything, and so trying to mash level appropriate into a game that's supposed to be able to run 2e modules might be broken on first principles. But if I give up on being able to run 2e modules then there's literally no reason to type even one more word for this because I might as well just use better systems, so I clearly can't give up on that. I want to be able to run 2e modules, and I'm ready and willing to put up with some of the bullshit crazy, just not quite all of the bullshit crazy (which is why I'm not using RAW 2e).

[RobbyPants]

Yeah, that 120 CP was a lot to play with. I remember rolling up a storm-lord type cleric that functioned entirely off of SLAs. It got at-will flight, and some X/day things like Lightning Bolt, Gust of Wind, Control Weather, and some other goodies.

Remember...you're limited to 1 SLA per 2 levels, max. You're basically a 2E version of the warlock.

And 120 seems like a lot, but it goes fast...look at your proposed stormlord dude:<snip>

You could also save points by delaying when you get an ability. So, since you can't take your second SLA until 3rd level anyway, you simply delay getting it until 3rd level to save points. At least, I'm pretty sure that was kosher.

I'm not sure I actually had Control Weather. And I'm not sure he had casting or not. It would have been stupid not to give him at least one sphere, since he's got all those spell slot sitting around anyway. Regardless, I don't remember the specifics. I did this over ten years ago and never actually played the character.

[CCarter]

As to saves, the other issue at hand, I'm now tempted to switch to Fort/Ref/Wil (since 2e saves are basically just F/W/F/R/W anyways), but I'm note sure how to handle multiclassing at the moment so that affects how the bonuses will be handed out (per group or per class; per class would allow for classplosion and eliminating multiclassing by just making a class for whatever combo you wanted).

For saves, you could easily use something like the 3e system for calculating bonuses in Fort/Ref/Will. You can use that with 2e multiclassing, its just that characters would have to just use the highest bonus from all of their classes, rather than stacking them. Same goes for attack rolls. 2e multiclassing being in some ways like saying "you can be a gestalt character for +1 level adjustment".

No opinion on the background thing: depends whether you want to encourage your players to go out and kill stuff, or once every few months have a big adventure and spend the rest of their time doing whatever.

[JonSetanta]

I thought 3e was AD&D "fixed". Why bother fixing AD&D from the ground up?

[Lokathor]

I thought 3e was AD&D "fixed". Why bother fixing AD&D from the ground up?

Well I actually explained this in my very last post: 3e cannot run 2e modules without huge conversion issues. I want a game that can run 2e modules with minimal conversion issues.

[shadzar]

I thought 3e was AD&D "fixed". Why bother fixing AD&D from the ground up?

That is what WotC wants you to think...but then isn't Pathfinder supposed to be 3.5 fixed?

do you need multiclassing? if you are going with flat saves based on the F/R/W, then each has a modifier and range itself, so jsut split it amongst the number of classes.

2 classes, then take half from each class....3 one third, etc....

[Ganbare Gincun]

[*] Skill Points were a worse implementation than 2E AD&D Secondary Skills. Weird, but true. (4e's skill system had promise, but fucked everything up in a different way).

So why are Secondary Skills worse then the current 3.X Skill System, and why doesn't 4E's skill system hold water? How do you think the skills system should work?

[Lago PARANOIA]

I can answer the second one. I can answer the third one, too, but that's beyond the scope of this thread.

4E's idea for the skill system where characters would have a one-time starting bonus and keep the skill difference between various characters fixed was a sound idea. While almost everyone agrees that the rogue should be the best at sneaking and the wizard best at magical research, no one really wanted the situation in 3E where people who used to be competent at a skill loses their ability to do so. I mean even at low levels in 3E it was worth letting a fighter have a shot at intimidation. This goal was even MORE imperative with their skill challenge system--it was just completely unacceptable to do things they way they wanted to and also have people drop off of the skill arena.

Unfortunately, there were a few problems. The biggest one being that skill points diverged anyway; they published way, waaay too much crap that pushed people off of the RNG. Though the second-biggest one was the skill challenge system. The way it was set up before all of the revisions made it so that it encouraged the skill monkeys to do all of the activities anyway. No one really cared that your STR/WIS pole fighter had training in perception and you would succeed at 80% of attempts; the elven ranger archer had a +3 bonus on you so would do all of the attempts.

There's definitely more to it than that, but those are the big ones.

[jadagul]

I think my favorite part of the character point system in AD&D (if I'm remembering this right) was that priests get 120 points, and you can buy access to one school of wizard spells for 15 points, and there were eight schools...

So you could play a wizard. Or you could play a cleric who has access to all wizard spells on a cleric chassis. So free weapon proficiencies and no armor restrictions.

[Lokathor]

I even made a lame cover image:


...well I'll have to redo it later, but that's what it's like for now >_>

[CatharzGodfoot]

So you could play a wizard. Or you could play a cleric who has access to all wizard spells on a cleric chassis. So free weapon proficiencies and no armor restrictions.

And nothing more than 7th level (or perhaps "quest level") spells.

[tussock]

C&C skills are pretty good for an AD&D-alike. DC 18+HD, roll d20+level+stat mod, +6 if it's a class skill (sort of, they just use stat checks and favoured stats (part class, part choice) for everything).

HD being the monster's HD, or the likeness of monster that an inanimate problem is similar to. Heavy as an Ogre, puzzling as a Sphinxter, etc. They use it for saves, wrestling, morale, tea party, whatever.


I read recently what EGG wanted to do with 2e before they booted him out. No Psi, no monks (replace with a warrior-spy class like 007), no weapon speeds (reach giving first initiative), no weapon vs armour, full class bards and a jester, split wizard into five classes (elementalist/necromancer/diviner-conjurer/illusionist/other, with the last needing to specialise in what was left with very limited access outside that), add more alternate clerics and a demon-binder class. So at least 18 total classes and sub-classes.

Fix the skill system, thought C&C's would've worked great if he could've thought of it at the time.

UA type stat mods for every class, base +1 to +3 by stat, but (eg) Fighters get double str and con bonuses, and can use Str mod to hit (but probably presented in a convoluted table to avoid big breakpoints). Everyone's stats go up by level. PC hit points on half max plus half rolled. Monster hp similar with (eg) a spellcasting monster getting d6 per HD while big grunts get up to d6+6 per HD. All monsters would get +HD to damage.

Oh, and all the crazy UA warrior bonuses, so 2d8+7 base arrow damage up to 4/round, full plate armour, +3/+3 specialisation or better, and so on.