d47
Journeyman Douchebag
RPG of Choice: Metagaming Melee
Posts: 194
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Post by d47 on Sept 5, 2014 0:50:17 GMT -8
Long ago, I played 1e AD&D. My recent interest in Dark Sun has compelled me to buy some of the 2e books. I'm curious about the 2e Player's Option books, particularly "Skills & Power". Anyone use these? Worth adding to the set?
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Post by Kainguru on Sept 5, 2014 4:23:00 GMT -8
Yes, if only to see the evolution of 2e to 2.5e to 3e. 3e wasn't as radical a departure as some believe, nor were many of the 'revolutionary' ideas of the 3e designers actually directly attributable - being that they originally appear in the Players Option Books. Aaron
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Post by Houndin on Sept 5, 2014 5:26:38 GMT -8
I preferred the "Handbooks" to the player's option. It basically give you a point buy system for building characters, everything from races to classes can be customized. But I always felt that it added more complexity for less gain than the handbooks. I really liked the Kit system where you can customize the flavor/fluff of a class without mucking too much with mechanics around it. The PO book can get very breaky in the hands of a munchkin or optimizer.
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Post by heavymetaljess on Sept 5, 2014 7:34:17 GMT -8
I have all the Player Option books and I think this is the one I reference the least. Mostly I've used it to get a better hold on how they envisioned the use of proficiencies and I like the idea of split up attributes. No one in my group wanted to use the broken down attributes, though, so it mostly sits on my shelf. I definitely use the other two more often, especially Combat & Tactics. I don't use the rules for miniatures, but everything else is really helpful. I actually just recommended the Critical Hit table yesterday to someone. To Kainguru's point, you can really see how they were playing with ideas that made it into later editions by reading over the Player Option books. You can usually find them very cheap on Amazon or Craig's List.
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d47
Journeyman Douchebag
RPG of Choice: Metagaming Melee
Posts: 194
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Post by d47 on Sept 5, 2014 12:52:39 GMT -8
Thanks for all the tips. They've also recently been added to Drivethrurpg, but used copies seem to be cheaper. The product history on drivethrurpg states that all the options were not compatible with each other. I guess I am interested in the point buy aspect most, as the limitations to classes and hassle of multi classing we're one reason I switched to Runequest back in the day.
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Post by Kainguru on Sept 5, 2014 14:21:04 GMT -8
Not so much as incompatible, rather each book presented a set Options governing different aspects of gameplay from a certain perspective - they were very modular and it wasn't expected that one would implement ALL the options, rather you could pick and choose which options appealed to your desired game style. ie: you could keep 2e combat OR switch to the 2e Options combat with 1 segment combat rounds and opportunities to attack (from which we got the 'attacks of opportunity' in 3e) . . . however the implementation of some Skills/Powers were specific to the combat option chosen. The Spells Options book obviously went further with variant magic systems, non-vancian magic for example, as well as redefining the specialists priests/mages. To be fair they actually fixed the spheres list and the specialty mages list so that they were more balanced and workable - notably the deliberately made the druids sphere of access spells more 'druidical' (ie: a spell list akin to the 1e spell list for druids) whiles removing some iconic druid spells from being accessed by non-druidical priests eg: Chariotof Sustarre (which happened in the 1st draft of 2e . . . the lists were amended a total of 3 times officially as published erratas, but this was before the internets was popular). More importantly - Skills and Powers had DISAD's!!!!!! (you could be greedy, have an addiction etc etc for more points but there were very real disadvantages to having a disad. Much like a GURPS a character could spend later character points from leveling up to remove a disad rather than improve a skill/power). Custom classes were possible because if you stayed within the point buy system the final mix of skills and powers representative of a custom class created would be 'balanced' - though other bits of the options system, without strict oversight, could definitely rip this to bits and allow the creation of a game breaker character . . . Aaron
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