Diamondeye wrote:
Müs wrote:
Diamondeye wrote:
As opposed to the WoW clone that came after it?
Or the perfection that was 2E.
Roll a 20, crit. That's how I roll.
2E certainly had its advantages and was a significant improvement over 1E, as long as you stuck to the core books and the extra monster lists. Some of the complete handbooks and extra guidebooks were decent, even really good. Complete Thief's Handbook was my favorite.
However, it had plenty of vices of its own. Introducing specialist mages was great.. the restrictions on them were beyond silly. It greatly raised the demi-human level limits.. ignoring the fact that they served no purpose and should have been eliminated altogether. Worst, it catered entirely too much to the silly fears of RPGs in the era it was published in.
Other things I disliked about 2E:
-Ability scores did
nothing unless they were extremely high.
-Customizing your character outside the basics of the class was near-impossible. (Feat choices in 3rd edition, and on-the-fly multiclassing, allow any two rangers to be entirely different beasts, mechanically)
I think 3rd edition struck a very good balance, acquiring much of the modularity and customizability of open, classless systems like White Wolf, but maintaining much of the structure of 1E/2E/Palladium. It was almost, but not quite, the best of both worlds.