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"We are playing D&D tonight, and maybe I am bored with being Gregnar, the Fighter. I have a lucren hammer hook-fuchard, which is the most rediculous pole arm I could find. Or maybe I made it up. I don't remember.
They all look like point bits soldered onto a clothes pole to me. This is how I imagine they made weapons in the dark ages. The Lord was like, "Hey, let's fucking war on some dude." and the villagers didn't have, like, swords, so they just got tree-trimmers and shit. It was better if the handle is longer, so you're not so close to the other guys point bits.
"All I want to do is give this cow some hay!" said Gregnar. "And maybe get some milk."
"Too bad." Says the Lord.
"Man." Says Gregnar, somewhat disappointed."
Actually, so, AD&D doesn't make any sense, but sometimes Brent wants to play it anyhow. Between you and I, I am tired of trying to make AD&D make sense. What the hell are those saves? Vs. Dragon's Breath? Vs. Petrification/Polymorph? How did they think of these things? No. Instead of trying to make sense of it, I just assume that they are laws of nature.
Law of Getting Your Ass Turned Into Stone By a Motherfucking Beholder or Some Shit, We Don't Know. Why Are You In Front of A Beholder, Anyhow? This Wouldn't of Been An Issue If Your Dumb Ass Had Just Stayed In Waterdeep.
They had to simplify it a little, but that's the gist.
I am not sure how many apprentices had to be turned into stone for the sages to get the appropriate numbers on the Save DCs, but they did. These are specific, if maybe poorly-formed laws of nature. In addition to gaining class levels, where once you level up, you just take something that maybe you were training for.
Or maybe seems appropriate. Like, you can't explain anything else, so now you're a Thief. Which is ok, I guess. Dude, disarm that trap. Seriously, Gregnar almost lost his hand last time.
So, now, in the D&D of my imagination, there isn't any abstraction. Fighters really can fall off cliffs or get shot a lot with crossbow bolts, and who cares? They've got a lot of HP. And being a Paladin kind of sucks, because alignment is really pretty nonsensical. You're Lawful and Good, not just because that's what you were inclined to do anyhow, but because that's the team you play for. There are other planes, and shit, and they're fighting, and you're like minions of cosmic forces too grand to begin to comprehend, because you're not clued in. All you know if that you get Searing Light three times a day and undead are bad. Evil is the same way, except with more spikes and they poison you sometimes.
Also, fiends. You know.
Don't try to reason it out. The rules are natural law.
Man. But I still don't get all those goddamn pole arms.
They all look like point bits soldered onto a clothes pole to me. This is how I imagine they made weapons in the dark ages. The Lord was like, "Hey, let's fucking war on some dude." and the villagers didn't have, like, swords, so they just got tree-trimmers and shit. It was better if the handle is longer, so you're not so close to the other guys point bits.
"All I want to do is give this cow some hay!" said Gregnar. "And maybe get some milk."
"Too bad." Says the Lord.
"Man." Says Gregnar, somewhat disappointed."
Actually, so, AD&D doesn't make any sense, but sometimes Brent wants to play it anyhow. Between you and I, I am tired of trying to make AD&D make sense. What the hell are those saves? Vs. Dragon's Breath? Vs. Petrification/Polymorph? How did they think of these things? No. Instead of trying to make sense of it, I just assume that they are laws of nature.
Law of Getting Your Ass Turned Into Stone By a Motherfucking Beholder or Some Shit, We Don't Know. Why Are You In Front of A Beholder, Anyhow? This Wouldn't of Been An Issue If Your Dumb Ass Had Just Stayed In Waterdeep.
They had to simplify it a little, but that's the gist.
I am not sure how many apprentices had to be turned into stone for the sages to get the appropriate numbers on the Save DCs, but they did. These are specific, if maybe poorly-formed laws of nature. In addition to gaining class levels, where once you level up, you just take something that maybe you were training for.
Or maybe seems appropriate. Like, you can't explain anything else, so now you're a Thief. Which is ok, I guess. Dude, disarm that trap. Seriously, Gregnar almost lost his hand last time.
So, now, in the D&D of my imagination, there isn't any abstraction. Fighters really can fall off cliffs or get shot a lot with crossbow bolts, and who cares? They've got a lot of HP. And being a Paladin kind of sucks, because alignment is really pretty nonsensical. You're Lawful and Good, not just because that's what you were inclined to do anyhow, but because that's the team you play for. There are other planes, and shit, and they're fighting, and you're like minions of cosmic forces too grand to begin to comprehend, because you're not clued in. All you know if that you get Searing Light three times a day and undead are bad. Evil is the same way, except with more spikes and they poison you sometimes.
Also, fiends. You know.
Don't try to reason it out. The rules are natural law.
Man. But I still don't get all those goddamn pole arms.
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HP and levels are a lot easier to stomach if you think of the world as operating on narrative importance rather than anything resembling physics. You can take 20 crossbow bolts without keeling over? Man, you must be a protagonist.
As to 2nd edition, I'm well aware that it's terrible. But it hits the power curve I'd like better than 3rd edition. There's this whole assumption in 3e that things are going to scale with you - which is why commoner is a 20 level class. 2e doesn't have that. At best, everyone else in the world is level 1 and at worst, they're not even classed. They've just got these stats, you know?