DC's and Second Edition

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I have searched and search through all the 2nd edition rulebooks and couldn't find any rule that remotely comes close to the DC system in 3rd edition.

Say a character wants to jump and roll out of a tree. A very high tree. A dm puts a DC of say... 14 on this task. The guy jumps and uses his acrobatics bonus (dex if you dont have any acro skill). It all works good andw ell in 3rd edition. How woudl this be done in second edition?

(I am just curious, we used to play 2nd and couldn't find any true solutions to these problems so the DM had to improvise)

 

Well, there is your answer. 2nd edition D&D didn't have any set way to resolve these types of situations. The DM had to improvise. This was one area that they addressed in 3rd Edition. 2nd edition did have skills and such but it was added in an ad hoc manner, and the rules were never very clear on how to implement them.

[This message has been edited by Baldak Oakfist (edited July 25, 2002).]

 

2E did have non-weapons proficiencies but they did work as well as skills do in 3E. You couldn't increase these abilities without increasing your stats. Thus a 1st level character with a 15 wisdom would have the same healing nwp as a 15th level character. These nwp were gain based on your class and modified at 1st level only by your INT score. So the DM would set the check by asking 'To heal that injury your need to make a healing -2" or something like that. Thus if you had a 15 WIS you have to role under a 11 (healing = WIS -2). The greater the dificulty of the task the larger the '-' applied. You wanted to roll as low as possible.

As stated above the 3E skill system is so much better.

 

Yeesh! Just reading those rules makes my head hurt ...

Can someone tell me exactly how saving throws were calculated in 2E?

 

Saving throws for 2nd Edition were listed for each class in tables rather than calculated. There probably was an actual calculation used to determine them (none was ever given in the rules though) but it's nothing simple like in 3rd Edition. And the lower the save score the better. Roll a d20, if it's less than (or equal to) the score the save is successful. Higher and the save fails.

 

And if that is not bad enough each class had a different progression, i.e. fighters went up a little every other level while mages only increased every 5 levels. Stats did not effect saves as they do in 3E and instead of the three simple save catagories we have now there were 5; Poison, Polymorph & Paraisys, Rod/Staff/Wand, Death Magic, Spells. (I think that's right but I'd have to check to be sure.)

 

Somehow I would prefer to improvise in some things. Or just simply make a dex check and add a penalty of plus if they had a NWP that says that they are good at that sort of thing.