AD&D 2E Skills & Powers Racial Abilities

As D&D 2E stumbled through the 90s and TSR’s final collapse at the end, a curios idea took hold that would eventually bloom into 3^rd Edition in 2000. Innovation based on what the players wanted. This ended up drawing a lot from Rolemaster, a more complicated game that itself had started as expanded critical hits and combat tables for AD&D 1E. Thus, the Player’s Options book line was born. A whole revision of D&D giving absolute control over building a character and the degree of complexity for a game. From grid combat to breaking each stat into two, there was a bevy of options, some of which got incorporated into 3E.

Quite a few people look back on them fondly but just as many people dislike them for taking a game that regulated itself with random rolls and removing that. This seems to be anecdotally split between players and DMs.

Well regardless of the original intent, TSR floundered and 3E was made by Wizards of the Coast, based again, more on Rolemaster with Feats and a roll over unified mechanic. But I wanted to know how much it was carried over from 2E. Based on an anecdotal comment that 3E’s party balance issues never came up in playtesting as the designers of 3E playtested it like a 2E game.

So, I read through all the starting Character Options, as those were closest to Feats with getting into the weirdness of Non-Weapon Proficiencies sometime being skills or what later editions would term feats.

Character races got a certain amount of Character Points, of which they could only keep some ad so were encouraged to spend them. They were presented with the different races and variants of those races. With a point breakdown of their racial abilities. And therefore, they could mix and match, to their hearts’ content. Notably Half-Orcs returned as a core option along with Half-Ogres, the race Gygax created in Dragon Magazine but never really took off.

Since many of these powers overlapped, I had hoped to establish a generic list and see if things changed between races. In classic TSR fashion, it wasn’t just that these abilities were cost differently between races, the abilities themselves were not standardized. Just being the original racial abilities from 2E and 1E with a rough point cost.

Generally, a +1 attack bonus with a specific single weapon was worth the minimum of 5 points. Unless you are an Elf, who gets the +1 to both Long and Short Swords for 5 points. The same for a +1 for damage from a specific weapon, but only Half-Orcs seem to be able to do that.

Elves get a cooshee or an elven cat for the same 10 points a gnome can use friendly burrowing animal. That’s two double-stacked points in favour of an Elf and Half Elves don’t even get either bonus.

Bonuses to Non-Weapon Proficiencies were worth about 5 points for +2, as was any racial ability that mimicked a level 1 spell or gave a +2 bonus to a non-combat effect. The few saving bonuses from AD&D were also priced at 5 points per +1.

Any ability was otherwise priced at 10 points, especially if it could be halved in effectiveness for another race for 5 points. Like Infravision being 5 for point for the Halfling subtypes that got 30 feet of it, and not the regular 60 feet of other races. Or Half Orcs getting fewer natural abilities to detect underground construction.

Suprise bonuses were all just as idiosyncratic and unchanged from AD&D.

The outliers of interest were the Human only ability to get an extra 10% XP for 10 points. Which is itself a common houserule for not capping Demi-human (not human) race levels. Humans can get the Half-Ogre ability of a natural 8 AC, something that has only ever appeared here, though at 10 points and not 5 points. Which I think is odd, because 10 points feels like the right amount for something as important as AC in AD&D. Maybe they just considered it to be a small combat ability as it's the opposite of a +1 to a weapon attack.

 

In summery, there is no real consistency, which explains why 3E basically copied Rolemaster’s ideas rather than go through thee rigmarole of straightening out 2E Skill and Powers.