Troll Lord Games

This subject may have been addressed previously, but does not seem to have crossed into the discussion boards in a fair while, at least from what I can see. To begin with, AD&D second edition never really struck me as a "full" new edition in the grand scheme of things; sure, several game-engine points had been cleared up, the Monster Manual had been expanded to a full page-per-monster (although still nothing close to the literary avalanche that DMs were faced with in 3.x), the demons and devils had faced their name-change in the face of the now(and it was then, too)-laughable "Won't somebody think of the children?!?" histrionics that were making their stumbling way through popular culture, and - most unfortunately, from my standpoint - the half-orcs had faced their excision as a PC race in the Player's Handbook, but when it comes down to it, the two "editions" were fully compatible with only cursory conversion/adaptation required. The preceding are only top-of-mind alterations that can be mentioned, the vast majority of which came across as actually Pretty Darn Good.

Thus, I felt that second edition gave a raft of gaming options that, while certainly not necessities, did offer a realm of new choices for DMs and players alike. It has struck me that C&C, though clearly drawing its origins from AD&D first edition, could certainly adopt some of second edition's rule additions and options with little to no difficulty. So, just wondering: Has anyone taken bits and pieces from second edition and grafted it or them on to C&C? Probably the biggest option is wizard specialization; here the illusionist becomes simply one of several routes the character could take, and this could add to a CK's range of choices when creating bad guy spellcaster types - as an example, for our group, I created a gang called The Nine: Super-powerful liches who each had their own sphere of wizard specialty, and who I took great pleasure in drawing up the pictures for (the leader was an Egyptian-themed necromancer called The Black Hand; yeah, three guesses where I got the name from and the first two don't count). Obviously, Our Gang were starting to get into the serious double-digits as far as experience levels were concerned at that point (yeah, it took several years, and they were damned glad to start facing these kind of Ragnarok-level challenges), and I wanted to really open up the gates as far as what the Forces of Evil were capable of bringing to bear. So, to repeat - any filtration or osmosis of second edition into C&C for others, and if so, what were the results?

Someone had done both schools and spheres for the C&C PHB spell list a good long time ago. I have it somewhere in my files at home. PM me your email and I can send it to you at some point.

R-

send me a pm, I'll email you what I do.. skills for things you know like swimming, reading, musical instruments, fletching arrows, etc. Basically within the SIEGE engine, but giving each PC some starting things outside of the class scope to flesh out the back story and history of the PC with some meaning.. "Yeah my family business is silver smith'n, but I really wanted to be a priest, I felt the calling and now the church has sent me here.... and this silver medallion you found on the dead guy, its worth I'd say, 3 sp as its iron with a silver coating only.... see here..."

TBH I was always curious about allowing a 2E style bard (probably my favorite character class in that edition) but was kinda wary that they'd be OP seeing that they could eventually use up to 6th level wizard magic (by copying it from spellbooks or scrolls) as well as having basic thief skills, plus getting to wear light armor and being able to wield any weapon.

They put bard spells in the Adventurer's Backpack alongside ranger and paladin spells, but they're kinda the bog-standard 'Buff', 'Charm' and 'Illusion' spells.

I just want a character who can throw actual pyrotechnics after his guitar solo...

Check out my house rules in my sig. I have a very good 2e bard that plays pretty well.

R-

Ah, been so busy with work and research at school that i've not been able to check in much. But nice when i do i find a thread of particular interest to me...

I use an awful lot of material from 2nd ed, but with the SIEGE mechanic. The bard has played fine for me (but i also play Birthright where magic is more limited). That said, even though a standard 2nd Ed bard can get to 6th level magic, they are much weaker in combat and survivability than the C&C bard. So i think it would work out ok.

Other features i like from second ed are the schools of arcane magic, non-weapon proficiencies (aka skills for short). Kits were hit or miss for me- often gave some nice tweaks that work as backgrounds which integrate into C&C without a problem, but some were really new classes (Sha'ir from Al-Qadim for example), though those ought to convert easily enough as well.

Basically, i think the power levels of the two systems are similar, so conversions work pretty seamlessly.


-Fizz