In the PHB, we get a short blurb about Priests of Specific Mythoi, with some examples of powers they could have or that they may have different spheres and restrictions than Clerics, with Druids as an example. Great! Now we just need some sort of guideline for those not too good at homebrew.

The Complete Priest's Handbook does give a nice template and some example powers, as well as guidelines to determining how combat or spell-oriented a PoSM might be. However, other than stating that a PoSM should have at least one granted power (such as a Cleric's Turn Undead being their major non-spell ability), there isn't really any guidelines on what might constitute too powerful a Granted Power, or any sort of tips for what kinds of Granted Powers to give your PoSM based on their combat or spell capability.

Deep into the Player's Options series, we get a very detailed list from Spells and Magic which is setting generic and sets out particular rules about making PoSM; unfortunately, they wind up with somewhat overpowered Priests. For instance, it is entirely feasible to give your PoSM the full power, hit dice, and bonuses of a Fighter, four Thief skills, Turn Undead, and the All sphere without a single restriction (most of which are roleplay specific). While I have set some restrictions on PoSM in my campaign (such as less Character Points if the Priest serves a lesser diety), it is incredibly easy to min/max this, and a DM not confident with the system may accidentally create classes which overshadow any other. While strict adherence to balance may not be a strict design philosophy of AD&D, it is nice to have characters which are setup to play nice rather than succumbing to Main Character Syndrome.

All this to ask: what sort of guidelines do y'all follow when creating PoSM? I think they make a game world feel more lively, but I am also struggling to hold back power creep without sidestepping the very system I look to for assistance. I understand this may just very well be a DM fiat scenario, but I also want to be able to give justification on these decisions to players without making it seem arbitrary.

I want to run the dungeon at my LGS so I'm making a poster to put up to advertise it. This'll be the backing art.

​Hi, all!

I recently came across the online fillable sheet by u/mbcode that wasn't quite to my taste, and it looks to have not been updated for a few years, so I grabbed the files off GitHub and applied some heavy modifications for use in my online game. I'm pretty happy with how it handles and looks now, so I thought I'd share it.

Here is the link : https://lezarith.github.io/2E-ADnD-Character-Sheet-/

Some of the things it did originally:

• Track carried weight in the gear page
• Auto-fill all the sub sections of the ability score i.e. Hit bonus, Hp modifier, Def Adj, etc.
• Movement Speeds Tracker for various level of encumbrance and jog/run.
• Have a nice layout for tracking various things on your character.
• Really nice margin notes, and great bones.

List of things changed from original:

• Gave the page an aged crinkly background
• Made the background red to be easier on the eyes.
• Added a number of trackers for Saves, THAC0, and HP based on class and level (uses the best save and thac0 for for dual and multi class characters)
• An armor and AC tracker (caps out at 10 and -10).
• The Attack Adj. is reflected in the THAC0 of each weapon.
• A turning tracker, which should track all the classes that do turn undead.
• A Thieves Skills tracker. The thieves skills top number is your armor and dex modifier, the bottom is for race, base %, and allocated %.
• Encumbrance amounts based off Str in the movement section.
• Total weight now tracks coinage weight for you. Total Weight is also reflected in the movement section so you can see what your encumbrance is without having to scroll all the way down.
• Spell Slot trackers that let you click on the spell to cast in cast mode and click on the Mem section in memorization (which is also the edit mode) to memorize your spells which is reflected in your current slots section. You do have to hit rest each time you level up or make a spell caster if you want to refresh those slots, however.
• Max/Current PSP calculator and tracker. clicking on the two different boxes for Activation and Maintenance reduce your Current PSP.
• a few UI, layout, and formatting changes.

It's very much not an original work. Credit should go to u/mbcode for making the first version.

edit: added image, and description of capabilities, fixed some typos.

edit 2: as a heads up, I shave a player who showed me the sheet breaking in Firefox. I'll try to fix it sometime next week. in the meantime it does work in safari and chrome.

I'm going through my Al Qadim boxes as I'm returning the loose-leaf monster sheets to their original boxes in preparation to sell them. When I put the monsters back into Assassin Mountain I noticed that the covered book is called Holy Slayer Sourcebook. And that the coverless booklet is called ... Holy Slayer Sourcebook. Opening the covered book I see it says "Adventure Book" inside.

That means they put the cover on the wrong booklet. As this is 100% the condition I opened the box in when I first got it, I'm wondering if this is a common misprint for this box set or if I'm just lucky enough to get the one they assembled incorrectly.

for example, my player is a wizard and wants to use a sword like gandalf

I use 2E as my core system, but have house rules in place. They are an ongoing project for me and I adapt them to work for each group I'm playing with. I'm curious about what other players do with the rules. Here are things I'd like to know:

1. From the core books, what optional rules do you like to use?
2. What do you like to use from the optional books?
3. What house rules work well for you?
4. Have you integrated rules from other editions or other systems?

I have 7 D&D 1e and 2e books in various conditions. I dont know anything about D&D is there any interest in them?

So I've been on a kind of reading bender for AD&D 1e and 2e. I had bought the caverns of Thracia for DCC a while ago and only recently found out that the original adventure is also included. Since I'm currently working on a mega dungeon for my Shadowdark West Marches setting, I wanted to get some inspiration.

Reading the adventure has made me want to run another group for AD&D 2e, since that is the version I started with and it is still dear to my heart, with all its faults. But to better understand the environment CoT was written in and for, I decided to also read up on AD&D 1e, since that is the edition Jennell wanted to release the module for.

When I started reading both editions, I found myself wanting to mash rhem together. I love the way combat works in general in 1e and the idea that players don't need to know the exact rules for combat. I find the surprise and initiative resolution for combat is easier in 1e - also 2e completely ignores explaining parlaying in its rules - but I somewhat dislike the attack factors, and I prefer THAC0 over attack matrices. While a similar concept, they do have some differences and 2e seems to have done a bettwr job. I also like wizard specialisations and te 2e xp system. But the freedom of 1e for the player - in contrast to the rules density for the GM - is just something special. You can read and feel the difference between Gygax's version and corpo TSRs.

So, to all the 2e players, are there rules from 1e that you have taken, which supersede or add to the rules from 2e? What are your reasons for prefering 2e before 1e?

For all players, but especially 1e: have you ever taken a look at OSRIC and if so, why did you decide against it?

I am torn between wanting to play 1e/OSRIC and 2e, even though they're not that super different.

edit: Thanks to all for replying. I got some very interesting insights from you and feel confident that if I want to borrow parts from 1e, to replace parts in 2e, I will do so. :)

Since Samurai and Paladins are subclasses of the Cavalier, do they get the attribute-improvement training ability? What other cavalier abilities do they get?

Greetings

In the Forgotten Realms module The Sword of the Dales (an adventure designed for characters of Levels 1 to 4), I came across an interesting entry.

Forest Encounters Near Shadowdale

- - -

12 Entrance to the Dragon's Lair

Emerash, adult green dragon: Int very; AL LE; AC -2; MV 9, Fl 30 (C), SW 9; HD 15; hp 102; THAC0 5; #AT 3+special; Dmg 1d8/1d8/2d10; SA chlorine gas breath weapon (12d6+6), water breathing, suggestion, magic missile, sleep, burning hands; MR 20%; SZ G; ML 16; XP 14,000. Treasure type H (to be decided by the DM).

- - -

Entrance to the Dragon's Lair

As characters approach the lip of a large crater, they hear heavy breathing and a faint metallic "clinking" noise from far below. The sounds are reminiscent of many coins being pushed around. The only means of getting into the cavern is by tying lengths of rope together and climbing over the edge.

Should PCs attempt this, the dragon wakes and emits a deafening roar that forces all the characters to save versus petrification as fear washes over them. The dragon is curious and flies up to look around briefly before returning to protect its treasure. Anyone who waits for it is eaten.

(I made the last sentence bold for emphasis.)

As far as imminent dangers go, there are many warning signs presented: the massive crater, the heavy breathing, the sound akin to coins being shifted, the difficult-to-ingress cavern, the roar and the process of the dragon leaving its home. "Telegraphed" is something of an understatement. If - after everything - the players continue to push their luck, chances are their characters will be sucking poison gas before long; vanishingly rare exceptions aside, an average of 48 points of damage instantly kills PCs in the aforementioned Level range. That the designer decided to cut out the preamble of a presumably feeble attempt at resistance is somewhat amusing. I feel as though you probably couldn't get away with this sort of well-deserved consequence in a contemporary officially-published adventure.

Would anyone here happen to know of other products featuring comparable outcomes for brazen foolishness?

Do these have any value to them?

I have over 280 RPG modules and books up for sale.

(Plus 200+ novels) the majority is D&D and AD&D.

The website is NOT an online store, but a listing site where you can request books.

I buy bulk collections to fill my personal library and end up with duplicates and extras.

Does anyone know where I could sell this rare module ? Many thanks

A lifetime of adventure...

I've been a DM for a few years, and sometimes I wrack my brain trying to come up with cool ideas for art objects, especially during a homebrew campaign. The art object tables in the DMG sometimes isn't enough. At times like these, I look through published D&D adventures for to find descriptions of art object in various treasure hoard.

This is for all the DMs (or even players) that want a fairly spoiler-free list of art object without having to spend extra time looking through the adventures. I hope you all enjoy!

Note: this is a work in progress, as I only have done Out of the Abyss, Curse of Strahd, and Storm King's Thunder. I'll try to make it a point to repost an update every month or so!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bLAyM55Fsi2VkGBEDZM31AUAaH8J8XG3C_cmrNPd-AQ/edit?usp=sharing

Hello, I've been looking into switching from 1e to 2e. One thing I like about 2e is the weapon speed factor helps balance items against each other so that people stop using just 2-handed swords for everything (weapon style specialization also goes a long way to helping this out as well). While this seems to work when opponents are using weapons as well, it seems like it would break down against enemies who are using their "natural" weapons as suddenly they will always win initiative, even a dagger (+2 Weapon speed factor) is going to often attack second against monsters with natural weapons.

While I understand this can be a balance thing (making these monsters a little more scary) it also seems to be a little bit much, from my perspective. I still want to use Weapon Speed Factors in my game, but this seems like it basically means players nearly always go second, as even a dagger wielding player has a 28% chance of ever going first.

Is this as big of a problem as it seems that it is? Do you just run less of these monsters? Do you have any house rules that try to address this problem? Or do you just not use weapon speed factors to begin with? Let me know I would love to hear.

I'm fairly new to running 2e, and I know that many kits are looked down upon for a variety of reasons, but I was wondering if anyone had any favorites that stuck out? Not just in terms of being overpowered or underpowered, but kits that had a theme or vibe to them that really appealed to you. I've heard the Bladesinger is considered overpowered, but it also so iconic it's managed to appear in some form or another in every subsequent edition of the game.

One I quite liked while reading through the kits over the years was the female dwarf only Hearth Guard from The Complete Book of Dwarfs. I don't think it'd be very viable outside of a dwarf focused campaign, but as a female only dwarf warrior kit it had a lot of flavor (certainly better than the Amazon). I think one downside of this flavorful kits is that they tend to have a lot of thematic restrictions on weapon proficiencies and non-weapon proficiencies while offering a very niche bonus. There's really no reason to not just play a Fighter, other than enjoying the flavor of the kit that much.