Hacking 2e: The Fighter

That's right, I'll be using the revised
PHB artwork for this series. Despair!

The Fighter (né Fighting-Man) has been here since Chainmail, and has survived every edition. If there was a default character class in D&D, this is it. Due to its simplicity of design and straightforward mechanics, it is commonly derided as too simple and, ultimately, boring. Most editions would take a stab at trying to make the Fighter more interesting, and 2e was no exception, though its solution was to copy Unearthed Arcana and just make the class hit better and harder and more often. If your goal is to keep the Fighter as the easy-to-run martial choice, this gets the job done.

However, this is not a history lesson. If you want an absurd amount of detail about the Fighter’s travel through the editions (and beyond), you can’t do better than Brandes Stoddard’s fourteen part history of the class.

While you’re at it, I always recommend Matt Colville’s The History of D&D, One Fighter at a Time. It’s a good mix of general history and Fighter-specific detail. He made it as far as 3rd Edition.

Let’s dissect the Fighter, see what works, and what might need some adjustment.

Hacking 2e: Class

Class is the beating heart of D&D. You could ditch almost everything from the game – many editions have, in one form or another – but as long as you have distinct classes which differentiate themselves through unique powers and abilities, you still have the essence. Without them, you’re playing something else.

Admittedly, this is why I’ve spent the better part of a year finding anything else to write about: it’s a big slice of work, and an important one for the purposes of this hack, so I’ve put off making a mess of it. However, playtesting is fast approaching, so it’s time to crack this open.

Alignment Across the Editions

Stepping away from the hack for a moment, I’ve been thinking about alignment.

Alignment was there from the start. As such, it has been an ever-present feature of the varied editions, right up there with Ability Scores and Classes. There is a 50+ year argument regarding the place and functionality of this quantified moral compass. These arguments can get weirdly ontological.

To get a better grasp of this most contentious of systems, let’s break down how alignment has been used in D&D and how it has changed throughout the editions.

Hacking 2e: Skills and the Nonweapon Proficiency System – Part 7 (Coda)

Surprise. The write-up on alignment is taking a bit longer than I anticipated, life is being life, and I really like the idea of having 7 parts (a la Rod) over just 6. So, consider this a coda to the preceding series.

The rules laid out in the prior post detail a division of use: passive and active. Active is boilerplate and unsurprising; if a skill would come into play, and the task has a chance of failure for one so trained, then an Ability check occurs without penalty or restriction. Passive is seemingly simpler, in that it gives the character auto-success features, but I think it’s the more interesting function of these skills. Whereas active use may be more exciting and even dramatic, the passive use guarantees a more open and reactive world, while cementing a given character’s identity.

Let me explain through two other games.

Hacking 2e: Skills and the Nonweapon Proficiency System – Part 6 (Final Skill List)

I’ve spent the past 5 weeks looking at all of 2e’s varied skill systems, mostly focusing on the Nonweapon Proficiencies. I have tried to rein in overpowered skills, boost weak ones, and cut the fat wherever possible. This has resulted in a list of five Rogue-only skills, three universal skills, an optional background skill system, and ten optional NWP-derived ability skills. These are in addition to skills provided by demihumans and by specific classes.

I’ve already reviewed the demihuman skills, though the following rules will require that I adjust those skills. The Rogue skills and class skills are a matter for another post. Today, I shall hammer out universal, background, and ability skills.

Hacking 2e: Skills and the Nonweapon Proficiency System – Part 5 (Roguish Skills and Survival)

Last time, I threw most of the reviewed Nonweapon Proficiencies over the side of the ship. For this final review of the NWPs, we’ll look at Thief-adjacent NWPs and the Survival skills.

Hacking 2e: Skills and the Nonweapon Proficiency System – Part 4 (Feats and Riding)

Last entry, I pared down a few more Nonweapon Proficiencies into Animal Handling, Performance, Direction Sense, and Healing. I only got halfway through the list of feat-like NWPs, so let’s finish those off first.

My numbering has gone sideways due to this split. Part of this is Part 2 of Part 3, and starts at 3.6. Forgive me.

Hacking 2e: Skills and the Nonweapon Proficiency System – Part 3 (Animals, Art, and Feats)

The last post established the background feature – allowing the Secondary Skills system to directly interface with Nonweapon Proficiencies – and tossing all the other ‘career’ NWPs. I also took skills related to knowledge, scrapped language/literacy NWPs, condensed the list, and bundled it under a general Knowledge skill. I pulled Religion out of the pile to remain a separate skill.

Let’s move on to the animal stuff.

Hacking 2e: Skills and the Nonweapon Proficiency System – Part 2 (Background and Knowledge)

Last time I opined about the varied skills systems in AD&D 2e and discussed how to bundle them into a single system. The takeaway was that every check outside of Ability Checks and Saving Throws could be considered a Skill Check, broken up into universal skills, class/demihuman skills, and selectable skills. The latter will be my focus for this post, as I work to modify the Nonweapon Proficiencies to function properly in this hack.

Hacking 2e: Skills and the Nonweapon Proficiency System – Part 1

Skills are often paraded as a dividing line between old-school play and the modern implementation of D&D. 2nd Edition sits on this line, providing an optional system of skills that encompass everything from trade skills and areas of study to proto-3e feats. These skills were titled ‘Nonweapon Proficiencies’, as they were the non-weapon version of the weapon proficiencies, though the only conclusion I can make as to why they weren’t just called ‘skills’ is likely because a) they didn’t want a skill system even thought they made one anyway, and b) they didn’t want to conflate it with the skill system they already had in the Thief class.

Well, let’s ruin that completely by smashing them into one system.

Hacking 2e: Half-Elves

Half-elves have had quite the time these past few years. They’ve been saddled with a variety of meanings, from being held up as a representation of lived experiences to being labeled ‘inherently racist.’ The latter opinion was that of Wizards of the Coast, who fully banished the Half-elf and the Half-orc in 2024. The online response to this has its own spectrum, ranging from ‘Hasbro erased my identity’ to ‘Pathfinder did it better’. This is a lot of baggage just because some guy in the 1970s wanted to play Elrond.

Hacking 2e: Halflings

The 2e Halfling is a smash-up of the Dwarf and Elf, pulling traits from both, with a few weird exceptions based on racial subtypes.

These subtypes represent the only instance in the PHB where a demihuman has different traits based on their ancestry within their race. This wasn’t a foreign concept by 1989 – Unearthed Arcana had provided unique subtype abilities years earlier – but it’s interesting for being the only place this occurs in the core book, and that only one of the three subtypes (Stout) gets any real benefit. This idea would be expanded later within the glut of 2e splatbooks, but it wouldn’t see primetime again until 5e.

The implementation in 2e is rather fiddly. It’s a die roll to determine if your Halfling has “any Stoutish blood”, which gets you either full or half infravision, and some limited underground data as per the Dwarven trait. Overall, the chances of getting this are a little better than a third, and the traits only make sense for this Dwarf-like type of Halfling. I’m in favor of scrapping the whole bit. As such, I’ll skip these as I break down the Halfling.

Hacking 2e: Gnomes

The Gnome is an odd addition. Prior to 1e AD&D, they only appear as a monster, but in 1978 they suddenly show up as playable. As far as I can tell, this occurred only because Gygax was tired of seeing the other demihumans all the time and he liked Gnomes. Fair enough. Based on this alone, they’ve remained in the PHB of every edition up to the present day (excluding 4e, because of course it was different).

Personally, I’m not a fan of the little buggers. They’re mechanically derivative, and (at least in base 2e) they are not the tinker/inventor-type weirdos which makes them so unique in other media. By the book, they’re just weaker Dwarves with limited magical ability. As such, this should be fairly short work (that pun just showed up, I had nothing to do with it).

Hacking 2e: Elves

The eponymous Elf of this so-called elfgame, these pointy-eared Tolkien refugees are a true classic. As before, we’ll skip the sociology and jump right in.

 

1. Infravision

Why Elves can see in the dark like Dwarves and Gnomes is beyond me. Certainly they should have better vision than Humans. However, seeing in complete darkness doesn’t really feel like it’s in their wheelhouse. 3e recognized this by changing it to “low-light vision”, which is strangely clinical, but I absolutely agree with its conversion of elf-vision into ‘they can see well in moonlight/starlight/low-light’. It fits the Elf well, and is mechanically simple: they have Darkvision, but only outside, or inside when there is any light source nearby. So, cats, basically.

Hacking 2e: Dwarves

The taciturn staple of the genre. I think we can skip the intro on where they live and how they dislike horses. We’ll also put the Allowed Classes and Ability Score Adjustments on the back-burner for this series. Alright, let’s get to it. 

 

1. Infravision

This will appear in every entry.

A character with infravision can see in darkness as clearly as they can in normal light, within 60 feet. It’s simple and overpowered, which is perfect for the mine-happy Dwarf; this is exactly who I’d expect would be able to see in a lightless dungeon. Whether this is appropriate for every demihuman is debatable.