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.

Hacking 2e: Demihumans

Before we speak of how demihumans should function within this hack, let’s talk about race.

Art

For the 2e Primer, I used public domain art sourced from Old Book Illustrations. It served the aesthetic well and it was available at the right price. I’m certainly not the first one to go this route – the 2e retro-clone For Gold and Glory used it extensively.

Public domain art can look incongruous, with too many artists and too many styles, robbing the work of a personality. It also risks overuse, at least for the really good pieces; since releasing the 2e Primer, I’ve found some of its art in other books. On the other hand, the art is often evocative and much of it can be modified to form new illustrations.

When it comes to modifying the public domain, I don’t think anyone has done better than Johan Nohr. MÖRK BORG is a triumph of art and game design, being a work that is enjoyable to look at even if you’ll never play the game. Though you should play the game; it’s got legs. The only issue is that the book often places the art before the game, with some layout rendering the text inscrutable.

I’m a bigger fan of his work in the remastered version of Into the Odd. That book balances the art and text perfectly, ensuring that every word is readable black text on a white background, while offering full page and half page spreads of public domain collage that add flavor and mood to the game.

All that to say, I’ve been playing with something similar to his style. I’m not artist, and certainly I do not feel that what I’ve made approaches Nohr’s work. Still, I’m not bad with Photoshop (or my current tool, Affinity), and I like to tinker. So far, I’ve developed these:

I think they’re serviceable. I’m not even at the alpha stage of the hack, but this is the kind of art I’d throw into it. Anyway, I’ve been having fun with chopping up old public domain works and I didn’t have anything written for this week, so you get art.

Hacking 2e: Surprise

I touched on Surprise in a prior post, but it’s time to solidify it. Surprise is codified in every edition of the game, so it’s a must-have. However, it’s worth a look at how those other games (and later works) handled surprise, and how 2e stands apart from them.

Hacking 2e: Hirelings, Followers, and Henchmen – Part 2

Last week, I reworked these NPCs into a single category: Followers, with a subcategory of ‘Sworn Followers’. This week, I’ll work on experience and leveling rules, administration mechanics, and a final ruleset.

Hacking 2e: Hirelings, Followers, and Henchmen – Part 1

My players really like henchmen. I think all players do, even if it’s not coded into the game. The trope of the adopted goblin in the party exists because players love to make an NPC their own. The henchman is that concept on steroids. You’re telling the players “not only will this NPC tag along, they’re specifically your NPC, if you can keep them.” Once my group figured this out, they started trying to recruit everyone they met.

Before we really get into this, I want to share a very cool resource with you:

Meatshields! The Classic Fantasy Hireling & Henchman Generator

You gotta love a good generator. This one, obviously, makes people of the hench persuasion.

Anyway.

In 2e, these tag-along NPCs are broken into three groups: Hirelings, Followers, and Henchmen. Let’s look at each.

Tools for Planescape and Sigil

AD&D 2nd Edition heralded the Age of the Campaign Setting, and with it came an endless parade of unique ideas and overfilled splatbooks. That collection is a goldmine, a rich vein of pure imagination that can and should be pulled from the ground.

For me, the best of the lot is Planescape. It’s a wild setting with incredible locations, bizarre characters, and fantastic ideas. However, the act of getting these things to the table is a daunting task. There’s so much to remember, so many pockets of brilliant worldbuilding spread across so many sources, that it can become paralyzing. And that’s just for Sigil!

To mitigate that, I use tools. Here are some of the resources I have found invaluable for running the setting, along with one which I created myself.

Hacking 2e: Encumbrance and Weight – Part 2

Last time, I reworked the 2e weights and weight allowances into a slot-based system. The final step is to determine encumbrance penalties.

This is the entire reason we’re here. These penalties are the stick used to enforce the agonizing decisions inherent in encumbrance rules. Without them, there’s no reason to track anything at all, and that way lies 5e and players who occasionally look through their inventory to discover oddities from old adventures, like they’re rifling through their parents’ attic.

AD&D used ranges, or weight bands, to determine when penalties applied. Let’s start there.

Hacking 2e: Encumbrance and Weight – Part 1

Encumbrance is considered a pillar of old-school play, creating a natural limiter on what can be brought into – and out of – the dungeon. It creates a puzzle, wherein players agonize over what should be carried and what must be dropped, and opens the game to unique solutions such as hiring people or using beasts of burden. It makes magical items which subvert encumbrance into coveted treasures.

It’s also a huge pain and a taxing mental load. Especially in most editions of D&D, wherein you either need to add up large, abstracted coin weight or small, fractional pounds. This is the kind of ruleset for which people end up making spreadsheets. By the time you’re opening Excel to run a subsystem for a tabletop game, I’d argue you’ve left the Realm of Game and entered the Duchy of Simulator. This caused many tables to abstract encumbrance or ignore it altogether. As a result, the idea of tracking any of the character’s gear faded from modern D&D by 4th Edition. Notably ahead of its time, 2nd Edition made encumbrance optional.

If you want more detail on the history of encumbrance rules in D&D, check out these posts from Simulacrum: Exploring OSR Design and Welcome to the Deathtrap.

The OSR does its OSR thing when it comes to encumbrance: the mechanical approaches include points, slots, and grids, while unique sub-mechanics abound. Of these, I find slot-based encumbrance to be the most simple and adaptable for my modification of 2e, so I’ll follow the crowd here. As I noted in my post on Strength, that was the plan all along: the number of available slots can be the Strength score itself.

Now I have to execute it, which means establishing slot allotment, item slot values, and encumbrance penalties. For this first part, I’ll tackle the first two.