Second Edition AD&D Is Only 3/4ths Of a Game and Even Though I Love It, We All Have to Acknowledge That

On Friday, the Swords of Stock (formerly Fenrus' Very Best) were in the Tomb of Queen Serenavalla, last of the Golden Age Queens of Tailmisia, seeking her undecomposed silver elvish corpse in order to talk with her ghost about who should rule the Greatwood.

They came upon a puzzle (the Queen had always intended for the very clever and very strong to be able to reclaim her belongings from the tomb) that included a series of traps in the form of 5' wide 30' long mosaic strips on the floor.

The question arose, "Can we jump them?"

Can they?

I flipped to the index of the DMG and looked up jumping. Oh, page 82. No, not 82 in the DMG, there's no jumping entry here. Someone check the PHB.

Huh, the jumping proficiency, which gives rules for if you have it... but no default rules for jumping. Interesting.

Did I go over to my computer and scroll through the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide pdf? No. I frantically checked all the other 2e books I own. Meanwhile, half of the party walked into another room and began their scientific jumping trials. They put out a measuring tape and began jumping from a standstill to see if they could make it across.

Eventually, since a heroic and enterprising member of the group was able to broad jump 4.5' from a standstill, we agreed that they could probably jump it. To be safe, they never did, rather using a slow and tortuous method of casting dispel magic, crossing the mosaic, and sleeping on the far side so they could use a dispel magic to escape.

But the question lingered. Where the hell are jumping rules in 2e?

Oh, as I thought: they're in the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide. A 1e book.

Now, let me just say that I love 2e. It's the perfect iteration of D&D. I'll never change. I've houseruled it to death. I just added a houserule granting specialists a -2 penalty to all saving throws made against spells by opponents hit by spells of their specialty to represent their increased understanding of how their own school of magic works. I use Combat and Tactics 15 second rounds, but don't reduce the duration of spells to match (should a first level spell only last 15 seconds? That seems like not even magic at that point). It doesn't break the game, because the game is flexible and doesn't exist on a razor's edge of functionality.

But 2e is missing so many important things. And they're all in 1e.

This means I have to get the 1e books, since I finally have a real group of flesh and blood people, in person, to play with and I can't take the time while people are typing on IRC to putter around through 1e pdfs.

What rules am I talking about?

The data for construction a holy water font? In the 1e books. 2e hints at, but never grants the full explanation, of how holy water is made. Things like exposure rules from the Wilderness Survival Guide. The jumping rules in the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide.

The fact of the matter is, 2e doesn't appear to have been designed with just itself in mind. It is an expansion of 1e and while many of the rules are different, it builds on rules that people were either expected to know or have access to. But 2e was my first D&D, so I never had the 1e books.

Now, it's time to fill in the gap.

But What About Water?

Journeying in the wilderness is tough. You have to carry food on your back, and at least a little water or wine with you. Yet there's no way to carry enough water on your person to make certain you aren't going to run out. Indeed, you probably aren't going to carry more than two days of water at any given time. Three, if you're careful. Now, you can always get a wagon and fill with wine tuns or ale casks... but then what if you need to go off the beaten path? Wagons and carts are notoriously bad at moving along unpaved wilderness; they need at least a little cart path to follow, else they risk breaking an axle and become very heavy and expensive containers.

What's to say, then, that PCs find enough water to refill their wineskins every few days? The most logical (really?) answer is that you have a map granular enough to cover the position of every small rill, stream, and pond. Of course, in reality you could never be expected to map with such delicate detail to every meter of crossed terrain. You could handwave and say it's fine; to me, that's a very unsatisfying option. You could just arbitrarily determine it (almost as bad, but what I tend to do) or you could make a table. Guess where there's a good table?

The Wilderness Survival Guide.

I was going to make a table myself for this post, but then I was suddenly struck with the inspiration to check there. I found one almost instantly. So, for the benefit of everyone who forgot or never new that this table existed...

I can only assume those abbreviations are Desert, Forest, Hills, Mountains, Plains and Swamps.