u/greypaladin01

I was reading through my new copies of B/X D&D (the joys of Print on Demand) and I saw them mention Companion Rules a few times... which if I understand were planned by then scrapped in favor of doing the BECMI edition of D&D.

However one of the things they mentioned for Companion rules was recovering from being Level Drained. I was wondering if those rules were ever actually put anywhere? I fully understand why the drain exists and I am not against it in the game...but I was curious what recovery options could look like. Especially with higher level play, it feels that is something that COULD be possible... if not easy.

Thank you for any help you can offer.

I have nearly finished reading through the main book for 2e and have a rough understanding of the rules. Not perfect by any means, but honestly things are much more understandable than I had been lead to expect.

However I do have a few questions about the other books in the 2e line. My understanding is that 3rd edition takes various rules from suppliments and a few other changes but is otherwise 2e. Specificially I have heard people say there were changes in Virtual Realities 2.0, Grimore... 2? and Rigger 2 books.

So my main question is this: What are the overviews of the changes for how Matrix things work, magic work and rigging work with the suppliments compared to the main book for 2e?

Are the differences beneficial enough to be worth grabbing the books and planning to use them or are they just adding more options and layers onto the basic rules?

Reading through 2e core rules and trying to learn them. So far I am liking the system much more than when I tried to read 6e, at least I feel my players will take to the mechanics better.

However I do have a question (preferably for those that have played 2e at the table and/or used these optional rules). On page 194 they list Optional Lethality Rules... mostly raising or lowering the effects of armor, damage and spell casting force/resist to make the game more or less dangerous.

My question: For those that played 2e more or less as is... how lethal is it really? I can see in the mechanics that it COULD be lethal... but is that really how it plays out? Secondly, has anyone used any of the variants listed on p194? If so, which and how much did it really effect things?

I know it is a strange edge-case question... but I am trying to wrap my brain around the core set but would like SOME understand of how things change. Other than the obvious things like making things more lethal pushes Black Trenchcoat while making it less lethal pushes more Pink Mowhawk play.

I was interested in getting the OSE system to read through and compare to BX rules.... and with luck perhaps even get a chance to run some games for my GF with some older systems.

However I saw they are apparently going to be releasing a new starter set and player/ref rule books sometime this year? I had been looking at the box sets for the basic and advanced...but now not sure what I should be picking up.

Does anyone know more ETA for the new products as well as if there are major changes?

EDIT: Also in looking online it seems OSE was produced as Basic and Advanced Box Sets but also as Basic Core Rules book and Advanced Player and Referee guide books. It... seems that the rules are all the same but just packaged differently...but any guidance or notes about differences would be helpful. Thank you.