Which One is more newbie-friendly? 2nd edition or 3rd edition?

[humanflyz]

Hi, I want to start playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of people in my college. We are all new to D&D, but all of us have played 2nd edition games like the BG series and Icewind Dale. I was just wondering which edition is more newbie-friendly.

[Volk]

3rd hands down, THAC0 and other things are calculated in a very confusing manner in 2nd edition, 3rd edition was pretty much all about making D&D simpler to understand and play.

[Rob-hin]

Plus, 2e edition books are hard to find.
If you want to play 3e edition, make sure you buy 3.5 and not 3. They updated 3e edition rules to 3.5, altering some rules.

[Rigrider]

Absolutly 3ed. That was the whole goal of the release, making it easier for the newcommers. I loved 2ed but with the multitude of books there was alot of contradictions and rule changes. I don't know how your group is but with our's, this lead to alot of time spent on arguing rules. That kind of takes the fun out of the game.

[Magpie]

2ed can be pretty simple. I agree, however, that the THACO and %s get rather confusing. I think the Monster Manuel, which (no offence) sucks, is much simpler. I might go with 2nd if you only plan on have one main DM.. LOL.

3rd has some confusing things but I play it and think that it is much simple and besides, its much funner.

[Xandax]

Well - most of my knowlegde is gained from playing various D&D games, and only a very small amount of actually "PnP" roleplaying type games.

I'd have to say that I also find 3ed way more simple then 2ed.