Player's Handbook - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition

The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition Player's Handbook was a 256-page hardcover book written by David "Zeb" Cook and released in 1989. The original cover art is by Jeff Easley, and the book featured eight full-page color illustrations, as well as other interior illustrations by Douglas Chaffee, Larry Elmore, Craig Farley, John and Laura Lakey, Erik Olson, Jack Pennington, Jeff Butler, Jeff Easley, Jean E. Martin, and Dave Sutherland.

The Player's Handbook for 2nd edition was compatible with 1st edition rules, but was streamlined and clarified. The book included information on how to play the standard character classes: warriors (including fighters, paladins, and rangers), wizards (including mages and specialist wizards such as illusionists, priests (clerics and guidelines for variance by mythos, including the druid as an example), and rogues (including thieves and bards); while most character classes remained about the same as in the 1st edition rules, the bard was regularized, and the assassin and monk were dropped. TSR Inc. also removed some races from the game, such as half-orcs, although some of these were added back into the game in supplements, such as The Complete Book of Humanoids. Optional rules for skills, known as proficiencies, were added, and sections describing role-playing, combat, magic, time and movement, equipment, and spell descriptions were all expanded. The book included major changes regarding character classes, races, and magic, and incorporated many new rules that had been published in supplements such as Unearthed Arcana and Dragonlance Adventures.

The 2nd edition Player's Handbook was an Origins and Gamer's Choice award winner. Lawrence Schick, in his 1991 book Heroic Worlds, called the book "a vast improvement" over the 1st edition book; he noted that the monk character class had been "banished to Oriental Adventures where it belongs", but commented that the spell descriptions "have positively bloated to over 100 pages".

In 1995, a new version of the 2nd edition Player's Handbook was released as part of TSR's 25th anniversary. The book was revised, becoming sixty-four pages larger, mainly due to layout changes and new artwork. A new foreword in this edition specifically stated that the book was not Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition.