Never played 1e, but my favorite points for 2e are:
For players: The amount of freedom you have to create and run a character can’t be overstated. The system is feat based, so two players with the same race+class combo can have vastly different characters. There’s actual options to combine races, not just “human+elf and human+orc are the only mixed people in the universe”. The three actions system is so clean and streamlined that once you use it you can never go back to the weirdness of dnd 5e. Also the classes are actually balanced, if you are a fighter player you won’t feel left behind because your mage friend learned to conjure meteor storms at the same time you learned to attack for the third time in a round.
For DMs: The game has real rules and restrictions, you won’t need to magically divine bonuses and penalities if your player decides to do some weird action or create rulings on the spot.
Never played 1e, but my favorite points for 2e are:
For players: The amount of freedom you have to create and run a character can’t be overstated. The system is feat based, so two players with the same race+class combo can have vastly different characters. There’s actual options to combine races, not just “human+elf and human+orc are the only mixed people in the universe”. The three actions system is so clean and streamlined that once you use it you can never go back to the weirdness of dnd 5e. Also the classes are actually balanced, if you are a fighter player you won’t feel left behind because your mage friend learned to conjure meteor storms at the same time you learned to attack for the third time in a round.
For DMs: The game has real rules and restrictions, you won’t need to magically divine bonuses and penalities if your player decides to do some weird action or create rulings on the spot.