gnarbrag: 2nd edition d&d was bad. It had it's charm but it was still bad.
Stats rarely mattered unless they were 15+ which was ofc what you wanted.
Exceptional strength could be the difference between a weak fighter and a meatgrinding monster.
The XP table for druids was ridiculously insane.
A single class rogue would at some point run out of skills to improve. The same was true for multi class rogues in ToB.
Dual classing was immensely overpowered.
Hold person was a 2nd level spell for clerics and it no limit on the number of targets, meaning with a bit of luck you could take out more than half the enemy party with just one spell.
Thac0 calculation was needlessly confusing.
With a few small exceptions, most spells were equally easy/hard to save against while saving throws kept improving. So at high level there was very little reason to cast spells that could be ignored with a succesful save.
Magic resistance... probably intended as protection against "save or die" spells but also made casting spells against certain enemies pointless. Unless you bothered to cast a few lower MR spells first (or cheated by casting a spell that
gave them MR)
etc, etc.
You've got many good points here. I will note with amusement that the Hold Person issue means that in SSI's 1st edition Gold Box games, your low level cleric has an incredibly powerful weapon when facing most humanoid enemies. Those games often feature difficult fights, and I find it helpful. The only problem is your enemy clerics have the same weapon.