What Variant Unearthed Arcana rules will you be using?

Just picked this up today, and dang! It's really good! Luckily for me (timewise) I'm gathering local gamers into a group (with any luck) to run a game that already features a fair amount of "alternateness" -- including classes purloined from Midnight, Rokugan and Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed to replace all but three of the core PHB classes. I've got all new races (with the exception of human -- and the new races are just extensively bred humans, actually.) I've also got a custom magic system I cooked up that combines some aspects of Midnight and chanelling as a male in the Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game. Not enough alternateness for ya?

From Unearthed Arcana I'm thinking of picking up the following additional options:

• Character Traits -- these things are really cool!
• Defense Bonus
• Armor as Damage Reduction
• Massive Damage Threshold -- reduced to CON score, but failed Fort save puts you at -1, not instantly dead
• Action Points

Funny how a lot of the things I'm using are already present in other games I have -- I have d20 Modern. d20 Star Wars and d20 Wheel of Time so I've obviously already seen the Defense Bonus, Massive Damage Threshold concepts and Action points concepts in print from those books, but it took them turning up in Unearthed Arcana for me to think of putting them in a D&D-ish game.

Here's what I'm going to be using from Unearthed Arcana. Not all at once on any given character, but within a campaign should I ever start one.

Vitality/Wound Points
Bloodlines
Racial Paragon Classes
Monk Fighting Styles
Paladin Variants
Ranger Variants
Domain Wizard
Spelltouched Feats
Craft Points
Class Defense Bonus
Action Points
Legendary Weapons
Item Familiars
Reputation
Sanity

I'm still considering the following..

Armor as DR
Class Variants (those that weren't listed above)

I think I will be looking at...
Armor as Damage Reduction
Sanity
Item Craft Points
Magic points
Rep

After eating some homemade jambalaya while listening to blaring vintage Depeche Mode (yes, the wife and kids are out of town) I'm also considering the "bell curve" dice rule. I'm not sure why they didn't just make it 2d10, though -- it approximates a bell curve and is certainly simpler than trying to fit 2d6 into a d20 paradigm.

Also, although not for this game, I like the Mutants & Masterminds damage save as retrofitted into a D&D paradigm. I'm actually a little disappointed to see the Sanity rules were nothing but warmed over Call of Cthulhu rules -- I already have those, and I was hoping for something that was a little simpler and a little more consistent with the rest of the d20 system as a whole.

Although it's nice to see it now made Open Content...

Even with the few responses so far, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the various speciailst wizards (conjurer, necromancer, etc.). My biggest problem with specialists from 2nd edition onward (basically, since the 1E illusionist went away) was that they tasted just like a wizard a few tweaks; they had no true flavor of their own.

These new variants change all that, and I expect to be using them in every campaign I run from this point on, and in any campaigns in which I'm playing a specialist if the DM allows it.

Joshua Dyal said:

After eating some homemade jambalaya while listening to blaring vintage Depeche Mode (yes, the wife and kids are out of town) I'm also considering the "bell curve" dice rule. I'm not sure why they didn't just make it 2d10, though -- it approximates a bell curve and is certainly simpler than trying to fit 2d6 into a d20 paradigm.

Also, although not for this game, I like the Mutants & Masterminds damage save as retrofitted into a D&D paradigm. I'm actually a little disappointed to see the Sanity rules were nothing but warmed over Call of Cthulhu rules -- I already have those, and I was hoping for something that was a little simpler and a little more consistent with the rest of the d20 system as a whole.

Although it's nice to see it now made Open Content...

Click to expand...

Off topic, but man are are tastes similar. First OB and now DM. Go JD.

So far, I'm not sure if we'll be using any of the variants, but I've submitted both Racial Paragons and Players Roll All The Dice to my players for consideration.

I may suggest more as time goes on. I was looking forward to the Defense bonus and Armor as DR variants, but was disappointed in way they did them as I prefer the variants used in some of the other d20 games. At any rate, it's not something I'd adapt mid-campaign anyway, so I have a while to think about it.

Variants I'm using:

• Racial paragons (but my players won't)
• Totem Barbarian
• Divine Bard
• Defense Bonus
• Reserve hit points
• Action points
• Metamagic components
• Recharge magic
• Incantations
• Contacts
• Spontaneous domains
• and the Metamgic & Sorcerers variant I

Recharge magic is on a trial basis. We try it for three sessions. If they like it, we keep it. If not, we ditch it. It's easier to axe a rule that doesn't work for the group than add one later.

Using:

* Racial Paragon Classes (if anyone wants to take a level in one ...)
* Character Traits (one only)
* Character Flaws (one character is taking one as a guinea pig, and he's taking Energy Substitution with that, with which we have always kind of had him anyways but not actually on the sheet because the other group GM hates it -- but he's on paternity leave anyways)
* Players Roll All the Dice (we have a big group)
* Summon Monster Variants

No one wants to rock the boat.

I will use:

Cloisted cleric
Spontaneous Metamagic variant
Specialist wizard variant


and only that