3 Years of Unearthed Arcana

[Desdichado]

The Fractional BAB/Saves was a bit fun to play with, but it got confusing at times and I had to keep re-checking my math. I like the idea in general, though.

I like them a lot too, but I don't think they're strictly necessary in D&D.

However I'd never run d20 Modern without that rule again.

 

[blargney the second]

Maybe borrowing the damage track used in the Sovereign Stone & Serenity RPGs (& I'm guessing in the forthcoming BSG RPG as well) would help.

I haven't heard of that before. Could you please give me a quick rundown on how it works and would be helpful for them?
-blarg

 

[sckeener]

I've used

• Death and Dying p 121
• Death from Massive Damage p 119
• Additional favored Class p 100
• Fractional Attack Bonus and Saving Throws p 73
• Turning Undead Level Check and Planar Banishment p 66
• Weapon Groups p 95
• Armor as DR p 111
• Taint p 189

I'm now using the taint rules from HoH and I stopped doing the armor as DR.

* the "buy off LA with XP" (unconvinced; good for bad-LA races, otherwise I wouldn't use).

I'd rather do a Savage Species deal and have racial levels. What I'd really like to see is a dragon magazine article detailing a new race to play every month.

 

[GreatLemur]

I'd rather do a Savage Species deal and have racial levels. What I'd really like to see is a dragon magazine article detailing a new race to play every month.

That would be extremely awesome. I love monster and template classes.

 

[Psion]

Well, Unearthed Arcana has been around for a few years now and I am wondering what rules from it that you have tried? What rules have you determined are not right for your game? What rules have become a regular part of your game? What rules are so good you'd like to see them become part of the core rules for D&D?

Action points (especially the "emulate feat" variant) and LA reduction are regular parts of my game.

I used and still allow Bloodlines, but I think I'm not in love with the mechanic; it doesn't mesh well with the LA/ECL mechanic.

 

[Emongnome]

Interesting that nobody mentioned (that I remember seeing) the Spontaneous Metamagic (specifically the Daily Uses part on pg. 152). I love the rule personally and have already applied it to our campaigns, but haven't really gotten any dedicated spellcasters at high enough levels to make use of metamagic feats. Therefore, it sounds great for me, but I can't say that it's balanced or not by experience. I've added a house rule to this where a character can take a metamagic feat multiple times to reduce the spell level adjustment by one for three castings per day. So you can take Quicken Spell twice for a +3 spell level adjustment, 3 times per day, or twice for a +4 level adjustment, 6 times per day.

I've also used to good effect several class variants and LA buyback. Would love to try the weapon group stuff if I can get my group on board with it. Not much else has been tried at this point.

 

[jeffh]

Use (or at least, explicitly allow) in all my games now:
Action points
Racial paragons
Weapon groups (worked into a broader proficiency system)
Variant death & dying rule (somewhat modified)
Most of the class and class feature variants
Incantations, but so far it has only come up in backstory
Taint
Complex skill checks (occasionally)

Have also tried:
Spell points
Gestalt classes
Spontaneous divine casters (ended up making the spells known a bit more generous)

I also use a class defense bonus, but it's from d20 Modern, not the very different version in UA.

 

[Umbran]

Action points - my players love 'em.

 

[lkj]

Interesting that nobody mentioned (that I remember seeing) the Spontaneous Metamagic (specifically the Daily Uses part on pg. 152). I love the rule personally and have already applied it to our campaigns, but haven't really gotten any dedicated spellcasters at high enough levels to make use of metamagic feats. Therefore, it sounds great for me, but I can't say that it's balanced or not by experience. I've added a house rule to this where a character can take a metamagic feat multiple times to reduce the spell level adjustment by one for three castings per day. So you can take Quicken Spell twice for a +3 spell level adjustment, 3 times per day, or twice for a +4 level adjustment, 6 times per day.

I've also used to good effect several class variants and LA buyback. Would love to try the weapon group stuff if I can get my group on board with it. Not much else has been tried at this point.

Actually, I mentioned spontaneous metamagic upthread a bit. But I'm using the variant where you can spontaneously cast any spell metamagicked, so long as you spend as many additional spell slots of that level spell or higher as the level adjustment for the given metamagic feat. For instance, it means you could quicken a ninth level spell, so long as you had four extra ninth level spell slots to burn. I really like the idea of spellcasters being able to burn themselves out in a blaze of glory. It has worked really well, and my players have really liked it.

I think the only balance issue would be if you had very few encounters between rests. At the extreme, if the party was having only one significant encounter per day, it might give the spellcasters more power than is fair. But that's never been a problem in my campaigns.

I thought about using the daily use variant, but, if I recall, it does still require the level adjustment, and I was looking for something that made metamagic more versatile.

Anyway, in short. Yep, I like it too.

AD

 

[Nonlethal Force]

I term them my big three (although I probably use more than these):

Class Defense Bonus (and love it - great for swashbuckling type games)

Class Variants - including wizard specialist variants

Weapon Groups (and love it!)