3 Years of Unearthed Arcana

[Mark CMG]

I've messed around with Backgrounds, Contacts, Honor, Reputation and Action Points.

I like them all but think they could use some refinement before possibly introducing them to the core.

 

[Wombat]

When we were playing D20 still, we used several ideas that made their way into UA ... only found earlier in other supplements, and usually better, more completely written up (such as Wounds/Vitality, armour as DR, etc.).

UA, as far as we could tell, was WotC trying to catch up with the good ideas from 3rd party publishers.

 

[gamecat]

I like the gestalt rules, having used them heavily.

 

[Greg K]

When we were playing D20 still, we used several ideas that made their way into UA ... only found earlier in other supplements, and usually better, more completely written up (such as Wounds/Vitality, armour as DR, etc.).

UA, as far as we could tell, was WotC trying to catch up with the good ideas from 3rd party publishers.

Yeah, as much as I like several things in UA, there were sections that needed expanding upon and felt like half-assed or half-hearted attempts to introduce material done prior and better by third parties. Apparently, that was the actual case as I questioned Andy Collins about the feeling of incompleteness regarding one of the ideas introduced in the the book. The response given by Andy was that the material in question was included so that other designers could expand upon it and flesh it out.

 

[cmrscorpio]

Armor as DR - at higher levels when monsters start dealing lots of damage on an individual attack, people wanted the increased chance to avoid the damage entirely than have the DR, especially the tanks.

Damage Conversion - pain in the butt to keep track of as a DM running multiple monsters and my group hates tracking non-lethal damage

Used a combo of Class Defense Bonus, Armor as DR, and Damage Conversion - suffered from everyone hating to keep track of nonlethal damage

Weapon Groups - I love the concept of it, but no one else seems to care for it one way or the other.

Reducing Level Adjustment - Sees use every time someone picks a race with LA

Bloodlines - has gotten used by 1 player, but I doubt anyone will use it again

Paladin variant class - after my player chose the class, the player whined that there weren't any good PrCs for him to take until I let him switch to regular pally

Character Traits - lukewarm reception

Flaws - lukewarm reception

Action Points - I don't allow the Spell Recall or Emulate Feat uses (because of Sudden Metamagic feats and similar abuses), because spellcasters did nothing but horde them for boss fights, but other than that, I love them.

Individualized Summoning Lists - been using something similar to this for a real long time. I like the flavor, but PCs miss the flexibility of being able to summon a creature better tailor to a particular situation.

Metamagic Components: I keep telling the players that this is always in effect, but no one seems to care.

Spell Points - I love the psionics system, but my current players hate it. This will never see play.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Armor as DR - at higher levels when monsters start dealing lots of damage on an individual attack, people wanted the increased chance to avoid the damage entirely than have the DR, especially the tanks.

Ran into the same problem here. I added a defense bonus that stacked with armor and added 1/2 hardness to armor DR. That way DR kept pace as level went up.

Damage Conversion - pain in the butt to keep track of as a DM running multiple monsters and my group hates tracking non-lethal damage

Never tried it for pretty much that reason.

Used a combo of Class Defense Bonus, Armor as DR, and Damage Conversion - suffered from everyone hating to keep track of nonlethal damage

The problem is mainly tracking nonlethal, if you dump the conversion and fiddle with DR progression a bit it improves.

Weapon Groups - I love the concept of it, but no one else seems to care for it one way or the other.

Favorite mechanic of the book, now used in all my games.

 

[Greg K]

I've messed around with Backgrounds, Contacts, Honor, Reputation and Action Points.

I like them all but think they could use some refinement before possibly introducing them to the core.

I agree. Personally, I think Backgrounds need a lot of refinement. I saw the name of the section and, thinking they would be either like 2e kits (but balanced) or Rolemaster's adolescence, thought to myself "Cool! More ways to customize characters".

Then, I saw the actual material in the section.

It was disappointing to see that many of the recommended classes relied on cross-class skills. This section was about backgrounds . In my opionion, it would have been a good time to introduce replacement skills by background to reflect how one grew up (similar to what Ari later gave us in the Cityscape enhancement for urban/wilderness skills) and to also suggest some of the new class variants introduced earlier in the book to fill certain roles.

 

[lkj]

I've been using the spontaneous metamagic rules (the one where you spend extra spell slots to cast metamaigicked spells on the fly). I really like it. It's a permanent house rule in the campaigns I run. It makes metamagic feats worth taking, and, in my opinion, makes it costly enough not to be unbalancing.

AD

 

[painandgreed]

Looked at bloodlines (mostly for flavor as to give the nobles a feeling of divine right), reputation, and spell points IMC, but not yet.

Used defence bonus and armor as DR in one pirate game but DM didn't like it 'as is' and was fiddleing with it till the game ended.

 

[blargney the second]

Damage Conversion - pain in the butt to keep track of as a DM running multiple monsters and my group hates tracking non-lethal damage

Damage Conversion is a really interesting variant.

Cons:
PITB factor to track nonlethal damage, as mentioned.

Pros:
AC remains unchanged. (!)
Healing increases somewhat in effectiveness.
You still go down after the same amount of damage, but it's
Easier to capture PCs, rather than simply killing them.

We're currently using it in conjunction with a campaign rule that you can't have more than half your levels in a given spellcasting class. It does a great job of keeping healing up to speed.
-blarg