Did They Play Arcana Unearthed?

[Connorsrpg]

Was meaning to do this thread earlier, but I see it has come up in the Paladin thread too.

So Wizards staff went and played all previous editions of D&D; did they play Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed?

To me that was one of the best 3E books. Our players loved the classes in there.

Monte sure did write up some interesting classes and class features. I really liked what he did with spells. We made a LOT of use of the keywords and actually built our spell lists using them (by adding a lot more).

Anyway, there is plenty from that book I would like to be considered in the design of D&DN.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

It was my favourite 3rd edition book too. We routinely lifted things from it to enhance games - I particularly liked the specialist Wizard rules that made them actually specialised.

 

[Piratecat]

Monte is lead designer on D&DN. So, probably.

 

[am181d]

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought of the Oathsworn unprompted during the Paladin conversation.

Anyway, there is plenty from that book I would like to be considered in the design of D&DN.

Well, I can think of at least one person on the 5e team who has played Arcana Unearthed...

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Well, I can think of at least one person on the 5e team who has played Arcana Unearthed...

I hope it is at least two, since Mearls wrote a few source books for AU/AE.

 

[amerigoV]

I liked the magic system. It had a bit of D&D Vancian in that the caster picked spells for the day, but you got to cast them as a Sorcerer (all 3e talk here). I liked you could combine or split up spell slots to cast different level spells, but there was an inefficiancy so you could not just spam one spell (well you could, but the cost was high). The ability to cast a spell as one level higher or lower on the fly with balanced effects is great design.

Even from the DM side it was nice - you did not have to worry about all the slot combining and breaking apart if you did not want to - just play the NPC like a D&D sorcerer.

So big picture - there was plenty of places in the system where you could really dive in and tinker with the spellcasting (great flexibility) or you could just fall back on the old standard Sorcerer approach and not lose much.

The only complaint/drawback is the system forced spells to be balanced against each other. I know that sounds strange, but it leads to a situation where there are no "must have iconic spells" at each level under that model (the whining that the equivanant of Magic Missile in the original book requiring a to hit roll was on par with the 4e folks until Essentials). Sometimes it nice to know that you just pick these 5 spells and everything else might have its use is not a bad one vs. here are 50 choices, all "equal". But that is a minor quibble, at best.

 

[Zaukrie]

Plus one....

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[Connorsrpg]

OK, so I should have put "Apart from the obvious 2, have the design team played Arcana Unearthed..."

I really meant, as a deliberate part of their playing old editions did they get this stuff out and playtest too. There were some very good innovations in that line for D&D.

 

[MacMathan]

I also hope they look at Iron Heros it had potential

 

[Connorsrpg]

[MENTION=191]MacMathan[/MENTION],

Yeah, I actually started typing that in my last post, then removed it, but I agree. Monte and Mike did a lot of cool stuff with Malhavoc Press and I do hope the others played some of this stuff too.