Did you use UA in your 1E games?
- Thread starter tx7321
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Lanefan
Victoria Rules
We used (and still use) bits and pieces of it - many taken from the original Dragon articles before UA came out (e.g. Cavalier, %-ile stat increments,Wood Elves, some spells and items); ignored other bits (e.g. Paladin as a sub-class, alternate rolling methods, some spells and items), used but dramatically changed other bits (e.g. we made Barbarian a sub-race of Human instead of a class) and had already changed other things (e.g. non-Human level limits).
If you're careful and selective about what you use from it, there's enough good material in there to make it worthwhile. But - and the same holds true of expansion books today - you have to know how to say "no".
Lanefan
If you're careful and selective about what you use from it, there's enough good material in there to make it worthwhile. But - and the same holds true of expansion books today - you have to know how to say "no".
Lanefan
I adopted it wholesale into my campaign at the time, and within a few weeks realized it was pretty uneven so we started to pull stuff back. As I recall, by the time the dust settled on our playtesting, we kept:
- the new races and level limits
- the thief-acrobat
- some of the spells and magic items
- field plate and full plate, and most of the other new equipment
- a changed version of the social classes
... and everything else we more or less junked. We did have some classes for knight-types and barbarians, but not from UA. Even that which we kept was lightly to extensively house-ruled.
Basically, Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures were the two books that killed my innocence as a DM - they taught me I couldn't just buy a TSR book and assume it was balanced or even finished, respectively. Not a bad lesson to learn, but not much fun at the time.
- the new races and level limits
- the thief-acrobat
- some of the spells and magic items
- field plate and full plate, and most of the other new equipment
- a changed version of the social classes
... and everything else we more or less junked. We did have some classes for knight-types and barbarians, but not from UA. Even that which we kept was lightly to extensively house-ruled.
Basically, Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures were the two books that killed my innocence as a DM - they taught me I couldn't just buy a TSR book and assume it was balanced or even finished, respectively. Not a bad lesson to learn, but not much fun at the time.
Most of the Unearthed Arcana stuff was okay.
Cavaliers were balanced, *if* you or your DM enforced that code of conduct. The cavalier code does restrict character behavior.
Barbarian had to be heavily modified before being usable. Thief-acrobat wasn't a problem.
Drow have social/reputation problems venturing up-world in addition to their racial penalties in daylight, and that got enforced too. I think we had one drow character in the entire campaign.
We never used social classes except for character background information. There wasn't a real need for it, but sometimes it helped define the character. If you chose a particular class that needed a certain social status, you could roll on that table and if you didn't get what you needed, you were given the minimum social status to qualify for the class. But it was pretty much optional.
Cavaliers were balanced, *if* you or your DM enforced that code of conduct. The cavalier code does restrict character behavior.
Barbarian had to be heavily modified before being usable. Thief-acrobat wasn't a problem.
Drow have social/reputation problems venturing up-world in addition to their racial penalties in daylight, and that got enforced too. I think we had one drow character in the entire campaign.
We never used social classes except for character background information. There wasn't a real need for it, but sometimes it helped define the character. If you chose a particular class that needed a certain social status, you could roll on that table and if you didn't get what you needed, you were given the minimum social status to qualify for the class. But it was pretty much optional.
kaomera
Explorer
Used it for a bit, in a few games I played in. It wasn't widely owned by the group I generally played / hung out with at first, personally I had it but never brought it up and therefore never used it (IIRC I wanted to drop some stuff from it in as a "surprise" to my players). Once the Survival Guides came out I and several other DMs I knew just dropped all of the newer books and banned anything from Dragon Magazine that we had not specifically picked out to be part of our games. I recall there being a big blow-up at one game that led to this decision, but I can't remember exactly what it was about (I think that I was not personally present for this incident, as I can remember several other big "incidents" fairly well.)
Evilhalfling
Adventurer
oh yeah -
hated the cavalier, after one powergamer abused it.
dropped the drow. I think we ignored the new unarmed combat
used everything else - I second on loving the class background, as well as the new spells, spellbook rules and magic items.
lots of hours practicing cantrips - I was such a young geek.
and the polearms - I have a oneshot this weekend where a charater has a glaive-guisarm (the powergamers polearm)
hated the cavalier, after one powergamer abused it.
dropped the drow. I think we ignored the new unarmed combat
used everything else - I second on loving the class background, as well as the new spells, spellbook rules and magic items.
lots of hours practicing cantrips - I was such a young geek.
and the polearms - I have a oneshot this weekend where a charater has a glaive-guisarm (the powergamers polearm)
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