Unearthed Arcana Has any one played a Unearthed Arcana subclass?

[TwoSix]

Undying light warlock for a couple sessions. Greenflame Blade + bonus fire damage is fun.

We have a new UA ranger in the party right now, seems pretty strong.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I've had players play an Undying warlock, and I played a minotaur. In my campaign I'm running right now, as soon as the arcane trickster gets past level 5, she will be doing rune magic. There's a couple others I know for sure of, but for some reason my early morning mind is failing me.

 

[Jester David]

One of my players is playing a favoured soul.

 

[Corwin]

I've been playing a College of Blades Bard in OotA. From 1st level. Just made 8th. There are a few minor quirky things about the subclass that doesn't quite sit right with me. But in general, I like it and am having a lot of fun with it.

 

[GM Lent]

One of my players is using a barbarian variant rule from the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana book. Does that count?


EDIT: no he's not. It's in the 3.5 PHB2. Never mind.

 

[Morrus]

The revised ranger is in use in our game (not sure if that counts - it's UA, but not a subclass), but nothing else.

 

[jadrax]

The revised ranger is in use in our game (not sure if that counts - it's UA, but not a subclass), but nothing else.

Yeah, that counts. As does the psion class.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Same. I have not, and at my table, one of my big rules is that only options from printed sources are allowed. Even if one of my players wants nothing more than to play an Awakened Mystic. In its unfinished state, I fear that things would go pear-shaped quickly.

There are two reasons why I've not seen them in play. Mostly it's because DMs (including myself) are hesitant to allow "rough" mechanics into the game, where they might upset the game. Additionally, we tend to have long running campaigns, so character turnover is very low (my current campaign has had only 1 permanent death in almost 2 years).

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm wondering what the mentality is behind this?

I read that there is a divide between the 1/2e era and 3/4e era DMs and players. This isn't a universal, but-

The earlier ear tends to have those who are less encumbered by the RAW, viewing them more as guidelines, and more open to employing non-standard materials to supplement the game (and tweak as necessary). See also, Dragon magazine "NPC" classes and races.

The later era had more options available, and there was thus the (occasional?) need to strictly limit what came into the game; new options could easily unbalance the game.

Obviously, this doesn't apply to everyone. I was just curious if others had notice it.

I noticed it too, and I wonder if it began with 3e. I.e., 3e allowed for a lot of abuse by nature of the system (the invincible kobold, what was it called? pewpew or something?). And a lot of other builds that would completely wreck the game. So I'm wondering if people who started with that era got a really bad taste from outside stuff abusing the system. The second part is it seems that's the time where we saw a lot of players get upset if another PC had better stats than their PC.

Myself, I'm an old school guy, and I'm pretty accepting of anything as long as I can review it first. Dragon was full of really cool new stuff to try out back in the day. And since everyone rolled for stats back then, no one ever got upset if another player's PC has better stats than our PC--we were all part of the same team. Except that dirtbag half orc assassin. He was never part of the team, but that's another story...