D&D 1E Inquiry: How do fans of AD&D (aka 1E) feel about the Unearthed Arcana supplement?

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Well, when it first came out we were using everything in it. Over time we dropped most of it other than the barbarian class (which was nonetheless only played a couple times), the new spells, and weapon specialization but for bows that was dialed back. Fastest to drop was the cavalier class. Next was dialing back bow specialization (we referred to it as having Rambo-ish nuclear-tipped arrows). Next to fall was comeliness as a separate stat and no longer using ANY of the ability score generation options. At some point our own playtesting just came down to the only really worthwhile thing in it was weapon specialization.

 

[Emrico]

We used most of it when it first came out. One of my favorite characters I ever ran was my Drow Cavalier. These days I prefer the Barbarian and Cavalier from Dragon. We still use most everything else, Weapon Specialization, the spells, magic items, etc. We don't use the dice rolling methods.

Emrico

 

[Greg K]

We used most of it when it first came out. One of my favorite characters I ever ran was my Drow Cavalier. These days I prefer the Barbarian and Cavalier from Dragon.

I was going to say that two of the best things to come out of 1e Unearthed Arcana were @David Howery's revised versions of the UA Barbarian and UA Cavalier in his two Dragon articles, "Tracking Down the Barbarian" and the "Corrected Cavalier".

 

[see]

There were gems here and there in the general dross.

 

[Zardnaar]

Gads! I forgot about Comeliness and the alternate ability score generation methods.

Comeliness was just dumb (and problematic, as has been pointed out).

The alternate bility score generation methods were kinda cheesey.

I think I would allow it and dump level limits.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Piggybacking off of my other post regarding 4E and Essentials, I wanted to get a read on how fans of 1E feel about 1E Unearthed Arcana.

If you are a fan of 1E, did you like Unearthed Arcana? Did you hate it with the fury of a thousand suns? Were you ambivalent? Please include your reasoning behind your feelings if you can articulate them.

Personally, I hated Unearthed Arcana.

The new classes were so wonky: Barbarians had lots of interesting stuff but couldn't work with magic-users, tried to destroy magic items (IIRC) and needed ridiculous amounts of xp to level, cavaliers were so mount focused that they seemed pretty useless for most currently produced site based (often dungeon) adventures plus they had the weird mechanic of slowly raising their ability scores, acrobats were...just...lame.

Additionally, I HATED the inclusion of new, bizarre races like deep gnomes and drow as playable races. HATED it.

Unearthed Arcana dramatically diminished my interest in D&D and it was a precursor to even further changes which pretty much killed my interest in the game for a long time.

The universal consensus in our group was that the new classes were garbage, and we completely ignored them. I am pretty sure we also ignored weapon specialization, though its hard to be sure, since we did use the 2e version, so I don't know. I think people probably also used some of the modest extensions that were added to the PHB classes, like tracking, acrobats, stuff like that. Honestly it wasn't all that well thought out, and a lot of it was redundant with stuff in DSG/WSG/OA anyway.

We also largely ignored silly stuff like comeliness, which seemed rather useless anyway. I seem to recall a few fighters lumbering around in full/field plate now and then, but since it didn't generally come in magical forms it was not super common except maybe at certain levels.

The spell lists were really just about the only thing we DEFINITELY used. There were quite a few good spells in there (My Wizard was pretty much addicted to Stone Skin, its a stupid awesome spell). Overall the book rather disappointed. It was pretty clear by that point that Gygax had gone 'over the hill' and left the ranch. I think in his way he was trying to recreate D&D as more of a story game, he just had too much invested in his existing way of thinking about RPGs to find the formula.

Overall we pretty much ignored the book, I think I photocopied the spell lists, and my actual hardcover is still in pristine condition, since it hardly ever got cracked open. Basically 2e took the ideas and material and reworked into something that made sense and was playable, so although we didn't really ever totally play 2e 'as designed' and more like a 1e expansion, it made UA entirely redundant.

 

[smetzger]

At the time I used it most of it. Since I subscribed to Dragon there really wasn't a whole lot of completely new stuff, repackaged and updated, but not completely new.

But... I must not have used it very much. Because my binding is still intact.

 

[LoganRan]

At the time I used it most of it. Since I subscribed to Dragon there really wasn't a whole lot of completely new stuff, repackaged and updated, but not completely new.

But... I must not have used it very much. Because my binding is still intact.

I'm not sure that actually opening the book was a prerequisite for it falling apart. I'm pretty sure my copy disintegrated just after a few side eye glances. Given how much I disliked most of the material actually presented in said book...maybe that was for the best.

 

[Emirikol]

We used some of it. More often we used new races and classes from DRAGON though.
We handwaived some of the stuff like bbns not playing well with m.users etc.

 

[Emirikol]

We used it all at one point.
Not being dorks, we also realized some areas were better left as ROLEPLAYING INSPIRATION than hard rules.
We went to milestone xp early so the barbarian hard limits to who he could have as friends was quickly forgotten.
Weapon specialization was HEAVILY used.
Chromatic orb spell and cantrips were a hit.
Paladins as cavaliers was ignored completely.
Character abilities generation settled on 4d6-low.
The new levels were nice.
Still don't have drow in game--just too sacred.