Unearthed Arcana One Year of Unearthed Arcana

[Li Shenron]

We haven't actually used any of the UA options yet in our game, but I did make some of these options available. Even if not all the stuff got me interested, but I certainly always love to read a new UA article...

Update for the Eberron Campaign - 02/02/2015

Not interested in Eberron as a campaign setting at all.

I generally don't like adding more PC races by default, but I may allow any of these races in a kitchen sink game. None of them I particularly liked tho.

I didn't like the whole Artificer concept and implementation.

Always hated Action Points.

The only part I actually liked is the Dragonmark feats. Unfortunately, they are not well balanced, at least in the sense that some of them are straight better than the Magic Initiate feat.

Personal appreciation: low.
Usefulness potential: medium.
Made available in our game: none.

Rules for Mass Combat in D&D - 03/02/2015

Loved it, possibly my favourite UA article!

I totally liked the concept and the implementation seemed fairly good. Unfortunately I haven't yet the chance to try them out in an actual game.

Personal appreciation: very high.
Usefulness potential: high.
Made available in our game: all (but this is DM's stuff).

Modifying Classes - 04/06/2015

Boring article, I have been creating new classes and subclasses for my 5e conversion of Rokugan, and I did not need these no-brainer guidelines to do so. But certainly giving them a read doesn't do any harm.

No interest in Ranger variants. On the other hand, I really welcomed the Favored Soul subclass, as I think in general the Sorcerer needed more subclasses.

Personal appreciation: low.
Usefulness potential: low.
Made available in our game: Favored Soul.

Character Options for a High Seas Campaign - 05/04/2015

We rarely do waterborn adventures at all, but all the material here seemed very usable in all campaigns to me!

Again, I don't like adding more PC races by default, but wouldn't object to a player wanting to play this version of a Minotaur.

Didn't particularly like the Mariner fighting style, but thought it was at least balanced.

Loved the subclasses instead!

Personal appreciation: high.
Usefulness potential: high.
Made available in our game: Mariner, Swashbuckler, Storm Sorcerer.

Variant Rules - 06/08/2015

Small and useless article to me, as I dislike the first two variants, and we already used custom alignments (but these guidelines were particularly useless).

Personal appreciation: low.
Usefulness potential: low.
Made available in our game: none.

Awakened Mystic - 07/06/2015

Never been a fan of psionics, but I guess I could maybe introduce them in my game is done properly. At least this first implementation sounded interesting and with good potential.

Personal appreciation: medium.
Usefulness potential: low.
Made available in our game: none.

Modern Magic - 08/03/2015

This was awesome to read, but sadly irrelevant for us since we are only interested in fairly traditional fantasy settings, not modern. It might be possible to adapt some spells or more, but it's not worth the effort yet.

Personal appreciation: high.
Usefulness potential: low.
Made available in our game: none.

Ranger - 09/09/2015

Not going to change the default Ranger for any reason. In addition, I hated almost all these ideas.

Personal appreciation: low.
Usefulness potential: low.
Made available in our game: none.

Prestige Classes and Rune Magic - 10/05/2015

Liked the attempt at bringing prestige classes back into the game, much better ideas than in 3e but still falling short of what would be the ideal case.

I fairly liked the example prestige class, except for the fact that it seemed it would better deliver as a series of feats than an actual class.

Personal appreciation: medium.
Usefulness potential: medium.
Made available in our game: none.

Light, Dark, Underdark! - 11/02/2015

I consider the two fighting styles broken, but the three subclasses seemed awesome.

Personal appreciation: high.
Usefulness potential: high.
Made available in our game: Deep Stalker Ranger, Shadow Sorcerer, Undying Light Warlock.

That Old Black Magic - 12/07/2015

Small but good.

Personal appreciation: high.
Usefulness potential: high.
Made available in our game: all.

Kits of Old - 01/04/2016

Some concern about these implementations, but otherwise another set of immediately usable material.

Personal appreciation: high.
Usefulness potential: high.
Made available in our game: all.

Psionics and the Mystic - 02/01/2016

More or less the same as the previous psionics round...

Personal appreciation: medium.
Usefulness potential: low.
Made available in our game: none.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Some of them are distinctly half-assed, like the Eberron one (where the author didn't seem to bother learning about Eberron prior to designing content for it)

In this regard, the UA articles are keeping up the time-honored TSR tradition of having designers not actually read or understand the quirks of the settings they design for. Reading is hard! Just ask any of the people on these forums whose questions are clearly answered in the DMG.

 

[Ath-kethin]

For me, the greatest value in the UA articles has been seeing the designers play with how the system works, and the occasional insight into design decisions. In my opinion/campaigns, the most useful (that is to say, the most likely to make an appearance at my table) of the articles was the waterborne one, the spell-less ranger/favored soul, and the black magic one.

Not all of the options have been great, but all have been interesting IMO. And I think the ranger hate needs to be taken out back behind the shed and put down. The class was fine and there are better ways for the designers to spend their time.

 

[Blue]

I'd love follow-up.

1. Pick the ones people liked the best, clean up anything suggested, and put them as as "more playtested" (maybe with some keyword) so that Dms who don't want "raw" UA can add them. Maybe even make then AL legal.
2. Pick the ones that needed a lot of work and generated a lot of discussion (to gauge player interest) and come out with a revised ones for further playtesting. The Mystic was a good example of this.

 

[Z. H. Darkstar]

I'd love follow-up.

1. Pick the ones people liked the best, clean up anything suggested, and put them as as "more playtested" (maybe with some keyword) so that Dms who don't want "raw" UA can add them. Maybe even make then AL legal.
2. Pick the ones that needed a lot of work and generated a lot of discussion (to gauge player interest) and come out with a revised ones for further playtesting. The Mystic was a good example of this.

I agree that more follow-up would be nice. However, I have something about each of your points.

1. The only way any UA materials will become AL legal is if they make it into a published product. That's how we got Swashbuckler and Storm Sorcerer via the SCAG. With regards to cleaning up and rereleasing fan favorites as UA updates, I'd rather just see them move onto the list of things to be included in a future product. Although, it would be awesome to see WotC have a living document that told us where in the inclusion process the UA materials were at. Something as simple as a table denoting whether a class/race/etc was "In Playtest"/"Being Revised"/"Under Review"/"Awaiting Publication" would be both a nice way to show us more of work behind the curtain and serve as a way to build hype for upcoming releases. Since WotC likes to hide clues to future releases, this seems like an idea that would fit in with their pattern of behavior.

2. I agree with you 100% here. Including the user base in the playtesting of questionable materials is what made the DnDNext playtest a brilliant move and led to the success of the 5e launch. If the user reaction to the UA release isn't unanimous in either direction, then more public playtesting is needed. Otherwise, clean it up for review with a final round of internal testing, or scrap it altogether if the users hated it.

 

[Greg K]

Personally, the only article that had anything that impressed me at all was Waterborne Adventures and even that was limited. In the article, I liked the Minotaur. The Mariner style did nothing for me. The Swashbuckler Archetype? I like Swashbucklers. I just don't like this take or, necessarily, it handled as a Rogue Archetype (The Swashbuckler that I would use is a Light Armored fighter class variant from these boards for which the Swashbuckler was a subclass) . The Storm Sorcerer origin was ok, but I don't like the 5e take on Sorcerers (I don't like the 4e Sorcerer or Pathfinder's either).

The Jester aside (which I don't like conceptually), the other sub classes in the Kits article I would not mind seeing if handled differently than in the article. In fact, I have seen something along the lines of the Scout done elsewhere (and, in my opinion, better).

 

[Istbor]

I am foaming at the mouth for more mass combat updates and rules.

 

[ranger69]

I like that the designers are getting the views of the players through the UA articles. Some things will make it into releases like SCAG. Other ideas will be dropped.
I doubt any idea will have universal acclaim.