Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Variant Rules

Not the most useful of articles for me... I won't use any of it. Nothing wrong with it, but I've tried all the ideas in prior editions and determined they were not my cup of tea. I see nothing in 5E that would make the player rolling, Vitality or their version of alignment an improvement for my games.

 

[77IM]

This is more like someone offering your kid a cigarette. Hurray, free lung cancer.

No, it's more like someone offering your kid spinach casserole, and then your kid throws a big whiney fit because he wanted mac & cheese.

Those of you with children know what I'm talking about. Personally, I hate spinach casserole too, but am still grateful to be offered some, even though I will decline. I don't care for this UA article, either, but it was nice of them to release it. At least now I know those rules options exist and that I don't like them.

 

[phantomK9]

WTH? How is this, in any way shape or form, comparable to lung cancer?

Are role-playing games giving your kids lung cancer?
Found out tonight at 11:00.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Vitality seems a little needlessly clunky (the "replaces your CON score for your CON bonus to HP" seems especially prone to "YAY EVERYONE GOT HIT BY A FIREBALL NOW DO MATH FOR 15 MINUTES!"). I like that it ticks down from maximum HP, though - reducing max HP (coming back gradually with rest) is a nice way of modeling lasting damage. That's got legs, it just needs to be calculated better.

The players roll all the dice and alignment stuff seem a mite on the "no doy" side for us experts (who already know what we prefer), but for a newbie DM, they're kind of gold. I'd appreciate some info on setting apart alignment affiliation, I think - what does your alignment get you, how can you use it to drive player action or to make interesting conflicts. That'd be meaty stuff even for old hands.

 

[doctorhook]

I dug up this thread from about a year ago, where we were discussing the math for a Players Roll the Dice variant. It's short, and it's the basis for all of the monster stats I've been using for the past year. Have a read!

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-players-roll-all-the-dice-quot-variant-in-5E

 

[AmerginLiath]

It's curious that those who argue "these obvious aren't tested and should be lambasted in the next survey!" are now doing so...before testing them themselves...

While some of the previous UA articles would get more use from my PoV, I don't see what's wrong with this one. This is basically a bit of cut-material from the DMG's list of alternate rules and variants. I think that we're so used, especially over the past 15 years (but even during 2nd edition) to see splatbooks being pumped out with new player options so often that we often take it as a slight to NOT have those even if we would never use them – and even if we consciously dislike that excess.

You have here a three-page PDF of rules ideas that you use, ignore, or dissect. While I would likely not use them as-is, I already see the skeleton of some new ideas inside (in particular, the alignment section seems ripe for playing with – even as a man who loves the nine-point grid, a lot of the questions that Mearls asks are useable across the game). And, if you opt to use nothing here? Wait four weeks or less for another bit of free ruleset.

(As for why this material seems less worked out, why it seems that he's using extras cut from the DMG instead of new long-form player material? I think it has something to do with the psionics questioning that he's been leading and the material that he's thus pretty obviously working on for 5e Psionics – he gave us a free UA to play with now while working on the next important piece of rules material...

 

[steeldragons]

I will join in the chorus of there being nothing here I will use or think is particularly useful. Nor, perhaps, that it is a particularly thorough or well written posting.

HOWEVER, I will point out two things in defense of the Wizard's right to put out this sort of material.

1) To the "This stuff doesn't look tested/good enough for play/use" criers. They have been extraordinarily clear that the Unearthed Arcana material is ALL untested and submitted your potential use, testing and feedback. So go use it, change what you don't like, or don't use it at all. But you don't really get to say "This isn't finished." It's a UA article. No, it's NOT finished. We know that.

2) I will remind [or "point out" for those who don't know] the original Unearthed Arcana book was a collection of Player AND DM options to be integrated into play on an individual table-to-table basis. Not everything was used, "fun" or even wanted by everyone. But that is what the book was. Player options AND DM options.

So for /every/ UA article to not be chock full of player options like races and classes, I can fully endorse and get behind even if I, personally, would prefer and be more likely to use some of the more creative race/class business than these sorts of obviously DM-directed variant rules.

Yes. It is only once per month...and that kind of sucks. But the fact that this month's article was specifically "DM-oriented/rules level stuff" after a couple of articles that were more "Player[and DM]-oriented/character-level stuff" seems totally fair and justified.

So...Thanks for the free stuff...I'll take a pass this time and happily await whatever you want to throw at us next month.

 

[Juomari Veren]

Why?

Not what you wanted or functionally bad?

Both, honestly. I don't mind variant rules, I loved most of the ones in the DMG (Especially proficiency dice, just like the old playtests), but these ones change things that either don't need to be changed or change them in a way that doesn't do anything, less alone their intended use.

Variant alignments I get, but I find it unnecessary to replace because, simply put, it works in this system. Alignment is always overcomplicated in discussions and arguments because people think it's hard and fast, but it really isn't, and should never be interpreted as such except in extreme cases(where things are unflinchingly so because it's what they are, like angels and devils). The need to make it so incredibly specific is half the reason the alignment axis exists; because it's simply saying this person is generally this or that, and not so intensely specific on what the character's moral code is that character sheets require whole sections to talk about it.

Vitality is probably the best thought out system, but I've never actually seen or heard anybody complain about hit points in the ways that warrant this variant. That said I'm sure there's kinks to iron out in it, namely that I'd rather a system that eliminates hit points and replaces it with something else over this.


But Players Make All Rolls is what really angers me. Player agency is a big deal in games, and heaven forbid you'd never want to play under a DM who essentially tells you a story about a bunch of random people that you guys meet with little involvement from you, but I don't see how this is in any way supposed to expedite gameplay - the same number of rolls are being made and there's no new way of making a roll(a defense roll is essentially an AC saving throw), so it cuts nothing out and just turns the bookkeeping around on the players instead of the DM. Half of the fun of DMing is also in one's agency to make rolls for all of the monsters. It might be 1 vs. many but I think it slows things down and feels lifeless to have the players do all the important rolling.

And, of course, the worst offense is that they released this as part of a monthly column that, while being all about options, is always more in-depth than three pages and has a lot more stuff to it. I'd even be happier if they simply had another 2 pages of variants for stuff, but a 3-page article of useless rules that probably took mere days if not hours to complete is hardly satisfactory work on their part. I would hope that they realize that this is a pretty poor package and release something extra later in the month for us(or make july's stuff just as good), because this is a pretty big failure to deliver in my opinion.

 

[77IM]

To the "This stuff doesn't look tested/good enough for play/use" criers. They have been extraordinarily clear that the Unearthed Arcana material is ALL untested and submitted your potential use, testing and feedback. So go use it, change what you don't like, or don't use it at all. But you don't really get to say "This isn't finished." It's a UA article. No, it's NOT finished. We know that.

Well said! As I was reading your post it occurred to me: these ideas are barely better than brainstorms, and that's GREAT. The design team is giving us a window into their brainstorming process -- they're showing us their half-baked ideas -- so we get to see what RPGs are like before they are fully-baked. That's a fantastic opportunity for us and very generous of them.

So I say, bring on all the stuff that isn't tested and isn't good enough for play yet. I want to read the note pad Jeremy Crawford keeps on his night stand, or Mike Mearls's computer file labeled "dnd_terrible_ideas.txt".

 

[DEFCON 1]

The thing that kills me is that places like right here at EN World have PAGES of alternative rules that have been designed and in many cases actually tested in the home games of the people who post them... and yet no one cares or says 'boo' about them. But because WotC is the "Official" company that makes 5E stuff... everything they produce HAD BETTER be exactly what each of us would want and use because otherwise they made us wait an entire month for nothing, the goshdarned bastards. Who the hell do they think they are?

Never mind that almost any potential alternate rule I could probably want for 5E has already been created by someone else already... since it wasn't WotC, it doesn't count! If WotC produces something I don't want, or doesn't produce something I really need, then obviously I'm going to get all self-righteous about it and trash the company for it. Because I don't deserve to be treated this way. I'm important, dammit! I should be getting what I want in an official capacity!

 

[doctorhook]

But Players Make All Rolls is what really angers me. Player agency is a big deal in games, and heaven forbid you'd never want to play under a DM who essentially tells you a story about a bunch of random people that you guys meet with little involvement from you, but I don't see how this is in any way supposed to expedite gameplay - the same number of rolls are being made and there's no new way of making a roll(a defense roll is essentially an AC saving throw), so it cuts nothing out and just turns the bookkeeping around on the players instead of the DM. Half of the fun of DMing is also in one's agency to make rolls for all of the monsters. It might be 1 vs. many but I think it slows things down and feels lifeless to have the players do all the important rolling.

I've gotta fundamentally disagree with you here, as a big proponent of this variant (when implemented with correct math).

I DM, and I've been using this variant weekly for a couple years now to free myself from the mental sluggishness that comes from a long, late night of doing arithmetic while my friends look at me and wait for my judgements. I reasoned that by shifting the burden of randomly generating numbers over to my players, I'd have more mental energy to devote to roleplaying, ruling on the fly, and generally facilitating a fun game. After trying it in practice, I was pretty surprised at the results: not only did it deliver my expectations for reducing my workload as DM, it actually kept my players more engaged than they had been.

We all know how D&Ders tend to be about dice rolls: even when we understand probability, many are superstitious when a beloved character's life is on the line. By letting my players roll defense (rather than monsters rolling attacks), my players feel like they have "control" of their defense; they picked they die and they rolled the number. It's been a long time since anyone has felt like I, the DM, was their antagonist at my table. Moreover, my players don't spend nearly as much time on their phones looking bored--they're too busy watching to see if they need to roll a defense against some hobgoblin's sword. At the end of the night, the players say they've had more fun than they used to...and I have less of a headache.

Some people argue that this variant means the DM can't fudge rolls. In my experience, that's not true. I'm still the one to decide if an attack hits or misses (because I'm the one who knows the monster's attack score, and because I can lie if I really don't like the result). Additionally, if things really go badly--a couple weeks ago, one player rolled a row of three critical failures on defense (i.e.: critical hits against his character by the monsters)--I still have the ability as DM to interject and change the outcome by fiat for the purpose of the narrative.

I'm not gonna say Players Roll All the Dice is going to be ideal for everybody's game, but I and my group are entirely 100% committed to it, because it's had a universally positive impact on our game. I absolutely think everyone should give it an honest try sometime.