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.

 

[Chocolategravy]

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.

Total fanboism. There is a difference between handing us something that isn't good and handing us something that doesn't work. The artificer is an example of the first, this is an example of the second. We aren't angry because it is of low quality, we are angry because it is completely useless garbage that even an average forum person would be embarrassed to post.

 

[Chocolategravy]

1) At level 1 a wizard that would have 8 HP (14 CON) now effectively has 22. Balance issues.

2) At level 3 (20 HP) if that wizard goes unconscious his new HP max is -1. Uh oh. -1 isn't 0 so technically the rules don't cover this case.

3) The unconscious wizard now doesn't receive HP healing, he needs 10 HP healed to get his vitality back to 1...

3a) That leaves him at -1 max HP still... Oops. But lets say he's still conscious even though this isn't covered.

3b) Wait 10 HP to get 1 vitality, that means... healer's kits won't work, rolling a 20 on a death save won't work, the Healer's feat won't work, heck even cure wounds often won't work. Pretty much you're dead if you go unconscious.

4) At level 20 if you get hit for 10 damage, you instead lose 20 HP with even CON as your CON drops by a point.

4a) For high HP characters like a barbarian the tough feat is worthless now as you'll run out of vitality before you run out of HP.

4b) At higher level CON becomes a god stat as every hit will be knocking it down at least 1 point if not 2 or 3.

4c) Healing spells become more than 10x less effective as they now are burned to recover the Vit you lose every hit.

4d) A healing spell for 9 does nothing. 19 recovers 1 VIT.

etc. I can't even be bothered to continue, if this isn't enough to convince you this is not the system you or anyone should use, then by all means use it.

 

[Dire Bare]

I gave it a lot of thought, and I think I want to try creating an alignment system based around the four temperaments:

-Sanguine: Associated with blood and air, seeks out stimulation and excitement, acts with spontaneity
-Melancholic: Associated with black bile and earth, seeks out security and preservation of tradition, acts with diligence
-Choleric: Associated with yellow bile and fire, seeks out identity and cooperation, lead by idealism and emotion
-Phlegmatic: Associated with phlegm and water, seeks out knowledge and reason, lead by logic and objectivity

[sblock=read more]A creature's nature leans towards one temperament in particular, or might be split between two temperaments. There is much variation within each temperament; this is just a list of general trends and tendencies. All creatures, including fiends, celestials, elementals, fey, and even undead, have a temperament.

Creatures from the inner planes have souls. The soul directs a creature's life force, or spirit, under the guidance of its temperament. It is the source of its free will. Less-developed souls, like those belonging to animals, are more subject to the whims of their temperaments (instincts). Creatures living in the Feywild have especially volatile souls, making them incredibly capricious and spirited, jumping from one temperament to another on a whim. Creatures living on the Shadowfell have especially inert souls, making them listless and apathetic, their attitudes towards anything rarely changing. The nature of an elemental's soul is not well understood, but it tends to be incredibly focused on bringing its temperament to the forefront, which generally matches the associated element.

Creatures from the outer planes lack souls, but their temperaments have an additional component to them: Spiritual polarity. Those residing in the upper planes have temperaments infused with positive energy, while those in the lower planes are imbued with negative energy. My goal for this alignment system was to not have any metaphysical properties that directly correspond to Good or Evil, Right or Wrong. So the effects spiritual energy has on a creature are best-described as a powerful feeling of transcendence and empathy on the positive end, and a total lack of empathy combined with intense selfishness and a desire for dominance on the negative end.

Altruism and sacrifice come naturally to celestial beings, as their positively-charged beings give them a sense of inner completeness and a need to put their spirit's excess energy to use. An angel never feels envy or greed, because it lives in a state of constant spiritual satisfaction. It seeks to improve itself only as a way to better-serve its cause. While it can experience fear, the overwhelming positive energy that flows through its being gives it endless courage to overcome it. Sacrificing oneself for the greater good is not even considered a question; it's merely a calculation of whether doing so is worth it.

Fiends, by contrast, live with the constant belief that they are incomplete, and in a way, they are. Their negatively-charged spirits mean that even the stupidest of mere mortals is more spiritually-whole than they are, and a demon's life is dominated by lust, gluttony, envy, greed, wrath, hubris, and a total disinterest in acting according to anything other than its most basic, depraved instincts. It always wants more, but what it has is never enough because what it really yearns for is the very concept of transcendence that all fiends scoff at. So it dominates whoever it can, accumulates power and takes pleasure in bringing any creature down to its level, or ideally, below it where the fiend can stomp it into the mud. Creatures of the lower planes treasure mortal souls, one more thing they can never have, and many develop ways to steal them. The raw essence of a soul is an excellent resource for spawning mortal minions inherently devoted to furthering the fiend's goals. Gnolls and orcs are two such examples of races born with souls that have been warped by their creators to serve them.

Undead come in two varieties. Some, like zombies, have souls warped by the magic that created them that compel them to follow the commands of the creator, much like fiend-spawned races. Others are in full possession of their souls and are thus free-willed, like liches. All undead are powered by negative spiritual energy, and are thus subject to the same feelings of jealosy, hatred, and longing that characterizes creatures from the lower planes. Undead hate the living, and will stop at nothing to extinguish the radiant lights that taunt them so. However, because undead do still have souls, those that are free-willed and not too powerful (more power = more overwhelmingly negative energy suffusing you) can sometimes manage to temper these feelings, growing merely apathetic rather than envious, or by focusing all their hatred on one specific individual. This is why many intelligent undead feel more at home in the gloom of the Shadowfell. If you come across a ghost in the Feywild, it has almost certainly been driven mad with rage at the overabundance of life, energy, and freedom. Such spirits are very dangerous.

The nature of aberrations is inherently alien and unknowable. Although traces of familiar temperaments and spirituality levels can be found with strong magic, they rarely match the creature's expected behavior. A wicked beholder might register as spiritually-positive, or a cold and rational mind flayer as sanguine. For the purposes of classification, it is recommended to eschew magical means and simply assign the being a temperament that best-fits its behavior.[/sblock]

Holy Crap! This is awesome! Consider it yoinked! Seems to me it would be a great way to distinguish the behavior of the four elemental cults of evil in Princes of the Apocalypse!

 

[Dire Bare]

The thing is, it can be useful to bring up what you have no interest in or doesn't work for you, because it helps identify trends.

It CAN be, but that's not what's happening in this thread. At least, IMO, of course. It's not that some posters do not care for part or all of the three rules variants offered, or that feel UA would be better served by giving us expanded player options once a month, 'cause that's all fine and dandy. It's the incessant negativity and whining that just brings me down.

If you post simply to say, "I don't like this" and that's it, you're threadcrapping. Especially with the demeaning, insulting, and entitled whine that pervades internet culture. If you post, "I don't care for the "Player's Make All the Rolls" variant and this is why . . ." then we are having a discussion. We are getting most of the former, and very little of the latter in this thread, as usual.

Hell, even some of the folks who actually are adding to the discussion are couching it in insulting terms towards the D&D design team. It's unnecessary, it's rude, and it says more about the poster's lack of civility and reason more than anything else.

IMO, YMMV, IDK.

 

[jhingelshod]

A bit underwhelmed by this UA. Waiting a month for what is, give or take, a 3 page cut and paste from the 3E UA is disappointing.

 

[steeldragons]

Total fanboism.

ummm no. Not even a little. I have no great love for WotC nor do I blindly endorse any/all things they do.

But I do appreciate the immediate inflammatory aggression and disparaging remarks you seem to handcraft for nearly every post you make about 5e.

-snip complaints- I can't even be bothered to continue, if this isn't enough to convince you this is not the system you or anyone should use, then by all means use it.

I am pretty sure, if you had read what I posted instead of just throwing around knee-jerk accusations, I was quite clear I would not be using anything that was presented in this article.

Happy numbers crunching.

 

[Obryn]

It CAN be, but that's not what's happening in this thread. At least, IMO, of course. It's not that some posters do not care for part or all of the three rules variants offered, or that feel UA would be better served by giving us expanded player options once a month, 'cause that's all fine and dandy. It's the incessant negativity and whining that just brings me down.

If you post simply to say, "I don't like this" and that's it, you're threadcrapping. Especially with the demeaning, insulting, and entitled whine that pervades internet culture. If you post, "I don't care for the "Player's Make All the Rolls" variant and this is why . . ." then we are having a discussion. We are getting most of the former, and very little of the latter in this thread, as usual.

Hell, even some of the folks who actually are adding to the discussion are couching it in insulting terms towards the D&D design team. It's unnecessary, it's rude, and it says more about the poster's lack of civility and reason more than anything else.

IMO, YMMV, IDK.

WotC isn't our crazy aunt Sally where we need to pretend that, no, we super appreciate that ugly sweater she gave us for Christmas.

It's fair to call a spade a spade. The players-roll variant doesn't work because they got the math dramatically wrong. The vitality points option is both cumbersome and doesn't actually solve the problem it's supposed to solve. The alignment option had no mechanics, which means it's at least not actively bad.

Really - this was not a forum post. This is official (if optional) content posted on the front page of the flagship RPG of the industry, and the author couldn't even be bothered to check easy math? Come on. It's unprofessional.

Simply calling this month's installment disappointing or even outright bad is fair. Explanations? Obvious. Don't really need to be stated. Characterizing that as entitled whining just shuts down the discussion.

 

[MagicSN]

The problem I had of the article was - when we started
To play 5e it was a big issue with players that if
They do spells they do not do a single
Dice roll and only the DM does it. Our main
DM and me (secondary DM) sat together, thought
For maybe 15 minutes and then had a
"Players do all saves" rule which was mathematically
Correct. From WotC I would expect to at
Least spend 15 minutes on a rule, even if
Only for Arcana and no "official Rule".

Asides from that - good ideas in the article,
Just bad execution. I prefer an article only
Every two months with GOOD material to
A badly done one BTW.

 

[Umbran]

Total fanboism.

We expect our users to show a modicum of respect for each other. Dismissing folks as being irrational due to emotional attachment to a company or property falls well short of that mark.

Next time, please address the logic and support of the post, not your personal assessment of the poster. Don't make it personal.

 

[Morlock]

We expect our users to show a modicum of respect for each other. Dismissing folks as being irrational due to emotional attachment to a company or property falls well short of that mark.

Distinguishing between a post disparaging an idea (e.g., "total fanboism"), and one disparaging a person as irrational or the like (e.g., "you're a total fanboi") should be fairly easy. And a critical skill for a moderator. Avoids escalating the situation by making obviously false accusations.

Next time, please address the logic and support of the post, not your personal assessment of the poster. Don't make it personal.

Lol, that's so wrong (the idea? Get it? The idea?). 180 degrees wrong.

***

Can't say I like these UA alternative HP rules, but I'm all for a non-standard approach to hps. I was thinking of making Con (or average of Con & Str) worth of a character/creatures's hit points into "Health" points. The rest of the hit point total would still be called hit points (though I'm amenable to a name change), but they don't represent damage taken, but rather damage avoided. They represent luck, fate, vitality, endurance, what have you. Once HP run out, the character starts taking damage, to Health. Hit Points can be healed with short or long rests, but Health is only regained slowly via bed rest, or through magical healing. And damage to Health is where stuff like permanent injury comes into play.

Healing magic is where it gets tricky. It seems like healing Health with magic should be less effective than healing HP is under the standard rules. It also feels like healing HP with healing magic is a bit off, if HP now truly represent not the ability to absorb damage, but the ability to avoid damage altogether.

Then there's poison and disease, which should probably be re-written to bypass HP and go straight to health.

At this point, I begin wondering if it's really worth all this trouble, just to have the hit point rules feel less wonky. Maybe. I really, really hate the idea of characters shrugging off damage from dragon bites because high level. Always have.

Vitality
Some people really like separate pools for health and luck/energy/skill. I have some on my website.

Thanks. The Wound Points and Hit Points thing is sort of like what I want, but I'd rather not change the balance of the game that much.

I always wondered what would happen if alignment were replaced by the Myers-Briggs personality types. Instead of Lawful or Chaotic, you'd have things like Rational, Realist, or Idealist. I remember taking a test once (I got INFP), and it was uncannily accurate.

I hear that a lot from women who like horoscopes. I always wonder if it would still be true if I could swap all the horoscopes around for them beforehand, without them knowing. Meaning, those things are written to appeal to everyone.

Not that I'm poo-pooing MB, mind. I took it, too, and found it fairly accurate. Just wondering how many other assessments I could read and think, "hmm, yeah, that sounds like me, too!"

Vitality is a half assed nod to the sim crowd who is never satisfied and doesnt realize they should friggin play Rolemaster or GURPS already. This is not the wound system you are looking for...

I dunno if I'm in the "sim crowd." I just think hit points are damned wonky, and stand out as damned wonky in a system where most things don't strike me as damned wonky. I can't help thinking that heroes in fiction usually stay alive by either not getting bitten full-on in the abdomen by the full-grown dragon, or wearing some really nice armor when they do.