By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack
Initiative Round
Unearthed Arcana is a Dungeons & Dragons supplement from Wizards of the Coast. This is a 224-page full-color hardcover by Andy Collins, David Noonan, Rich Redman, and Jesse Decker. The cover art by Matt Cavotta illustrates a young mage getting an eyeful. Steve Belledin, Ed Cox, Wayne England, Emily Fiegenschuh, David Hudnut, Jeremy Jarvis, Doug Kovacs, John and Laura Lakey, David Martin, Dennis Crabapple McClain, Mark Nelson, James Pevelec, Steve Prescott, David Roach, Richard Sardinha, Ron Spencer, Stephen Tappin, Joel Thomas, and Ben Thompson add a personal touch to the interior imagery.
Unearthed Arcana retails for $34.95.
I’ve been with the D&D game for a long time; long enough, in fact, that I can recall only three alignments and a time when elf and dwarf were classes. If you’re old and grey, like me, you probably recall a highly anticipated release back in 1985 called
Unearthed Arcana. That book, intended for use with 1E, was a campaign expansion, full of new character classes, new spells, and all manner of new options for your game. In a way, the new release of
Unearthed Arcana brings us full circle. Like its predecessor, this book is full of options.
Let’s take a good look at that sentence for a moment. Notice the descriptor; options. I bring this up because I’ve seen a lot of commentary on the boards about UA and I think that people need to stop and realize that these changes are
optional. If you don’t like them, don’t use them. No one is telling you that you should employ every one of the variants listed herein (in fact, that would be impossible, given that there are three different means of handling hit points alone). For that matter, no one cares if you use any of these variants. It’s up to you (and your players). I can safely say that no one from WotC is going to come over to your house, slap you with your rulebook, and ask why you didn’t choose to utilize such and such from this or any other release. Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the options that
Unearthed Arcana offers.
From a role-playing standpoint, one of the things that defines your character more than any other is his or her race. Dwarves don’t just look different from elves, they behave differently. They have a different mindset, different customs, and even different outlooks on life. Still, it’s possible that a player might want just a little more variety to their character. What would a dwarf raised in the ruins of an ancient jungle temple be like? What abilities might a halfling with strong ties to the plane of water possess? How about a human who isn’t a half-giant, but has giant blood in their lineage? If you can ask questions like these, this book has the answers.
The first part of this chapter introduces environmental racial variants of the core races (except humans; their adaptability works against them in this case), as well as goblins, orcs, and kobolds. Aquatic, arctic, desert, and jungle variants are presented here, offering plenty of variety to the “standard” races. These are far more than just cosmetic changes, they redefine the races in terms of their environment. For example, halflings in a jungle environment would gain no racial bonus on attack rolls with slings. This weapon simply isn’t of much use in a jungle. On the other hand, the use of the axe, handaxe, and shortbow come naturally to them.
Moving on, a similar variant offers presenting races with a strong affinity to one of the four classic elements (earth, air, fire, or water). Thus, it is possible to have an elf with fiery traits that gains a +1 racial bonus on attack rolls against creatures with the Water subtype, suffers a -2 penalty on saving throws against spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities with the Water or Cold subtype, and resistance to fire 5. These races don’t represent so much an elemental heritage as simply an affinity for the element in question. As is the case with the environmental variants, the adaptability of humans works against them here and they may not claim elemental ties.
A brief pause here, before continuing. In the D&D game, this is balanced through the application of effective character levels (ECLs). While ECLs are a great tool for providing balance, in the long run, the tradeoff can become less meaningful as the character’s class abilities overstep the racial benefits. As the other character’s are two or three levels ahead of him, the player feels like he has made a poor decision to trade levels for race, and regrets having done so, but what’s done is done and he’s stuck with it, right? Not any more!
Unearthed Arcana offers a solution by permitting the character with the ECL to “buy” it off by sacrificing XP at certain intervals. This is where the self-correcting nature of the XP system becomes apparent, as even though this will put the character at a lower level as compared to his fellow, he will swiftly catch up once the penalty created by the artificial ECL is removed.
Bloodlines are perhaps the most novel approach to character customization that I’ve yet seen in the D&D game. Let’s say that you want to play a character in whose lineage the blood of dragons. It’s not strong enough to warrant playing a half-dragon character (you don’t want the hassle of ECLs), but you wouldn’t mind picking up a benefit or two from your unique heritage. Bloodlines may be the answer. A bloodline represents deific omens or curses, unusual ancestry, or genetic mutation. As the character gains experience, she also gains certain unique traits that are reminiscent of the bloodline.
Bloodlines come in three forms; minor, intermediate, and major. Minor bloodlines manifest at every 4th level, intermediate bloodlines manifest at every even level, and major bloodlines manifest at every level. Only the most powerful of sources cam manifest as a major bloodline, and some sources may not be strong enough to manifest even an intermediate one. Because bloodlines add a number of new abilities, they are balanced by the requirement that the character must purchase a level of “bloodline” at certain points in their advancement. Characters with only a minor bloodline must take a single level of bloodline before attaining 12th level. Characters with an intermediate bloodline must take two levels of bloodline (one before 6th level, and the other before attaining 12th level). Characters with a major bloodline are required to take three bloodline levels (before 3rd, 6th, and 12th level). Bloodline levels offer no bonus in hit points, base attack bonus, or saving throws, nor do they affect the acquisition of class features, skill points, or feats. They do, however, add to the character’s class level (for all classes held) for the purpose of level-based abilities. Failure to take the level of bloodline before reaching the required level means that the character gains no further bloodline abilities (including that level) and suffers a 20% penalty on earned experience until the debt is satisfied.
The fourth and final option for adding variety to character races is the racial paragon class. Racial paragons are, as the name suggests, ideal examples of the strength and abilities of the character’s race. Each of these three-level core classes is available only to members of the appropriate race, and grant special abilities that enhance the character’s natural talents in some manner. A dwarf paragon, at 1st level, gains the ability to add their paragon class level to all Craft checks related to stone or metal and gains a significant improvement to his stonecunning ability. By comparison, an elf paragon gains exceptional visual acuity and an additional +2 on her save versus Enchantments.
There are 11 paragon classes, one for each of the seven races in the
Player’s Handbook, and also drow, half-dragon, orc, and tielfing. Levels of racial paragon do not count against a character’s multi-classing limits and may be freely mixed with other classes or even taken at 1st level. Just in case anyone is wondering, the seven core races do include humans, who also have a racial paragon class.
The next chapter, Classes, does for character classes what the first chapter did for races. It begins with a selection of variant versions of the character classes in the Player’s Handbook. These changes give some thoughts on how a class could undergo minor alteration to give it a different appearance. For example, take a cleric, reduce the hit dice to a d6, use the poor base attack bonus progression, and add a few class skills and up the skill point allotment to 6 + Int modifier per level. Leave him with Light Armor Proficiency, but add in the bardic ability Lore at 1st level. Grant Knowledge as a bonus domain and add a few divination spells from the wizard/sorcerer list to his spell selection and you have a cloistered cleric. Similar adjustments are made to provide the totem barbarian, the bardic sage, the savage bard, the drudic avenger, the thug, monkish fighting styles, variant paladins for other alignments, the planar and urban rangers, the wilderness rogue, the battle sorcerer, and the domain wizard.
Specialist wizard variants open new opportunities for wizard characters, offering to grant new abilities based on their specialty in exchange for standard abilities. An abjurer might choose to give up her bonus feats during advancement in order to be able to generate a protective field that shields against physical and magical attacks (on a limited basis). Similarly, a necromancer might find it beneficial to give up his familiar in exchange for a skeletal minion that becomes more powerful as the master advances. Each specialist is given three different options; one in exchange for taking a familiar, the second exchanging for bonus feats, and the third replaces the specialist’s additional spells per day. Also included are some thoughts on how these changes might affect a campaign.
It’s worth noting, at this point, that scattered throughout the text are sidebars labeled Behind the Curtain and House Rules. Behind the Curtain functions in exactly the same way as it does in the
DUNGEON MASTER’S Guide, providing insight into consequences or changes that the use of a particular option might bring. House Rules, on the other hand, describes optional rules that the designers use in their own campaigns, such as Andy Collins’ Spontaneous Domain Casting, which replaces and functions exactly as the cleric’s ability to spontaneously cast cure spells. Andy offers some insight on how this will affect game balance, but it’s nice to see that someone else has the same ideas that I do. I’ve been using a rule that is almost identical to this for about a year, now.
The “spontaneous divine caster” option permits you to build a character that channels divine energy like a sorcerer, giving them the ability to use any spell they can cast, but lessening their selection of spells. This isn’t a new idea, and there have been classes that do exactly this presented previously (the two that come immediately to mind are the avatar (from Green Ronin’s
Avatar’s Handbook and the favored soul (from WotC’s own
Miniature’s Handbook). There’s really not much more to be said about this option.
Now, if changing the mechanics of the classes seems a bit too ambitious for you, there are some other changes that aren’t quite so dramatic that you can work. Try changing class features, instead. Try replacing the ranger’s favored enemy ability with favored environment. Instead of gaining the favored enemy bonus against a specific type of creature, the ranger gains a +2 bonus on Hide, Knowledge (nature) [or Knowledge (underground)], Listen, Move Silently, Spot, and Survival checks whenever she is operating within her favored environment. There are four other examples given in
Unearthed Arcana, but it’s easy enough to come up with your own.
A new option presented here represents a change that I (and other people I know) have already made to my campaign; the idea of making certain base character classes into prestige classes. Personally, although I understand the reasoning, I don’t agree with the paladin as a base class. I think that paladinhood should be something that you earn by working your way up to it. Similarly, the base class of ranger has been replaced by the woodsman (from
Wheel of Time in my campaign and the ranger made a prestige class that specializes in guerilla warfare.
Unearthed Arcana offers the official take on both of those options, as well as the prestigious bard.
Gestalt characters change the very way the game is played, essentially allowing each character to take two classes at every level, combining the best aspects of each. This permits a great degree of flexibility, as a character can be easily developed in almost any direction desired, but it also makes characters much more powerful. This necessitates a brief section for the GM on maintaining game balance with gestalt characters.
The final option in the chapter on classes is generic classes. Again, this is more the basis for a campaign itself than something that can be added into a current campaign. Under this system, there are only three classes; expert, warrior, and spellcaster. In short, experts are masters of skills, but also have a decent selection of feats, warriors are masters of combat, and spellcasters are masters of magic. Specialized class abilities, such as favored enemy and familiars are handled through the feat system. Players decide at the time of character creation how to arrange their saving throws and choose their own class skills, making characters extremely customized. Spellcasters may choose to be arcane or divine, and gain and cast spells in a fashion similar to the sorcerer. The decision of type really only affects the kinds of scrolls that may be used and which ability score controls the character’s spellcasting. Spellcasters may learn any spell from the cleric, druid, or sorcerer/wizard lists.
Chapter 3 looks at some different ways of developing your character. I felt that this was simultaneously the strongest and weakest chapter of the book. The “maximum ranks, limited choices” option of skill acquisition assumes that a character, instead of having a number of points to spend on skills, will automatically purchase the maximum number of ranks allowed in any skill he or she takes. A skill is either known or unknown under this system. If a character knows a skill, they are assumed to have the maximum number of ranks available to them in that skill. If this system seems familiar, it should! The sample beginning classes in the
Player’s Handbook are built using this option. While this does greatly simplify the process of character generation, it also increases the complexity of multi-classing somewhat.
“Level-based skills” simplifies the skill system even further. Using this variant, every character has access to every skill in the game. If using a class skill, they add their character level plus any modifiers to the roll. If using a cross-class skill, they add only modifiers. Feats such as Alertness become the medium by which characters are defined, instead of by their skills. You can’t get much simpler than that. DMs should be aware that if using either of these options, your characters will be speaking
a lot of languages, due to the nature of the system.
On the other hand, if you feel that skill checks are too simple,
Unearthed Arcana goes in the other direction as well. Under the base skill system, the difficulty of a skill is assessed by its Difficulty Class (DC). The “complex skill checks” system extends this idea by requiring multiple checks for certain complicated and time-consuming tasks. This can be a useful tactic is the desire is to build suspense or tension. The DC of the original check still applies, but additionally, the DM sets a number of successful rolls required to complete the task, and a maximum number of failures. If the maximum number of failed rolls is met before the number of successful rolls, the task fails. The book carefully examines each skill and informs the DM whether the use of the skill lends itself well to the “complex skill checks” system and offers advice on how many successes/failures should be required.
Character traits, and the similar system of flaws, offer a means by which to build depth in a character’s personality. Traits are aspects of a character’s personality, background, or physique that make her better at some things and worse at others. Traits are balanced within themselves. For example, a character whose takes the Easygoing trait is naturally friendly. He gains a +1 bonus on Gather Information checks, but suffers a -1 penalty to Intimidate and Sense Motive checks. 35 traits are described in
Unearthed Arcana, but there are others that could be come up with and advice on designing new ones is offered in the form of a sidebar.
Flaws, on the other hand, are like the flip side of feats. Where a feat allows a character to be better then normal at a task, a flaw hinders them in some way. Normally, flaws are taken only at the time of character creation, and each character may have up to two flaws. Each flaw taken grants a bonus feat.
Spelltouched feats are an interesting new idea that requires exposure to certain magical effects as a prerequisite. The idea is that a character exposed to a certain magical effect may find that some of the magic “rubs off on them.” For example, a character who has survived an application of the death knell spell might find themselves gaining temporary hit points from nearby individuals who are dying. While these feats are balanced against the standard feats in the
Player’s Handbook, they do make magic a bit more prominent in the campaign.
I’ve noticed that some people complain that it is ridiculous that fighters automatically gain proficiency in all weaponry. To be fair, I’ve also heard complaints from the other side of the fence, with people saying that forcing other classes to spend a feat for every martial weapon they want to learn to use is unfair, as well.
Unearthed Arcana offers good news for both camps, in the form of weapon group proficiencies. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, separating martial (and exotic) weapons into logical groups, and permitting characters to purchase proficiency in an entire group for the cost of a single feat. Newly-created heroes have access to one or more groups (as many as five for the fighter), based on character class.
In campaigns in which the focus is on action, with less “downtime” between adventures, the process of manufacturing magical items often gets put aside, as taking the time to do so would mean sitting out of an adventure or three. While this perception is realistic, it is also boring. The optional system of craft points takes care of some of that problem, by assuming that the character has been working on the item for some time, but has only recently gotten around to finishing it off. From the standpoint of the players, it appears as though the item had been crafted overnight. This system is designed to work with the standard rules for crafting items, and works equally well with non-magical items (anything that requires a Craft check). This system also introduces four new feats; Craft Alchemical Item, Craft Masterwork Armor, Craft Masterwork Ranged Weapon, and Craft Masterwork Weapon.
When building higher-level characters, I like to start the character at 1st level and track their progression all the way through to the level I intend them to be. I find that this promotes a sense of realism and it helps me to see how the character has developed. The character background option presented in
Unearthed Arcana simply automates that process somewhat by using die rolls to help focus your decisions about what classes, skills, and feats a character might have acquired in his or her climb to the top. While less imaginative players could make use of this system to help build a higher-level character, I find it tailor-made for NPCs! With a few die rolls, I can flesh out an NPC’s background while picking up a varied selection of skills, feats, and classes (and even gear, contacts, and reputation) that suit the background being developed!
Moving on to the chapter on Adventuring, here are changes to the very heart of the game, the way that things work on a base level. The class defense bonus takes a page from
d20 Modern and grants characters a defense bonus to Armor Class based on class and level (it does not stack with armor bonus, however). Obviously, this system is designed for use in a campaign where armor is uncommon or is being avoided for some reason. On the reverse of the same coin is the armor as damage reduction option. This draws from the Star Wars d20 game and rules that, in addition to providing defensive properties, armor also serves to absorb damage. Used separately, either system is well-balanced and playable, but if combined in the course of a single campaign, characters may be faced with some difficult decisions; whether to spend the money on armor that not only defends, but also absorbs damage or to be footloose and fancy free, but somewhat richer. A third variant introduced here proposes that armor not only serves to protect, but instead of reducing damage, converts a certain extent of damage to non-lethal damage.
Unearthed Arcana several variant means of handling injury and death in D&D. The first is the injury system, borrowed (with permission) from Green Ronin’s
Mutants and Masterminds. Under this system, hit points are not tracked. Instead, characters make a Fortitude save to determine the extend of damage inflicted by an attack (the DC of the save is determined by the damage value of the attack). Initially, the most likely result is a hit, which simply has the effect of reducing further Fortitude saves against injury by -1 per hit accrued. It is also possible for an attack to disable a character. If a disabled character is hit, he becomes dying. Dying characters must make a Fortitude save each turn or die. If attacked with nonlethal force, the effects are similar, but less deadly.
Vitality and wound points, on the other hand, borrow a page from the
d20 Star Wars game from Wizards of the Coast. In this system, characters posses a number of vitality points determined by their class and level (in the same manner as hit points in the standard D&D rules). Vitality points represent minor injuries, while wound points are representative of more serious effects. A character has a number of wound points equal to their Constitution score. With this method, critical hits are taken directly to wound points instead of doing additional damage. There is no penalty for losing vitality points save that when a character runs out of vitality points, any further damage is taken from wound points. Running out of wound points, on the other hand, can result in incapacitation and death.
Where the previous two options have changed the way that hit points and injury work, the following options are presented more as addenda to the existing system. The changes they make are more subtle, but just as far-reaching. Under the reserve point system, each hero has a store of reserve points equal to their hit point total. When the hero is wounded, reserve points are exchanged to recover hit points on a one-for-one basis. The reserve points are then recovered later through natural healing.
There are also means presented of varying the massive death threshold (basing it on Constitution, Hit Dice, or creature’s size category), alternate results for failing the Fortitude save, and a method of scaling the massive damage save based on the amount of damage suffered. Even the -10 hit point rule is not sacred, with a variation that makes 0 hit points the limit. Characters reduced to 0 hit points make a Fortitude save to avoid unconsciousness or death.
Action points are a familiar mechanic to anyone familiar with
d20 Modern, though they have undergone some adaptation here to make them more suitable to the genre. Far from being restricted to altering rolls and using a class talent, action points may be used to activate a class ability, boost defense, emulate a feat that the character does not possess, take an extra attack, boost a spell, recall a spell that the character has cast, or stabilize oneself. They can even be used to improved feats that the character has.
If combat isn’t realistic enough for you, you might find the facing rules of interest. The standard D&D rules assume that character shift and move about during combat, constantly changing facing. These rules dispense with that idea, making combat a much more complex affair, but at the same time offering a variety of new strategic options. Rules are presented making use of both square and hexed grids and include a new way of handling the protection afforded by shields.
If you find that static modifier for attack rolls, checks, and other d20 rolls have resulted in a game that is too predictable, you might consider the variable modifiers rules. In effect, any modifier higher than +1 or lower than -1 is replaced with one or more dice to be rolled alongside the d20 to modify it. Thus, instead of a 4th-level fighter getting a static bonus of +4, he rolls 1d20+1d8. The variable could be anything between 1 and 8, making the final result much less predictable.
Unearthed Arcana even offers a method for taking the
d20 out of the
d20 System, replacing it with a bell curve and 3d6! For large combats, the DM might even choose to let the players make all the die rolls, making defense checks to avoid attacks instead of having the DM roll an attack, and making magic checks to determine the effectiveness of their spells on opponents.
Magic hasn’t gotten away untouched, either. Magic ratings replace the caster level for determining variable factors of spells, making multi-class casters slightly more powerful. There are rules for building themed lists for monster summoning, as well as a method by which casters can customize their summoning list. The metamagic components option, which I particularly favor, permits casters to apply certain metamagic effects to spells by using specialized and often very expensive components in the casting. For example, if a few chunks of cooled lava from an erupting volcano are used in the casting of a
fire storm, the spell is considered to have the effect of the Maximize Spell metamagic feat, even though it has not been specially prepared as such. If that isn’t radical enough for you, consider introducing spontaneous metamagic feats into your campaign, whereby a caster may either have a set number of spontaneous metamagic uses per day, or may choose to sacrifice spell slots (or prepared spells) to power a metamagic spell.
I’ve heard many complaints about the “fire and forget” system of magic (though I don’t mind it myself). Apparently, so have the designers, because Unearthed Arcana provides two new ways of handling magic. The first, spell points, assumes that casters receive a certain number of spell points per day. Wizards, clerics, and druids still prepare their spells each day, but instead of being limited to only those spells chosen, they prepare a list of spells for each level they can cast (based on the number of spells slots they would normally receive) from among those they know. They may then access any of these spells throughout the day, by paying the appropriate number of spell points. Each spell costs a number of points to cast, based on its level.
The other option is recharge magic. In this variant, characters don’t have a hard limit on spells per day. Instead, each spell requires time to gather the necessary energies to cast once more. In general, the more powerful a spell, the longer the time it takes to recharge. As with the spell point system, wizards, clerics, and druids prepare their lists of available spells each day, while spontaneous casters are limited to their base list.
In addition, Andy Collins offer us two house rules from his campaign; one a system of recharging magical items and the other a variant by which all casters become spontaneous casters. The latter is simply a variant of the spell point system in which the caster prepares a list of spells available for casting that day, but then may cast any from that list, expending the appropriate slot as she does so. Thus, a wizard might have four 1st-level spells available and may cast any of those four spells up to four times in total. The recharging magic items rule permits characters capable of crafting a magic item to recharge one for a fraction of the cost of creating a new one.
Legendary weapons, taken from
Artifacts of the Ages: Swords & Staves from The Game Mechanics (and published in softcover through Green Ronin Publishing), present a system by which weapons grow in power relative to their possessor, making it less likely that a character will switch out weapons constantly throughout her career. This system also introduces the four scion prestige classes that allow characters to unlock the full potential of their weapons. A new variant on the legendary weapons variation is the item familiar rule. In this variant, a character may spend a feat to form a supernatural bond with a favored magical item, granting it special abilities as the character goes up in level by investing life energy (XP) into the item.
Finally, incantations make magic available to everyone, not just those trained in its use. An incantation is a ritual that can be used by any character, not just one trained in magic, who knows the proper gestures and phrases. On the plus side, incantations don’t use spell slots, they don’t have to be prepared ahead of time, and they can be used an unlimited number of times per day. On the other hand, they are time consuming, often expensive, some can only be cast under certain conditions, and they can be very dangerous. In most cases, if a spell goes wrong, there is no effect, it simply fails. Not so with many incantations. The price for failure may range from misinformation to immediate and irrevocable death.
Last, but certainly not least,
Unearthed Arcana offer a handful of variants that work to add variety on a campaign-wide level, affecting all characters equally. These elements represent both shifts in how the game works and in the way that certain game elements are handled. Beyond that, they also suggest new options for feats, spells, and other game mechanics.
Contacts introduce the idea that the characters do not live in a static environment. The concept is simple enough. Each character has a number of unnamed contacts on his sheet. When a situation arises where a contact would be helpful, the player expends a contact and the PC has access to a friendly NPC. Contacts come in three sorts; information (useful by virtue of what they know), influence (useful by virtue of who they know), and skill (useful for what they do). As a character rises in level, they gain additional contact slots to define as necessary.
Reputation is another too-oft ignored aspect of role-playing. With this variant, each character has a reputation score defined by their deeds or level. This is where the DM must make a decision. Characters can either gain reputation automatically as they increase in level, or they can be forced to earn reputation through their actions. Personally, I intend to use a combination of both systems.
Honor is not a new concept to D&D. It was first introduced back in 1E in
Oriental Adventures. The system presented here has definite ties to those glory days, but it’s been reworked and made more adaptable to non-oriental campaigns. It can be used to supplement alignment, or replace it altogether. Honor is provided two methods that make it easy to use; mechanical (providing a strict set of rules for gaining and losing honor), or free-form (putting the decisions in the hand of the DM). There are also notes on handling family honor and some sample codes of honor.
Some places and items are so evil as to actually mark or taint a character in a very real fashion. Like honor, taint can be used to supplement or replace alignment. The concept is simple. The longer a character is exposed to a tainted object or place, the more likely they are to become corrupted. While taint is generally considered an undesirable thing, certain individuals have learned to embrace it, using it to enhance their abilities. Two such beings are presented here; the tainted sorcerer and the tainted warrior.
Sanity was first introduced in
Call of Cthulhu d20 as a method of simulating the classic systems slow decline into madness when confronted with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. In similar fashion, it can be used to give a typical D&D game a feeling of dark horror. The system described here is pretty much identical to the original, with characters beginning with Wisdom x 5 sanity points and being required to make a sanity check on percentile dice when faced with some nameless horror. Failure indicates temporary or even permanent insanity. Taken to its logical extreme,
anything could cause a loss of sanity, from meeting an undead creature to casting certain spells.
Test-based prerequisites are another thing I’ve been using for some time in my own campaign, but it’s nice to see the subject broached here. The idea behind this variant is that in-game NPCs really have no way of distinguishing the game mechanics behind prerequisites for prestige classes. Does the master of the assassin’s guild really know that an applicant has 8 ranks in Hide and Move Silently? Probably not. Instead of basing entry into prestige classes on mechanical requirements, test-based prerequisites require the applicant to undergo a test for entry into the class that will draw most heavily upon the necessary skills, feats, or what-have-you. While this may mean that a character who doesn’t quite meet the requirements gets in, it’s more realistic and may allow players to sneak into a prestige class a level or two early, if they want it badly enough.
The final variant rule serves to make the DM’s job a little easier. This is done by doing away with the Experience Award table found in the
DUNGEON MASTER’S Guide. Instead, every monster is assigned a flat value, based on its CR, and this is divided equally among all participants. It simply serves to make the math easier at the end of the evening. Consummately, the experience point progression has been changed somewhat to reflect the increased rate of advancement, with more points being required to reach the higher levels. While it does have the intended effect, it also nullifies the built-in balancing system provided by Encounter Levels. This option is not for beginners.
Unearthed Arcana rounds out with a few suggestions on how you can have your cake and eat it too. After all, this book is full of great suggestions, and some of you might want to try them all. Trouble is, you’ve only got one campaign. How can you possibly use everything this book offers? This section, an afterword if you will, gives three ideas for handling such a circumstance. I’ll not go into detail here (buy the book!), except to say that it’s given me a few ideas of my own.
Critical Hit
Unearthed Arcana is all about options, and there are plenty of options here. This is a great book is you’re like me, and enjoy tinkering with the system and the way the game works. If skills play a less-important role in your campaign, then you’ll find the Level-Based Skill System just what you’re looking for. If you want to increase the personalization of characters, then the generic classes option may be just what you need.
Not everything in here will be suitable to all campaigns, but that’s the real beauty of this book. Through these rules, you can make your campaign unlike anyone else’s. The best campaigns aren’t played precisely by the rules; they’re adjusted and tampered with, stretched nearly to the breaking points, and then snapped back. That’s personalization, and it’s what separates the fun campaigns from the merely adequate ones!
Critical Fumble
Okay, the major weakness of UA is price versus usage. There is a lot of material here, no question of that, but it’s a lot of material that is incompatible within itself. That is, to use everything UA offers, you will
need those suggestions on how to fit everything in. In addition, how much of it could you do yourself? I own the
Star Wars d20 rules, so if I wanted to use the wounds/vitality points system, I don’t need UA to do it. Likewise, I also own
Mutants & Masterminds, and it’s easy enough to convert the injury system over myself without someone spoon-feeding it to me. I’d say that fully about one-third of what I will be using from UA is already in use in my campaign, from other sources I’ve collected or come up with myself. Of the remaining two-thirds, about one-third of that doesn’t fit my campaign style or I don’t want to use it. Still, it’s that one-third that I do want to use that I didn’t have already that makes this book worth it for me. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I strongly recommend browsing a copy before making a final decision.
More specifically, the system of craft points seems a little wonky to me. Why are the Craft Masterwork items feats necessary? Under the current system, they aren’t needed, and since a skill check is still required to craft non-magical items, it seems pointless to require both a feat
and that the higher DC be met. I can see the usefulness of the Craft Alchemical Item feat because it permits non-spellcasters to craft alchemical equipment (and I may add this to the list of feats in my regular game, but the only reasoning I can see for the others is to reduce two Craft checks (one for the masterwork component and the other for the item) to one. What’s the point?
Artwork is a minor nitpick, mostly because I hate to criticize artwork when I can’t draw a Euclidean line with an s-curve. Here is a lot of good and a few not so good. I’m not going to name names, but if you thumb through, you’ll see a good example of what I’m driving at. One the plus side, it seems to be new stuff, with no recycled imagery. On the other hand, some of the artwork just isn’t up to WotC standards.
Coup de Grace
I’m drawn to say that this is the most useful volume that I’ve seen from WotC in a while. Like I said above, I already use about a third of what is in here, but even so, I’ve found some new ideas that I will be incorporating. One thing is for sure, these 224 pages are absolutely packed with new variants and options, which is very much in the spirit of the original
Unearthed Arcana. You’ll have to decide if what you will use is worth the cost of the book. It was for me.
One the OGL front, big kudos to WotC for making darned-near everything in this volume open content. With the exception of the artwork and a few monstrous terms, everything here has been made available for use in other sources (with proper credit given, of course). They didn’t have to do that, and it shows a big step forward in WotC’s policies. In the past, they’ve been rather tight-lipped about their new materials and I’m glad to see them softening up.
In the end, I think this one deserves the B it gets. It has a lot to offer, but not everyone is going to use everything herein, and some people won’t get as much use from it as others. In the end, you’re going to have to peruse a copy and decide if it’s worth it for you. I hope this review helps you in that respect and I’d love to hear your thoughts. One last good point; it does have an extensive table of contents and a solid index, so at least finding the reference you need isn’t too hard.
To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
