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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 2011188" data-attributes="member: 3400">Unearthed Arcana isn't so much a unified rulebook for a game as it is a packaging of a la carte rules that DMs and players can evaluate and add to their campaigns as they see fit to enhance their game. I remember James Wyatt referring to Oriental Adventures as a sort of dim sum experience. Grab the bits you want, eschew the rest. For OA with its mix of Rokugan and more traditional D&D OA, that was true. But UA takes idea and pushes it a lot farther. With a $35 price tag, UA doesn't come cheap. I expect most people will make their decision on whether to buy it based on how much of the content appeals to them and how important it is to have the rules around for ready reference. For myself, I don't even own it yet. I checked it out from my local library (yes, my library system carries D&D 3rd edition materials). I'm leaning toward buying it assuming it never makes it into the SRD (a possibility, I suppose since it is OGL content).Anyway, on with the content:Chapter 1 is about customizing characters from a racial perspective. There are climate/regional variants of the standard races to draw ideas from if you want to have an ice-age or arctic campaign, a desert campaign, a jungle campaign, and so on. There are also elemental variants on standard races and common humanoids. For the standard European-style campaign, these might not be too useful. But they might see more use in an Al-Qadim-style or Planescape style campaign quite easily.Bloodlines allow PCs to pick up related abilities throughout the course of their adventuring based on having some unusual ancestor. The additional powers, gradually added on to throughout the character's career, are balanced by effectively tying up a few of the character's levels, ultimately slowing advancement in the core class. There are also paragon classes. These are multi-class options that allow a dwarf to pick up more hard-core dwarven characteristics, elves to pick up more hard-core elven characteristics, and so on. Some of the powers involve an ability boost, improved darkvision, better save bonuses, and so on.I didn't find much use for this chapter for my own gaming interests. But that's me. In general, with this chapter and a few other spots later on in the book, I'm sure some readers will cry "MUNCHKIN!" and they'd be sort of right. With many of the options in this book, you can munchkin the character's out quite a bit. But then again, who are any of us to cast aspersions on anybody else's gaming styles? People can play with this as much as they want (and the DMs and players agree). Chapter 2 gets into customing characters from a class perspective. There are plenty of character class variants, trading off one power to get another. Some of these are quite intriguing including barbarians of different totems, cloistered clerics, and savage bards. They introduce a new feat called Urban Tracking, the art of following or tracking down someone in a town environment. This one uses Gather Info as the skill check rather than Survival. I'm adding this one to my campaign.There are quite a few variants on wizard specialists with considerable additional powers related to their specialties in exchange for wizard abilities like being able to attract a familiar or bonus spells. There are spontaneous divine casters, other variants on character class abilities like a slightly different form of rage, a different mechanic for handling turning checks, gestalt characters that allow simultaneous advancements in two classes, fractional BAB and Base Save bonuses (to handle that instances of having a 2nd level character with a BAB of 0 if you've multiclassed as rogue/wizard). Bards, Rangers, and Paladins are written up as prestige classes.  There are generic classes with all of the standard class abilities bought as if they're feats.Chapter 3 is about handling character builds but without redesigning races and classes.  There are simplified ways of handling skill points. There are alterantive ways of adjudicating skill use to draw out dramatic tension. There are traits that can be picked up for minor advantages and disadvantages. There are a few oddball additional feats like Spelltouched, which suggests that maybe magic could have a lasting effect on characters (assuming they have been affected by a spell before and have a feat slot to spend). Weapon groups have returned to allow for more subtle handling of weapon use know-how without lumping all martial weapons together. There is an alternative means of handling item creation - craft points. Now this is far less ground-breaking than I would have hoped, magic item creation being a royal pain in 3rd edition as far as I'm concerned. But it does allow you to kind of ignore how much time crafting an item requires if the character has enough craft points to spend. Finally, there are tables to allow you to roll up a character at higher levels and backfill his previous experiences. I know some people don't like this kind of character generation but it can bring up some interesting ideas and present a variety of challenges.Chapter 4 takes us to more of the main rules tinkering that will affect play time. They pull in ideas from other d20 games with a defense bonus (like in Star Wars), armor affording a certain amount of damage reduction (I kind of like this idea), various other types of damage and healing (injury systems, healing converts lethal damage to non-lethal, vitality points), there are ideas for different results from massive damage, combat facing, using a hex grid, and rolling all d20 checks on a 3d6 bell curve instead. I'm not sure why they didn't use a 2d10, personally, but there you go.This chapter is where some very interesting chunks of the rules really are. And I think it will also be the most used chapter of the book. I'm sorely tempted by both the vitality damage rules and the armor as DR rule. I already make significant use of the hex grid ideas anyway since hexes are generally superior to squares when it comes to modeling free movement on a tabletop.Chapter 5 moves into magic. The first topic out of the gates is magic ratings. Ever have a multiclass character who had a hard time getting his magic to affect a level-appropriate challenging monster because of his lowered caster levels? Have no fear, here's a way to handle that. Like BAB, a character's magic rating goes up with input from all of his classes (though at different rates). This doesn't affect the number of spells castable, but does affect caster level for damage, range, and the all-important caster level checks for overcoming SR. This is something I WILL be using in my game.There are also variants on summoned monsters (tailored lists for the caster involved), special metamagic components (use this very expensive component with your spell and get it metamagic-enhanced for free), spontaneous use of metamagic feats, spell points, spells limited by their own recharge times, incantation magic (hello Call of Cthulhu-style rituals), and legendary magic items.I suspect this will also be a heavily used chapter.Chapter 6 takes us to other supplementary rules that can be used in a campaign. These include a more systematized way of handling character's regular contacts. It also has rules on reputation (like in Star Wars), honor, taint (originally from OA), sanity (CoC), and having test-based prerequisites for getting into a prestige class. One of the most interesting aspects of this book lies in the sidebars. In these, you'll find off the cuff analyses of what some of the variant rules can do to a game. There are also house rules used by some of the designers at WotC. I find these pretty useful.And at the very end of the book, there's a checklist of the variant rules with room for jotting down notes. Kind of a nice little touch overall.So, there's a lot to UA, much of which any single campaign will not use. I'll probably pick this up sometime when my FLGS has a sale so I can support them without dipping too deeply into my lunch money. Until then, the rules sections I will be using are simple enough and small enough that I can commit them to a briefing sheet for my players with little fuss.</blockquote>

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