What should have been included in 1E's UA that wasn't in there?

[tx7321]

Without diving into an edition war (pre-UA vs Post-UA)

I'd like to have seen PC classes for: beserker taken from the original MM and worked up (ditch the scaredy-cat of magic uber-barbarian), a Witch/Warlock (worked up from the Dragon Mag), an Anti-Paladin, Gygax's hunter (this class was completed by EGG, I think copies are floating around, worth checking out if you can find it), and a sensible knight (replacing the uber-cavalier, and I'd loose that whimpy sounding name too "cavalier" sounds like a French desert ). Edited- and some kind of assassin/monk mix (similar to a Ninja but called something different).

 

[dcas]

I'm so pleased with Unearthed Arcana overall that I would be hard-pressed to name anything else that I think should be in it.

Anti-paladins are useless as player characters. The Hunter (not the Forester) class to which you're referring is kind of interesting, though.

 

[tx7321]

Thanks dcas, I knew that didn't sound right. Fixed.
BTW your probably right about the anti-paladin, but it might have been interesting none the less.

 

[the Jester]

The mystic, savant, mounteback, etc.- all the things he was working on for the PH2 that we'll never see....

 

[DaveyJones]

common sense.

 

[painandgreed]

Berserker instead of barbarian would have been nice. However, the only thing I think they really needed would be demihuman progression methods past what they already increased them to. UA was basically a collection of issues that most people had already come up with house rules for plus classes and spells. Although the new demihuman level limits helped, what it really needed was infinate progression with some sort of XP penalty to keep them balanced with other classes. Comliness turned out to be just another dump stat, mostly because of a lack of systems to support it. Similarly, social standing was interesting and I used it some, but it really needed a system to go along with it so it wasn't just fluff.

 

[Mark Hope]

common sense.

Other than that, I'd also vote for the Anti-Paladin, but tweaked for playability. I thought that they were ultra cool. Of course, I was 14 when I read about them, which might explain something...

 

[Rothe]

... Similarly, social standing was interesting and I used it some, but it really needed a system to go along with it so it wasn't just fluff.

Traveller (1977) and IIRC Pendragon (also 1985) had social standing systems. Traveller having it as a numerical stat and although a sci-fi rpg it might give you some ideas how to use it to have an in-game effect. IIRC Pendragon had the effects nicely laid out for an early medieval environment.

 

[T. Foster]

The mountebank, mystic, and savant classes (I could continue to live without the jester, I suspect). More/better rules for priests/clerics of specific deities and how they differ from the standard PH cleric (amplifying the tidbits from the 1983 World of Greyhawk set). More info on adjusting standard classes to fit better with demi-human races -- for instance, Gygax has mentioned that the inclusion of the dark elf ranger was not meant to imply dark elves that matched the PH ranger class description (surface dwelling, good aligned, allied with druids, etc.) but rather a class that fulfilled for drow society the same function that human rangers do for human society. More info on extra-planar (and outer space) adventuring -- from the MM2 and his articles in Dragon it's clear Gygax was giving these issues a lot of thought around this time, and it's a shame more of it didn't see print.

All of these things (and more) I'm sure would've been in Gygax's 2E AD&D (and really UA was nothing more than a stopgap to keep TSR afloat until 2E AD&D could be released), but, alas, we never got to see it.

 

[Lanefan]

I'd have liked to see more detail on the non-material planes...to this day I'm still not sure how the Ethereal and Astral planes are "supposed" to work; if they ever come up in my game I just improvise something and hope it bears any resemblance to what I improvised however many years ago I last had to think about it...

I'd also like to have seen a different name for the Barbarian class (though I've always quite liked the class itself), and had "Barbarian" become a sub-race of Human; Human had no sub-races at the time but everything else did; it would have been easy to do.

And some sort of non-adventuring Artificer class would have been handy - these the people who spend their lives creating magic items - to formalize a bit better how magic items are made while still keeping it (mostly) out of the realm of what the average PC would do.

Allowing Rangers to be any alignment would have been sensible, too.

Lanefan