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

[replicant2]

milieu

Now there's a Gygax-ism if there ever was one!

 

[tx7321]

Chaotic Evil has always been difficult to play in a party, even an evil party. Lawful evil, however, is quite doable.

I haven't seen anyone start evil and go good, but I'd like to.

Hey, you should have seen my group. CE was a breeze for these psychos. Enslaving villages, sending undead zombies raiding homes, one guy even had a half orc dine on an elf sandwhich (thats right an elf between 2 slices of bread). They would have had no problem with an anti-paladin class.

 

[Anson Caralya]

A chapter entitled "The fighter: In Memoriam," since that class was effectively rendered obsolete by the barbarian and the cavalier.

I disagree. With single and double weapon specialization the UA fighter had much more combat punch than a barbarian with the same xp's. The barbarian also had a number of restrictions in use of magic items and association with magic-users which clearly differentiated him from a fighter. All in all, I thought barbarians might have been a bit overpowered (the original Dragon write-up which I believe excluded use of all magic items was more balanced IMO), but I certainly didn't think they rendered fighters obsolete.

As for the cavalier, yeah, they could out-fight the fighter, and that was a fundamental problem. The lack of missile weapon use, inflexibility in armor choice, and code of conduct didn't balance it out. However, the RP elements of a cavalier were entirely different from a typical fighter. (And giving cavaliers (and paladins) a method to improve ability scores without giving the same to other classes was just a glaring imbalance. And the cavalier's xp progression should have been slower than the fighter's, maybe similar to the paladin's. I didn't much like the 1E cavalier.)

 

[VirgilCaine]

There may have been write-ups of some/all of these classes by other authors in the post-Gygax era but (at least for me) that's not the same thing.

Ah.

 

[grodog]

A jester NPC class (designed by someone other than Gygax) appeared in Dragon #60 (April 82). [snip] He specified that his jester wouldn't be the same as the one that had already been published.

IIRC, Dragon 60 was Roger E. Moore's jester, and Gygax alluded to Rob Kuntz's inclusion of a Jester in The Maze of Xaene 1983 AD&D Open Tourney module (later published by Kuntz's Creations Unlimited, then updated to 3.x by Necromancer Games). Kuntz's Jester in there is less of a character class, per se, and more of a "funky guy with funny powers"; FWIW, apparently Gygax's vision for the Jester was also going to be a subclass of the bard (!).

 

[grodog]

This is another area where I think UA represents an intermediate stepping stone on the way to Gygax's never-published 2E AD&D -- there are socio-economic class tables in UA, and at least the implication that the character's social class determines what classes he's eligible to pursue (e.g. if you have SEC 1 you can only be a thief or assassin, etc.) -- but it's something of an afterthought (except for cavalier characters), nothing like its importance in Gygax's later work -- Mythus, Living Fantasy, the Yggsburgh setting for C&C. I strongly suspect Gygax's 2E would've expanded the role of SEC in AD&D to something more like the latter works.

Social class was also strongly hinted at as far back as the 1980 Greyhawk folio, though there really weren't any rules to back it up, I think that the material published there aligns with Gygax's outlines in Dragon 72 for the Cavalier and then later in UA.

 

[MerricB]

Social class was also strongly hinted at as far back as the 1980 Greyhawk folio, though there really weren't any rules to back it up, I think that the material published there aligns with Gygax's outlines in Dragon 72 for the Cavalier and then later in UA.

There's a note by Gygax in the DMG that a Social Class table would depend too much on individual campaigns and would serve no useful purpose...

Cheers!

 

[ephemeron]

I disagree. With single and double weapon specialization the UA fighter had much more combat punch than a barbarian with the same xp's. The barbarian also had a number of restrictions in use of magic items and association with magic-users which clearly differentiated him from a fighter. All in all, I thought barbarians might have been a bit overpowered (the original Dragon write-up which I believe excluded use of all magic items was more balanced IMO), but I certainly didn't think they rendered fighters obsolete.

I've never been in a 1e game that used UA, but on paper, the UA barbarian strikes me as the extreme case of 1e's approach to balance. On the one hand, they have lots and lots of bonuses and special abilities; on the other, they have ability-score requirements that aren't trivial to get by random roll, a unique restriction on associating with spellcasters (which means friction in most parties), and steep XP requirements.

How well did these guys work in actual play? Just surviving long enough to get 6001 XP, reach second level, and be allowed to let clerics heal you seems like quite an accomplishment.

 

[tx7321]

IMHO they sucked. It wasn't just their power, it was their imported personalities. I wouldn't expect Conan to toss a perfectly good magical sword because it glowed ("mmm...good...light" is what I'd expect) and the disassociation with MUs was stupid as well ("don't cast sleep, let the group get wiped out instead...I think not). Barbarians are all about being the alpha male, that means the best of everything on thier terms..and being brutes about getting it, and getting others to see them as top dog. If a 1st level barbarian new a member of his group had a +3 ring, he'd attempt to take it for himself, not throw it away. Sure, barbarians don't like magic being used against them, fear it, but sure as hell they'd use it, and at any level. To include this as some "balancing" element was foolish.

The caviliers "fight to the end" import personality was also bizzare (what ever happened to letting players choose what they want to do). Honestly, I don't know what the hell Gygax was thinking.

Best bet if you want to play a barbarian: use the beserker per MM and be done with it. +2 or 2 attacks (while beserking), AC 7, are a subclass of fighter, maybe a 30% climb and track, and of course, shun armor. Read a few Savage Sword comic books to get into character, and you have everything you need for a bone crushingly good barbarian time.

 

[Tuzenbach]

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

Why am I always the last one to know?

PS: What's a mountebank?