D&D 5E What Unearthed Arcana Subclasses Would You Allow in a Campaign?

[Micah Sweet]

Anything they want. The UA stuff shows up at my table pretty often, but I also use a lot of material from Mage Hand Press. The one time there was a balance issue, I talked it over with the player and we adjusted it.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Probably not the Lore Wizard. Possibly not the Mystic without a good run-down of the character's capabilities. I would probably at least insist on reading the UA before I made a decision on an option I was unfamiliar with.

Also, if there is a published version of an option that appeared in a UA earlier, I would probably say stick to the most recent or official version unless there were significant differences between them.

 

[Northern Phoenix]

Any of the ones that are meaningfully weaker than the strongest official option.

 

[Li Shenron]

One of our PCs is a Swashbuckler. I should eventually buy XGtE but in the meantime we've been using the UA version.

Another PC is a Centaur. Originally it just used the statistics for a human character. We ret-conned it later against the UA version but not wanting to really recalculate anything or give the PC a net advance, we only added the Hooves weapon (ribbon) and the Equine Build property (encumbrance bonus, climb penalty).

I am not generally looking at UA as stable/usable material, but if something comes up that the players wants to play that is not explicitly available in the PHB, and if I recall some UA article covered it, then I can bring it up. My players usually aren't aware of the existence of UA, so they don't come up with "can I use <this> from UA?" requests. The Swashbuckler was my idea when the Rogue reached 3rd level because the player was a bit skeptic of criminally-sounding archetypes (Thief and Assassin) and had no interest in magical abilities (Arcane Trickster). Centaur was a player's request for purely narrative reasons.

 

[cbwjm]

I'd allow pretty much anything, using later versions if there has been a revision. Still have that psychic artificer subclass in a game, thinking of altering it so that it works similar to current artificer subclasses because the invulnerable psychic brain thing is really annoying and I feel it should be able to take damage.

 

[Inchoroi]

Mystic is really the only one that's flat-out no go, which is sad because I really want a psionics class. I'm pretty easy going in regards to homebrew, with the caveat that anything you ask for I will nerf and/or rewrite to fit the balance.

 

[SkidAce]

None. They aren't in Roll20, and we're playing exclusively on that platform.

We make macros for the things that don't directly transfer.

 

[Shiroiken]

Traditionally I haven't allowed them at all. However, likely for my next campaign I'll at least consider ones that are thematically acceptable to the campaign, and that aren't mechanically problematic (not happy with ANY of the psionic choices, for example).

 

[Marandahir]

These new two, for sure.

 

[jgsugden]

I tell my players they can ask to use Unearthed Arcana material. I generally allow it, but evaluate it before allowing it. The same is true of 3rd party materials.