AD&D 1E What was so bad about unearthed arcana 1e?

[haakon1]

Count me as a half-ogre super-fan. If it were up to our group, half-ogres, anti-paladins and witches would all have been in UA.

Anti-paladins and witches come up often as well.

Maybe the purge of anything “naughty” in 2e was already happening for UA?

 

[Nikosandros]

The new druid and illusionist spells in particular made those underpowered classes a bit more capable.

I consider druids to be quite powerful. Illusionists are too, but they do require a creative player and a DM who is willing to let them shine.

 

[cbwjm]

Drow get the glory but deep gnome was the most broken.

From memory, they had a lot of abilities. I think they showed up in 3e with a large level adjustment.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Anti-paladins and witches come up often as well.

Maybe the purge of anything “naughty” in 2e was already happening for UA?

I think the issue for UA was that he didn't come up with anti-paladins or witches. Other than the demi-human deities, the whole thing was basically reprints from Sorcerer's Scroll columns.

 

[Zardnaar]

From memory, they had a lot of abilities. I think they showed up in 3e with a large level adjustment.

Conjure elemental (8HD) was kinda good....

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I consider druids to be quite powerful. Illusionists are too, but they do require a creative player and a DM who is willing to let them shine.

I've been playing an illusionist in an urban campaign for almost two decades and I basically have to hold myself back or I'd easily dominate the entire campaign.

While having a DM who's not anti-illusion is a big part of making the class successful, learning how to be a good illusionist is something that experience really helps with. In every edition but 4E (where they were just a reskinning of regular wizards), illusionists are ludicrously powerful in many scenarios. (They're probably not who you'd bring to an undead-heavy campaign, though.)

 

[Lanefan]

Just out of curiosity, something I see mentioned from time to time was that unearthed arcana was considered bad or unusable. I remember reading it back in the 90s and liking some stuff about it, but I never used it in 2e (which I was playing at the time). I probably didn't have as critical an eye back then either and, since I never used it, may not have seen all it's flaws. I do recall thinking that it was a little unfair the cavalier could slowly increase some ability scores and tha barbarian seemed to need ridiculous amounts of xp and couldn't adventure with spellcasters (or something like that).

So for those who did use it back in 1e days, why was it considered so bad?

Some of the new spells were highly overpowered and flat-out broken as written. Others were nearly useless.

Ditto for the new magic items.

The new classes were pure power creep (Cavalier) or hopeless (Acrobat) or unplayable as written (Barbarian). The new abilities for existing classes e.g. Fighters' weapon specialization were also just power creep.

Comeliness was pointless; just another place to dump a bad stat.

The new roll-up method was more pure power creep.

Some parts e.g. the expanded treatise on polearms were of interest only to a very select few and kinda wasted on the rest of us.

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EDIT to add: Forgot about the new PC-playable races. All bad. Dumb ideas from which the game has never recovered.

Also forgot about the relaxed demi-human level limits and greater class options; those were good, and we'd largely already done that before UA came out.
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Put that all together and most of the book was, as written, a big disappointment to someone running original 1e.

There's a few gems in it, though, if you dig and are willing to do some kitbashing. Cavalier (or Knight) as a class concept is good, just needs rewriting. The Cavaliers' percentile-increment system for stat improvement is brilliant and should have been applied to every class. A fair number of the spells and items are salvageable with some rewriting and adjustments. Weapon spec. works great if it's toned down a bit and the benefits made incremental across levels rather than coming all at once. And so on.

 

[cbwjm]

Some of the new spells were highly overpowered and flat-out broken as written. Others were nearly useless.

Ditto for the new magic items.

The new classes were pure power creep (Cavalier) or hopeless (Acrobat) or unplayable as written (Barbarian). The new abilities for existing classes e.g. Fighters' weapon specialization were also just power creep.

Comeliness was pointless; just another place to dump a bad stat.

The new roll-up method was more pure power creep.

Some parts e.g. the expanded treatise on polearms were of interest only to a very select few and kinda wasted on the rest of us.

=====
EDIT to add: Forgot about the new PC-playable races. All bad. Dumb ideas from which the game has never recovered.

Also forgot about the relaxed demi-human level limits and greater class options; those were good, and we'd largely already done that before UA came out.
=====

Put that all together and most of the book was, as written, a big disappointment to someone running original 1e.

There's a few gems in it, though, if you dig and are willing to do some kitbashing. Cavalier (or Knight) as a class concept is good, just needs rewriting. The Cavaliers' percentile-increment system for stat improvement is brilliant and should have been applied to every class. A fair number of the spells and items are salvageable with some rewriting and adjustments. Weapon spec. works great if it's toned down a bit and the benefits made incremental across levels rather than coming all at once. And so on.

I think I'm recalling correctly that your own homebrewed system uses the stat increase for all of the classes.

One thing with 2e is that some of the classes became character kits, from UA the cavalier and acrobat were converted in the relevant complete handbooks, the cavalier is quite similar to the UA version (though didn't have the stat increases, likely some other bits that weren't carried over) and the acrobat was pretty much just "even if you don't use proficiencies, the thief acrobat should have tumbling, tightrope walking and jumping... That's it, the class seems to have had so little going for it in 1e that it became a full thief with extra proficiencies (and some minor thief skill adjustments).

 

[Lanefan]

I think I'm recalling correctly that your own homebrewed system uses the stat increase for all of the classes.

Yep. We had to re-do percentile strength for Fighters to make it work, though; each bonus increment within the 18.xx range became its own full number thus 18.41 became 19 and so on up to 18.00 became 24, and Hill Giants are now 25.

One thing with 2e is that some of the classes became character kits, from UA the cavalier and acrobat were converted in the relevant complete handbooks, the cavalier is quite similar to the UA version (though didn't have the stat increases, likely some other bits that weren't carried over) and the acrobat was pretty much just "even if you don't use proficiencies, the thief acrobat should have tumbling, tightrope walking and jumping... That's it, the class seems to have had so little going for it in 1e that it became a full thief with extra proficiencies (and some minor thief skill adjustments).

Never got deep enough into 2e to see this.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Anti-paladins and witches come up often as well.

Maybe the purge of anything “naughty” in 2e was already happening for UA?

UA was a major release after D&D had surged in sales, so maybe? But the Anti-Paladin and Witch were NPC classes - I don't recall any of those appearing outside of Dragon magazine.