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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9747227" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Unearthed Arcana was, perhaps oddly, the first AD&D book I got.  Having acquired Mentzer Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert in 1985, UA was the new hotness on the shelves when I went looking for more.The additional complications and stats in the book confused and intrigued me.  As a wee munchkin and soon a Drizzt reader, the new Demihuman options and magic items were awesome, but the weird and extreme power bumps combined with nerfs on the classes were a great puzzle to me, a newbie gamer taking it on faith that the great and powerful wizards at TSR knew better than me.More the Matter of France, really (which was also inspirational for Three Hearts & Three Lions).And yeah, the suicidally brave & foolish chivalric code required by the Cavalier class doubled down on and made player horror stories about Lawful Stupid paladins look trivial by comparison.Yup. New multiclass options, spells and magic items were good.  Weapon Specialization well-loved and extensively used at the time, though some people would raise balance objections to it (not taken seriously in my groups BITD).I would argue that SOME of the spellbook rules/additional details in there were useful, but overall yeah, they're detrimental.  Especially the insane monetary values which make them about the most valuable magic treasure short of an artifact.At the time we dismissed that variant as unbalanced nonsense, but in retrospect it made more sense.  It was a cookie for the human characters to help ensure they could qualify for their cool subclasses and not be entirely overshadowed by demi-humans with all their cool abilities and multiclass options.We never used 3d6 in order in AD&D, since the DMG discouraged it, the ability score tables clearly weren't designed for it, and Gygax explicitly advises in the PH that a character will normally need at least two scores of 15+ to be viable.That's a fun theory. Hard to argue against, really, given what insane handicaps the required behavioral rules were for those classes.  Though it made sticking poor Paladins under Cavalier a completely bewildering decision.There was also a clear shift in Gary's behavior and attitudes from around '79-'82, it seems.  Between the game sales going gangbusters starting in late '79 and convincing him and the Blumes that they were business geniuses (getting featured in Inc. magazine, etc.), Gary's mother dying, and his disintegrating marriage.  There was definitely a shift in him we see people talk about in When We Were Wizards, and Flint Dille's stories give more evidence of in The Gamesmaster.</blockquote>

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