Which Unearthed Arcana variant rules do you use?

[crueldespot]

I am DMing a group that used the traits and flaws. They seem to make the characters more distinctive.

I chose to forbid the flaw "murky eyed." All it does is require the character to reroll against concealment chance and take the worst of the two rolls. That is pretty gentle compared to the other flaws- such as -3 on a save or -1hp per level. It would only be significant to a missile-based character, and they would never take it. The melee guy would take it. So I banned that one flaw.

Otherwise, they worked well.

I also like contacts, honor, and reputation. I'm just afraid that it is more paperwork to keep track of. I'm already digging through enough papers as DM without tracking honor points. Ooh! I got an idea: Designate a player to be the "Honor scorekeeper" as an additional duty. That would probably work.

 

[TracerBullet42]

Love the class variants...haven't used them much yet, but undoubtedly will.

So far, we've used the facing rules and the flaws/traits system. It's worked out very well.

 

[HellHound]

Paragons and Bloodlines, and some of the alternate and modified classes have made it into my core game. (Especially the druid who rages, and the alternate rage that doesn't boost Con... since our barbarian happens to be a ghoul).

For my Big Eyes Small Mouth d20 game, I'm using the M&M hit points system (that way there is no way for the characters to die, which is good when you run a game for 12-year old girls in the magical girl style).

 

[haiiro]

I use the AU Tumble skill in my campaign (with the PHB surface modifiers chart). The variable DC makes the skill much more balanced, IMO.

 

[Anand]

I like the Action Points.

 

[JoeGKushner]

A lot of the material I have as open in my game, meaning I may not use it as the GM, but players can. For instance, most of the variant core classes.

I am using action points and reputation. It's good to have a semi-official action point for d20 fantasy. About the only thing I wish this book had was backgrounds for starting characters like d20 modern. (Occuprations right?)

I do have a few tainted fighters as a powerful evil, made worse by the fact that they belong to one of the player's clans.

I have also used racial paragons since Arcana Unearthed came out so it was nice to see some more variants in this book, especialy semi-official again.

 

[Psion]

New:

• Reducing Level Adjustment - With GMs permission. Some third party races actually deserve their level adjustment.
• Bloodlines - Have been used for some NPCs.
• Environment race and class variants may be used for specific regions; so far it hasn't entered play.
• Variant specialist wizard abilities

Other stuff I am already using in some form by other products:

• Action Points - was already using from d20 modern in my second world game, and I really like the tweaks for it in UA.
• Class based defense bonus - I am already using the d20 modern version adapted to D&D as per Second World Sourcebook; I really don't like the "surrogate armor" version in UA.
• Legendary Weapons - Already had one pass in and out of the game from the original.
• Plot & Poison already gave me metamagic components, but I'll add these to the list, along with some of those in Book of Unusual Treasure.

 

[philreed]

I also like contacts, honor, and reputation. I'm just afraid that it is more paperwork to keep track of. I'm already digging through enough papers as DM without tracking honor points. Ooh! I got an idea: Designate a player to be the "Honor scorekeeper" as an additional duty. That would probably work.

I also like the contacts (so much I've been working on a new PDF that takes those rules, expands them, and presents several pre-made contacts for the DM). Honor didn't do much for me but reputation is also a rule I liked.

All of the variant classes didn't excite me.

 

[thundershot]

We use:

Level Adjustment Reduction
Class Defense Bonus
Armor as DR
Armor Non-lethal Conversion
Reserve points

All of this is used mostly to help keep the PC's alive, since resurrection is no longer possible... it seems a bit complicated at times, but it's working pretty well so far.. "Okay guys, lets take a half hour break." as they get their reserve points kicked in...



Chris

 

[DaveMage]

Thanks for the ideas!

Also, has anyone used the Gestalt option? I think there will only be 3 PCs for the summer, and it seemed like a pretty fun option. My only fear is that I will then have to fiddle with all the encounters to make things balanced.

I've used the gestalt option (using it now in fact) and I love it. We had a discussion on it here if you'd like to see it:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=88381