Knights & Knaves Alehouse

I got into D&D sometime around 1979/1980, quickly moving into 1E AD&D when the 'Big Three' books were released/became available/came to my attention.

I picked up the Fiend Folio and Monster Manual II as well.

Even though I played AD&D well into the late 80's, for some reason, I never picked up Unearthed Arcana.

In fact, I never even looked into it at all until last year, when I got back into AD&D after a 20+ year hiatus.

Now, I can see where some of the classes can be viewed as... problematic, but what about the rest?

For example, I've got a serious hankering to play an Illusionist and the new spells for that class in UA certainly seem OK to me.

Overall, is it just the new classes that draw the ire of the majority of the 'Old School' AD&D crowd, or is it the whole book?

New classes and changes to the old ones. There are also some harrumphs about the damage absorption of field and full plate armour types.

But by and large the new Spells are well received?

Ultimately I know it doesn't matter, as my local group is OK with them - I'm just curious about how everything was (and is!) received out there in the world at large!

I think so. The main complaint about spells, as I recall, is that clerics get the number immediately available expanded, as contrasted with magicians who still have to locate and learn the spells.

My impression is that the large majority of 1E players, especially the ones active at this site, ignore (at best, actively oppose at worst) almost everything in UA, even the "non-objectionable" additions like the new spells and magic items and the revised unarmed combat rules and such. I'm an exception in that I've gradually come around to accepting almost everything in it as "core" to my conception of AD&D, but even I don't use everything in it -- I ignore Comeliness, don't allow the full array of expanded races and race-class combos (in my games humans, half-elves, and half-orcs are still the only races who can be clerics as PCs, for instance, and you'll never see a drow elf or deep gnome PC), allow PH (fighter sub-class) as well as UA (cavalier sub-class) paladins, and ignore some of the new magic items. FWIW I only started playing the game in 1984 so I wasn't as set in my ways by the time this book came out in the summer of 85 as a lot of other folks were (plus I'd watched the D&D cartoon which included a cavalier, a barbarian, and an acrobat as characters, so I was already accustomed to that as well). People will make lots of "fact-based" arguments about how terrible UA is and how its additions wrecked the game (see, for instance, this thread), but I suspect that, much as the detractors might deny it, a lot of the objection at the end of the day really comes down to old guy being old and not wanting to make any changes from the way he played the game c. 1979-84 (assuming he wasn't reading Dragon magazine and incorporating the new rules as Gygax presented them there c. 1981-83).

T. Foster wrote:People will make lots of "fact-based" arguments about how terrible UA is and how its additions wrecked the game (see, for instance, this thread), but I suspect that, much as the detractors might deny it, a lot of the objection at the end of the day really comes down to old guy being old and not wanting to make any changes from the way he played the game c. 1979-84 (assuming he wasn't reading Dragon magazine and incorporating the new rules as Gygax presented them there c. 1981-83).

I think you're right. There are a lot of rules in UA I never liked -- expanded level limits for demihumans and the expanded list of playable demihumans, to cite two -- but my dislike of them is largely esthetic. I think the incorporation of UA in toto changes the feel of AD&D considerably, which is why I rejected some of its innovations when I played 1e. On the other hand, I used cavaliers and thief-acrobats without much trouble, along with many of the spells (cantrips) and magic items. If I were playing AD&D today, I'd probably do so again without a second thought.

Matthew wrote:I think so. The main complaint about spells, as I recall, is that clerics get the number immediately available expanded, as contrasted with magicians who still have to locate and learn the spells.

Yeah, but that's sort of balanced out by the fact that most of the new cleric spells are underpowered and lame, or at least not generally useful in an adventuring context (unsurprising since they were mostly created by Len Lakofka, who was pretty much the king of boring low-powered minutiae in the Gygax era), whereas most of the new magic-user spells are cool and useful (Grease, Melf's Acid Arrow, Evard's Black Tentacles, etc.).

I am biased, sure, but I think the new spells really help flesh out the Illusionist character as well.

Chromatic Orb, Phantom Armor, Alter Self, Fascinate, Phantom Steed, Wraithform, Advanced Illusion, Tempus Fugit, Phantasmagoria, Shadow Walk, Weird... they all seem like excellent and characterful additions to the Illusionist spell base, without being ridiculously overpowered.

Of course, I've never actually played with them either, so what do I know?

Alpharius wrote:I am biased, sure, but I think the new spells really help flesh out the Illusionist character as well.

Chromatic Orb, Phantom Armor, Alter Self, Fascinate, Phantom Steed, Wraithform, Advanced Illusion, Tempus Fugit, Phantasmagoria, Shadow Walk, Weird... they all seem like excellent and characterful additions to the Illusionist spell base, without being ridiculously overpowered.

Of course, I've never actually played with them either, so what do I know?

Yeah, I think the addition of the UA spells is pretty much a necessity to allow illusionists to be a really viable class. The PH spell list alone is simply too small. Even back when I was much more picky about what I allowed from UA into my games, the illusionist spells always made the cut.

We're probably going to have to re-start my local campaign soon, and I'm going to be playing an Illusionist for the first time ever - and I'm really looking forward to it!

I would say are varying degrees in which UA is accepted:

#1: Assumed to be in effect except as otherwise stated by the DM. Players can have a copy in their hands during a game.

#2: Assumed to be NOT in effect except as otherwise stated by the DM. Players may not have a copy in their hands during a game, but the DM does and can pull out treasure, spells, subsystems, whatever.

#3: Banned from the game completely.

And all shades in between. I personally fall in category #2, and I should think that’s pretty common. I have used:

17 Druid expansion
18 Weapon Specialization
19 Barbarians (but didn’t like it)
22 List of Giant Class monsters
28 Spells (occasionally place them on scrolls)
74 Starting Hit Points for Player Characters
80 Acquisition of Illusionist spells
82 Effects of darkness
84 Treasure
106 Weaponless Combat System I
123 Pole Arms

Yeah, I would go along with category #2 as well.

James Maliszewski wrote:There are a lot of rules in UA I never liked -- expanded level limits for demihumans and the expanded list of playable demihumans, to cite two

Those, along with the change of the paladin from a fighter to a cavalier, are probably the hardest pills for me to swallow as well. With the full expanded eligibility and level limits from UA, there's almost no reason for anyone to play a human (unless you're using Method V to generate a barbarian or monk, I suppose). Why be a human cleric when you can be a dwarf cleric, have a level limit in the mid-teens (i.e. it's never going to matter) and get infravision and huge saving throw bonuses (to the point of becoming essentially poison-proof at mid-high levels) plus be able to use a +3 warhammer? Likewise why be a human or half-elf ranger when you can be an elf ranger and get an even bigger surprise bonus, bonus to hit with bow & sword (i.e. the weapons you're almost certainly using anyway), and near-immunity to sleep & charm spells? Since the last few games I've run have been one-offs with pre-gen characters I've side-stepped these issues (by simply not creating characters with the combos I don't like), but if I were to run another campaign game I'm pretty sure I'd not allow all the new combos (and definitely wouldn't allow the expanded races -- no gray dwarf, drow, or deep gnome PCs in my games!).

I asked a similar question on Dragonsfoot: What do you use from Unearthed Arcana?

The data is hard to interpret since you can't see patterns like a group of people who like X and Y but not Z, but there's this other group who don't like X, but do like Y and Z.

If someone wants to copy/paste the poll options and run a poll on KnKA go right ahead.

I love how “Non-human deities” is one of the more popular UA sections among DFers.