Unearthed Arcana: Cheer or Jeer? 

Well, as a 61 year old Humanoid who's been playing D&D in its various forms since 1978, I can safely say that the majority of my friends/players/DMs think this book is 100% necessary. Okay, there are a few sections that "ruffle some feathers" but at the end of the day, it's just another set of guidelines/suggestions and not Rules. Personally, I love most of the content of this book and if that doesn't please you well, you've just got yourself another subscriber based mostly on the fact you appear to have a great taste in beverages! Nice Video, I can see where you're coming from and Cheers my friend! 🍻🍻🍻🍻

Love it. Warts and all. It was, is, and will always be, my favortie book. And it was the only book I ever got as a present because my mom believed all the panic bs back in the day. But, curiously, when asked what I wanted for Christmas or my birthday, she never told me no. She just acted like she didn't know what words meant. And after several years one day, I actually nailed jello to a wall. Once again she'd asked what I wanted for Christmas one day when Grandma was over. I said it didn't matter because I never got what I asked for anyway. She got miffed. I said D&D books. Then she engaged confusion mode. She didn't know what to look for. I gave her a list of titles. She didn't know where to go. I gave her a map to Waldenbooks measured in paces. Her paces, not mine. She came up with another excuse. I gave her a list of three people who worked the computer there who's job it was to not only look it up, but walk you to it's location on the shelf, and told her I chose those three people so that someone would be there on every day and every shift. Feeling the noose tighten she glanced at grandma who just shrugged. She came up with another. I lost it and said, "Are you stupid?!?" And had to quickly add, "No. You're not. But you're treating me like I am. What you're saying is that after years of ruining my weekends dragging me to garage sales for eight hours on Saturday, and six hours on Sunday and not just that, but you'd go to the first one, to the second one, back to the first, to the third, back to the second, to the fourth, etc for _eight_ hours all over twenty five cents... Now you've got the names of the books, the store that has them, the names of three people who can _walk_ you to it, and a _map_ you're telling me you don't know how ....to shop?!? That year I got Unearthed Arcana for my birthday from grandma. Mom was livid. But Grandma pointed out that I was right. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Playing D&D with Monty Haul, my friend and I played brothers, one a Thief and the other a Barbarian. The routine was that my Thief would get XP for acquiring the magic items, and the Barbarian would get XP for smashing them.

I actually loved this when it came out. before, it was exactly like he said, carrying pages photocopied from articles in a magazine in a notebook. Having it all together was great.

I don't recall Unearthed Arcana as being particularly controversial at the time. The group I was playing with used some parts, and took a "that's interesting, but we're not doing that" on the others. Maybe controversial for people who came to the game later, but our group was mostly in the "whatever" camp.

This was the greatest thing for AD&D! Introduction of negative levels with Cavalier class! Polearm nomenclature with illustration! New ability score generation that let you pick your class before randomly rolling your stats! Cantrip spells! New spell book rules! New spell explanations! Demi-human gods and pantheon! New magic items! New weapons and armor! It was a gold mine for players and dungeon masters!

Yeah, I remember it being very controversial in student roleplaying clubs in the UK back in the mid to late 80s. In terms of the ability inflation, it contained the notorious Method V ability score generation method that was particularly disliked. Players picked the best from 8 or 9d6 in key scores rather than the usual 4d6, drop the lowest. (Page 74). Best bits were the new spells, classics like Aid, Spike Growth, Alarm, Flaming Sphere...

I used Unearthed Arcana back in the 1980s and still have the copy I purchased then, and I remember loving this book bringing back fond memories. I mainly used the parts about new races, character classes, spells, and weapons, but ignored the smaller details. I didn't read from front to back so I didn't realize that there was a new ability score "Comeliness" until it was mentioned in this video. We also "improvised" and were flexible with the rules such as barbarians hating magic items they would destroy on sight etc. The best bit that me and my friends liked, was the cavalier class because it was more flexible with race and alignment compared to the Paladin. When I did DM, I also created evil cavalier NPCs to be fought.

Wasn't controversial at the tables I played at. We used it from the start. I still have my original copy. Although looking back, the quest for more "rules" was a "be careful what you wish for" scenario.

I loved this book when it came out and still love it today. I've never agreed with the hate directed at this book which seems to be a newer thing since no one I gamed with back in the day ever had a problem with it. We did agree that the Cavalier and Barbarian were better suited for solo campaigns but neither were as powerful as the OA Ninja, lol. We didn't like that the Barbarian could somehow damage creatures requiring magic items to hit with his bare hands so we simply ditched that aspect of the class along the bit about him destroying magic items for XP. Lots of game systems have some version of physical attractiveness as a stat so we never had a problem with Comeliness either.

I really, really, really appreciate your citations in your videos.

When we got UA in Arkansas we all started a new game and because we were on college campus, we ended up with a couple of valley elves, that were in game brother and sister, and in real life boyfriend and girlfriend, and things in their lives leaked into the game. So, one day our bard decides to tell everything we knew about their love life in a song, called "Valley Elves" to the tune of "Valley Girls" by Moon Unit Zappa. It was the most savage deep dive I have ever heard in my life, and we all knew that everything in the song was true, which made it worse. They never returned to our game. I as DM taxed him 1,000XP for disrupting the game, Then I gave him a level up for doing in character and with style. Hadn't thought about that in years. Thanks for the memory.

Gotta admit, we loved it back in the day, new classes, spells, items. Of course we had to change a few things... but the whole crew enjoyed the new campaign we ran.

Many of the classes in this book were nerfed and worked into the kit system in 2e. Hence, they mostly found new life in rhe "Complete" series. The Acrobat doesn't really suffer from this treatment (since 2e improved the thief class with greater specialization), but the Barbarian and Cavalier are pretty lackluster. Curiously, the Fighter's Handbook also introduced the Berzerker as a playable kit, along with the Battlerager in the Dwarves book. Both of these were separate from the Barbarian, though 3e would combine Berzerker rage with some of the Barbarian's hit dice and movement abilities from UA.

I started playing in 1985 - right after my college graduation, as I began my first professional job. Of course, the 1st edition AD&D Player’s Handbook was my main resource, but I really liked this new book - Unearthed Arcana. It was ALWAYS understood (I believe the forward actually says it directly…) that it was ALL optional, and that one’s DM was always the arbiter of whether some variant was allowed or not. Sure - there’s some goofy stuff in there, but we understood that we would only use what we liked, disregarding the rest, and filling in gaps with our own creations. I appreciate your explanation about magazine materials being published in some of these books - totally makes sense now. I was for awhile an avid Dungeon mag & Dragon mag customer, and selected what I wanted in my game - and what to leave out. That is how we did it, and our campaigns became effectively customized patchworks of found & original material. The campaigns today appear preplanned & prescribed from the corporate level.

This was the book that made me realize that all the classes should be kept simple. All the new classes should've been kept as subclasses and build types. So it made me realize that was what was coming. I always had the feeling that Barbarian or Caviler will be later put under fighter class.

I loved this book, especially the cantrips! I've never been in a group that had a Cavalier, and i played mostly AD&D from 1982-2009!

Back in the day when it came out it was revolutionary for us. It changed everything and we loved it. I still reference it today conversations and utilized it in recent past.

I like the little details about the drink & music etc. Personalises it a little more & reminds us you're more than just a voice on a screen :)

Thank you for laying out why it was so controversial. All of these class concepts had to be designed for an experienced player group that were already creating their own homebrew classes. It required player buy-in (like with the cavalier who has a strict moral code). The book must have felt very mysterious and experimental.

“Good luck with that.” So perfect.

I had a player in the 90s that migrated between our group and others, and I remember him bringing up "Comelyness." Having access to 2e books, I'm thinking, "where the heck is that at?" Another thing that made me sit up and point at the screen was the seperate wild elf and wood elf races. There were vestiges of these terms in setting books (especially in Forgotten Realms lore) but wood elves only got acknowledgement in the PHB and treatment in the Complete Elves book. The Barbarian aversion to magic makes sense as the Uthgart tribes in the Forgotten Realms have the same shtick. I can better understand where the three orders of Solamnic Knights of Dragon Lance come from as the Cavalier fits along with the Paladin and Fighter for the Crown, Rose, and Sword orders respectively. More pieces of the puzzle! 😂 Much appreciated!

The two things that transformed our games were Weapon Specialization and the Stoneskin spell. The former contributed to the problem that many interesting monsters, especially in the Fiend Folio, have low Hit Points. As a result both PCs and Monsters are offensively powerful, but defensively weak. The latter became a must-take - it completely stopped damage from 1 hit and lasted indefinitely if the caster was not hit. It was frequently combined with Contingency (to go off when the first Stoneskin is taken down by a hit). Chromatic Orb was also unbalanced at higher levels, even if it did require a roll to hit and allowed a saving throw.

This was always my favourite AD&D book :) Thanks for this :)

Thanks for this flashback to 1985! I dug out my copy of UA while watching this video, and took a little trip down memory lane. I certainly welcomed this book when it came out. It delivered plenty of great new ideas. The materiel in the DM section was almost uniformly helpful, and the bits that weren't very practical were still pretty interesting (five pages of polearms!) There were plenty of duds, too - like comeliness - which my group generally ignored, just like we ignored the things we thought were duds in the PHB, DMG and MM, like level titles and level limits for demi-humans. Besides the new spells, most of the player section in UA was nonsense. I hadn't realized it until you pointed it out: this is where the pernicious trend of racial overload, infinite subclassing and min/maxing implanted its terrible tendrils into the game. Personally, I always thought most of the AD&D subclasses were lame: either unnecessary, over-powered, weirdly defined or incongruous (so I used them sparingly). Cavalier really sealed that opinion. IMO, the four core classes, plus or minus multiclassing, are sufficient foundation to create any type of character you could want. As a DM running 1E games, I used assassins, barbarians, illusionists, driuds and rangers. The rest I flushed. Yes, even paladins. Too hokey. LOL. To me, the drow were best in their terrifying original incarnation - obscene, mysterious, and evil - no matter how many best-selling books you could produce with the subsequent watered-down down version. Suffice to say, not a player choice in my old campaigns, no matter that EGG allowed it to be so in Unearthed Aracana! But I digress. The point of my comment was that I treated Unearthed Arcana as a collection of optional resources and used a good many of them, feeling no obligation to indulge in some of the less appealing or (in my opinion at the time) less well-thought-out content. Player: I want to play an elf cavalier! Why not? It exists! DM (me): Yeah, and I want to date Elle Macpherson.

"The Cavalier is playing a different game" about sums it up, what with the massive suite of additional rules Gary wrote up for them, some of which feel like the system plays the character for you instead of you playing them. I sort of wonder now if the Cavalier and Barbarian might have been intended for solo play.

I bought this book and have never opened it. One of the other players bought it and we all despised most of it. And when it fell apart after using it a few times, I just put it on the shelf and it's been there ever since.

I am here for exactly this kind of content. Thank you! I bought all the core books back in the day, but it felt a little overwhelming for us. We played BECMI until 2e came out, so I missed this book entirely. I finally ordered my Print-on-Demand version a few months ago. So it took me almost 40 years to finally figure out why the D&D cartoon had characters with weird classes. I like the drink and music selection at the beginning, but please keep it short. "Hey, I'm coming to you from my study where I'm currently drinking X and listening to Y." And maybe a single follow-up sentence with more context if you have something important to say about one of them. I am here for the D&D content, so not too much. But I do like getting that little window into the life of the dad behind the video.

Nice rundown. UA is, in essence, a hardcover Best of Dragon. We used it salad-bar-style back in the day. Never used comeliness or the cavalier. Easily the #1 AD&D book in terms of failed bindings. I occasionally see a failed binding on OA, but about half of the UAs I see have pages coming out.

I LOVED that book. It was a perfect add on book back in the day. So i'd disagree whole heartedly that it was polarizing. And for the record, I am a few months short of 60 and started playing in 1979.

We loved this book our group, starting in 86, never heard it as controversial until today. Thanks for the take. We didn’t play with comliness. It was really just a magic item tome.

I certainly remember buying this book back in the 80's and at that time just about anything with the letters D&D on it seemed absolutely necessary! Nowadays I take it all with a grain of salt, but I still love reading this stuff and exploring those books even when they don't make sense.

Very good readthrough and overview. I liked how you touched on its contribution to attribute inflation.

AND, he tried to make Paladins a sub-class of Cavalier. Sigh.

Have played 5e and and currently playing a lot of Baldur’s Gate 3, and your videos on the history and details of previous editions have been really interesting. Definitely making me want to play some AD&D. Love 80s Miles too!

Another feature of the Barbarian class was that they got twice the usual number of bonus hit points for having a high Constitution score.

I loved this when it came out. It was just the AD&D expansion I'd been looking for. New classes, new spells. We had a great time with it.

When I was about 13 in the early 90s, my parents found a copy of this book at a garage sale and bought it for me, and I was fascinated. It was my first d&d book and I read it over and over again, and colored some of the illustrations in (which the previous owner had also done, but my contributions were much more amateurish). Sadly I never found a group to play with.

this channel is such a vibe love the drink & music flavour mixed in with classic dnd book discussion

I just remember looking at the Barbarian and thinking how I would stay at 1st level while the rogue had made it to 4th level.

I loved this book. This was a step in the evolution of D&D and informed my 12 year old self at the time this book came out that it was okay and fun to modify the original rules. This is the book that opened the door to home brewing. Oriental Adventures was another big one. Back at the time martial arts movies were big. Chuck Norris and the Octegon, Bruce Lee and Enter the Dragon. Edit: The errors to me and my friends were hidden blessings. It forced us to make executive decisions on how to interpret the rules. Of course our local hobby shop/Game Store would hand out photo copies of the errata but that didn't stop us from keeping rules we made at our table.

I loved this book. I think this was the book with the treasure tables that gave details about stuff you might find in a treasure horde. As a DM, I used that a lot. We ignored the Comliness attribute and level limitations since the beginning. Barbarians, Cavaliers, Thief Acrobats.... It was just a lot of fun to try new stuff. Did this one have the Warlock as well? I seem to remember somebody playing a Warlock once. Maybe that was just in Dragon Magazine.

My DnD group back in the day regularly ignored the strictures about Barbarians and magic. When the barb player tried to destroy one of the magic user's magic items (wand of fireballs i think?...), the magic user threatened to use it on him. It was an intervention, lol, we all decided that Barbarians just need to chill out. Lol

I always watch and enjoy your wrap ups at the end of your videos. I prefer the info being given at the end. It is a nice wind down from the information given throughout the video. Plus, when you click on a video, you primarily are looking for the information it promises from the title/description rather than what you were drinking and listening to. The info being added at the end makes it easier for those who may not want to watch that, to opt out. Just my thoughts.

Love these history videos, as someone whose only go into it within the last eight years, its really interesting to hear about it from someone who was actually there and experienced it first hand!

My group and I LOVED Unearthed Arcana! It was likely one of the most influential books in my young D&D life. It's easily still on my top 5 most nostalgia inducing books.

10:51 Limits on demi-men is an implied worldbuilding element more than a game balance element (but it’s partly both.) You get demi-men, who have lots of abilities and can also progress in more than one class, with inherently more power than men. However, single-classed men will level faster than multiclassed demi-men by one or two levels’ worth fairly quickly. Not only are man way head on special abilities, but they face milder level-up restrictions in terms of class fidelity penalties and the time and money necessary to train up. Recall that RAW, a figure must get enough XP to attain level X, but it also must spend X weeks and X hundred GP each time. That means multiclassers are going to spend more resources at the critical early levels while their specialized colleagues are off in the dungeon. Recall further that RAW, the DM is instructed to impose XP penalties for characters who act outside their class role (or alignment.) Well, a character with two classes will have to walk a fine line to fulfill both roles cromulently. A character with three classes? The penalty is all but assured. Level caps, again, shape the world more than the party. Elfs can only get to 11th level in magic user. That means they never get 6th column spells. No Enchant an Item or Permanence. Hobbits can be Druids but not clerics. Why? Above Name level, what we will see across the game world is powerful high-level Men with many lower-level, but versatile, demi-man allies. Which models Gary’s favorite pulp fiction worlds quite well.

I love this style of video; they remind me of Matt Colville's History of D&D One Fighter series. The longer, the better!

My OA had a warped cover. The binding is still in excellent shape, but if you laid it on the table, it would rock like a rocking horse. The more I tried to press it flat, the worse it got. That was the only orange spine book I had that had any issues.

I was really excited when this boo came out, but we never really played with it as my campaign was heading into the homestretch and characters were pretty set.. One of the players borrowed my book and used it to make a barbarian to use in another game, and I sat in on a session and I thought the barbarian was pretty powerful. I don't recall how the magic restriction played out for him. Possibly ignored. What I remember about the cantrips is there wasn't much in the way of damage causing cantrips. I remember a bee sting and that's about it. The whole thing was a hodge podge of miscellany from Dragon Magazine and the cutting room floor. I forgot about pole arms. No one ever used pole arms back then. The feat in 5e makes these much more prevalent. I'd like to think it makes Gygax smile.

I'm loving all your content so far. Especially your well researched + context historical videos. I look forward to watching all your uploads! On Drinks and Music, You should do what makes you enjoy making these, that's why they are so great. I can personally do without it if my vote counts. Or at the end so I can write notes while it's background noise.

I beat the hell out of my UA. My gaming groups always took things from the books as optuons, so we homebrewed them. We had spiral notebooks full of our own houserules labeled for different campaigns with references and explanations. We loved and hated the orange spines. All the new ideas were awesome, but the shoddy production ment tape and eventually hot glue and learning how to rebind books ourselves. As Mako might say, "A time undreamed of... let me tell you of the days of high adventure" ... the 80's.

From what I remember, you're spot on with everything you said. The books were notoriously fragile. Several of mine fell apart in various stages over the years. UA was never considered official content by most people I knew, and while I liked a lot of what was in it, I hardly ever got to use it. And I feel like in some ways, it was merely a prelude to the hot mess that would be known as 2e.

The biggest complaint among my playing group was that the book was 1/2 new player's handbook material and 1/2 dungeon master's. So, you're buying a hardback that, by design, you're not supposed to use in its entirety (of course, everyone read the whole thing). Like most of the hardcovers after the core books, we pulled bits and pieces out for use, but it was never a major addition to anything we did. Cantrips was probably the most functional addition. An interesting springboard for ideas (like Deities and Demigods; sparks ideas but not greatly useful), but not a really great resource book in the way the Fiend Folio and Monster Manual II were.

I would argue that the barbarian, along with amazonian and beautyful witch, where actually present in OD&D (titles pictures) and were intended as player characters, even though no explicit class was giving.

Great video, as usual! I'm not a fan of the drink/music section. Maybe it could be a graphic that pops up on screen, between sections or at the start of the video. For someone listening to the video whilst doing something else, it's not as easy to skip ahead.

Watching you videos got me digging up my old books.

I recently learned that M.A.R Barkers Empire of the Pedal Throne contained the comeliness ability score. Not sure weather he got it from Arneson or vice versa but I guess that is possibly where Gygax adopted it from? I like and still occasionally use the Cantrips in the UA in my AD&D campaign and the description of the spell book size vs traveling, etc was also useful. I felt the Barbarian was way overpowered and the Cavalier was impossible to play correctly with my 15yo friends back in the early 80s. Everyone wanted to play the Acrobat but it sucked you had to be a high level thief to play one. The added weapon proficiencies helped the fighters shine a bit, but every fighter took the same ones. Same with the added races. Suddenly everyone wanted to play a dark elf or deep gnome. The power creep in the game became more solidified and evolved I feel in the UA ( Dragon Magazine article options aside). Also, UA seemed so far removed from Gygax's Greyhawk Setting and how the DMG really reflected the setting.

What a coincidence that both Cavalier, Barbarian and Acrobat featured (not both, trith of them) featured in Dungeons and Dragons animation series! I always wondered what kind of classes those were, because there were no Cavaliers, Barbarians or Acrobats in Baldur's Gate 1 (my first info source on DnD). Also, Barbarion boy did not roleplay properly because he never attacked Wizard (Magic-User) boy =) Although Cavalier boy was pretty In-Character, with him being proud and haughty and all of that =)

That beer sounds amazing. Id say shout out the current drink/music quickly at the very beginning before even jumping in to the topic.

So good, many new elements to add to your game. Still useful

My vote: Save the drinks reports for the blog. I clicked to hear about D&D.

Another great video. About you talking about drinks and music: just do whatever the heck you like. It's your channel. But please, keep adding the chapters so that it's easy to skip.

I love the new intro of what you are drinking and stuff but it should be at the end

We loved it at the time, I don't think I became aware of the issues until I played an OA campaign with a different group and saw how broken martial arts were. Ability score inflation started with AD&D's percentile STR dice, I got so tired of people rolling up fighters and the like and discarding the character because their STR was sub 18. At one table I saw a friend tear up a sheet because he'd rolled 18 for STR (and 16 for CON) but rolled an 02 for the percent.

You are absolutely right about Ability Score inflation from this book. Rolling 9d6 for your primary score virtually guarantees a 18 in that stat.

Hey, greybeard old schooler here, played DnD back in the early 80s. When Comeliness came out everyone I knew thought that was the silliest idea in existence, and we all completely ignored it. Lol

Thinking you could make another channel for your drinks/music. Came for the D&D info....which I really like what you do. 🙂

I only got this book about ten years ago in a resale shop somewhere, just because I was curious and the price was right. Only then did it dawn on me that the D&D cartoon from the 80s must've been, basically, a half hour ad for this book (as was the case for many 80s cartoons being ads for various toy product lines). I remember watching that cartoon and being slightly confused about there being a Cavalier and a Barbarian.

My UA is falling apart, but my OA is still in really good shape. Of course, I didn't use my OA book near as much as my UA book, so there's that. UA was an easy book to pick and choose from - parts you didn't like, you just didn't use, while other parts you could integrate seamlessly into the core material. At least that was my experience, I was never bothered by not having the entirety of it fully incorporated in my game.

It was one of my favorite books. Still have it, too.

We loved this book. We did ignore or modify a lot of things however. Like Barbarians having issue with magic items and other magic using PCs. Usually we roll played a bit of irritability with the mage but a grudging respect that the cleric could removing disease. But Barbarians were very welcome addition to the game. I don't think anyone ever played a Cavalier, though they were common NPC's. We completely ignored level limitations and already had in place rules on ability scores. So I guess we used this more for fresh ideas. We only had two DM's back then and we worked well together.

This is one of my favorites books. I loved all of it. Loved all the player options.

Love the beer and music disclosure

Blast from the past! Throwing out a MySpacian NP reference right at the beginning. I’m now playing Janelle Monae’s “Dance Apocalyptic.”

thanks! The worst part was 1. the binding. I have 2 copies and they're both falling apart. This is due to the business issue you cited , 2, /comeliness, I think we rolled it but we never used it, everyone knew it was worthless> All the rest? Yeah, playtesting ust have been non existent the new classes were completely unbalanced, This was just a colleciton of Dragon mag articles. As you noted this only came out to generate some cash flow.

Very cool, thanks for walking us through this

The Cavalier Ability Bonus is a good example of lack of balance within 1e AD&D. There are those that point to UA as the problem, but the lack of balance existed in many other forms. It's kind of interesting and I love the Beautiful mess that is 1e.

I played the HELL out of Unearthed Arcana, to the point that mine eventually fell apart. A lifetime of editions of D&D have given me an insatiable thirst for homebrew & rules hacks!

I liked the video. Love hearing what you have to drink, helps me find new stuff to try if it sounds good enough! Keep the D&D and table top stuff coming Sir!

Another great overview. Thanks for covering this fascinating bit of D&D history.

Polarizing, so what are some of the reasons why some people love(d) it? Love the channel! I like the drink/music thing at the start

I liked UA at the time, even tho i didn’t use much of it (so mine is still in great shape). We mostly used it for additional spells and magic items. I was baffled by the cantrips, which were ridiculously specific & yet still required you to memorize them. Who is going to say “Let's see, shall i trade a 1st level spell for sneeze, dampen, spice, & creak or for gnats, whistle, clean, & firefinger?” They were very flavorful, but the rules for them were idiotic. They should have just been cast at will.

Two things that made me want to cry as a child. It was not when my grandma hit me. It was not because when I came home my dog never missed me. It was when Metallica released the Black Album and before that when TSR released Unearthed Arcana. That makes me wonder what the world would be like if neither happened. I wonder if I would still be wearing a concert tee and playing Advanced D&D instead of 5e.

My brother and really like double weapon specialization, as it helps make fighters more powerful and more on par with magic users

This was my first ever AD&D book! It was, along with "How to Play Dungeons and Dragons", the only D&D book in my school library.

As a kid I remember seeing that book. Never had a chance to play it as I was in a rural area.

Your videos are top -notch, I don't think you need the what you are drinking and what your are listening to part. That said if you like doing it then keep doing it.

As a Pathfinder player that stumbled onto this video, it's amazing to see a cavalier in the super old game that's pretty much the same as PF1's version of the class. You got the mount, you got the social rules you gotta follow, it's just missing the banner, tactition, and challenge abilities unless I'm missing something.

Yeah…I remember when this came out and I had to do multiple quests to get my dark elf’s intelligence high enough to get to arch mage. F/MU/T…eventually vampiric. Miss that dude.

I like the comments on what you are drinking and what you are listening to. i have little in common with your drinking tastes, from what i have seen, as I am a bourbon drinker Love your taste in music. I haven't _run_ D & D since around 1977, having developed my own rules, Glory Road Roleplay but I have played in a friend's campaign and once or twice at cons. but the history of RPG is a big interest of mine and your videos are interesting. The DM whose game I played in used select bits of Unearthed Arcana. I never questioned where he got his ideas. I just asked him and he says that he used parts of it and found others di9dn't fit his campaign.

I'm surprised you didn't touch on the alternate ability generation option in the DM's section, where a player would take the best 3 rolls from 9d, 8d, 7d, 6d, 5d, 4d, & 3d, and which abilities got which amount of dice was determined by class

I remember it as a collection of stuff that you could use or loose. More options are always good in my book.

I had an experience somewhat like yours: I liked many things about the book, such as the new classes, from a player’s perspective, because I wanted a more powerful character. It was only as a DM that I started questioning some things, like the Barbarian being somewhat overpowered and being able to attack almost anything without having to consider the odds first. Very quickly, however, our games changed as the result of all the new options, so like it or not, it got used. I remember trying to glue the errata tables into my book and ruining the quality of the book in the process. Finally, as a recovered alcoholic, I prefer the drinking part of the video to be at the end, so that if I don’t feel up to watching it (and that differs from day to day) I can easily skip it. Sometimes I enjoy those segments, since it adds to the ambiance of your videos like a well-described tavern scene in a game session. Some days, not so much. That’s just my two cents, and I’ll continue to watch them either way because the rest of the content is so outstanding.

We loved this thing when it came out in our freshman year of high school.

When ever we wish to break the game, we go to “Unearthed Arcana.”

I have to say, loved the intro section, but I’m also a shameless Miles Davis fan. Cheers! Great video as always! I have two physical copies. One has the infamous spine issue, other is flawless. I really should triple check which printing the clean copy is from. As a kid, this was one of my favorite books. As an adult, that understands the history behind the book, and has a respect for balance…I think some bits are a little problematic. New classes as written are a bit much. I prefer the toned down variants of the Barbarian and Cavalier from Dragon 148. I’m torn about Method V. It feels like unnecessary power creep. But 1E can be brutal, and I think factual table sizes by then were generally smaller than what 1E was designed for (6+ players.) With those facts in mind, it makes sense. Weapon specialization, much like Method V, is a bit power creep-y, but in actual play really helps Fighters stay competitive at higher levels. It’s not perfect, but even if we solely evaluate it on the basis of what it contributed to the core 2E books, I think it’s worthy of merit.

When it came out, myself and everyone I knew were initially quite enthusiastic about it overall. We tried everything in it at least once. Some of it we used until 2E rules superseded it all. However... very quickly we dropped almost everything in it - and we tried essentially everything in it. Overall, there were VERY few parts of UA that we truly liked and continued to use long-term - weapon specialization, _some_ weapons, _some_ spells, the demihuman deities, and magic items. THESE days, in DMing a 1E game, I use ABSOLUTELY NONE of it directly. I occasionally toy with the idea of having a barbarian class. I've toyed with giving thief-acrobat abilities here and there, but NOT using the thief-acrobat class itself. I make up my own pantheons of deities. Etc. NOTHING in it gets used anymore by me, and nobody I game with cares about 1E much less would run it.

Also, I like the drink and music selection stuff. Although I’m no longer a drinker I do love stuff about coffees, teas, and I do appreciate stuff about fine liquor and beers. Also I’m a part time musician (mainly for fun, little pay,) and I love jazz etc

I liked the spells and magic items in Unearthed Arcana. I used to attribute rolling by class and race a few times, but went back to the normal way. The classes (Barbarian and Cavalier) and races (such as Grey Elf) were all over powered. I only saw a a few Thief Acrobats.