Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

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Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Username17 »

OK, here's chapter by chapter how things get cheesy if you use things from Unearthed Arcana:

Chapter 1: Races

Alternate Player Races
The more alternate races you put it, the more characters can get custom crafted to the class and party role they are supposed to have. With a standard Elf, for example, the only classes which benefit from all of their abilities are the Cleric and Druid - while many of their skill bonuses (such as Search) are of little use. By being an Arctic Elf you can trade that Search skill (which a Druid can't make a lot of use with) for Craft and Survival - which are much more helpful. The Gnome gets a bonus to Alchemy, but if you are a rogue, you'd rather be Arctic and trade that bonus for Sense Motive. In total, there's little reason to ever play a "standard" race, since with the number of variants they brought in there's almost certainly a cultural polyp which better fits your party role and style of play with its bonuses.

But worse, some of these races trade powers for other powers - some of them just get more swag for free. All of the people from hot and cold places get bonuses to resist extreme temperatures, and most of the other bonuses/penalties cancel out. A Desert Halfling gets bonuses to Hide and Sleight of Hand instead of Climb and Jump - which is pretty much a wash. However, they also get resistance to heat fatigue. That's a minor ability, but it is free.

On the more extreme case, being a creature of water gives you +2 Con, +1 to-hit creatures with the fire subtype, and a swim speed. At the cost of -2 to your saves against Fire Spells. That's hugely beneficial, for those keeping track at home.

Reducing Level Adjustments

If we pretend for a moment that creatures with a +1 LA actually deserve it, this is broken. However, they don't - so this is not a big deal. When a creature reduces their LA from +1 to zero, they spend 3000 XP at "level four" and become "level three". At that point you begin to collect XP faster than the rest of the party because you are lower level. So you'll catch up by about level 8 or 9.

However, a higher LA character will never catch up. So I guess the problem here is that it acts like this is making Half Celestial characters viable but it's really not. That and because it doesn't count Monster Levels, it makes Tieflings palayable at high levels, but doesn't give the same considerations to Gnolls, who never become playable under these rules.

Blood Lines

Send in the Cheese!

Simple Cheese: If you take a minor bloodline you don't pay a level into it until level 12 - but you start getting bonuses at level 4. If your game is never going to get to level 12 (most don't), this is free money.

Complex Cheese: A level of Bloodline increases all of your class levels for purposes of level-based abiltiies. All of them. So if you are an 11th level Paladin with a Bloodline level, you get +1 level of Mount bonuses. If you are a 5th level Paladin/6th level Halfling Outrider with a bloodline level you get +2 levels of mount bonuses. If you are a 5th level Paladin/ 5th level Halfling Outrider / 1st level Cavalier, you get +3 levels of Mount Bonuses.

It also increases your caster level for purposes of level based effects and your turn undead - once again of each class separately. So a Cleric 11 with a blood line level gets +1 level of turn undead and casts her spells with a caster level of 12. A Cleric 8/ Sacred Exorcist 3 gets +2 levels of Turn Undead and casts spells with a caster level of 13.

With enough multiclassing and PrCs in the right places - taking that level of Bloodline can be better than taking a level of any class. And you still pocket the stat bonuses and the bonus feats and the dumb powers and everything.

Paragon Classes

They are three level PrCs with what are essentially no prerequisites. What exactly did you think would happen?

Most of these are inept (especially those poor suckers who get 2 levels of spellcasting in 3 levels) - but the Fighting ones are pretty decent.

Chapter 2: Classes

Alternate Classes

Like all alternate core classes, most of these are completely ass. All of the Totems let you trade your Fast Movement for Skill Focus. WTF?

Good ones: Horse Totem Barbarians trade Uncanny Dodge (which is good) and Trap Sense (which is not) for some bonus feats of Run, Skill Focus, and Endurance. Those are crap bonus feats, but if you are intending to go into a PrC which requires them it saves you time. Lion Totem Barbarians get more power at first level and less power later - so if you intend to take a level for the Fast Movement, the Rage, and the hit die and then bug out to a PrC - you may as well get the Run Feat for free on top of that. Wolf Totem is two levels long and gives you Improved Trip as a bonus feat.

The Bardic Sage is crap.
The Divine Bard is a straight power-up of the Bard. You staple the word "Divine" on your spells and it becomes better because it doesn't have ACP or require rest to get spell slots back. It's still a Bard - so it's still on the weak side.
The Savage Bard is really weak.

The Cloistered Cleric trades the Cleric's Martial Ability for having all of the relevent abilties of a Bard - and thus easily and contemptuously blows the Bard out of the Water. In the long run, the Cloistered Cleric can still cast Divine Power and will be just as Martial as the normal Cleric and have a lot more skills and abilities.

The Druidic Avenger is horrendously over powered. You are just like a Druid except that you have all of the Barbarian abilities for free and you get to use them in Animal Form. Whoever thought this was a good idea should be shot.

The Thug appears to be an NPC class, as it is weaker than the fighter of all people.

Fighting Styles are a straight power-up of the Monk. The Monk pays nothing and gets some minor abilities. They are still Monks, so they still SUCK.

The Variant Paladins are inane, but not actually broken.

The Planar Ranger is better than the Ranger. Whooptedo.

The Urban Ranger gains the special ability to use Gather Information to do what the Gather Information skill normally does instead of getting Tracking. If you are as confused by that as I am - I am not terribly surpised.

The Wilderness Rogue is in no way different from the normal Rogue.

The Battle Sorcerer is still a Sorcerer and still sucks. In fact, the Battle Sorcerer is even worse than a normal Sorcerer. Since Wizards are already better, the Battle Sorcerer is a jest.

The Domain Wizard is very much like a specialist wizard who doesn't have to give up any schools and learns an extra spell every other level.

The minor variants are impressively easy to cheese, because the abilities they remove don't always come at the same level as the abilities they add. What do you care if you lose a Ranger's Combat Style at level two if you gain Fast Movement at level 1? You are probably going to take only a single level or you wouldn't have made the trade. And so on. Impressive min/max fodder here.

Note: Unearthed Arcana seems to have bought completely the idea that early levels should give more than late levels. To an extent, having 30 extra Core Classes just means that Fighters get a boost. Why not be a Wild Planar Ranger/ Lion Barbarian/ Wild Urban Ranger? You get to be a 3rd level character with a move of 60 and the run feat.

Specialist Wizard Variants:

You give up either familiars, or the bonus feat every 5 levels, or the bonus spells. The familiar and the bonus spells hurt, but the bonus feats really don't - especially because you'd only see one of them ever (as you intend to PrC out at 6th level regardless). Pick the right bonuses and you'll be a very happy person. Lots of min/max potential here. Lots of it. Note that many of the Familiar replacing benefits continue to acrue swag based on your Caster Level instead of your class level - so you can be getting bonuses after you would have stopped gaining bonuses to your familiar after you PrCed out of the class.

Cleric stuff

The Spontaneous Cleric is a joke, and brutal effectiveness of the spontaneous domain caster cleric with trickery and illusion domains is difficult to overstate.

Variant Abilities

The Favored Terrain is almsot impossible to adjudicate. Go look through Shadowrun for long philosophical tirades about what terrain takes precedence where - this is just a paragraph and in practice would be maddening to use.

Whirling Frenzy is better than Rage in most ways, except that unlike Rage it doesn't stack with other forms of Rage so from a min/max standpoint it is the suck in the long run.

Turn Undead Level Check variant is extremely complicated, but makes Sun Clerics even more fearsome (The base chance to affect creatures of your hit dice is lower, but turn modifiers count in a 1 for 1 instead of 1 for 4 - so a specialized turner is much more effective),

Planar Banishment is far more powerful than Turn Undead, because Undead have lots of extra hit dice for their CR and Turn Resistance - and Outsiders have very few hit dice for their CR and no Turn Resistance.

Wild Shape Variant: Aspect of Nature is crappy and underpowered.

Druids getting Domains for free is madness.

Core Classes as Prestige Classes

This was done so poorly that I don't want to talk about it.

More later - where I talk about Gestalt Characters.

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by da_chicken »

DMINAGF
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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Lago_AM3P »

What's that stand for?
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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Username17 »

Gestault Characters

Oh my goodness, where to begin?

Gestault characters are more powerful than normal characters, but the degree to which they are more powerful is highly variable. A good choice - like Cleric/Rogue or Ranger/Wizard will end you up with a grip of skills, full spellcasting, and all good saves. A poor choice, such as Paladin/Fighter will end you up being just like a multiclassed character except with worse saves and slightly more abilities.

Did I just say worse saves? I sure did. The Gestalt Character gets a single save progression until they PrC out. That means that they get their +2 bonus for first level only once (wice if their two classes have radicaly different save progressions). A Ranger 2/ Fighter 2/ Paladin 2 has markedly superior overall saves than does a Fighter/Paladin 6 - let alone a Fighter/Paladin 5 that he is supposed to normally go up against.

Note that this means that the suggested Gestalt Campaign CR calculations are exactly backwards. It says to treat monsters based primarily on a nasty Save effect as two levels lower - while actually they are just as nasty or more so than they are against standard characters.

That 6th level multiclassed Paladin is going to have base saves of +9/+3/+0, the 5th level Gestalt is going to have saves of +4/+1/+1. Which is better against the Medusa again? The book implies that it's the Gestalt character, but I'm just not seeing it.

In short: The Gestalt campaign numbers are made up by someone who does not understand how D&D save bonuses accumulate, and the Gestalt classes are horribly unbalanced when compared to each other. Taking the best of both is incomparably better when classes do radically different things than when classes do similar things.

Generic Classes

These classes are terrible. The design is that the Caster gets better with age and the Warrior and Expert get worse. Do I have to draw you a frickin diagram?

Chapter 3: Building Cheesy Characters
Alternate SKill Rules

Maximum Ranks: This rule may as well be called "Multiclass your character". If you just multiclassed into Fighter Variants for the first seven levels of your life you'd have as many skills as a single classed Rogue.

Level-Based Skills: All characters get a -3 penalty on important skills, and get full ranks in every skill which was ever a class skill for them. At low levels, it kicks the Rogue in the balls. At high levels, the Rogue becomes extremely overpowered - as does anyone who has even a level of Rogue ever. Very unbalanced system and I can't see the advantages. It isn't even simpler to use during play.

Complex Skill Checks: Using this rule transforms normal D&D probabilities into intractible nightmares. From what I can tell - people who use these rules will rapidly find themselves placed into impssible situation after impossible situation. Why? Because the vast majority of DMs will be unable to figure the probabilities involved in these checks ahead of time and thus in almost all circumstances, these tests will be set up to be impossibly easy or difficult.

Character Traits: These are not balanced. You get to take penalties to skills you don't have for bonuses to skills you do have. At least most of the traits are small. Except that some of them break the Constitution rules and make us cry even more.

Flaws: You can take extra miss chances as a Wizard who fights only with targetted spells and area attacks! You can reduce your own base land speed as a mounted fighter! You can take all kinds of crazy crap that has no effect whatsoever on your character in the manner you actually intend to play them. This rule may as well have been called "Players get more feats".

Bad Touch Feats: Most of these are underpowered, no surprises there. Some of them are pretty cool.

Weapon Groups: Highly restrictive - fighters end up knowing how to use very few weapons. However, it strongly encourages multiclassing, and gives all warriors Exotic Weapons of some kind for free.

Craft Points: For games that don't allow complicated paper manipulation - here's some extremely complicated paper manipulation. Does anyone else see the inherent problem with this?

Character Backgrounds: I'm not sure why this is even a rule - it's just a cumbersome NPC generator. Characters generated by this method will be almost entirely unplayable, so I'm not sure why this would be inflicted on us.

More later with the dreaded chapter four.

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Naar »

Thanks for your analysis, Frank. One point: the Lion barbarian doesn't get the standard fast movement, so it seems relatively poor to choose the Lion totem if you're going for a one-level dip.
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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Desdan_Mervolam »

I intend to react to this, but I'll do it tonight. My UA is at home, and I don't want to limit my stupid mistakes.

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

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Naar at [unixtime wrote:1077749705[/unixtime]]Thanks for your analysis, Frank. One point: the Lion barbarian doesn't get the standard fast movement, so it seems relatively poor to choose the Lion totem if you're going for a one-level dip.


True. Missed that - which means that they are the suck. Sorry, I think I was transposing them with the Horse above. Comes from going really fast. I deeply apologize.

Chapter Four: Adventuring

The Defense Bonus

You take a rules set in which some people are expected to get armor and some people are not. Then you replace that with everyone getting AC bonuses when not wearing armor. Again this heavily favors multiclass characters - a 20th level Rogue has a defense bonus of +9, but a Rogue 19/ Fighter 1 has a defense bonus of +12. There is a short description in here about how some characters will flourish and some will suffer - it doesn't really tell the half of it. It is an enourmous boon to Two Handed Weapon Fighters - as they get a minimal shield bonus effective whether they are actually using one or not.

Armor as DR

Interestingly - this screws armor users hard. The dR it gives out is small and weak, and the reduction in AC is massive. Consider the Cleric in Platemail who before was being hit by CR 5 opposition only 25% of the time. Now he's being hit 45% of the time - an increase in the amount of damage he's taking of 80%. However, he takes 4 points off of each attack - which if CR 5 enemies were doing only 9 points of damage per hit would break even. CR 5 enemies do a lot more than 9 points of damage per hit so this is a net tremendous kick in the balls to armor wearing people.

The behind the curtain on this shows really bad math. They compare a 25% relative reduction in damage per hit to a 20% absolute increase in hits per attack to show that a Fighter is pulling ahead. Apples to Nuclear Reactors my friend - the actual math is that you just had a relative increase of between 40 and 400 percent of hits per attack and are recieving 3/4 of the damage per hit - which means that you are looking at at least a 5% increase in the damage per round that you are taking from that Ogre.

Damage Conversion

While the other options were about kicking armor wearers in the jinglies - this is simply a method by which people wearing lots of armor become massively more survivable in combat. A high level Fighter can expect to turn 13 points or more of damage from every physical source into subdual. There's no downside for Paladins - it's just awesome.

Injury

The sum total of all modifiers to the DCs and rolls are generally meaningless in the face of high level damage output. A 1st level Barbarian in a Rage averages 17.6 points of damage with his greatsword which is a Fort Save DC 32.6 - which for those keeping track at home is Epic. The DC to avoid going down is 22.6 - which is considered very high even to mid-level characters. 1st level characters pretty much routinely stagger and kill high level characters with one blow. Expect combats to be largely a matter of rolling initiative and Evasion to figure larger in calculations.

Note that in this system a Barbarian 1/Fighter 1/Ranger 1 is a third level character who effectively has the hit points of an 8th level Fighter before he even goes into a rage. It also has special rules for Fast Healing which don't mean crap because people very rarely suffer "hits" and instead go down like suckers on the first or second attack.

Slower Healing: This rule takes Magical Healing, already a sketchy action to perform in combat, and takes it out of the realm of combat entirely because it doesn't actually have any effect until later. This might actually make Clerics more effective as they wouldn't be tempted to waste their time on combat healing spells which don't really work in D&D anyways.

Vitality and Wound Points

Once you take even a single point of Wound Damage, any Archer will own your face. An Arrow has a 10% chance per hit of doing direct Wounds to you per hit. Smaug would be dropped by 200 archers without even being able to go on one bombing run.

However, ironically, the DC to avoid Death is only 15 - so high level characters have nothing to fear - they just become exhasusted all the time but suffer no real chance of anything worse happening.

All in all - it doesn't seem like this was thought through at all. A high level vampire not only can't be killed - he can't even be slowed down. At all. By anything. Nothing can reduce him to less than 0 wounds, he gets wounds back at the beginning of his turn and acts. You can stab him all day with a holy avenger and he'll keep fighting.

Reserve Points:

This rule, while it introduces a lot of book keeping, doesn't actually change anything. The damage you can take in a single fight is the same, and the amount of damage you've lost between fights is the same. It just lets you bank healing in a bizzare fashion - like purchasing extra charges on a wand of cure light on trips back to town. Actually, it's exactly like that.

Alternate Massive Damage threshholds:

The Massive Damage rules are terrible, and are more frequently modified or removed than any other rule in the game. All of these alterations are crap because they still have Massive Damage at all. There's no reason for it. There's no reason for lesser versions of it. If it comes up in the game, it makes the game worse - end of story.

Death and Dying

0 hit points: This is a big boon for Barbarians (no more Rage Death), and a big slap to wizards. Because death is handled by a Fort Save - Dwarven Fighter/Barbarians are practically unkillable. Meanwhile, elven Rogues are just going to die all the time. Subtle Note: The high level monster with fast healing is unstoppable again, because they hit zero, don't die, and immediately turn concious again on their turn.

Action Points

Neat idea, poor execution. The benefits of using action points are not, in fact, remotely equal when used in different circumstances.

Facing

It's just as bad as it was in 2nd edition. Probably because it is from 2nd edition. Fights between Rogues become games of leap frog, it's totally retarded.

House Rule: Luck Checks. This is entirely dependent upon the DM. It's like saying "I, as a DM, like to make Deus Ex Machinas happen sometimes. However, I also like to make players spend feats to make it seem like I'm not jerking them around when I actually am."

Enhancement to Touch AC: In 3rd edition, this isn't even a house rule. It's just how things were written to begin with. It isn't unbalancing 3rd edition games, so I don't know how or why it could unbalance anything else. In practice, it's a very minor benefit.

Variable Modifiers: OMG! This is so dumb it makes me want to cry. It's a roll modifier - it doesn't make any difference whether it's static or variable. The overall roll is still variable. The only real change is that all rolls are more likely to succeed and fail about half the time. More likely events become less likely, less likely events become more likely. Since it makes chances hard to evaluate and eliminates much of the differences between more and less skilled characters - why not just handle things with rock paper scissors instead?

Bell Curve Rolling: No overall effect. The analysis of this is tolerably good in the book. However, the analysis of the Luck Domain is spot off dreadful. While average results are more frequent, this means that a reroll of a bad result is more likely to help than it is in standard d20. The concept that rerolls should come with a +3.5 bonus is just perplexing. The Auspicious Odds spell is broken.

Players Roll All Dice: Unless you were cheating, this "variant" doesn't change anything. It's just like you rolling the dice, with all the numbers inverted.

Later: Chapter Five.

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Thoth_Amon »

I'll chime in with a "thanks for the legwork Frank".

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Desdan_Mervolam »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1077760737[/unixtime]]
The Defense Bonus
Armor as DR
Vitality and Wound Points


Star Wars d20 has had Defense Bonus and the VP/WP system since the beginning, and something similar to the Armor as DR rule since it's revision about a year ago. My group's been playing SWd20 almost constantly since it came out so I can tell you from plenty of table experience that these rules work pretty well in an actual game, even the Armor as DR rule, which I was staunchly opposed to when it was proposed. I will mention a caveat though that armor in SWd20 doesn't provide any AC bonus at all, instead providing a better DR (DR7 for heavy combat armor)

Frank wrote:However, ironically, the DC to avoid Death is only 15 - so high level characters have nothing to fear - they just become exhasusted all the time but suffer no real chance of anything worse happening.


I will, however, agree wholeheartedly to this. I have never seen a SWd20 character dropped below zero wounds die due to failing to stabilize before bleeding to death.


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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

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Chapter Five: Magic

Magic Rating

This is extremely complicated, and is similar to a system I've seen somewhere before. Note, however, that since it doesn't help people cast higher level spells, that a multiclass spellcaster still sucks. It's a little complicated, and it makes Mystic Theurges into crazy town rockers - but on the whole it's better than nothing if your wizards actually want to take a level or two of Cleric, or whatever. Basically, this option tackles a very real problem of D&D (Multiclass spellcasters are the Suck) and then doesn't actually solve it because it doesn't go far enough. Without serious modification, this breaks Epic.

Optional Variant: Separate magic ratings for separate classes invalidates every advantage this system has.

Summon Monster Variants

Themed Lists: Summon Monster is already the suck. The only advantage is that it is at least versatile. Limiting monster choices makes one fo the weakest spells in the game even worse. I'm sincerely puzzled. It's like coming up with special rules that only allow Find Traps to function underground.

Individual Lists: As above, except more so.

Metamagic Components:

These rules are dumb - in that they specifically allow people to spend money directly for more power in a method perhaps more tangible than anyone is really comfortable with. More importantly, did you notice that the metamagic enhancement for awaken was empower? That pretty much runs an end to the "Awaken isn't supposed to be empowerable, stop it you cheesy bastards" argument....

House Rule: Sorcerers and Metamagic I. So you need the feat, and the spell, and then you can use up another spell known to be able to cast the metamagiced version of that one spell on the fly? WTF? Metamagiced spells are generally not as powerful as higher level spells (See Magic Weapon and Greater Magic Weapon if you don't believe me). You could just research a Quickened version of Magic Missile as one of your fifth level spells. It wouldn't cost you a feat and it would probably do more than 17.5 points of damage.

House Rule: Sorcerers and MEtamagic II. You get to prepare spells. Yippe frickin do. Wizards can do that and aren't losing a spell level. Coming up with rules like this simply highlights the inadequacies of the Sorcerer class.

Spontaneous Metamagic

Daily Uses: Actually, this isn't bad - although it makes Wizards even more better than Sorcerers. Personally, the game complaint that using Metamagic properly requires planning is somewhat humerous to me. Regardless, this option makes all metamagic good, and causes players to horde metamagic feats - even Heighten (especially Heighten). It's a notable power-up, but probably won't damage games.

Extra Spell Slots: This is a higher cost than people pay now for Metamagic, and it seems like it would drive metamagic off the market entirely. Exception: since this option allows people to break the 9th level cap - it can be used with Cleric Archer Builds to do some impressively broken things (at the cost of literally all of her spell slots).

Combined Approach: Sometimes it's funny to hit people in the balls with a golf club. I have a golf club, let's institute this rule!

Spellpoints!

There is no number of Magic Missiles you can give up that won't easily be worth another Teleport. In a spellpoint system characters simply cast high level spells virtually exclusively and the disparity between casters and other people intensifies.

For some reason, someone thought it would be a good idea to punish specifically Evokers by making their spells cost more spell points. This is extremely puzzling, as Evokers are the suck. So, for example, a 20th level Wizard pays out only 5 spell points to cast Greater Magic Weapon to make 50 arrows +5 for 20 hours, but has to pay 10 spell points to drop a 10 die fireball on his enemies. This is totally backwards, as the 20th level wizard doesn't pick his teeth with a 10 die fireball.

Vitalizing Variant: How about we just give casters less spell points to begin with instead of giving them more and then punching them in the balls? This rule may as well be called "there aren't any wizards in my campaign". A first level wizard who casts a spell can't run any more.

House Rule: Simplified NPC Casters. I wasn't aware that anybody went through and wrote down every single spell that NPC spellcasters had. This is a very complicated way of saying "It's easier on everybody if you just kind of wing extremely complicated NPCs like evil Wizards". It is, and I don't think that Stark had a really good way of presenting that piece of data - nor do I think it makes much sense to try to pretend that's an optional rule somehow.

Recharge Magic

This heavily favors Clerics (who have hundreds of spells at their finger tips) over Wizards (who only have a couple dozen at the outside), and heavily favors Wizards (who have spellbooks) over Sorcerers (who suck ass).

Because utility spells have a specific recharge time, spell knowledge become immensely powerful. Because a Cleric knows Greater Magic Weapon, and Weapon of the Deity, and Weapon of Disruption, and Weapon of Energy, and Spikes, and Weapon of Impact, they can always be casting buff spells on their weaponry - a Wizard has a spell book, so when their GMW is in recharge mode they are out an option altogether.

It also makes massive breakpoints for higher level casters. A character of 5th level, for instance, can only have weapons be Greater and Magical most of the time - while a 12th level character can maintain two sets of weapons Greater Magical at all times. Once your spells last longer than the specific recharge time, you are totally the win.

Legendary Weapons

This is something that most people have wanted for some time. I mean, if you get Excalibur, you take the Prestige Class that Arthur has - namely that you're the guy who totally has Excalibur.

The execution here is unimpressive. A +2 Bastard Sword of Bravery isn't Legendary - I'm literally supposed to be able to go to the store and get something better than that on lay away if I have good credit. At the end, you end up being a 19th level character with a +5 Dragonbane sword. Who cares? Getting +1 to the enhancement bonus of your sword every three levels isn't a class feature - it's something that happens naturally if your party has a wizard in it. The Faith Scion's "ability" to have a +5 weapon at 20th level is perplexing - since by then they can just cast GMW and get the same bonus all day.

Item Familiars

This is totally broken. You get more XP than the rest of the party - and if you spend those XP on item enhancement you can't even lose them. Hillarity ensues for everyone. Everyone should have these made immediately - it's totally overpowered. Best feat ever.

Incantations

It's the Epic Spells rules. Actually, it's a lot better written than the Epic Spells rules. Like the Epic Rules - it's totally broken. You can design some truly cool stuff with these rules, and they no longer say "You have to be a Cleric or shut the hell up." However, they still have the whole thing where it's trivially easy to permanently transform yourself into a Chronotyrin for free and stuff.

Coming Soon: Chapter Six

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Josh_Kablack »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1077760737[/unixtime]]

Players Roll All Dice: Unless you were cheating, this "variant" doesn't change anything.


Untrue.

It changes the threat range (but not multiplier) of some weapons used by antagonists. :tongue:
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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

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It changes the threat range (but not multiplier) of some weapons used by antagonists.


I just sort of assumed that enemies with 19-20 threat weapons would threaten on a 1 or a 2, for example.

I also noticed that no provisions were made for that - but I just sort of assumed that in a book full of optional rules and hand waiving - that micromanaging the literal meaning of individual words was just going to make breaking the game too easy.

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by da_chicken »

Lago_AM3P at [unixtime wrote:1077742472[/unixtime]]What's that stand for?


DM Is Not A Gold Fish. That is, just because you bring it to the table doesn't mean it works like that. Especially with variant UA rules.

It's short for "That's obviously stupid and broken since it renders the game unplayable. No sane DM or group will play it like that so your point is moot."

If you're wanting to point out poor game design, that's fine. But actually suggesting your DM must allow you to mine balors or recurse phoenixes or get 110% simulacrums because "it's in the RAW" is just dumb.
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Desdan_Mervolam
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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Desdan_Mervolam »

So, if you combine the DM is Not a Goldfish Princaple and the Oberoni Fallacy, they negate each other, tearing a hole in the fabric of space and time?

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by da_chicken »

No, no. They're really quite separate. Oberoni says "it's not balanced just because it can be changed". DMINAGF says "it's not playable just because it's published".

It's like Presidential veto and Congressional override. Checks and balances. Not too much power in the DM's hands, not too much in the publisher's.
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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Username17 »

There are few games I've ever played in where a minor bloodline would not be a skill bonus and a feat for free.

That's what the review system is for - if you actually used this rule, what would happen? Thus, while I'm not terribly concerned that people are going to take only half as many criticals from enemy swords when playing with the Players Roll All Dice variant - I am concerned that people who play with bloodlines are going to walk off with extra free feats.

The one problem is a typographical error, and when you are talking optional rules is going to be fixed by the DM in most cases. The other is exactly what the rules is supposed to do - using it at all allows players to get benefits now and pay for them at 12th level. Since few games get to twelth level - that's buy now pay never. That's not a typo, that seems to be what the rule is for. Which means that any reviewer should call people's attention to that fact, because it may not be immediately obvious to a DM considering the rule that that is gong on.

So, if you combine the DM is Not a Goldfish Princaple and the Oberoni Fallacy, they negate each other, tearing a hole in the fabric of space and time?


Actually, DM is not a goldfish is the Oberoni Fallacy.

The Oberoni fallacy is that the DM can change things so things are not broken.

DM is not a goldfish is that the DM will change broken things so you don't have to worry about them.

They are one and the same, so there's no danger of explosions.

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by da_chicken »

SureFrankyou'rerightwhateveryousay.
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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Username17 »

:rolleyes:

Anyway...

Chapter 6: Campaign Stuff

This was probably the hardest chapter to write, because unlike the other chapters, it deals with stuff that there really isn't a standing rule in the PHB to modify. These rules are brand new (or were brand new when they were codified in the original source). This also makes it harder to evaluate, because there often isn't another rule to compare it with to see whether it works better or worse.

Contacts:

I personally use this sort of thing all the time in Shadowrun. It works pretty well for intrigue games, and doesn't hurt (or particularly effect) hack and slash games. So in principle I have no problem with this.

Level Based Contacts: The contacts by level don't give you nearly enough contacts to actually matter or do anything with. The party Wizard is lucky to see his second contact by the end of the campaign. It also heavily screws some of the major social classes - like Druids and Sorcerers. What's the point of even having a well rounded Charisma stat and a grip of social skills if the party Cleric has more contacts just for getting up in the morning. There's no particular rhyme or reason for different classes getting contacts at a different rate - and multiclass characters generally do not get contacts at all. If I were to do this, I'd start people with a couple of contacts and then have everyone get new contacts based on character level according to the Bard chart. That's still kind of low for most games which will want to use this sort of thing, but it's a start.

Reputation

I don't think that the author really quite realized how big this number is - it's pretty big at high levels. And it's zero at low levels. Once it gets big enough that people have heard of you at all - the bonus you get from people having heard of you is immense. Personally, I'd cut it down to a flat +/- 2 per five points they make the test by, rather than the scaling monstrosity it is right now.

Level Based Reputation: I can't for the life of me understand why different classes should give out different reptation bonuses. It's totally whack, and amounts to "We realy love Paladins". If you want Paladins to have a bonus to diplomacy, just frickin give them a bonus to diplomacy.

Reputation Feats: Renown is like taking Skill Focus in Perform, Gather Information, Diplomacy, and Bluff at the same time. However, it also makes your other bonus more likely to appear, so it's really larger than 3.5 Skill Focus, while also applying to more skills. Make of that what you will.

Event Based Reputation: This is more fair than level-based reputation. It gives what is essentially skill bonuses to Social Skills as rewards for adventures. So you could get a +1 bonus on diplomacy checks in the kingdom of Arvandor along with the gold and XP you take off the Lich king. Nice, and quite effective in a very social game. Unfortunately, since many games involve only one character being the party Face and the rest of them sort of lurking until there's something to research or blow up - this sort of adventure award is often going to be the equivalent of finding the magic exotic weapon that only one character in the party can even use. Regardless, you do have to do that sometimes, so that's not a huge problem.

Honor

This rule is pretty odd. You get the maximum bonus you possibly can from just waking up in the morning and being Lawful Good. That's a pretty big problem. There's not actually much of an incentive to chase honor when you are the heroes - because you already have as big a bonus as it can give you. OTOH, being dishonorable doesn't give you the sweet sweet bonuses until you've picked up quite a bit of infamy after waking up Chaotic Evil. It's a lot more work to be hated than respected, evidentally.

Free-form Honor: This "system" is even more confusing than the alignment system, as it involves starting at the alignment system and then waiving your hands for a while. Eeegh. Based on the degree to which the alignment system is already contradictory, I envision attempting to institute such a rule to involve game-stopping arguments about whether actions are honorable at least once every third game.

Family Honor: This doesn't make any sense at all. Apparently you become (a lot) more honorable in the eyes of people around you if your Paladin's father was the Lich King Sepheroth. How that's supposed to work I have no idea.

Taint

It's the Oriental Adventures Taint rules with some of the serial numbers rubbed off. In fact, it has so many of the serial numbers rubbed off that the Taint rules presented here are hard to follow and don't make a lot of sense. I suggest just reading OA if you want to use this mechanic.

Tainted Sorcerer: It's the Maho Tsukai again. Well, sort of. Instead of having that whole (broken) caster level trade-in, the Tainted Sorcerer is just a +1 Caster Level/Level class. It also gives literally all of its class features at first level. It's a hard bridge to walk - if you keep your Taint Score high you can have Save DCs on your spells in the mid fifties at 8th level. But since you have to make a Will Save to take a level of any other class based on your taint score - keeping a low taint score will allow you to actually get class features (which further levels of Maho Ts... Tainted Sorcerer do not offer). A Broken Class, to be sure, but differently so than the version in the Oriental Adventures book.

Tainted Warrior: This class is a waste of time and makes us cry.

Sanity

Like in the old Chaosium game - Sanity loss is a rapidly accellerating process which will completely jack your characters. Since losing Sanity makes you more likely to continue losing Sanity, characters lose their grip faster and faster once they fail even a single check. This strongly encourages short campaigns where it is understood that the characters are doomed from the beginning. Hey, it's from Call of Cthulhu, what did you expect?

Forbidden Tomes: Gaining Skill Ranks by methods other than gaining levels is in all ways a bad idea so long as you stay tethered to the level system for other purposes.

Drugs: These are the drug rules from the BoVD and before that from Lords of Darkness. No surprises here, although it's nice to see drugs that do things other than poison people or act as combat enhancers.

House Rules: Puzzles and Hints. This is pretty standard puzzle stuff, and I've seen this advice before abot a gajillion times.

Test Based Prereqs

The listed prereqs here are essentially way lower in practice than the prereqs are for the PrCs in the book. That's often not a problem - but it means, for example, that you can easily qualify for Mystic Theurge as a 2nd level Wizard, qualify for Arcane Trickster as a 5th level wizard, and qualify for Eldritch Knight as an 8th level Elven wizard. It makes the split classes massively more powerful, and supercharges spellcasters (who would otherwise have to take like 6 empty levels of Wizard or Cleric) significantly. In practice it has little effect on Warrior characters, who already had plenty of low-level options to keep getting abilities every level.

Feat Tests: These are just annoying. Taking your feats is a pain in the ass enough without the DM hitting you with the training wang. While characters can rather easily get feats in this method that they don't normally meet the prereqs for - the extra annoyance caused by haing to go through some rigormorol every time you wanted to get a feat sounds exhausting. I also like the fact that the only people who are put through this crap are Fighters - because we know how overpowered they are. :rolleyes:

Level Independent XP Awards:

I'm looking at this math and I can't for the life of me understand why people though this was in any way easier to understand or employ. It seems to be a much more complicated set of XP requirements which increase the disparity between players who miss an occassional session and those who don't.

It seems to have no advantages, and the sliding XP costs for magic items are equally arbitrary and bizzare.

House Rule: XP Bonus Pool. If you play favorites by putting down little check marks you can be arbitrary and unfair and have little checkmarks to pretend that you aren't. Yeah.

There's then some shockingly bad advice on how to inflict your players with a Sliders or Planescape element as a method to constantly change the rules on your players. :shudder: As a DM, do not do this! I'm serious. If you want to play with different rules and options, have multiple games, possibly with different players in them, and alternate the games. Do not jerk the players around on the rules you are using.

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Crissa »

Changing rules mid-game, while 'flavourful' for environmental rules... Don't do this without telling your players ahead of time.

Changing the classes or mechanics the players are depending upon their characters to use is not good.

Doing this results in things like the Fighter of the party having almost all the skills of the Rogue of the party because he skill list was change. We know what sort of whining that entails, don't we, Frank?

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Desdan_Mervolam »

Changing rules mid-game should always be done with the knowladge of your players, and probably the conscent of them too. Fortunatly, the group I'm in understands that the game is no fun when one person dominates it, so we've had a mutual consensus several times to drop spells and such mid-session.

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Re: Unearthed Arcana Cheeselist.

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Generally, if I have to change rules mid-game, I do so after consulting the players, and we run a test game.

If we don't like it, we go back after one session. No harm done.
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