Quote from: Omega;742064The pole arm section was awesome if only for the absurd number of them on display.

Someone at TSR way back explained why that section was in there but I cannot remember were. Possibly Dragon or at GenCon. I believe it essentially it came about because TSR kept getting letters asking them what these things looked like. So someone decided to present about all of them they could list.

Plus, later on Gygax had confirmed that Pole-arms were important to have variety to help visually separate armies, most of the time using different pole-arms for different armies.

I think that the polearm section was good thing.  Not every gamer is a historian or weaponphile and really doesn't know what some of these things  are or look like.  

One of my earliest memories of playing AD&D with the second group I ever played with was of my friend Scott and David.  David was the DM and Scott was playing a Thief.  We were in a standard dungeon hallway and we spotted a enemy up head in the hallway.  Scott announced that his Thief will sneak up on the enemy and backstab him with his awl pike!  David and I bust out in laughter and Scott didn't understand what was so funny until we explained that his weapon was 20-fricking-feet long!

1. Used the demihuman changes wholesale but didn't allow Drow or Deep Gnomes unless there was good reasons (rarely). No Cavalier or Barbarians, barbarians only in proper setting. Double specialist single class fighter only, specialist Ranger allowed no others.

Loved the spells and spellbook rules and the 0 level character rules. Allowed Thief-Acrobat. Used and tinkered with the Comeliness rules (interesting attempt to make Charisma a non dump stat). The polearm section was a neat idea and read.

Quote from: RPGPundit;742029way too many pole arms.

No such thing!

Quote from: Akrasia;742154No such thing!

Same thought came to mind. Also, Swiss German halberds.

Yeah, Stone Skin was the most broken thing in the game for three (two and a half maybe?) editions.

Actually, there was something where someone was saying how fourth was great because you could play Legolas at first level.  Double specialized archers did that long, long before.

Quote from: David Johansen;742175Yeah, Stone Skin was the most broken thing in the game for three (two and a half maybe?) editions.

Best. Spell. Ever.  :cool:

A 4th level spell that negates one attack?  *shrugs*  Not that big a deal.

Quote from: JRR;742320A 4th level spell that negates one attack?  *shrugs*  Not that big a deal.

Wasnt the problem with Stone Skin that it could be stacked and had an absurdly long duration?

Quote from: Omega;742334Wasnt the problem with Stone Skin that it could be stacked and had an absurdly long duration?

I think so but doing something like an avalanche of pebbles or a swarm of hornets, or a wizard with summoning or Gate or Mage Hand, Bigby's spells handled it just fine if said player got uppity.

Quote from: Marleycat;742335I think so but doing something like an avalanche of pebbles or a swarm of hornets, or a wizard with summoning or Gate or Mage Hand, Bigby's spells handled it just fine if said player got uppity.

Yet so much simpler would be to make the Stoneskin spells not stack.  It hardly makes the spell useless, but it makes the more imaginative tricks less useful.

Quote from: Votan;742571Yet so much simpler would be to make the Stoneskin spells not stack.  It hardly makes the spell useless, but it makes the more imaginative tricks less useful.

True. But that can be easily accomplished if you want to. Then again how many 4th level slots are you going to dedicate to Stoneskin? There are alot of good 4th level spells out there.

Okay, I think I have a handle on what I'm dealing with.
Thank you everyone for your input on Unearthed Arcana.

I feel fairly confident now that what I'll probably do is use the spells in my game, and leave the rest well enough alone.

//Panjumanju

Read it through with an open mind and make of it what you will. Even the classes have uses in the right campaign.

Quote from: Silverlion;742106They'd actually switched to cheaper printings, most of the UA's I've encountered fell apart.

Which is odd since OA came out at the same time, yet that book doesn't have a reputation for falling apart. My first UA ended up in a binder because the spine came apart, but my first UA is just fine.

QuoteI didn't much care for UA, some of the magic items were good, I liked the Thief-Acrobat, but both the Barbarian and Cavalier felt overpowered for my games. (Mind you, I'd ditched the Eastern Style Monk, long before.)

It's a mixed bag -just like the other hardbacks. The new classes were a waste of space*, though I did give the Thief-Acrobat abilities to the standard Thief class (no splitting) and it worked out fine. The new spells and magic items were welcome additions as well.

The humanoid gods thing was silly, since most campaigns already have dozens of gods to choose from; adding twenty more was pointless.

* I'm not a fan of creating entirely new classes and sub-classes for every character type. Rangers, barbarians, cavaliers, even fighting monks should all be lumped together as fighters.

The different demi-human types (the part that caused so much Nerd Rage) didn't strike me as bad, but then I never felt obligated to include every race or class listed in the books in my campaign -any more than I thought it mandatory to include every item in the DMG or every monster in MM1, MM2 and the Fiend Folio.

In a typical human-dominated setting, the more oddball non-humans would face numerous handicaps that extra-strength infravision won't compensate for, so even the drow, duergar and deep gnomes shouldn't be a problem. In my own campaign I made the wood elf the standard elf type, just to be a little different.

The best part of UA was the errata published in Dragon and added to the new reprint. Assassins and thieves are now easier to integrate into neutral and good-aligned parties. On top of that, they were allowed to wear armors aside from leather, though with penalties to some skills. Magic-users could use swords, but with a "to hit" penalty. In other words a little common sense was injected into the game.

Overall, I thought Unearthed Arcana was a great addition to AD&D.