You can think of the material presented in this series as similar to the first wave of the fifth edition playtest. These game mechanics are in draft form, usable in your campaign but not fully tempered by playtests and design iterations. They are highly volatile and might be unstable; if you use them, be ready to rule on any issues that come up. They’re written in pencil, not ink.
The material presented in Unearthed Arcana will range from mechanics that we expect one day to publish in a supplement to house rules from our home campaigns that we want to share, from core system options such as mass combat to setting-specific material such as the Eberron update included in this article. Once it’s out there, you can expect us to check in with you to see how it’s working out and what we can do to improve it.
-Wizards of the Coast
Here is a running list of released Unearthed Arcana.
Roughly speaking I find myself judging what to allow in my games, unearthed arcana or otherwise, on a few criteria
This isn’t a complete list of all released UA content, usually if the content looks interesting or promising I’ll dive into it more and assess it’s use in my games.
While not technically UA material, a lot of the stuff detailed in this book came from previously released UA. Overall this is a good addtional core book, it isn’t needed to play the game or understand the core rules. It’s a book for a DM that wants to expand player options and get ideas or tables for running their game. However, two problems stick to me. One, some of the content in here doesn’t refined. There are subclasses, spells, and rules that all work and make sense, but it feels like they didn’t get read over one or two final times before release which hurts the overall quality. Two, some of the content in here is free or easily accesiable online somewhere. I’m okay with pulling some official D&D materials together from random adventure books so they’re in one place, but a lot of the encounter or name tables are something that is just much easier to use community tools for. I don’t think these make the book a dealbreaker, but I wish they released this at a lower cost. I’ll cover the major sections it includes and offer some thoughts on each.
Character Options. This was one of the main selling points for XGtE. Other than getting lucky with homebrew or adapting UA material, this is the best place for new character mechanics. Roughly half the book consists of new subclass options, there are a lot. Some of these subclasses are great(the Cleric and Ranger ones stand out to me as the best), most are fine(Druid, Sorcer, and Barbarian), but too many seem uninspired(Oath of Redemption), lacking(Hexblade), or even mechanically clunky(Cavalier). The backstory section is a really good resource for getting ideas on your character’s past life.
Dungeon Master’s Tools. I was actually surprised how much I enjoyed reading these topics. What happens when characters sleep in armor? Can a wizard identify a spell as it gets cast? What can my campaign’s players do while they sit around town? This is all great insight on how WotC envisions these parts of the game playing out. Some rules are broad(random encounters) while some are very specific(tying knots). They try to clear up how to deal with falling damage from high distance falls and different ways of measureing spell effects on a combat grid. Even a deep dive on how traps can work. These are all great tools to work with for DMs, but the best part, in my opinion, is that these aren’t necessary rules that you need to enforce to play - they serve as optional or even suggestions on how to house rule.
Spells. New spells! I think spells get expanded the most across the lifetime of D&D editions which means great care gets put into what new spells can do. I love most of the spells they’ve added(Danse Macabre, Mental Prison, Mind Spike, and Tenser’s Transformation to name a few favorites) and don’t really hate any outright(Healing Spirit just needs a a little nerf). I wish some of the spells appeared in more class spell lists, but that’s an easy house rule.
Appendices. Appendix A talks about how to run shared campaigns with multiple parties, while I’m decently versed in this by running my West Marches game there was still some good ideas in there. Appendix B is consists of twenty pages of names for different character races, which while is a good resource feels very out of place in a book medium instead of a free online tool for D&D Beyond.
I also like the idea of race having more impact later after character creation. Short of having level locked racial features, racial feats are a great way to accomplish this. Each of these racial feats take an aspect of that particular race and extend it, enhancing that character’s abilities. Most of these are pretty great and are a worthy choice from the regular feat choices.
Now that, that Xanathar’s has been released, most of these feats have been introduced officially(with a few changes here and there). But there were some I really liked that didn’t make the cut, so I’m including those.
I’m allowing a selection of these feats to further aid racial impact in the game.
I like the idea of feats being able to give your character a skill proficiency that you are interested in, or weren’t able to secure when initial character creation. The idea that your skills being tied to your race, class, or background feels good to me, but as my character grows there are skills that make sense for them to invest time and effort in learning or becoming proficient. And feats seem like a great way to allow that to happen since it would mean a decision between the other feat options. But, there already is the skilled feat, which lets you get three skill or tool proficiences.
So, the I like the idea behind this. As a first draft I think these “Skills as Feats” are interesting enough and have potential but ultimately isn’t executed well enough. Some I find really well done, some I think are pretty lame, but some are really stretching the realm of the skill. I don’t like the idea of only allowing the ones I think are good enough because I would be allowing paths into some skills and not others. So in the spirit of being fair to every skill, I won’t be introducing these in my games. I also don’t like how they can grant expertise for a given skill. For me expertise is a special characteristic of the Bard or Rogue class, and I like keeping it locked there.
This is one of my favorite pieces of UA! Not for the content(I like that too), but the write up we get on feat design and for each feat given(good or bad) is wonderful! I think the “good” feats are great additions to the game; diverse beyond just weapons, mechanically interesting, and seem fun.
I like this UA because it does two things a) offers a compelling subrace choice for tieflings and b) it details new spells for a a new area of magic, summoning demons! The PHB’s tiefling is rebranded as infernal and the new one is introduced as abyssal. While the mechanic differences are a different take on each of their themes, the flavor allows the player to choose which type of creature from the hells to stem from(demon or devil). The spells are a little more complex than typical but tie into the theme of dark magic(which I love). These spells are only available to sorcerer and wizard. The warlock’s spell slot economy is different, so that’s probably why they didn’t get them(easily fixable by patron granted abilites) but I do wonder why the cleric was left out. Clerics can certainly be evil and dark, why shouldn’t they be able to summon a Vrock?