Unearted Arcana

Unearthed Arcana

Review

"Unearthed Arcana" was a supplement to the AD+D V1.0 rules.Unearthed Arcana's Introduction and publication date was dated May 1st 1985. It had a number of variations from the V1.0 rules and introduced some additional sub races, and character classes, including the Barbarian and Cavalier. It also made the Paladin, a cavalier sub-class which at the time was a good thing as it increased the Paladin's inate abilities, but is the slippery slope that leads us to aneamic thing it is today! It also added a bunch of spells for all spell casting classes, and introduced weapon specialisation.

Another great feature was the enrichment of the demi-human multi- combinations and the enhanced level restrictions for demi-human multi-class options.

Character Generation

One of the best features was the recognition that player's wanted to choose their class before they rolled the attributes. V1.0 involved rolling 3 D6 and taking the score for the attribute; originally, you declared the attribute before you rolled. Later, you could allocate the scores to the attribute you wanted so that you could ensure that your prefered class's prime attribute was reasonably high.

UA allowed, having chosen a desired class, the rolling of multiple die and the taking of the best three for each attribute varying the number of die by class and attribute.

So for a Fighter, one rolled as follows STR 9D6, INT 3D6, WIS 5D3, DEX 7D6, CON 8D6, CHA 6D6 & Comiliess 4D3

The file attatched to this page is a .pdf that licts the class/attribute die rolls permitted to obtain an attribute score. I shall attempt to fix both the MIME type and/pr the file name to ensure that the thing works properly.

Comiless was an experiment, obviously not continued as it did not appear in the BG2 V2 rules.

Rogues, Bards & Thiefs?

Interestingly, the Bard at this time was an optional rule set and based on additional Bard levels after a restricted level fighter/thief dual. It was not considered a class in this book and with the exception of the additional druid spells, not discussed.

The book spent several pages on the veri crap Thief-Acrobat!