Excavating Unearthed Arcana that Didn’t Make the Cut, Part 2

Courtesy of the Dungeons & Dragons design team’s plethora of Unearthed Arcana playtest documents over the years we’ve seen a ton of new character options evolve from initial concepts into their final versions in official published products. Each Unearthed Arcana follows up with a survey for players to weigh in with their thoughts and impressions, which the team uses to guide further development. Some remain largely the same, some change drastically and many don’t pass this playtest stage. At this point quite a few subclasses, feats and other 5E D&D character options fall into the latter category. Curious what didn’t make the cut? Let’s get into it.

Unearthed Arcana written in pencil, not ink

According to the very first Unearthed Arcana document for 5E D&D these documents are a “workshop where D&D R&D shows off a
variety of new and interesting pieces of RPG design for use at your gaming table. 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.” — from Unearthed Arcana: Eberron

In Part 1 of this series I turned this into a series because frankly there’s a lot more 5E D&D Unearthed Arcanas than I thought. Starting with Unearthed Arcana: Eberron I hit all the playtest packets with character options as yet unseen in an official product. I made it through to the end of 2015’s Light, Dark, Underdark! Here in Part 2 I’m picking up with one quite a few commenters called out as containing their favorite forgotten character option.

Unearthed Arcana: Kits of Old

College of Swords for bard graduated to official status through Xanathar’s Guide to Everything but lots of folks wistfully remember this UA’s College of Satire. Also called jesters this Bard College seems the most specific performative option of the lot. A College of Lore bard may be a jack of all trades and master of none, capable of pinch hitting for any of the other variety of bard’s specialty but none focus solely on extravagant performance like this one. Maybe the specificity was the aspect holding it back? There’s also a Martial Archetype of Scout, which wound up in a completely different form as a Roguish Archetype. For my money there’s no scout like the 3.5 D&D scout class. I played one of those for some time and their Skirmish feature was just *chef’s kiss.*

Unearthed Arcana: Psionics & the Mystic, Take 2

If you’re interested why I think psionics never catches hold in any edition check out Part 1 of this series. This iteration hits on familiar concepts of D&D psionics such as they are traditionally with things like Psi Points, Talents and Disciplines. There’s also two Mystic Orders. One focuses on developing the mind’s potential for power and the other is more mind over matter to achieve physical perfection. Looking through this one only reinforces why there’s only one version of D&D psionics I feel works.

Unearthed Arcana: The Faithful

Who doesn’t love another Otherworldly Patron? In this UA warlocks can strike a bargain with an astral wanderer to discover lost lore and share it with them. The Seeker grants great powers for exploring and gathering knowledge along with terrific protection from the undoubtedly hostile places their searches take them. There’s a specialized Pact Boon too. Pact of the Star Chain is really weaksauce though and not because it’s thematically tied to The Seeker. In fact it’s not even that but it is lame all the same. A better option for warlock material lies in specialized Eldritch Invocations, which this UA doesn’t include. It does however include the Arcane Tradition Theurgy. Basically it’s a wizard version of the Arcana Domain cleric. This is a concept lurking around the fringes of D&D since as far back as I can recall and a few commenters from Part 1 called this one out as a favorite.

Unearthed Arcana: The Ranger, Revised

What is the ranger’s identity? 5E D&D struggles with this question to this day although the Optional Class Features from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything seem to have smoothed things out. Just two years into this edition’s lifespan a second UA focuses solely on the ranger. This time they hit every branch on the way with reworks of basically all the core class features, reworked Beast Master as Beast Conclave and Hunter Conclave — and inserting the term Conclave itself — and including a third Ranger Conclave, Deep Stalker Conclave. (At a certain point I wanted to see how many times I could work Conclave into a sentence. I think I’ve got it out of my system now. Conclave.)

Unearthed Arcana: Cleric: Divine Domains

Two of the three Divine Domains here show up in official form but Protection Domain was unshielded from getting cut. Us tank players know what’s up but the idea of playing the damage magnet who lets everyone else shine doesn’t appeal to everyone. It’s not too bad if you dig bringing magic into your tanking skillset. Gaining and holding aggro isn’t really a thing in 5E D&D (remember using Intimidate in combat, 3.5 D&D players?) and compelled duel as a Domain Spell goes a long way towards pulling attention your way.

Unearthed Arcana: Druid

I’m shocked only two of the three Druid Circles in this UA went on to find a place as official 5E D&D character options. Circles of Dreams and the Shepherd scored high on their survey but Circle of Twilight did not? Before looking this this one I thought maybe it formed the basis of the later Twilight Domain for clerics but it’s not even remotely similar. This is more or less a necromantic druid! They’re not creating undead but certainly exploring the balance of life and death. There’s not a whole lot to it and overall not very exciting but conceptually I’m surprised it didn’t see a second take later.

Unearthed Arcana: Fighter

The official Cavalier Martial Archetype wove its way through UA as a Cavalier too focused on their mount and this playtest document’s Knight too focused on…making Purple Dragon Knight/Banneret look bad (?) but the Sharpshooter missed the mark. Elements of this ranged weapon master found a place in different ways whether Optional Class Features for rogues, additional Fighting Styles and the like. There’s a longstanding conversation who makes the better archer between fighters and rangers. I’m on the side of fighters. Whether there’s specific class options, feats or simply a fighter with no other special features they all do one thing better than any other class — fight.

Unearthed Arcana: Monk

Pacifist style characters appeal to a small niche of players and many editions offer attempts at character options to fulfill this desire. But in a game mostly about slaying monsters and finding treasure it’s often an unrealized dream. The official Way of Mercy Monastic Tradition finds perhaps a happy medium with equal shares granting succor and peril as a balance. This UA’s Way of Tranquility leans too far toward the former though. These monks may indeed manage to diffuse violent situations or extinguish a creature’s violent impulses but they’ve probably also got several adventuring buddies for whom those were the intended outcome.

Unearthed Arcana: Paladin

One mean sounding Sacred Oath cannot be enough! Many, many people lamented the Oath of Treachery swept into the dustbin of UA history. The way lots of people play D&D it’s not surprising to me in the least there’s a subset of players for whom “a path followed by paladins who have forsworn other oaths or who care only for their own power and survival” is a Sacred Oath they’d take in real life too. I kid. (But not really?) All that aside these paladins have some truly terrific features. They’re not only very useful but also represent the themes expressed in the fluff with aplomb.

This brings us up to the close of 2016 as far as Unearthed Arcana goes. Later installments of this series will include links to previous posts, and they’re all included in our Blast from the Past category too.

• Excavating Unearthed Arcana that Didn’t Make the Cut, Part 1
• Excavating Unearthed Arcana that Didn’t Make the Cut, Part 2
• Excavating Unearthed Arcana that Didn’t Make the Cut, Part 3
• Excavating Unearthed Arcana that Didn’t Make the Cut, Part 4
• Excavating Unearthed Arcana that Didn’t Make the Cut, Part 5

*Featured image — Jeff Easley painted the Last Spell as the cover image for 1985’s Unearthed Arcana book for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]

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