Excavating Unearthed Arcana that Didn’t Make the Cut, Part 3

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 3 I’m picking up with one that presents an entirely new class to 5E D&D.

Unearthed Arcana: Artificer

The 5E D&D design team takes another crack at representing the artificer and this time as a distinct class rather than an Arcane Tradition for wizards. The base class changes quite a bit when it first shows up officially in Eberron: Rising from the Last War. Also notable is the absence of the Gunsmith Artificer Specialist, whose features focused on a magical firearm.

Unearthed Arcana: Ranger & Rogue

The Horizon Walker for rangers and Scout for rogues went on to become official but the Primeval Guardian didn’t continue. Maybe it came across too much like a druid or the survey data simply didn’t show enough enthusiasm but for whatever reason this very magical Ranger Archetype withered away. Perhaps it is too focused on a single environment (forests) but for my 2 cp I’ve always liked the idea of a more magical ranger. Transforming into a wood woad like Guardian Soul is pretty sweet too.

Unearthed Arcana: Sorcerer

Favored Soul went on to become Divine Soul more or less. The other three very cool Sorcerous Origins here — Phoenix Sorcery, Sea Sorcery and Stone Sorcery — fizzled out. It’s too bad since leaning into elementalism always feels appropriately sorcerous for some reason but nevertheless there wasn’t any rising from the ashes on these three.

Unearthed Arcana: Warlock & Wizard

How could you not love The Hexblade, which got its 5E D&D start right here? Not only did this one become official but one of the most popular and powerful Otherworldly Patrons overall. Unfortunately for lots of players The Raven Queen did not fare as well. I would be so bold as to point to our creation of The Norn as thematically similar and we’ve got our own Eldritch Invocations for those mysterious warlocks right here on the website too. Speaking of those wonderful customization options there’s a whole bunch of them in this Unearthed Arcana. All of them carry some sort of prerequisite, usually for a particular Otherworldly Patron, so they’re great for really embodying those themes. There’s also the Arcane Tradition of Lore Mastery giving wizards immense control and manipulation of the spells they cast. I imagine the feedback on this was it steps too much on a sorcerer’s toes, a sentiment with which I agree.

Unearthed Arcana: Mass Combat

Back in part one of this series I covered the first attempt at such a thing via Unearthed Arcana. I haven’t done a comparison between the two but I do appreciate the design team’s consideration for exploring this concept. Same as with the first iteration I wonder if any of these concepts will emerge in the upcoming Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn battle game? Between the material in this and the previous UA I think there’s a lot of solid stuff for Dungeon Masters to work with when implementing large scale combat into their campaigns. And unlike the plethora of third party creators offering their takes this stuff is free.

Unearthed Arcana: The Mystic Class

What is this, the third try now? I’ve said all I want to say about psionics in D&D and why they never seem to work out (except in the best edition of the game) in the previous two parts of this series. When sixth edition rolls around — because the coming “evolution” in 2024 will almost certainly run into the same issue — I hope they make a bonafide psionic class part of the core classes in the PHB. Otherwise it’s likely doomed for obscurity or extremely niche representation at best.

Unearthed Arcana: Wizard Revisited

War Magic made it to official publication but Theurgy, a concept first explored in an earlier Unearthed Arcana covered in part two of this series, did not. Basically a wizard version of the Arcana Domain for clerics this longtime D&D concept is beloved by many players. For some reason it seems okay to give arcane powers to clerics but putting some divinity in a wizard’s hands is traditionally verboten. This iteration basically just gives a wizard a Divine Domain straight up, which to me seems like lazy design both because it doesn’t bring much new and also because it’s not a great idea to make players jump around finding references elsewhere to the character options they choose.

Unearthed Arcana: Starter Spells

So many of the new cantrips and 1st level spells presented in this UA became official so long ago now I completely forgot they first appeared this way. I’m shocked more of these did not progress though. Guiding hand is really neat! I like puppet quite a lot too. I can imagine lots of scenarios where sense emotion would be useful and sudden awakening while niche would be most welcome for certain kinds of playstyles. Unearthly chorus brings terrific flavor with an equally terrific effect too. Those are the standouts of which I took notice on looking back.

Seems 2017 was the year of Unearthed Arcana! There’s so many of them even skipping the ones without character options I’m maybe through half of them in this post. Seriously there’s over a dozen more from this year alone. Part four of this series begins with the very popular Feats for Skills UA, which I feel is a pretty awesome design space to explore. 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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