Excavating Unearthed Arcana that Didn’t Make the Cut, Part 5

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 5 I’m picking up with one of several concepts WotC revisited over and over again these past few years.

Unearthed Arcana: Artificer

I think there’s been a UA with artificer in some fashion in every one of these excavations. This time around they look pretty close to the official version we’d get later in Eberron: Rising from the Last War. I notice they start with hand and heavy crossbow proficiencies, which reminds me of how artificers operated in Dunegons & Dragons Online when they were introduced. Some features got moved around in level and the base class got a modified Extra Attack too. This version is fairly close to the official version.

Unearthed Arcana: Artificer

Wow! Just a couple of months later the next UA takes yet another crack at the artificer. This one includes two more subclasses and a revised spell list with spells from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything plus new infusions and revised multiclass guidelines. I’d completely forgotten about the Archivist Artificer Specialist and taking a look back now it seems pretty sweet and unique!

Unearthed Arcana: Cleric, Druid and Wizard

Both the Twilight Domain cleric (my favorite!) and Circle of Wildfire druid appear here and underwent a few changes for their official version. One character option that did not make it any further though is the Onomancy Arcane Tradition. As I recall from when this UA was fresh I felt like Onomancy was quite clunky. Also I couldn’t help but think of Usidore the Blue and all his many names — including many secret names so powerful that saying them aloud causes untold destruction. At any rate one of the wizards in Nerdarchist Ted’s Untraditionally Arcane campaign plays an Onomancy wizard. If you’re curious about it or what an all wizard party‘s shenanigans look like, check it out here!

Unearthed Arcana: Fighter, Ranger and Rogue

Rune Knight fighters and Swarmkeeper rangers made their way to official options but The Revived Roguish Archetype did not. Not exactly anyway. Phantom from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything captures the same theme but the fiddly bits changed significantly. The thing I felt most strange about The Revived was the Bolts from the Grave feature, which just seemed goofy to me. Phantom feels much more polished and on point as a representation of a rogue with a connection to the world beyond the veil. But if you’re into rogues firing off necrotic bolts in lieu of Sneak Attack maybe this is your jam.

Unearthed Arcana: Class Feature Variants

Looking back at this now I feel like this is where 5E D&D really started straying a bit too far into…I don’t even know how to put it. Nonsensical easiness? Many of these options wound up in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything in some form. Changing your skill proficiencies or maneuvers or other static abilities at level ups, throwing around quasi-Expertise including for barbarians, combining both clerics’ 8th level features into one — there’s some suss stuff in here if you ask me.

Unearthed Arcana: Fighter, Rogue and Wizard

It wouldn’t be another of these excavations with yet another run at psionics to go along with the new takes on the artificer class. This time around there’s no Mystic in sight and instead the concept presents through the Arcane Tradition Psionics. There’s some pretty neat ideas here like Thought Form where you transform into a being of pure mental energy. I don’t feel like it’s a strong concept for wizards and I guess survey respondents and the design team didn’t either but I am surprised some of these features didn’t get recycled since they’re pretty cool. There’s several new spells too and while some became official I am disappointed we don’t have the entire collection of classic psionic powers in 5E D&D. Pour one out for ego whip, id insinuation, mental barrier, mind thrust, psionic blast, psychic crush, tower of iron will and thought shield.

We’re through 2019 in this series with so much still left to go! There’s so many of them even skipping the ones without character options there’s still plenty remaining. Part 6 of this series looks like it’ll jump ahead quite a bit. The UA character options following from here largely became official content barring tweaks to the original version but very little was left on the cutting room floor. 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]

New videos all the time at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel