New Member here. I've noticed in your blog posts, Anthony, that you employ certain classes from Dragon Magazine like the witch, variant paladins, etc. What's your take on the classes from Unearthed Arcana? For that matter, do you use UA at all in your games?
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I suppose I know something about 3.5 because I did run Pathfinder for about 8 months??? I also played Temple of Elemental Evil (from Troika) back in 2003? Plus other computer games of similar ilk. It might FEEL like I proselyte a lot about the system I use. But I think the system YOU use should maybe:
Be transparent to you b/c of your familiarity (obv not at first, but w/ time)
Be transparent to new players: so they don't have to look up skills. They just use their imagination.
Intrinsically support the kind of experience you want.
What I want is a lethal system that encourages cooperation and careful planning instead of showboating and Leroy Jenkins approaches. And I want tactical combat with meaningful choices that moves swiftly and lets me narrate the action by on-the-fly interpretation of the dice. AD&D does these things well so I have no need of sampling other systems beyond those I've already tried.
Games I've played:
Gamma World
Top Secret
Boot Hill
Star Frontiers
Paranoia
Call of Cthulhu
Labyrinth Lords
0D&D
Basic D&D
Expert D&D
Paladium
Traveler
Villains and Vigilantes
Numerous computer RPGs that base their rules on 3.5 D&D or similar
Pathfinder
So my experience is almost entirely with old games. I think the fact that D&D has made a comeback is fantastic. Moving to a new system won't solve your problems unless the things you hate are truly endemic. What I hated about Pathfinder was that the players ran the game and nothing was a challenge. I've elaborated on this in various posts. Therefore, switching back to AD&D did in fact solve my problems. But you have to know exactly what you are trying to solve before you apply the cure or it might be a big waste of time.
Thanks again for reading the blog. And thanks again to Allan for leading you here.
UA is a sampler tray. Pick the stuff you like. I don't use weapon specialization, or the acrobat for example. But i do use some of the spells and magic items. Any class that's not core to the PHB also probably doesn't have the play-testing that other classes benefit from. Even the Illusionist and Monk are a bit whack IMO for various reasons dating back to TSR's internal politics. Know that venturing outside the core classes likely requires some tweaking on your part.