Unearthed Arcana - Reception

Reception

Reaction to Unearthed Arcana was often critical. According to Lawrence Schick, in his 1991 book Heroic Worlds, "Many players regard the new character classes introduced in this volume as overly powerful and out of line with those in the Player's Handbook."

Paul Cockburn reviewed the original Unearthed Arcana in issue 73 of White Dwarf magazine (January 1986), rating it 4 out of 10 overall. He summed up the book's contents by calling them "A rules extension package of reprints, most of which add very little of interest or value to anybody's game." Cockburn predicted that the book would be a huge commercial success due to the seemingly never-filled appetite some people have for new material. However, he felt that as a rules companion book it would not be used universally by gaming tournaments or by other publishers, or even players moving from one group to another, and that the book would wind up causing problems and confusion for gamers. Cockburn criticized the weapons specialization rules and the new character generating method, called the barbarian class "a farce" after losing their prohibition from magic, and considered the extended number of character races "virtually ridiculous", as it added several over-powerful races to the list. Cockburn noted that the bulk of the book was taken up by the new spells; while he felt these spells were OK, he said they "add nothing very scintillating to the game". Cockburn compared the cavalier class to the paladin, calling the cavalier "everything the paladin should have been in the first place", and felt that when compared to the thief class the acrobat "offers possibilities that should have been attached to the thief from the beginning".

Following Cockburn's review, UA was subjected to further criticism by Allan Miles in two articles published in the magazine. In White Dwarf 85 (January 1987), "More Than Skin Deep", a general discussion of the subject of PC race in AD&D, touched upon the subject in the context of Unearthed Arcana. "Arcana or Errata?" in White Dwarf 89 (May 1987) covered the volume specifically, opening with the observation that the material published in the book was now "definitely affecting the way the game is played," despite the fact that the bulk of its reception had been negative. Miles began by mentioning the aspects of the book that he considered predominantly unproblematic, such as the addition of new spells, magic items, weapons, and the introduction of minimum starting values for hit points. He then went on to discuss the areas he considered disruptive of game balance at length, including the new methods for character generation, malleable limits to demi-human class levels and characteristics themselves, the rules regarding the new Comeliness attribute, aspects of the Cavalier and Barbarian classes, changes to Thief alignment requirements, and the results of UA's version of weapon specialization.

William B. Haddon's review of the third edition Unearthed Arcana on RPGnet lauded the book's content while criticizing the interest level of the content as "very flat". He found the power level unbalanced for each of the new sub-systems introduced, and found little in the suggested rules that he wanted to use. He did note that the book was "jam packed" with pages of variants, ideas and suggestions, and found that the "Behind the Curtain" explanations from the designers gave him insight into their thought process behind the book's contents. Haddon called the book's art "terrible," explaining that "It looks cartoony and has little of the flavor or strength found in the art of so many other WotC products."