Unearthed Arcana (1985)
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This was the first (A)D&D book to contain variant rules (home rules) and make them official. It was intended to be used with AD&D first edition rule books, claiming to expand Dungeon Master's Guide and Player's Handbook. Divided into two sections (one for players and one for Dungeon Masters), this 128-page book provided new races, character classes, magic items and spells, weapon types, deities, as well as some other expansion material.
Much of the material in Unearthed Arcana had previously appeared in Dragon magazine, and was later (in second edition) incorporated directly into Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. Some other additions, like Comeliness attribute, were not included in the core, but were used almost everywhere. The new classes and character races presented in Unearthed Arcana were left out of the next version of the Player's Handbook, as they were considered unbalanced by the AD&D 2nd Edition's designers (the book's author, Gary Gygax, has left the team by that time), but were revitalised anyway in the following supplements.
The most important additions
- The idea of prestige class was presented by means of thief-acrobat.
- The barbarian class appeared for the first time.
- Weapon Specialization.
- Cantrips.
- Hierophant Druid was the first epic class.
- Gray dwarves in addition to hill dwarves and mountain dwarves.
- Gray, wild, valley and dark elves in addition to high elves.
- Deep gnomes (svirfneblin).
- Non-human deities.
- A lot of pole arms, which were so abundant in the Second Edition.
- Lots of magic items still encountered in the modern rulebooks.
See also
- Unearthed Arcana - next edition, for DMs only
- Arcana Unearthed - a similarly named setting
- Book's webpage in Pen&Paper RPG Database
