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RoboEmperor
2019-04-04, 05:25 AM
One of my DMs banned Unearthed Arcana for the longest time for being a "Book of House Rules" and he doesn't allow "house rules". And he points out the book even calls its own rules "house rules" like in the various sidebars. He also hates variant rules like like fumble, needing to pay gold to level up, spell points, etc. so he blanket banned all variant rules. So whenever a player asked him if he could use variant classes, traits, or flaws, he always said NO.

But today I managed to convince him that parts of UA are not house rules with this:

Forge of War p.108 says you should use Flaws in UA for mechanical changes due to Scars of War
Dragonmarked p.12 gives an official Flaw and words it in a way that you're house ruling if you don't use it as a flaw.
Dragonmarked p.158 says you should use the Aberrant Dragonmark as a Flaw
Dragonmarked p.42, 83, 85, 87, 88, 117, and 120 uses Urban Ranger even in official NPC stat blocks.
Cityscape p.119 has yet another NPC using the Urban Ranger (WotC really likes urban rangers!)
Player's Guide to Eberron p.129 says Lizardfolks should use Druidic Avenger

Once I presented these official 1st party splat books directly utilizing Unearthed Arcana material I finally managed to convince him that at least Flaws and Variant Classes are not house rules, and Variant Classes are definitely not even "variant rules" seeing how Urban Ranger was extensively used, so he finally allowed flaws and variant classes in the game. I have a necromancer player and a summoner player who both gave me a high five for finally getting this DM to allow the warrior skeleton ACF and the standard action summon ACF.

So! Anyone have any official instances of other Unearthed Arcana material being directly used in 1st party splat books that I can use? Like Traits!

He considers Eberron's action point system a direct update to UA's action point system so he banned UA's action point system.

Telonius
2019-04-04, 05:44 AM
If he considers Action Points an update, he'll probably think the Taint rules in Heroes of Horror is an update too; but it's another example of something that was in UA first that was later used officially.

RoboEmperor
2019-04-04, 05:47 AM
If he considers Action Points an update, he'll probably think the Taint rules in Heroes of Horror is an update too; but it's another example of something that was in UA first that was later used officially.

Heroes of Horror directly says its a revision of Unearthed Arcana's Taint system which was a direct update to Oriental Adventure's taint system. Nice! Taint Bonus feats are awesome!