Unearthed Arcana

Unearthed Arcana is terminology taken from Dungeons & Dragons and is essentially more or less what you get when the game developers take a shot at homebrew.

In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Unearthed Arcana was a rules supplement written by Gary Gygax and published by TSR in 1985. It was, essentially, a cash grab; TSR was pretty heavily in debt, so Gygax's brilliant idea was to gather up a bunch of D&D content of various types published in Dragon Magazine (mostly by himself) or which had been submitted there but never printed, stick them all in one easy-reference book, and flog it to the market as a third "core" book, alongside the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide.

The result was... less than brilliant. To put it in perspective, in that year's November issue of Dragon, there were four pages worth of rules corrections, a two-page list of typo corrections, and some explanations and justifications for items which were not actually errors. In January 1987, that month's issue of Dragon devoted the entirety of its "Sage Advice" column to answering readers' questions about Unearthed Arcana, as a follow-up. Even then, it took until the 2013 anniversary reprinting before an edition of the AD&D Unearthed Arcana was published that actually incorporated this stuff.

Content included in the AD&D version of UA included the first ever version of the Barbarian class, alongside the cavalier and the thief-acrobat, new races/subraces like the drow and the svirfneblin, new weapons, revised information on character level maximums for non-human player characters, revised weapon specialization rules, new spells, the Comeliness ability score, magic items and non-human deities, alongside others.

Wizards of the Coast would later use the name twice over.

The first time was for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, where a second rules supplement was posted in 2004. This version of the UA was akin to its predecessor, in that it was marketed as a new tool for dungeon masters and veteran players. However, rather than just containing new content - which was, after all, the norm for every supplement in 3e by that point - this version of Unearthed Arcana focused on various ways to customize existing rules. Where the original Unearthed Arcana had simply expanded the rules and options of the core game, this 224-page supplement was aimed at providing an extensive list of variant rules and options to change the standard game itself. The book ends with a checklist of the included variants, preceded by a short chapter discussing ways of transitioning among multiple games using different rulesets (one of which explicitly emulates the "Eternal Champion" stories of Michael Moorcock).

The second use of the name by WoTC was tied to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. In February 2015, WoTC began publishing a semi-regular series of PDF articles on their website, displaying homebrewed, experimental content created by WoTC's writers and which could potentially be updated into official content in the future, depending on fan-reception. Usually, only one such article gets published a month, but sometimes WoTC gets motivated and releases more than one per month.

List of 5e UA Articles

2015

February

Eberron Update: Bare-bones mechanics for converting Eberron campaigns to 5e mechanics. Includes 5e PC stats for the Changeling, Shifter and Warforged, Dragonmark rules, and the first rendition of the Artificer, as a Wizard subclass. More or less panned by fans of the setting, who feel most of it was phoned in - the Artificer was particularly loathed for being underpowerd, whilst the Warforged was so weak that Keith Baker himself put up his own version on his blog.

March

When Armies Clash: Rules for mass combat in 5th edition.

April

Modifying Class: As the name suggests, an extended discussion on how to mechanically tweak and homebrew classes and subclasses. Examples give are a non-spellcasting version of the Ranger class and the first edition of the Favored Soul as a Sorcerer class.

May

Waterborne Adventures: Rules for playing naval campaigns, complete with the Krynnish Minotaur race, the Mariner fighting style, and the first drafts of the Swashbuckler and Storm subclasses for the Rogue and the Sorcerer respectively.

June

Variant Rules: The first of several UAs aimed at modifying and expanding the rules of 5e as a whole. This article contains the "Players Make All Rolls" rules variant, the "Custom Alignment" rules variant, and the Vitality optional rule.

July

Awakened Mystic: The first rendition of the Mystic class, 5e's first attempt at bringing psionics back into the game.

August

Modern Magic: 5e rules aimed at more "Urban Fantasy" games, ala D20 Modern. This particular article contains the City Domain for Clerics, the Ghost In The Machine Patron for Warlocks, and the Technomancer Tradition for Wizards, as well as new spells for all of them, and a gunslinging invocation for Warlocks. It ties into another article called "Behind The Screens: My New D20 Modern Campaign", which also features more urban fantasy equipment in the form of new firearms (sidearms and longarms) and modernistic armors.

September

Ranger: This month's edition presents a 1st through 5th level look of an updated, revised ranger, born as a result of all the people complaining about just how awful the default 5e ranger was.

October

Prestige Classes & Rune Magic: As its name suggests, this article tries to bring back the concept of prestige classes, and introduce the Rune Magic subsystem on the side. The response was lackluster and PrCs don't seem likely to ever officially come back, though that might be due to how bad the Rune Scribe sample PrC was.

November

Light, Dark, Underdark!: As you can probably tell, this UA was inspired by the Underdark. Two fighting styles - the Close Quarters Shooter ad the Tunnel Fighter, the Deep Stalker Archetype for Rangers, the Shadow origin for Sorcerers, and the Undying Light Patron for Warlocks.

December

That Old Black Magic: Demon-focused UA article, presenting the new Abyssal Tiefling variant race and new Wizard spells for conjuring various low-level fiends.

2016

January

Kits of Old: New subclasses based on various kits from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, specifically for the Bard (College of Swords, College of Satire) and Fighter (Cavalier, Scout). None were seen as particularly bad, although Cavaliers did elicit grumbles about how they fall into the same old traps and Scouts elicited outrage from Ranger fans for being better at their job than Rangers are.

February

Psionics And The Mystic, Take Two: An update and expansion of the original Mystic from the previous year, now going all the way up to 10th level. This one doesn't get a lot of attention because WoTC has screwed it up putting it into their own archives, forcing anons to search for it with the clumsy search engine the site boasts.

March

March 2016 Review: One of the lazier Unearthed Arcanas, this article consists of WoTC shilling the three DM's Guild products they most took a liking to, stating that if fans agreed with this like, such material could be ultimately made official content. The three products advertised were Blood Magic, Book of Beasts: Demon Depository, and Battle for the Undercity. Fans were... not impressed.

April

Gothic Heroes: Introduced the Revenant PC race, the Monster Slayer subclass for Fighters, and the Inquisitive subclass for Rogues.

June

Feats: Just what it says on the tin; a bunch of new experimental feats, these ones focusing on weapon and tool proficiencies, like the official Polearm Master feat. Fell Handed, Blade Mastery, Flail Mastery, Spear Mastery, Alchemist, Burglar, Gourmand, and Master of Disguise all appear in this article.

July

Quick Characters: Optional rules intended to make generating characters quicker and easier to pull off.

August

The Faithful: New subclasses to allow arcane casters to get in on the divine casters' schtick. This article introduced the Seeker Patron for Warlocks, and the Theurge tradition for Wizards. There was an immediate uproar that the Seeker was all over the place and the Theurge was overpowered.

September

The Ranger, Revised: A follow-up to the UA from a year ago, this further expands the Revised Ranger's ruleset by making it a full 20th level class at last.

October

Encounter Building: New rules to make generating encounters quicker and easier.

November

In this month, WoTC introduced a glorious but ultimately short-lived changeover to make UAs come out more than once per month.

Barbarian Primal Paths: First edition of the Ancestral Guardian, Storm Herald and Zealot subclasses.

Bard Colleges: First editions of the College of Glamour and College of Whispers subclasses.

Divine Domains: First editions of the Forge, Grave and Protection subclasses for Clerics.

Druid Circles and Wild Shape: First editions of the Circles of Dreams, the Shepherd and Twilight, plus alternate rules for governing druid wildshaping.

December

Martial Archetypes: First edition of the Arcane Archer, Knight, Samurai and Sharpshooter subclasses for Fighters.

Monastic Traditions: First edition of the Way of the Kensei and the Way of Tranquility for Monks.

Sacred Oaths: New material for Blackguards, in the form of the first editions of the Oaths of Conquest and Treachery for the Paladin.

2017

January

Artificer: The second ever fully-fledged new class for 5e, in the form of a new take on the Artificer, complete with the Alchemist and Gunsmith subclasses.

Ranger and Rogue: First edition of the Horizon Walker and the Primeval Guardian for the Ranger, and first edition of the Rogue's version of the Scout.

February

Sorcerer: First editions of the Phoenix Soul, Stone and Sea Origins for Sorcerers, and the second edition of the Favored Soul Sorcerer subclass.

Warlock and Wizard: First editions of two new Patrons for the Warlock, in the Hexblade and the Raven Queen, four new Warlock invocations, and the first edition of the Lore Master Tradition for Wizards, which has been derided as being even more broken than the bloody Theurge was.

Mass Combat: A revision of a concept touched upon in the very second every UA Article, way back in March 2015.

Traps Revisted: New rules for DMs to handle managing, placing and disarming traps.

March

The Mystic Class: The complete version of the Mystic, so far, a full 20th level class with all the mechanics that 5e plans to use to handle psionics, or so it seems.

Wizard Revisited: A second edition revamp of the Theurge Tradition and a new Tradition in the form of War Magic.

A Trio of Subclasses: One new subclass for each of the Monk, Paladin and Ranger. The Monk gets the new Way of the Drunken Master, the Paladin gets the new Oath of Redemption, and the Ranger gets the Monster Slayer, a tweaked version of the Monster Hunter subclass released for Fighters in Gothic Heroes.

April

Starter Spells: An assortment of new cantrips and 1st level spells for all of the casting classes in 5e.

Downtime: New rules on how to handle what PCs do during downtime in between adventuring encounters.

Feats for Skills: An assortment of new feats based on skill proficiencies.

Feats for Races: An assortment of new feats restricted to characters of specific races.

May

In this month, Unearthed Arcana returned to being a once-per-month production.

Revised Subclasses: Five 2nd edition revamps of subclasses from the past year; the barbarian’s Path of the Ancestral Guardian, the bard’s College of Swords, the fighter’s Arcane Archer, the monk’s Way of the Kensei, and the sorcerer’s Favored Soul.

June

Revised Class Options: More tweaked 2nd editions of subclasses from earlier Unearthed Arcanas; the druid’s Circle of the Shepherd, the fighter’s Cavalier, the paladin’s Oath of Conquest, and the warlock’s Celestial (formerly known as the Undying Light) Patron. It also has some new Warlock invocations.

July

Greyhawk Initiative: Old-school styled rules for handling initiative amongst PCs, using random dice rolls made in each turn of combat. Pretty much universally held up as the absolute worst UA that WoTC has put out to date.