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.

Favored Soul - This first attempt at converting the Favored Soul is relatively close to the original 3e version. Taking the Favored Soul option instead of Draconic Bloodline or Wild Origin means your sorcerer gets to pick options from one of the Cleric domains for themselves and adds those domain spells to their list as bonus spells. They get much better combat stuff (automatically proficient with light and medium armor, shields, simple weapons, and gain an Extra Attack at level 6), but they still have d6 hit dice, so it's not always the best idea to go wading into melee. They gain the ability to sprout wings for flying and healing whenever they cast a Domain spell. Take the Life Domain and your Sorcerer can toss around healing and buffing spells like nobody's business (and with metamagic, to boot. Twinned Cure Wounds? Don't mind if I do), or take the War domain to put your newfound ass-kicking skills to the best use.

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.

Storm Sorcery focuses on lightning, swooping around with wind powers, and controlling the weather to make navigating a ship a breeze (No pun intended). At high levels, they can fly and spend an action to let the party swoop around, too. In short, a pretty great "pure caster" bloodline that doesn't go for making you tough like a dragon or have a significant lol-random component like the wild one. This eventually got made official with the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, but with one key nerf: the extra "stormy" spells that they got for free and which didn't count against their allotment of spells? Gone now. Who the fuck knows why.

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.

Technomancersrepresent a Wizard for a more modern age, one who focuses on mastering the interplay between magic and technology. A fairly fluff-accurate character, but unlikely to be of much use unless your DM wants to run either an urban fantasy game or a magitek/dungeonpunk game in the vein of Shadowrun - or at least with more advanced stuff than Eberron. The Technomancer gets free proficiency with sidearms (that is, pistols) and hacking tools at level 2, as well as trading their spellbook for an enchanted tablet computer. This lets them scribe spells in half the time of a normal wizard. At level 6, they get Program Spell, which lets them use any basic computational device (mobile phone or better) to "hold" a spell for them. The charge only lasts 48 hours, is one-use only, and a technomancer can only have one at a time. On the other hand, this lets you give somebody an undetectable improvised explosive device by handing them a cheap mobile primed to detonate a Fireball when they answer it. At level 10, they get Online Casting, where they can use networked electronic devices to channel spells for them. So, if you can get yourself into the mall's security room, you can promptly blast every fucker who walks into a room with a working security camera, without leaving the place. Finally, at level 14, they get the Chained Device feature, where they can have a tablet computer or better gizmo maintain concentration on a spell for them, allowing them to hold two concentration spells at once.

Ghost in the Machine - A Warlock with this pact comes from a hyper-dungeonpunk, high-magitek or Urban Fantasy type setting, having made a pledge with some sort of powerful artificial intelligence. This warlock gains the ability to mentally control computers, teleport along electrical wires & data cables, resistance to magical forms of detection and information retrieval, and the ability to "infect" others with a techno-virus by touching them, which hurts them with Psychic damage and lets you control them like puppets. This is awesome, but sadly useless in the standard high fantasy setting your group insisted on playing in.

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.

Undying Light - Making a pledge to the force of Positive Energy itself, these warlocks are a weird melding of warlock and cleric, making them a pretty interesting alternate take on the Favored Soul. In addition to a bunch of fire/light based spells, including two new cantrips, it gives Radiant resistance, a bonus to Radiant or Fire damage that it inflicts, increased vitality, and a healing touch. It also comes with a d6 table of optional personality flaws, which basically revolve around hating the dark and loving the light - despising the undead, being afraid of the dark, always needing to light up any place that's dark, things like that. This would receive some tweaks and ultimately give rise to the official Celestial Patron in "Xanathar's Guide to Everything".

Shadow Magic - gives no new spells, but does get a bunch of "umbramancer" class features, like burning sorcery points for Darkness, summoning a "Hound of Ill Omen" (ghostly dire wolf), teleporting between shadows and assuming a shadow form. It comes with a list of weird undead-themed optional quirks, like slow bleeding or a tendency to stare without blinking.

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 Theurgy tradition for Wizards. There was an immediate uproar that the Seeker was all over the place and the Theurge was overpowered.

Theurges are incredibly powerful, and this has led to quite a bit of backlash from fans who denounce them as being the most broken Arcane Tradition in the game, a title they held until the Lore Master came out in 2017. Essentially, a Theurge is a "wizard-priest", an arcanist who is either devoted to a deity sufficiently to wield some of their magical powers, or has learned to imitate (or usurp) divine magic through arcane lore. Essentially, the Theurgy Tradition is an alternative to the Arcana Domain for Clerics, in that it tries to make a singular class out of the Cleric/Wizard Mystic Theurge, but by from the basis of being a wizard who studies and wields godly magic. Amusingly, by its default fluff, you can easily use it to represent an Ur-Priest as well. It's first second-level feature is, of course, Divine Inspiration, which lets you pick a specific Cleric Domain. Naturally, this should be one appropriate to the deity your Theurgist is worshipping/studying/ripping power from, though it notes that the most natural fits for a Theurgist are probably Arcana, Knowledge and Light. Its second level 2 feature is Arcane Initiate; when you gain a level, you can choose to trade one of the Wizard spells you know for a Cleric spell from a slot level you can cast - so, if you can cast 3rd level spells, you can snag a 1st, 2nd or 3rd level Cleric spell. You must concentrate on gaining the bonus spells from your chosen Domain first; only if you can cast all of the spells from that Domain can you pick up "generic" Cleric spells for your spellbook. Additionally, though you keep these spells in your spellbook, other wizards can't learn to cast them by copying from your spellbook. Its final 2nd level feature is Channel Arcana, which basically gives you Channel Divinity 1/short rest (2/short rest at 6th level, 3/short rest at 18th). When you make use of this power, you can gain either the Divine Arcana power-up (+2 to attack roll or saving throw of the next spell you cast) or the Channel Divinity effect granted by your chosen domain. The rest of its Tradition features are based on gaining access to your Cleric Domain's bonus features, with the exception of weapon and armor proficiencies. Arcane Acolyte (level 6) gives you access to the level 1 bonus feature, Arcane Priest (10th level) gives you access to the level 6 bonus feature, and finally Arcane High Priest (level 14) gives you access to the level 17 cleric bonus feature for your domain. Arcane High Priest is the most commonly cited and least legitimate source for complaints about the "overpowered" status of Theurges, with many falsely insisting that, RAW, you could take the Arcana Domain and thusly get access to Wish at level 14. More legitimate complaints focus on the potential for abuse if you apply Spell Mastery to Cleric spells,or the fact you can effectively have two Domains by becoming a multiclassed Theurgist/Cleric.

Seeker - The Seeker is a semi-divine warlock, sworn to the service of a deity or similar entity dedicated to gathering lore and knowledge. The UA article it appears in outright states that it mostly owes its inspiration to Celestian, the Greyhawk god of stars, space and wanderers. At 1st level, it grants the Shielding Aurora feature, where you can invoke a 1-turn-long forcefield once per short rest that grants you Resistance (All) and inflicts Radiant damage on any enemy that ends their turn within 10 feet of you. At level 6, it grants Astral Refuse; spend an action and you teleport off the battlefield to a non-space, where you can cast two spells on yourself before returning to where you started and ending your turn. 10th level grants you the Far Wanderer feature; you no longer need to breathe and are now Resistant to Fire and Frost damage. Finally, at level 14, you gain the Astral Sequestion feature: once per day, you can spend five minutes performing a ritual that teleports you and your party (no more than 10 people plus yourself, mind) to the Astral Plane. There, you get to complete a short rest before returning to the material plane with no time having passed in the interim. Its bonus spells are a mixture of divination and mobility enhancers, from Feather Fall to Legend Lore.

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.

Favored Soul - This mark 2 version doesn't get free Cleric spells but is instead allowed to learn Cleric spells. They also get a boost to hit points, the ability to add 2d4 to a failed attack or saving throw, doubled proficiency on Charisma checks, immunity to poison and disease, and regaining half your health once per long rest. This might make a decent survival Sorcerer.

Phoenix Soul - This lets you start fires, deal fire damage to anything that hits you, add your charisma bonus to fire damage you deal, ignore killing blows and deal fire damage when someone lands one, spend spell slots to heal themselves, and eventually fly, gain resistance to all damage, and deal even more damage when someone lands a killing blow. It's a bit of blastiness, mixed with some survivability. However, it's also been widely and intensely derided for having literally all of its features only matter when you're in your phoenix form, which you can only assume for one minute per day.

Stone Soul - Weirdly, this is a tank sorcerer and plays like a Battlemind or maybe a Swordmage. This nets you proficiency with shields, simple weapons, and martial weapons. You also can learn spells off a list that focuses on melee combat and tanking (you get a bunch of different smites), get a boost to your HP and an AC of 13 + Con. You can grant allies a reduction to physical damage equal to (2 + Sorcerer Level) / 4. When an ally with this reduction gets hit, you can teleport next to them and make a melee attack with bonus damage. At first, you can only give this reduction to one ally, but eventually, you can throw it on 3. Finally, you get a nice little bonus to your spell damage. It's the clear winner of the UA. It's hard to say why Wizards decided to remake the Battlemind as a sorcerer, but they did a pretty good job of it. It's also one of the better ways to make a gish in 5e.

Sea Soul - Guess your mom got freaky with a water-elemental or something. This lets you breathe underwater and swim real good, curse people to trigger special effects when you hit them with a lightning/cold/forced movement spell, resist fire damage, reduce physical damage you take by your charisma modifier, turn into water, and eventually, resist physical damage, ignore critical hits, and, best of all, exist without food/drink/sleep (why does D&D keep trying to sell us this shitty, shitty feature as a goddamned capstone? It's not like most DMs use the fucking food rules!) It's kind of a mixed bag of features, without a real mechanical theme. Maybe a control sorcerer?

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.

Lore Masters were... well, if you thought Theurgists got bitched about, you hadn't heard anything yet. Lore Masters are the return of the "Generalist Wizard" archetype, which is represented by giving them quite a bit of versatility, attracting complaints that now it outdoes the 5e Sorcerer at being the "versatile caster" as well as complaints about being overpowered. Its first 2nd level feature, Lore Master, doubles your proficiency bonus for Arcana, History, Nature and Religion checks (you still gotta be proficient in the first place) and lets you roll Initiative based on your choice of Int or Dex. The second level 2 feature, Spell Secrets, lets you change the damage types of elemental damage spells (that is, spells that inflict Acid, Cold, Fire, Force, Necrotic, Radiant, or Thunder damage) at will, and change the saving throw type of a single spell per encounter. This means that not only could you throw around all of the "force damage inflicting fireballs" that you want, you could also throw a fireball that is resisted with a Strength check once per encounter. Level 6's Alchemical Casting lets you modify certain spells by burning an extra spell slot; give up a 1st level spell slot when casting a spell that inflicts damage for +2d6 bonus Force damage, give up a 2nd level spell slot when casting a ranged spell of at least 30 feet to instead upgrade its range to 1 mile, and give up a 3rd level spell slot when casting a spell with a saving throw to increase its DC by +2. At level 10, you gain the Prodigious Memory trait, which lets you use a bonus action to swap one of your memorized spells out for a prepared spell instead once per encounter. Finally, level 14 makes you a Master of Magic, letting you cast 1 spell from any spell list (must be a level you can actually cast for, though) once per day. This tradition has received a huge outcry for effectively being better at magical flexibility than the entire Sorcerer class is, to say nothing of their ability to make all their damage Force damage, and therefore nigh-irresistible.

Hexblade - Pledge yourself to a sentient weapon of some description. Echoes the old Hexblade class and focuses on melee combat (it's a pretty obvious pairing with the Pact of the Blade). You get spells focused on making your weapon more magical (including three Paladin smite spells!), boosting your mobility, and a few kill-y spells. You also get proficiency with medium armor, martial weapons, and shields, and can substitute your charisma for dex or strength when making attacks with 1handed weapons. Other features include a curse you can put on people to make it easier to kill them (grants increased crit threshold, add proficiency to damage against them, regain hitpoints when they die, eventually makes it hard for them to hit you). Finally, you get a magic dog that lives in your shadow. You can make this dog go into someone else's shadow, which will let you ignore most cover they might be behind (I know that sounds made up, but it's real, I swear.)

Raven Queen - Pledge yourself to the Raven Queen. Focuses mostly around having a raven familiar. Spells are themed around death, finding things, and cold. Features give you a magic raven that grants you some bonuses, which you can eventually merge with. You also get advantage on death saving throws, immunity to frighten, and resistance to necrotic damage, and the ability to cast "Finger of Death" once per long rest.

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 Theurgy Tradition and a new Tradition in the form of War Magic.

Warmages were released in a March 2017 Unearthed Arcana, and if you think about it, they make more sense in this edition, as Wizards and Sorcerers no longer use different casting styles, and they were always highly trained, which is the wizard's "thing". Surprisingly, they're not redundant nor do they step on the toes of Evokers; they're all about blasting smarter, not harder. The first of their second level features, Arcane Deflection, lets them boost up their defenses with magical energy - when they take a hit against AC or fail a Con saving throw, they can burn their reaction to immediately boost their AC by +2 or their Con saving throw score by +4, as needed, in order to negate that particular attack. The downside is that they can't cast anything more powerful than a cantrip until the end of their next turn after using this trait. Their other level 2 feature, Tactical Wit, lets them add their Int modifier to their initiative rolls. Power Surge, unlocked at level 6, allows them to boost up their crowd-smiting attack spells once per short rest, in the form of adding +2 damage dice to the spell - this means they can launch a 10d6 fireball once per encounter, and at hitting level 20, they could unleash a 16d6 fireball. Their 10th level feature, Durable Magic, continues the "mystical protection" theme, giving them +2 to AC and to all saving throws whilst they have a spell maintained. Finally, the level 14 Deflecting Shroud provides a nice mixture of defense and offense, as it lets the Warmage deal half their level in Force damage to all enemies within 10 feet whenever they use Arcane Deflection. This Tradition was made official in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, with Power Surge getting a complete rewrite, Arcane Deflection boosting all saves, and Deflecting Shroud gained greater range at the cost of hitting fewer targets.

Mk2 Theurges are... literally unchanged from the mk1 version posted so long ago.

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.

Favored Soul - This third and final unofficial redraft of the Clerical Sorcerer subclass goes for more of a heal-bot approach. Divine Magic, acquired at 1st level, means it can learn Cleric spells and Sorcerer spells at will, and gets a "free" Cure Wounds spell - an automatically learned spell that doesn't use up its limited supply of spells known. It also retains Favored By The Gods, as per the last version. At level 6, it gains Empowered Healing, allowing it to spend sorcery dice to reroll the dice results for healing spells it casts. Level 14 gives it access to Angelic Form, where it can summon or dismiss ethereal wings that grant it a Fly speed of 30 feet. Finally, at level 18, it gains Unearthly Recovery, which lets it regain 50% of its hit points after dropping to half or less of its HP once per long rest.

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.

Celestial - This is the "good guy warlock" patron option, where you make a pact with an angel of some description. In mechanics, it's a refluffed version of the Undying Light Patron presented in an earlier UA. The big difference is that it adds some healing spells to its list of bonus spells, instead of just fire/radiant damage-dealers, and rearranges what levels you get which features at. At 1st level, you gain Healing Light - the "heal with a touch" feature from the UL Patron, which it didn't get until level 14 - and Light & Sacred Flame as bonus cantrips. At level it gets Radiant Soul, which is Resistance (Radiance) and bonus to radiant & fire damage, a feature the UL got at 1st level. They both get the same "bonus temporary HP on completing a rest" feature at level 10, but the Celestial renames it the Celestial Resilience trait. Finally, it gets Searing Vengeance - 1/day, when reduced to death, spring up at half maximum hitpoints and inflict radiant damage & blindness on all enemies within 30 feet - as its 14th level trait, when for the UL Patron it was a 6th level feature. This would go on to be reprinted exactly as-is for Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

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.

August

Three-Pillar Experience: New rules for gaining experience, in an effort to make exploratioen and social interaction as important to a game as combat, because traditionally all your XP comes from killing shit and that only really encourages murderhobos.

September

Race Options: Eladrin & Gith: New racial rules for the Eladrin, the Githyanki and the Githzerai, with the latter two being presented as subraces of a singular gith race.

October

Fiendish Options: New subraces for tieflings based on the Archdevils, new monster powers and other tips to represent diabolic and demonic cultists.

November

Elf Subraces: Four new subraces for the elf; the Avariel, the Grugach, the Sea Elf, and the Shadar-Kai, in an attempt at amalgamating its 3e and 4e fluff.