Arcana Unearthed: A Variant Player's Handbook [Hardcover]

Monte Cook (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: White Wolf Publishing (July 26, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1588460657
• ISBN-13: 978-1588460653
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #915,568 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The game designer
Monte Cook started working professionally in the game industry in 1988. In the employ of Iron Crown Enterprises, he worked with the Rolemaster and Champions games as an editor, developer, and designer. In 1994, Monte came to TSR, Inc., as a game designer and wrote for the Planescape and core D&D lines. When that company was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, he moved to the Seattle area and eventually became a senior game designer. At Wizards, he wrote the 3rd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide and served as codesigner of the new edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. In 2001, he left Wizards to start his own design studio, Malhavoc Press, with his wife Sue. Although in his career he has worked on over 100 game titles, some of his other credits include Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, The Book of Eldritch Might series, the d20 Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game, The Book of Vile Darkness, Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved, Ptolus, Monte Cook's World of Darkness, and Dungeonaday.com. He was a longtime author of the Dungeoncraft column in Dungeon Magazine. In recent years, Monte has been recognized many times by game fans in the ENnies Awards, the Pen & Paper fan awards, the Nigel D. Findley Memorial Award, the Origins Awards, and more.

The author
A graduate of the 1999 Clarion West writer's workshop, Monte has published two novels, The Glass Prison and Of Aged Angels. Also, he has published the short stories "Born in Secrets" (in the magazine Amazing Stories), "The Rose Window" (in the anthology Realms of Mystery), and "A Narrowed Gaze" (in the anthology Realms of the Arcane). His stories have appeared in the Malhavoc Press anthologies Children of the Rune and The Dragons' Return, and his comic book writing can be found in the Ptolus: City by the Spire series from DBPro/Marvel. His fantasy fiction series, "Saga of the Blade," appeared in Game Trade Magazine from 2005-2006.

The geek
In his spare time, Monte runs games, plays with his dog, watches DVDs, builds vast dioramas out of LEGO building bricks, paints miniatures, and reads a lot of comics.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Advanced Gamers, Rejoice!, September 17, 2003

By 

Matthew Arieta "TheWebCoder" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Arcana Unearthed: A Variant Player's Handbook (Hardcover)

If you're a moderately (or more) experienced role-playing gamer, Arcana Unearthed is for you. The following review is from an AU playtester who has been gaming long enough to remember the boxed D&D sets.

Let's look over the chapters:

Abilities:
If you've played D&D 3rd edition, not much is new to you here.

Races:
All new races that break from the Tolkien-esque mold D&D has adhered to from day one. Don't get me wrong, I love the Tolkien world, and the D&D races, but these are new, fresh, and flavorful.

Humans, faen, giants, litorians, mojh, runechildren, sibeccai and verik make up the land of the Diamond Throne. There is highly detailed information on all these races, including Savage-Species-like racial advancement for many of them. Combine that with the faen's ability to morph into a spryte, the transformation that is required to become a mojh, and the blessed runechilden, and you have races that aren't just selected during character creation and then stay the same. These races can evolve.

Classes:
Akashic, champion, greenbond, mage blade, magister, oathsworn, runethane, totem warrior, unfettered, warmain, and witch.

During playtesting I found the AU classes tend to have a fairly even power curve, whereas 3E classes can start somewhat weak, then get insanely powerful at high levels. It would take a long time to address each class, but I will say the champion, greenbond, and oathsworn are what the paladin, druid, and monk should have been all along.

The races and classes of AU have depth, deep roleplay potential, and kick butt mechanically. Overall, nicely balanced.

Skills & Feats:
You'll recognize most of the skills from 3x, with a few variations. The feats section is large and breaks down into talents, ceremonial feats, and general feats. Talents can only be taken at first level -- things like ambidexterity. Ceremonial feats tend to be fairly powerful and have a RP component; that is, the ritual involved to get the feat. There are many innovations here, and I especially like the new item creation feats. Instead of, say, 'scribe scroll', you have 'craft spell-completion item'. This adds flexibility and simplifies things simultaneously.

Equipment:
You'll see the old favorites along with many new items. There are exotic armors (indeed there are -many- new kinds of armor), and various weapon templates. One thing to mention here is that truly high ACs are possible in AU through normal armor, class abilities, magic, and spells. I feel that's an improvement over 3E where the warrior types could basically hit anything after a point.

Playing the Game:
Here is the bulk of the game mechanics. I'd call these rules like 3.25E, as they seem to be a hybrid of 3rd edition and the 3.5 revision. If you know 3x combat mechanics, etc., you can skim this section. If you're new to the system, it's all laid out here.

Magic and Spells:
Here is a huge innovation. Spellcasting has been standardized on one level, and made much deeper on other levels. Each type of caster gets spell slots per day, and a number of readied spells to choose from. This is kind of like how the 3x sorc handles spells, except your casters will -know- many spells, but only have a certain amount readied at a time. Don't like the spells you have readied? Sit down for an hour and swap them out. This system is flexible, and makes multiclass casters stronger than in D&D 3x, because slots stack. Nearly every spell has heightened and diminished effects. That is, if you cast the spell using a slot 1 level higher or lower, you get different effects -- very cool, and adds a fun new dimension to casting. Via feats (or rarely items), you can add spell templates to spells. There are many different kinds of templates like acid, lightning, corrupted, eldritch, holy, psionic, etc. Think of templates as a new way of handling metamagic feats. I should mention some of the old favorite metamagic feats are also still available in one form or another.

In conclusion, if you're a veteran gamer AU will provide a world of new possibilities whether you run a purely AU game, or add aspects of it into your existing 3x game.

Check out Monte Cook's website for free supplements, errata, and other useful AU resources.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, September 11, 2003

By 

Totoro500 "totoro500" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arcana Unearthed: A Variant Player's Handbook (Hardcover)

This is the work of a game designer who is interested in making everything count. Every race is unique and interesting. Every piece of equipment is valuable for a character of some type or another. Very nicely done.

That said, I just wanted to take ideas from the book and incorporate them into my own game rather than play the world described in Arcana Unearthed. Of course, that's the beauty of d20--you can take what you like and put it in your own game with little work.

So, what was good about the book? Well, the races are interesting. There is a small race (the Faen) that are fun and unique and allows you to morph into a more exotic faerie creature by taking race levels. If you play a giant, you can grow large, like a giant should be, in a balanced manner, again by taking race levels. Race levels work well.

Another good thing is the armor. Not everyone who wears medium armor is now going to wear breastplate because there are a couple of new armors. The "chain hauberk" is what chainmail should have been according to the core rules (he had to call it hauberk instead of mail because chainmail is already part of the SRD). Another great idea was articulated armor (requires an exotic armor proficiency). Some of the exotic armor was not explained clearly enough to understand why an exotic armor proficiency is necessary, but the articulated plate/breastplate was interesting, believable, and now a part of my game.

I loved the breakdown of spells into simple, complex, and exotic at each level. Works great. A single spell list is used, but more complex spells are only usable by the wizard-like caster. Spellcasting is more fun, too. You prepare spells, then cast them kind of like sorcerers. When you want to prepare different spells, you have to read from your spellbook, meditate, or whatever. This also works great.

Those are some of the highlights. Hope it helps you decide.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellant book, on its own or with others, November 17, 2003

By 

Gawaine "gawaine" (Bristow, VA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Arcana Unearthed: A Variant Player's Handbook (Hardcover)

I had two complaints with this book. The first was the treatment of alignments/religions - there aren't any, and the section on alignments contains a three paragraph lecture on moral relativism. I don't mind not having alignments, but I can do without humanist content in my games, especially when they're about pre-industrial revolution type societies. The other complaint is the copyediting/proofreading, which doesn't appear to have been done.

OK, with those out of the way -- this book is great. Many of the concepts are familiar enough that players can visualize them, but not so much that you think they're generic. No generic Tolkien-esque Elves here, no dwarves, either. You can always add those from the standard Player's handbook, but they aren't essential.

The concept of Talents - feats that may only be taken at first level - prevents some of the feat lawyering that I've seen happen with munchkin type players. The non-mechanic descriptions are also good at making the feats, classes, and races seem real.

The best concept here, though, is the repeated concept of templates, which may be applied to weapons (Dire, Masterwork, etc.), spells (Holy, Sanctum, Psion), or characters (Runechild). All of these work to make the world seem more rich, solving one of the problems of generic D20, where every wizard casts fireball. I've seen this addressed previously, for example with Fantasy Hero or some Dragon articles back in 2nd edition, but never so comprehensively.