Arcana Unearthed (d20 Generic System) [Hardcover]

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.

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.

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.