D20 RPG Gaming – Making The Jump To Unearthed Arcana

Don’t ask me I don’t know why it’s called all that. It’s RPG Gaming now, on Hasbro D20…use Dungeons & Dragons to follow along.

Then everyone outside is making their own games and RPG system and they end up in the Dungeons & Dragons books in the stores from the open game combat.

I made my own module and game setting “Dragon Adventures” on D20.

Not surprising to me that all the rpg gamers wanted to play at higher ability score levels but it is huge on Dungeons & Dragons 5E in the “Monsters Of The Multiverse” setting.

Here is how to jump into the “Unearthed Arcana” levels in D20 RPG to play with higher than 18 ability scores.

The thief class in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons “Players Handbook” has limited options during regular game play in games only up to ability score 18.

In “Unearthed Arcana” the theief adds the “acrobat” class to his character, but to achieve the maximum leap into the higher levels of the game he needs a 19 Dexterity Score.

Then he must also calculate his regular turn bonus BEFORE this, then add the above scenario.

This way he can “take a shot” at higher characters in the game.

The big question in all the books?

How do you go from 18 to 19 for an ability score?

In Dragon Adventures we just write them right in the boxes because we play at all 18’s….getting the new book to add 19 to an ability score we just write in 19 and keep going and then add our new character bonuses to our extra abilities we just earned.

Now we have this “Tight-rope Walking +20%” to add to our thief character.

In the previous setting at 18 the thief could maybe only get up on a stone wall and scale the fencing or something, NOW he can tight-rope walk over to the next building with a 20% bonus, take a shot at a bad guy and steal something.

He might come back with a big reward or something, remember you have to write these scenarios into the game as a Dungeon Master based on what material they give you in the book, like in the above scenario you can write that into your game story line.

In that case, the thief gained an new acrobat subclass and tightrope walk ability to let him steal a higher level magic item I assume by using a tight rope walk to sneak into a higher function of the game adventure and got in on a 20% chance bonus.

Then he gets an extra experience reward for that “feat” they call it.

The experience reward points on that setting are not clearly defined in the book but the character should receive a bonus of the higher level experience reward not lower.

This table from the “Players Handbook” shows how a 19 could result in a “penalty” as the ability scores increase.

“Chance Of Spell Failure” decreases as you increase in level and ability score, but when you get to 19 you open a new higher level of the game in “Unearthed Arcana” , this could result in a penalty of – chance of spell failure would now be back to 20% at Wisdom 19.

That’s because of the higher spells opening up in the higher level game, the spells become difficult to cast AGAIN as you have to start over at a higher spell level in the game.

As your ability scores increase, some spell failure may increase as you learn your higher level spell book.

That’s why in my game, Dragon Adventures, I added new ability score adjustment modifiers on Strength and Intelligence to allow for these scenarios.

The thief for example, can start using new schools for acrobats as he approaches ability scores over 19…the new Ability Score bonus will allow him to “hit larger targets in the game” and “be a better thief” by adjusting his lower scores to the “Unearthed Arcana” setting to help him start gaining the higher level entry by competing in game play with a new Ability Score Bonus that allows his character to play in that setting, on his way to building a strength 25 character.

The same with the magic user character, as their power and skills increase with ability scores over 18 OTHER functions will revert back as the character has to start over to learn new higher level spell books.

This “Intelligence Score” penalty means they have a higher chance of spell failure when starting at ability scores 19 and up as they have to learn the higher level spell books with their lower level character.

The new ability score bonus in “Dragon Adventures D20 RPG Beta” allows them to jump from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons gameplay into the “lower levels” of “Unearthed Arcana” to start learning new spell books with with thier new ability score bonuses.

These new spells and items they can take back and use at their regular levels and lower levels of other adventure modules in an “official game play” format on D20.