Sparky McDibben
Adventurer
The daemogoths are excellent villains to use, but I was actually struck by the Oriq. The adventure does a terrible job of telling you what their whole deal is, but once I went on a wiki-dive, I realized that the Oriq are just everyone that Strixhaven admissions turned down. They've also got some interesting points about how Strixhaven is controlling the access to magic and demonstrably resulting in unfair outcomes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/rfpdbq/spoilers_strixhaven_i_think_they_picked_the_wrong/
I had not thought of that, but that would definitely work!
I didn't know you have a blog! That's going on the old-school blogroll right now! I've also got your sourcebook in my DTRPG.com cart right now. C'mon, payday!
Well, let's take a look at it!
There are, by my count, 44 stat blocks in this book, making it relatively large as far as monsters go. There are 4 statblocks per college (so Lorehold Apprentice, Lorehold Pledgemage, etc), plus the five Founder Dragons, and the first year student statblocks. So that's 26 of the 44 focused just on people affiliated with Strixhaven. Moreover (not to run down Teemu's preference), the caster statblocks feel flat. Take the Lorehold Professor of Chaos. This is someone who's been debunking the "great man theory" of history all their life, someone who's been interested in magic and the past for as long as they can remember.
So it's kind of boring to see that most of their statblock is "condition + damage" or just "damage." For some reason, imgur isn't letting me drop clippings in at the moment, but basically they have a couple of damaging attacks that can knock someone prone, or an ability that's basically slow but it also causes some damage.
They have a few interesting utility abilities, like contact other plane 1x/day, or passwall, but it's overwhelmingly focused on them being a bag of hit points with a kind of neat ability. Not what I was looking for. I want these casters to change the rules in some what. I mean, Lorehold academics will conjure up whole armies to see how a battle played out; why can't they drop some spirits on the PCs? Give them a bonus action 1x/day summoning spell for 1d4 wraiths and see how the PCs handle that!
So about half the statblocks in here left me wanting more. But the rest are actually pretty decent. The Founder Dragons all are CR 20+, and feel like legendary dragons. The Witherbloom founder, for example, breathes poison and necrotic damage, and has a neat movement ability that can give people the poisoned condition effectively at-will (too bad this is well after the point when they'll be getting heroes' feast).
The various mascots are interesting low-level monsters that could pose a threat in large numbers. There's also the mage hunters, which are these caster-killers that can use a reaction to make a mage eat some of their own damage. The Oriq, including the Blood Mage and Recruiter statblocks, feel lacking a bit, but that's probably due to the same effect on casters I noted earlier.
Anyway, the statblocks aren't great, but they aren't terrible, either. About par for the course.
So, how would I run a magic school? Well, for one, I wouldn't use Strixhaven. I'd use Strixhaven's poor rival college, Hedgemoor Community, across town. At Hedgemoor, all the teachers are retired adventurers, and all of them have their own issues - some of them are alcoholics, some of them really need alimony for their ex-husbands, and some of them are still working out their kleptomania. They're competent (barely), but so badly funded that that the students are frequently put in dangerous situations.
Tuition is 500 gp per semester; if you can't pay, you don't attend. You can get loans, adventure for cash, hit up family, etc. Doesn't matter how you get it, so long as you get it.
I'd identify three key tensions I want to explore throughout the PCs 8 semesters. For me, these are maladjustment (fellow students picking on the PCs; e.g. Rivals), inequality (the tensions between Strixhaven and Hedgemoor derived from massive disparities in wealth), and exploitation (the fact that colleges are a business, and need to squeeze students for cash).
Each semester, I'd pick one or two tensions to highlight, and then I'd start running the semester. At semester start, there's some kind of social mixer, which is a way to blend in the Fun Strixhaven Games from the book without the railroaded setups. These social events highlight the tensions, foreshadowing what's going to be a problem this year. Then we run 8 weeks of school, break for midterms, where we have a second small adventure or mini-encounter that frames the tensions in play. So if we're running with Rivals messing with the PCs and the rivalry between Strixhaven and Hedgemoor, I'd probably have Strixhaven students roll in and prank the campus hard during midterm exams, potentially messing with the PCs exam results. Then the PCs rivals dare them to a race: the first one to prank the Strixhaven campus, and the best prank played (this is good for pointing the PCs at that heist on the professor emeritus' house). After the midterms are resolved, the PCs can decide how they want to spend their midterm break. Once they're back, they get into 8 more weeks of school, and then we run a larger adventure that brings the tensions to a boiling point. So maybe the PCs find out their rivals took cash to smuggle dangerous beasts onto campus, while Strixhaven students are setting up to "teach those peasants a lesson." The entire thing goes bananas as the PCs are dealing with their rivals, escaped beasts, and Strixhaven saboteurs in an end-of-term clash.
After the end of the semester, there's a long break, and the PCs can go do another adventure, such as from Radiant Citadel, etc.
So what do those 8 weeks of school look like? Well, basically like a fluid version of downtime. I don't have that structure down pat yet, but I want PCs to have meaningful choices about whether to study, party, or work, and each option having meaningful encounters or challenges.
Alright friends, this wraps up this review. It's been tiring, and I appreciate that so many folks are finding this topic worth their time. I'm going to take some time off, and I'll start my next review: Black Wyrm of Brandonsford, from a 5E viewpoint!
