Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Mages of Strixhaven

An Unearthed Arcana playtest document for the upcoming Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos hardcover has been released by WotC!

"Become a student of magic in this installment of Unearthed Arcana! This playtest document presents five subclasses for Dungeons & Dragons. Each of these subclasses allows you to play a mage associated with one of the five colleges of Strixhaven, a university of magic. These subclasses are special, with each one being available to more than one class."

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It's 9 pages, and contains five subclasses, one for each the Strixhaven colleges:

• Lorehold College, dedicated to the pursuit of history by conversing with ancient spirits and understanding the whims of time itself
• Prismari College, dedicated to the visual and performing arts and bolstered with the power of the elements
• Quandrix College, dedicated to the study and manipulation of nature’s core mathematic principles
• Silverquill College, dedicated to the magic of words, whether encouraging speeches that uplift allies or piercing wit that derides foes
• Witherbloom College, dedicated to the alchemy of life and death and harnessing the devastating energies of both

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They can still kill the party. That isn't toothless at all.

You don't need the lazy-dm "I'll take your powers" plot device for an NPC to motivate player actions.

Lord Vetinari didn't need to be able to remove anyone's powers to be an effective antagonist - he could order people to remove limbs, life, or liberty.

It makes the patron just like any other NPC. There's nothing inherently interesting or different about them. It's just a random demon, powerful fey or the like showing up and harassing the PCs.

And there's a lot more ways to have the patron controlling the faucet be interesting than just turning the powers on or off (although I appreciate the implicit insult to my DMing). Maybe the disagreement with the patron means that, for one adventure or even one battle against the patron or its minions, the warlock's powers get flipped to another patron flavor, either representing what "pure" warlock power looks like, or some other would-be patron offering help against their rival.

And, again, I agree with you about the bad DM issue. I'm just saying why I won't be using that ruling at my table. My players have been with me in this campaign since 2006 and aren't shy about speaking up when they think a ruling is BS. But they also trust me when I throw big complications at them -- I'm not going to break their character, but I might shake them up for an adventure or so.

 

[ph0rk]

It makes the patron just like any other NPC.

So what?


How often do you have parties interacting directly with clerical gods in Tier 1?

Why is this a necessary fluff check on warlocks?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, it's interesting, I recall Crawford and Wyatt talking in am interview about the process of deciding how they would approach this sort of thing, and they put a lot of work into alternate approaches particularly with Color Wheel metaphysics. They decided to see how little they could change the rules, as a specific decision to see how they could bend the rules around rulings, without adjusting the actual mechanics.

I get, especially for their first full crack at it, that making MTG metaphysics work in D&D is probably a really interesting puzzle to beat.

But -- and I say this even as a non-religious person in real life -- having a world without religion is a really interesting thing to explore and if the Ravnica book doesn't examine this issue (how did it happen? how does it affect things? if planewalking is a thing, surely MTG multiverse residents have come across powerful beings that call themselves gods, haven't they?) in conjunction with the clerics, that feels like a missed opportunity.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So what?

How often do you have parties interacting directly with clerical gods in Tier 1?

Why is this a necessary fluff check on warlocks?

Is your goal to prove that my opinion is empirically wrong? If so, there's another poster around here you should meet, who's been trying to start that same fight with lots of other posters as well.

I view clerics and warlocks as different, which takes us back to the beginning of what is apparently an infinite loop of a conversation. If warlocks are going to have the fluff they do, their patrons should matter, in my opinion. Having them be a weird stalker is insufficient for my tastes. (That's actually covered nicely by the hexblood race flavor, which my wife changed her wizard to, and is looking forward to having the two other members of a would-be coven periodically bothering her to try and get her to fully join up with them.)

Also: The answer to your question was spelled out in the rest of my post. Ease up on the trigger finger and read.

 

[Weiley31]

I wonder

Are these akin to Prestige Classes?

I was actually thinking of that today. At first, I felt like that the 5E Prestige Class would've just been a five level class progression that started at Level 15 and pretty much replaced your remaining Subclass levels in that range with whatever the Prestige Class would give.

But now, with the way this system is playing out and stuff, perhaps this is another way of doing Prestige Classes for 5E.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I get, especially for their first full crack at it, that making MTG metaphysics work in D&D is probably a really interesting puzzle to beat.

But -- and I say this even as a non-religious person in real life -- having a world without religion is a really interesting thing to explore and if the Ravnica book doesn't examine this issue (how did it happen? how does it affect things? if planewalking is a thing, surely MTG multiverse residents have come across powerful beings that call themselves gods, haven't they?) in conjunction with the clerics, that feels like a missed opportunity.

With Boros, Gruul, Orzhov, and Selesnya, the guild is their religion. I'd presume Golgari and Rakdos are similar, even though GGtR doesn't call them out as a guild well-suited to Clerics unlike the former three.

For Azorius, I'd assume that by and large, they're agnostic, or just indifferent to religion. Same with Dimir, Izzet, and Simic.

EDIT: also, planeswalkers are really rare, and after the Mending are not inherently godlike; they're just mages who are able to traverse the Blind Eternities without dying (unless they were somehow able to preserve or restore their pre-Mending level of power). From what I know of MtG fiction, they're usually treated as either a helpful outsider or a nuisance by the locals; they only get revered as gods if they go out of their way to set up the con (like Nicol Bolas did on Amonkhet).

 

[Charlaquin]

Guck, no thanks. Combat roles and power sources were not a great idea. The 5E approach is vastly preferable. Keep it loose, keep it flexible.

They were absolutely a great idea

 

[Remathilis]

Maybe it always was... considering the number of Subclass the Wizard got in the PHB compared to say the Barbarian...

The 8 subclasses we're there to emulate the 8 specialist wizards from 2e on. If there hadn't been those prior, they probably would have only had just a few subclasses like the others.

 

[ph0rk]

Is your goal to prove that my opinion is empirically wrong?

No, I'm arguing that you are being unfair to warlocks without a good reason.

The fact that you think you need this particular hook for the party to care about that NPC is not a good reason. Presumably you'd have some other strategy to use if there was not a warlock present.

The rules do not state they they can lose their powers for crossing a patron, I at least hope you tell every warlock player that before a campaign begins, but even then it seems like a bizarre punitive measure for warlocks specifically.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

D&D Wizards are people who learn magic through study. They learn how the Wave functions and how to manipulate it with words, gestures, and materials, to achieve a desired magical effect. Theoretically, anyone could do what wizards do, but it takes a great deal of dedication and no small amount of intelligence to learn to do. Wizards learn spells as magical formulae, and record these formulae in spellbooks, so they can access more of them than anyone could hope to memorize.

This is exactly why I think it should have been Wizards, rather than Bards, who get Magical Secrets.