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

 

[Parmandur]

They were absolutely a great idea

Abstractly, they were...interesting. UT overly restrictive in practice.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

PHB wizard subclasses are super meh. They're barely there. I really wish they had done fewer but thematically stronger subclasses for them.

 

[Undrave]

What it really says to me is "we want there to be healers, but we don't have any conceptual space for them, so, uh, you're just someone with healing magic."

More like "we didn't want to have to create a brand new class for that role so let's just refluff the Cleric". They could have at least be honest about it and given it a different name (like how Purple Dragon Knights become 'Banneret' outside FR) or something.

And they needed white magic healer because 1) they ditched almost all mundane healing on the switch to 5e and 2) the whole White Mana thing.

That's more of a lack of creativity problem. Most D&D fans and designers can imagine and design new magic a lot easier than anything else.

Strixhaven is design easy mode.

Ah! It totally is!

 

[Parmandur]

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.

Well, amusingly to me as a religious person IRL, both Crawford and Wyatt are Seminary graduates. In other sections of the book, Wyatt does go into the everyday lived world of the inhabitants of Ravnica. In the Mafic multiverse, all "gods" are actually manifestations of raw Mana, sort of powerful Magic Elementals (objectively within the Setting, the Iconoclasts of Theros are basically right). It's actually a pretty irreligous metasetting, very unlike the D&D standard assumptions. Any translation of Magic Setting into D&D rules has to address that, it's true.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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

I've explained my reasons several times. You disagree with them. There's no point in continuing this conversation.

 

[ph0rk]

I've explained my reasons several times. You disagree with them. There's no point in continuing this conversation.

So, unfair to a particular class without much of a defense. Sounds fun.

This is exactly why paladins were changed.

You've pivoted, anyway, because you started out arguing that it should be this way for any DM that wants it this way. It is not this way for precisely this reason - whether or not you do it that way in your own games.

 

[Weiley31]

Looking through the wiki yesterday, it's clear that their plane outside of the school has a lot of cool mysteries, with ancient ruins, a precursor race, mysterious structures that float over the world,

School Field Trips!

 

[Remathilis]

PHB wizard subclasses are super meh. They're barely there. I really wish they had done fewer but thematically stronger subclasses for them.

That would have defeated the "Greatest Hits" design theory that 5e started with. Someone would have been upset that there was no conjurer, necromancer or illusionist or whatever.

 

[Yaarel]

If by “this kind of warlock” you mean “any warlock with the tome pact boon” and by “study” you mean “know how to read,” then sure.

The Tome Warlock must "know how to read" magical formulas, correct?

 

[Undrave]

They were absolutely a great idea

From a game designing point of view I think they were a great way to orient your design. Half-baked wishy-washy no direction concept like the 5e Monk that can do a little skill, a little extra damage, a little controlling, just end up with milquetoast class that don't do anything. If you know what gameplay mechanic you want to focus on it's much easier to design your class, and it also means you're more aware of what you need to do to tip a subclass into a different role. And power source were a gateway to some great fluff like the Primal Spirits.

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.

PHB wizard subclasses are super meh. They're barely there. I really wish they had done fewer but thematically stronger subclasses for them.

What Longinus say. Those 8 subclasses are BORING and filled with repetitive class feature that all could have been avoided by having a single Specialist Wizard subclass. The Wizard base class feature are basically non-existent too! You get your Spellcasting (which barely counts), Arcane Recovery... and then it's NOTHING but Subclass until level 18 with Spell Master and then Signature Spell at level 20. How is this even a CLASS?!