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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dnd.wizards.com

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

 

[Yaarel]

As per this old article from 2008:
"Mage" is a broad term in the Magic multiverse. It doesn't just mean the studious spellcaster with his nose planted firmly in the brittle pages of an ancient grimoire (in other words, a wizard). It also means the shaman, the mage who wields magic from the gut, who lets her emotions and personal experiences of nature guide her enlightenment. The shaman derives magical power and inspiration directly from the world around her, without allowing too much abstract, ivory-tower thinking to get in the way. A shaman derives power from her passion and her instincts. Many shamans believe fervently in the importance of the fundamental forces of nature, including their own instincts... Shamans are tightly tied to the green and red part of the color wheel. The values of self-expression, motivation by instinct and passion rather than forethought, and individual freedom hit both those colors and the flavor of shamans right on the head.

That is a helpful quote to understand MTG.

I hate to say it, but. WotC must make an effort to tread carefully when describing a shaman. In old school D&D, the Orc mages were called "shamans" because they had lower Intelligence and were less civilized. This was potently racist against reallife shamanic cultures, nevermind racist against "less civilized" cultures as if less intelligent.

The thing is, there is some truth to the MTG description of a Shaman. As far as I can tell, the following sounds somewhat accurate.

"The shaman wields magic from ... personal experiences of nature ... from the world around her. ... Many shamans believe ... in ... the fundamental forces of nature. ... The values of self-expression ... and individual freedom ... flavor ... the shamans."



The following is incorrect: "The shaman derives magical power." Rather, the shaman is a magical power. Every being in nature is a magical power, including each human.



Shamanic traditions empathize with features of nature, both human and nonhuman. Shaman can relate to the instincts of animals, and sometimes even self-identify as animals. Some even take on the mind of animal, and some of these even shapeshift into the form of an animal. But likewise can empathize with stones and trees, and other features of the world. Nonhuman aspects of our planet are important, and the shaman personalizes the relationship with them.

Nevertheless, the following descriptions seem to imply that shamans are less intelligent and less sophisticated, and make me uncomfortable.

"The shaman ... wields magic from the gut, who lets her emotions ... guide her enlightenment. The shaman derives magical power ... without allowing too much abstract, ivory-tower thinking to get in the way. A shaman derives power from her passion and her instincts. Many shamans believe fervently in the importance of ... their own instincts. ... The values of ... motivation by instinct and passion rather than forethought, ... hit ... the flavor of shamans right on the head."

Ouch.



Perhaps it is extremely important to explicitly identify shamanism with "psionics". So the intellectual connotations of the psionic classes can mitigate the potential racism against the "less intelligent" cultures.

Psionics is the power of any mind, whether a human mind or a nonhuman mind. The mind includes both thinking and feeling.

 

[TwoSix]

Don't know if everybody knows, but just to make it clear: as of the release of the Strixhaven: School of Mages set back in April, there are officially five types of spellcasters in MtG:

• Cleric: White Mana, faith in a cause or higher being
• Druid: Green Mana, nature
• Shaman: Red Mana, spirituality, rituals, lore, and years of practice
• Warlock: Black Mana, contracts with demons and other dark beings
• Wizard: Blue Mana, study

Like that's an official official thing? Is that written up anywhere, I'd be curious to see it.

 

[Undrave]

More the former, but the latter is also accurate in my experience. Maybe the Monk didn't fit your playstyle, but it is not a mechanically bad Class.

I guess if you like playing Wizard you can get excited about them.

My experience with the Monk has been, overall, disappointing. Aside from being impossible to track, I feel like my contribution in combat are minimal.

Despite having busted rolled stats (to the point I avoided taking an ASI at level 4 and took the subpar Athlete feat instead for a simple +1) I feel that I either get hit too easily, taking massive damage in my terrible d8 HP, waste my Ki on extra attacks for weak damage, spend my Bonus Action to get out of melee and thus reducing my damage, or I waste them on Stunning Strike only for most enemies to succeed at the save because we've been fighting a lot of brute types. Maybe it's just because the party has a Warlock, Paladin and Barbarian, but I feel pretty much surplus the requirement in this. Especially since the Warlock can turn invisible and has a flying broom and rolled busted stats too. But I've also seen two other Monks at play and never been particularly impressed by them in action. I'd probably be happier if the Way of Shadow had been a Shadowfell touched magical Rogue subclass instead...

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Like that's an official official thing? Is that written up anywhere, I'd be curious to see it.

As per this article, yes it's official:

Odds & Ends: Strixhaven, Part 1 | MAGIC: THE GATHERING

Your Strixhaven questions are answered! Mark takes a dive into your submissions to share more behind the scenes of the set.

magic.wizards.com

Relevant section:
Since Throne of Eldraine, Magic has had five magic-casting creature types: Cleric, Druid, Shaman, Warlock, and Wizard.

During vision design, we talked about breaking up the creature types by college, but there wasn't a great fit. Clerics being white-black and Wizards being blue-red made a lot of sense, but the rest didn't fit in quite as neatly. Witherbloom made sense as Druid, but then Warlock was left out of both black colleges. If Witherbloom was Warlock, it required Lorehold to be Shaman, which was fine for red but odd in white; and Quandrix being Druid was fine in green but odd in blue.

In the end, the Creative team decided to divide up the five creature types by color. White got Cleric, blue got Wizard, black got Warlock, red got Shaman, and green got Druid. This means that each college has two spellcasting creature types: Silverquill, Clerics and Warlocks; Prismari, Wizards and Shamans; Witherbloom, Warlocks and Druids; Lorehold, Shamans and Clerics; and Quandrix, Druids and Wizards.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That makes sense.

"I turn the army of ghouls by showing it my Waste Disposal Guild Badge" is still an awkward fit.

Well, it is sort of a form of waste disposal...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Enchanters should have all sorts of Charisma-based abilities and powers. Maybe they're the one set of wizards for whom the victims of their charms don't know it's happened, making them the only ones to use those spells very much.

Considering that there are three charisma based arcane full caster classes I feel this is stich that wizards really don't need to have.

 

[Undrave]

If I were remaking the abjurer, it would be all about blocking and banishing things out. Sort of the anti-conjurer or a wizardly exorcist.

Evokers should be the best ever at blowing stuff up, to the point that Tim "the Enchanter" never uses anything else, other than an appropriately violent Dimension Door spell.

I would peel off alchemy from Transmutation and make it its own thing, and make Transmuters the kings of shapechanging and polymorph.

Enchanters should have all sorts of Charisma-based abilities and powers. Maybe they're the one set of wizards for whom the victims of their charms don't know it's happened, making them the only ones to use those spells very much.

But yes, your overall point stands: As it is, the PHB specialists are pretty dull.

And they have pretty generic fluff. The worst part is that they now interfere with future development for the Wizard class. It's why getting new ones past the UA stage is difficult. There's not a whole lot of ground left to cover and trying to 're-do' the specialists are more dynamic and flavourful options would run the risk of basically obviating the PHB stuff.

 

[Remathilis]

And they have pretty generic fluff. The worst part is that they now interfere with future development for the Wizard class. It's why getting new ones past the UA stage is difficult. There's not a whole lot of ground left to cover and trying to 're-do' the specialists are more dynamic and flavourful options would run the risk of basically obviating the PHB stuff.

Care to give a suggestion on what types of wizard is being impaired at this point?

 

[Yaarel]

If you choose to interpret the warlock that way, but at that point I’d say it’s a problem of your own making.

The problem is, I dont see any salient difference between the Warlock class and other mages.

I certainly dont see why a school couldnt have a college as a patron.

 

[Charlaquin]

The problem is, I dont see any salient difference between the Warlock class and other mages.

Well, I offered an explanation, you said you preferred a different interpretation. That’s fine, but it’s not like an interpretation where they are different isn’t possible. That’s why I said it’s a problem of your own creation.

I certainly dont see why a school couldnt have a college as a patron.

Me either.