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

 

[Minigiant]

In that case:

• White: divine
• Blue: arcane
• Black: necromantic
• Red: psionic
• Green: primal

Shamans are psionic, mediating between a community of minds.

If some object to the electronic-sounding term "psionic", call it "ki".

Nah.

Blue is Arcane
Red is Elemental
Black is Shadow

4e introduced Elemental but died before it can flesh it and Shadow out.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

heh reading this for the first time, its like they saw Pathfinder 2e's Archetypes and tried to affix it to 5e's structure as best they could.

 

[Undrave]

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

The stuff Whizbang mentioned? They tried to make an Invention Wizard for Ravnica (without saying it was Ravnica) and it failed. They tried to make a Psionic Wizard and that didn't cut it either.

If nothing else, I feel like the later subclasses to a lot of classes were far more interesting... Stuff like the Phantom, the Path of the Ancestral Guardian, the Circle of Stars, the Runic Knight, the Clockwork Soul, etc...

What did the Wizard get? 'War Magic'?! What is that even? Bladesinger is the more flavourful subclass they have.

 

[Charlaquin]

That makes sense.

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

Well, keep in mind, the waste disposal guild is made up of necromancers, undead, sentient plants and fungi, and other such creatures. Just because the guilds of Ravnica serve civic functions doesn’t mean they’re mundane. In fact, their civic duties are part of an incredibly complex, plane-wide ritual spell called the Guildpact. Granting members of the waste management guild the ability to magically disperse undead certainly seems like something that would be within the Guildpact’s purview.

 

[Yaarel]

Nah.

Blue is Arcane
Red is Elemental
Black is Shadow

4e introduced Elemental but died before it can flesh it and Shadow out.

I agree Red can make sense as elemental as earth-fire, but then it makes less sense to use the term "shaman", and is awkward because air-water is moreso Blue.

 

[TwoSix]

Nah.

Blue is Arcane
Red is Elemental
Black is Shadow

4e introduced Elemental but died before it can flesh it and Shadow out.

"Arcane" doesn't map well to any of the MtG colors, since it's simply too broad in its applications in D&D. Blue has a lot of Arcane's trappings, with the focus on learning and study, but a more limited set of effects.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I wonder if they'll have restricted spell lists by house. Or maybe Strixhaven spells that include "summons house creature" as an additional effect of spells.

Alternately, "randomly summon house creature" could be a Magic Gift that makes them appear when other spellcasting is going on as a bonus.

WotC doesn't believe in restrictions anymore. You'll see suggestions at best.

 

[ph0rk]

They tried to make a Psionic Wizard and that didn't cut it either.

Well, it shouldn't have.

 

[Undrave]

Well, it shouldn't have.

Probably not but it was at least something...

 

[Faolyn]

@Whizbang Dustyboots, while I agree that warlock patrons should be more than just big NPCs, I don't think there are any actual rules for clerics losing their powers should they stray from their gods, and paladins mostly just get a shift in powers rather than losing them completely.

One could say that a patron just awakens the spark of magic in the PC and then acting as a magic feather for the PC, who doesn't realize that they're doing all the actual work and the patron is just taking credit.

Honestly, I think that if you really want the patron to be the source of the magic, then the only way to do it "properly" is to use the piety system (even if the relationship between a warlock and their patron isn't really a pious one), and should the character's rating fall below 0 or whatever, they lose their abilities.