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

 

[ph0rk]

Probably not but it was at least something...

I'm of the opinion we don't really need any more wizard archetypes. The class is highly customizable with its spell list, after all.

I'd prefer, instead, other casters be tweaked with limited lists and more interesting subclasses.

But I'd also rather the wizard go back to being full Vancian.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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

Alternately, maybe it was a mistake to make three of them. Sorcerers got it when no one else prioritized Charisma in 3E. Bards got it, because sexy. Warlocks got it because ... reasons.

It'd probably be worth considering leaving only bards as Charisma-based full casters. (And, given what a weird half-a-loaf class sorcerers are now, giving that whole class a top-to-bottom reevaluation, starting with if there's a real niche for them now that wizards are much more flexible in their spellcasting and warlocks can do that all day, every day blasting thing.)

 

[Faolyn]

I don't know how many people would have been upset if Abjurist or Diviner hadn't made it into the 5E PHB (they've never really known what to do with either of them), but I do think the other specialties all have devoted fans.

Abjurer: standard wizard with better AC and the ability to shield others. If you want to play a standard wizard, go abjurer.

Diviner: the seeing-the-future bit is surprisingly powerful and useful.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

lol what!? Have you ever even played a monk?

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.

They’re much more interesting than a generic Specialist Wizard would have been.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Guild symbol as holy symbol is eye-rollingly stupid.

Not at all. It makes perfect sense.

 

[Yaarel]

Splitting up arcane.

• Force (ether, fly, telekinesis, force damage, force construct)
• Elementalism (earth-fire, air-water)
• Enchantment (telepathy, charm, fear, illusion)
• Shapeshift (healing, plants, animals, shapeshifting)
• Prescience (divination, teleportation)
• Necromancy (death, undead, darkside, disintegration, oblivion)

 

[Minigiant]

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.

Shaman is fine. It's more that most MTG elementalists and shamans are red.

Red is just impulsive, emotional, and blunt so it's shamans use earth, fire, and sometimes lighting and ice.

Blue just does air and water academically.

MTG's spellcasters methods just trend to certain colors, elements, and personalities. There are red wizards who are pyromancers but it so rare it's not seen often.

"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.

I think if 4e had lived long enough to fill out Elemental magic, Arcane could have been more defined and grew more as something other that "All non religious magic".

5e went a step backwards and made Arcane have even more effect and blur the themes of each type of spellcasting.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

@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.

I don't think there's a way to do it "properly."

Some folks want the classes to be mechanistic game design constructs only, with the fluff immaterial, which is perfectly fine.

Some folks want the classes to be subject to a lot of table rules and DM input, which is also perfectly fine.

The problem comes when Group A wants Group B to play the same way they do, or vice-versa. Everyone should find a group style that works for them and talk things through with their group and DM if there's a clash of expectations.

As a DM, I don't want to have to have a player-facing track that determines when an NPC's behavior will change. At that point, I'd be a baseball referee, calling balls and strikes and little else.

That said, I am completely sympathetic to folks who don't trust their DM (or generic DMs) if they give them a club with which to beat them to death. I have certainly put my players' characters through the ringer over the years, but "ha ha, you lost all your powers, sucks to be you" isn't something I would do. But I have been on the other end of that in the 1E days, when DMs were often adversarial.

I think the Piety track sounds like a good idea, except it means that only the 1:1 relationship between the caster and their deity/patron matters, when I, as a DM, would want those entities' needs, desires and behavior to sometimes change due to things outside of the player character's control. If a war in Heaven breaks out, and the god's metaphysical back is up against the celestial wall, maybe the god doesn't care that the cleric has been a mostly good cleric; right now, they need abject obedience and they need it now. That means either throwing out the Piety track that has been the controls on how the god treats the cleric, or being constrained by it.

This is kind of a trust fall situation: If you can trust your DM not to screw you, it opens up lots of additional options for all involved. If you can't, a more mechanistic approach makes more sense, so that you don't end up getting screwed over.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't know how many people would have been upset if Abjurist or Diviner hadn't made it into the 5E PHB (they've never really known what to do with either of them), but I do think the other specialties all have devoted fans.

Diviners are the School I’ve seen played the most. Abjurers kick ass, and I’ve seen half a dozen or so in play.

A single Specialist subclass probably would have been fine, though, with the flavor text explaining that each one has its own name the practitioners use.

So, lose all the actual school features in exchange for what?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Not at all. It makes perfect sense.

If you've got a long history with MTG, maybe. If not, it's hard to see why the symbol of the Guild of Accounting would cause skeletons to explode. Why would that sort of spellcasting accountant be able to do that, while the spellcasting accountant next to her cannot?

The biggest audience for Ravnica is probably long-term MTG and D&D fans. For someone like me, who comes to this purely from the D&D side, I'm not hearing anything that really explains how clerics fit in, or why they're "clerics" at all. If they were "mage medics" or something, that would help, but it still wouldn't explain why the Guild of Office Products would have power over the undead, unless there's a long detailed explanation that no one is proffering.

And none of this is to say that Ravnica is bad or people who like it are wrong, or whatever. But I submit that making it would be ideal for a MTG crossover product work for a D&D player who comes to it with no background in MTG.