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

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I am one of those who feel warlock feels far short of what I want the witch class to be. If a farmer knocks a witch down in a market, he should go home and find his cows not giving milk, maybe. Or his hair falls out. Or all of his business dealings start losing money. Or something along those lines.

If a farmer knocks a warlock down in the market, the warlock fires two or three beams of eldritch energy directly at him, vaporizing him. That doesn't feel witchy to me.

D&D is terrible at emulating magic from stories and folklore. Wizards toss off spells in a matter of seconds, that don't require rolls to cast, and work more reliably than my internet connection. Clerics command their gods will at a whim, for whatever purpose they deem. You break the laws of reality more frequently than you poop. D&D Magic is anything but magical.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Don't forget the option where I replace the PHB fluff with new, better fluff more fitting to the character or campaign.


A DM I can't trust is one that forces a warlock patron or paladin oath on me when my concept explicitly pushes in another direction. A DM who doesn't trust me to reskin appropriately to fit the setting is one I don't want to play with.

Is someone making you play a warlock or paladin in that scenario? If you want to play a class, and the DM is using fluff for that class that you disagree with, and if no accord can be reached, than you always have the option of...not playing with them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course they can stop you. It's just not fun to have them cut the power like a light switch. Turning against the patron simply turns them into an antagonist (something the game always needs, and antagonists driven by the PC's dramatic needs are always more interesting) or into a metaphysical threat (now the warlock's soul is damned when they die, or something with narrative consequences but not mechanical ones).

That sounds nice, but in my experience I've found most players care far more about mechanical consequences to their actions than narrative ones.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't understand. How on earth is the patron capable of doing it, but won't, when the warlock is literally directly opposing them?

The implication is that while the PC may think they’re directly opposing the patron, the fact that they haven’t taken the PC’s powers away indicates that maybe the patron is not so negatively impacted by the PC’s efforts.

But in both of those examples, the devil cannot take their power away. The devil wishes it could, but they can't, and their only recourse is to either send demons to kill the ungrateful brat, or constantly try to manipulate them into doing what the devil wants.

Maybe bad examples, I’ll admit to a lack of familiarity with both comics.

At most, that translates to not getting more stuff from the patron. They can't take back the stuff you bought with the money they already gave you. They paid you, the only way they're getting any of it "back" is if they have the ability to physically come and steal it from you or take it by physical force. Ie, send enemies to mess with you.

If “stuff from your patron” includes spell slots, not getting more of that is pretty much equivalent to losing your powers, yes?

Granted, I don’t believe the intent is for warlock spell slots to be a patron-granted thing by default, based on the warlock entry in the PHB. But they might be, in some warlocks’ cases. It’s something to work out between the player and the DM.

 

[Charlaquin]

I disagree. I think very few of those stories rely on the premise that they will lose the power if they stop doing the terrible things. Usually it's more that using the power results in terrible things, and they can't afford to stop using the power.

I agree with the latter premise. Try though you might to use your patron’s power for good, bad things happen as a result of you using it. Which is why the patron doesn’t take your power away, despite having the ability to. By using it, you are advancing their goals, even if you think you’re working against them.

As for taking additional levels of warlock, the class fluff negates that pretty solidly with wording that suggests that only your subclass features even come directly from the patron.

I think the wording pretty explicitly suggests that the player and the DM should work together to figure out exactly what the terms of the patronage are, and how much control the patron has. But yeah, I don’t think the default assumption is that the patron can prevent you from gaining warlock levels.

At most, I could see the patron retracting the subclass, requiring you to switch to something else. Probably hexblade tbh because it's pretty generic. If a player wants to use this idea to instead multiclass sorcerer or paladin or wizard or something, I'd be stoked to explore that with them.

Yeah, this is the kind of thing I would imagine doing in the case that a patron ever did take a warlock’s power away in actual play.

 

[Charlaquin]

But would that price be? Per the rules, he can't actually do anything.

I mean, the “price” is the unforeseen outcomes of making the deal. But again, I don’t really care what Jeremy Crawford says a patron can or can’t do. The book is pretty clear that how much control a patron has is for the player and the DM to work out together.

 

[Yaarel]

Warlock.

Otherworldly Patron.
"At 1st level, you have struck a bargain with an otherworldly being of your choice. ... YOUR CHOICE grants you features at 1st level and again at 6th, 10th, and 14th level."

According to the rules as written. Once you make a choice at level 1, that choice at level 1 continues to grant you features as you advance, whether you are still with that patron or not.


Pact Magic.
"YOUR ARCANE RESEARCH and the magic bestowed on you by your patron [at 1st level] have given you a facility with spells."

Whether you choose to remain with this patron or not.

Eldritch Invocations.
"In YOUR STUDY OF ARCANE LORE, you have unearthed eldritch invocations."

So far, the patron is irrelevant.

Only the Pact Boon is debatable. But a different patron can grant this if a Warlock chooses someone else.

Pact Boon.
"At 3rd level, your otherworldly patron bestows a gift upon you, for your loyal service: ... Chain ... Blade ... Tome."

Eldritch Master
"At 20th level, you can draw on your inner reserve of mystical power while entreating your patron to regain ... all your expended spell slots from your Pact Magic."

The Arcanum seems unconditional.

Mystic Arcanum.
"At 11th level, your patron bestows upon you a magical secret called an arcanum."




The rules are what they are. The Patron pretty much doesnt matter.

In the spirit of the rules, the Patron cannot mechanically mess with a Warlord for the same reason that the Patron cannot mechanically mess with a Cleric.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Don't forget the option where I replace the PHB fluff with new, better fluff more fitting to the character or campaign.

A DM I can't trust is one that forces a warlock patron or paladin oath on me when my concept explicitly pushes in another direction. A DM who doesn't trust me to reskin appropriately to fit the setting is one I don't want to play with.

No disagreement.

And, as has been pointed out, for people who don't want their patron to matter, but still want to have a patron, the Great Old One and some other patrons fit the bill pretty nicely.

But yes, it's also possible to retool the fluff of the class entirely and cut the patron out of the picture. I find that preferable to "no, I have a patron, but they never speak to me, have no impact on my life and are essentially a never-mentioned origin story."

Which, of course, brings us back to Strixhaven as an alternate power source -- maybe the warlock just reads books from the restricted section of the Biblioplexopolis and learns Things Owlkin Were Not Meant to Know (Moreso Than the Usual For Arcanists), which would be fine with me. Even then, though, as DM, I'd want that fluff to matter, in the sense that other books -- the more forbidden, the better -- would be a constant temptation to the player character, calling to him to open the book, caress the lovely pages, read the wooooords ... (We'd probably roleplay that, although if the player was cool with it, it might be a Wisdom check.)

For the record, the warlock in my campaign has a patron that he's currently unaware of (although said patron is aware of him). At some point, they will be having a "discussion." It is entirely possible some aspects of the character will change as a result of said discussion. (This is all part of the background that the player has brought to me privately and something he suggested and we further negotiated, before anyone dials 911.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

D&D is terrible at emulating magic from stories and folklore. Wizards toss off spells in a matter of seconds, that don't require rolls to cast, and work more reliably than my internet connection. Clerics command their gods will at a whim, for whatever purpose they deem. You break the laws of reality more frequently than you poop. D&D Magic is anything but magical.

Dungeon Crawl Classics addresses all of these issues, incidentally, although it's going for 1970s gonzo D&D, rather than folkloric gaming.

 

[TwoSix]

That sounds nice, but in my experience I've found most players care far more about mechanical consequences to their actions than narrative ones.

Then those aren't really the players who are going to feel engaged when you require them to roleplay a narrative consequence like a warlock patron.