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."

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

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]

It’s only violating the player’s space if it’s sprung on the player unexpectedly. If instead you do as the rules say to do and discuss the matter with the player and come to a mutual agreement about how it will work, there’s no violation.

The default is the player has a safespace in the game, whose personal identity the DM cannot violate.

 

[Yaarel]

Nobody is violating anyone, except apparently your old Dragonlance DM.

The DM is fine. The Dragonlance rules were violating.

When it became clear how bad the rules were, we never played that game again.

 

[Charlaquin]

The default is the player has a safespace in the game, whose personal identity the DM cannot violate.

The default is that the player(s) and the DM talk to each other and negotiate what is or isn’t acceptable in the game. That can include deciding that the DM can’t remove the PCs’ powers under any circumstances, or even that the PCs can’t die unless the player agrees. Alternatively, it can include that the DM can take away PCs’ powers or kill the characters at any time for any reason. Usually, it’s something between those extremes. The important thing is that the group discusses it and comes to a mutual agreement (or decides that their tastes are too incompatible to enjoy playing together)

 

[Greg K]

Your character not being able to use a spell is not violating your personal space. The player presumably chose to play a cleric of certain deity, and thus were fine with at least roughly following the core principles of the said religion. That the GM upholds the fiction the player is committed to is respecting their character concept, and this includes having the deities actually matter.

Agreed. I understand Yaarel being upset that the DM did not tell them that clerics can't cast spells (which was bad DMing) and that part of the adventure for the cleric is to reestablish ties with a deity and bring back clerical magic (iirc), but lack of clerical magic at the start is part of Dragonlance.

 

[Remathilis]

Your character not being able to use a spell is not violating your personal space. The player presumably chose to play a cleric of certain deity, and thus were fine with at least roughly following the core principles of the said religion. That the GM upholds the fiction the player is committed to is respecting their character concept, and this includes having the deities actually matter.

Also do you know what also prevents the character using their powers? Being dead. Do you also think that the GM cannot create situations in which characters might die, regardless of what they do? Is that too 'violating the personal space of the players?'

I've had DMs force me to change my character class (from thief to fighter) via divine intervention because they didn't feel I was playing a "thief" properly. I've had DMs who have killed PCs because they didn't like the name they gave them. I've seen DMs who hold inherent bias against certain classes (druids, paladins) and create elaborate situations to force them to lose their class status. I've seen DMs have allowed a character option only to revoke it a few sessions later because "it doesn't really fit the world like I thought it would" and force the player to make a new PC.

Truth be told, I'm a little over DMs feeling they can write and rewrite MY PC because they don't like them. The less ability they have to force me into their boxes, the better.

 

[Yaarel]

The default is that the player(s) and the DM talk to each other and negotiate what is or isn’t acceptable in the game. That can include deciding that the DM can’t remove the PCs’ powers under any circumstances, or even that the PCs can’t die unless the player agrees. Alternatively, it can include that the DM can take away PCs’ powers or kill the characters at any time for any reason. Usually, it’s something between those extremes. The important thing is that the group discusses it and comes to a mutual agreement (or decides that their tastes are too incompatible to enjoy playing together)

Most players are new, and lack the rules experience to have these kinds of technical discussions about what kind of gaming experience a particular rule might imply.

New players start off simply following the rules as written as best they can. Later they will internalize the rules and make them their own and modify them knowingly as they wish.

The default core rule is, the player has a safespace in the game, whose personal identity the DM cannot violate.

 

[Greg K]

I've had DMs force me to change my character class (from thief to fighter) via divine intervention because they didn't feel I was playing a "thief" properly.

Bad Dming, there is no right way to play a thief. There is no deity or other supernatural with expectations in exchange for granted power

I've had DMs who have killed PCs because they didn't like the name they gave them.

Bad DMing. If a name was inappropriate due to culture, campaign tone, etc. The DM should have said something at the beginning and had you change it to something appropriate or disallowed the character if you refused, but not killed off your character after accepting it.

I've seen DMs who hold inherent bias against certain classes (druids, paladins) and create elaborate situations to force them to lose their class status.

Bad DMing. It is one thing to disallow a class, but accepting it and then working up elaborate situtations that force the character to lose class status is bad ( and not the same as a player violating known tenets and/or strictures of a deity known prior to character generation or violoating a pact with a Patron).

I've seen DMs have allowed a character option only to revoke it a few sessions later because "it doesn't really fit the world like I thought it would" and force the player to make a new PC.

Not necesarily bad DMing. Stuff happens with unforseen consequences. The best thing to do is try to make changes in abilities so that the character still fits, but sometimes that is not possible or beyond the DMs capability.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I've had DMs force me to change my character class (from thief to fighter) via divine intervention because they didn't feel I was playing a "thief" properly. I've had DMs who have killed PCs because they didn't like the name they gave them. I've seen DMs who hold inherent bias against certain classes (druids, paladins) and create elaborate situations to force them to lose their class status. I've seen DMs have allowed a character option only to revoke it a few sessions later because "it doesn't really fit the world like I thought it would" and force the player to make a new PC.

Truth be told, I'm a little over DMs feeling they can write and rewrite MY PC because they don't like them. The less ability they have to force me into their boxes, the better.

All of these things obviously suck and are terrible DMing. But in a situation where the player, when creating a character, understands that said character's power comes from a deity, and understands the basic principles of said deity's religion and then intentionally violates said principles, curses the god and burns down the temple, then that is the player making an intentional choice. It is no different than player deciding to attack a sleeping dragon. And a cleric losing their powers in such a situation is not the GM 'punishing' the player, it is a logical outcome of the player's choices. And of course narratively this would merely be a prompt for the character finding an another god and thus regaining their powers (of differnt domain, possibly.) This all stems from informed choices the player knowingly makes, the GM having the world respond to those choices believably is the GM respecting the player's choices. Player's actions not affecting the reality of the game world would be robbing them of agency!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I disagree with you regarding 3e (I can't speak for 4e as I only own two books and neither are the PHB 1 or DMG). While many DMs never read the DMG or skipped over sections, the 3.0 DMG Introduction (p.6) specifically, states that the DM is in charge of how the game is played at the table, how the rules work, which rules are used, and how strictly to adhere to them. It is not the only place in the book that stated that. It is one of the reasons for Rule 0 in the PHB

True, but by the standards of prior editions, and of 5E, 3E laid a lot of stuff out in black and white and there was a real expectation that there was a rule for everything somewhere.

No one really expected the 1E or 2E books to cover all contingencies.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Allowing the player to express a character concept as the character identifies with it, is key. Interfering with expected class features, interferes with the character concept.

I think we're disagreeing about what makes up the character concept, then.