Correction:
The PC's don't reach 3rd level until they finish up at Captain Dapplewing's manor (page 86). Even by the standards of this book, it's be pretty bad pacing to level up after a single fight against four mephits.
This is accurate - I botched that. The actual order of events is that the PCs complete the owlbear exam, then do the heist, and then advance to third level. I also left out that at the end of the year, they advance to 4th level. That's on me, and I'm sorry.
Alright folks, I'm feeling froggy tonight, so we're going to do THE WHOLE NEXT CHAPTER!!!! WOOO!!!! NO CAFFEINE; JUST PISS AND VINEGAR!!!!
So let's talk Chapter 4: The Hunt for Mage Tower!
The first thing that happens is that the PCs wrap up their first day on campus, and a friend approaches them to tell them about Mage Tower. There's a once-every-three-years Mage Tower game with the stakes of "bragging rights" and half off tuition for this year. We're told this is effectively 400 gp, implying that a full year's academic tuition is 800 gp (each), but this doesn't matter because no one is charged tuition by the adventure. In fact, bringing this up is likely to cause confusion as players wonder if they should have been paying tuition this whole time. Are they on scholarship? If the PCs are reluctant, the adventure literally tells the DM to "emphasize that every peer they speak with wants them to participate." Choo-choo, indeed. Even weirder, this Battle for Strixhaven takes place between two teams. No brackets, and apparently no other teams are registered. So this amazingly competitive game only ever gets 10 folks to sign up.
We also get the rules for Mage Tower, and the general idea is pretty good. You grab some of these mascots and then use them to score goals in the various towers that surround the stadium field. We'll see how the specific mechanical implementation is handled later, but the broad strokes I'm OK with.
So if the PCs decide to compete (or hold out until everyone they know is beating down their door to get them to compete), they eventually go to the school guidance counselor. She's in a bit of a bind, because she needs to get the mascots for the game later in the year. She had them all corralled, and then they broke out. So she needs the PCs to hunt them down and tag them with these rings. This is good! Doing a favor for an authority figure gets you status, and elevates the PCs actions as they come to identify with the institution of Strixhaven, not just some of the people. I'm all for this (although it doesn't justify the railroad used to get them here).
The actual hunting of the mascots is done in a pointcrawl fashion, except time and encumbrance don't matter because you're just going into a swamp to find some mascots. There's some more evidence of Murgaxor's presence, and those of his Designated Minions this term: mage hunters (to be detailed in the monsters section), in the form of chitin. There's some social activity (helping a fellow student and convincing a mascot to wear the tag willingly, etc). The only weird thing in this part of the adventure is that someone has discarded an
ioun stone (awareness), despite the fact that 1 minute can fix it up just fine. Somebody just tossed a Rare magic item instead of spending the literal minute to repair it? OK, clearly there are some incredibly rich students on this campus. The key works, there's more to do, and the PCs don't have teachers racing to rescue them. This is an actual D&D adventure! Yay!
Once they tag the mascots, the counselor rewards the PCs with a free uncommon magic item from the library's store (one total, not one each). Perfectly reasonable.
Next up is a Scrivening & Symbology exam, with both DCs set to 15. Holy cow, some actual risk! At this point, the PCs advance to 5th level.
After that we get another Fun Strixhaven Game in which the PCs have to stack some mascots. The idea here is at least potentially interesting, but the only mechanical options the PCs have are one of three skill checks. The setup is a typical Strixhaven railroad: someone they like says, "Come check out this thing!" Those who don't want to form a team can either encourage a team or heckle a team. So it's skill checks all the way down - no real interesting interactivity. "Roll dice, add number." There are a few other ways you could go about this, like presenting options to calm the mascots so they wriggle less, use illusion magic to try to make your stack bigger, etc. None of that is even identified as an option for the DM, though.
At the least, though, the prize is worth having: a
belt of dwarvenkind. This was put up by one of the students. Her parents gave it to her, but she thinks it's more fun to offer it as a prize. Just to call out the obvious: this belt is probably a family heirloom, and it should definitely not be the stakes for a friendly game of "mishandle the cuddly magic critter." I would probably change it to being the student's midterm project - she got a good grade on it, and is now putting it up as stakes for a competition.
Predictably, after the Fun Strixhaven Game, the thing they were playing with tries to kill them. In this case, the mascots amalgamate and turn into a chimera (sans breath weapon). Once defeated, they disamalgamate, and puke up bits of chitin. I have three problems with this. One, we've previously noted that Murgaxor's magic could turn harmless stuff into deadly stuff, but it always looked like black ichor. Changing it to chitin makes this weirdly discontinuous. Secondly, this is like the fourth time the adventure has pulled this particular gag. It's starting to get old. And finally, the adventure does this thing where it pretends the PCs won't even want to look into this obvious mystery, roadblocking them at every turn.
After this, a student referee for the Mage Tower game approaches the players to tell them the Aerojaunt Field is reserved for their team practice the next day. That referee will help them learn the rules of Mage Tower, and (as long as the PCs aren't rivals with her), promises them a
stone of good luck. That seems like some clear favoritism on the referee's part, but I'm sure someone gave the other team a
stone of good luck, too. Definitely.
The actual practice takes place on the wrong field (for Aerojaunt, a sport for which we get a full key, map, and zero rules), but the student ref declares this field is more fun. Sure. The PCs split into two teams and move dummy mascots around. This would seem to be a delightful time to use the combat mechanics in a non-lethal fashion. But instead, it's either make a skill check (from a list of three) or cast a spell (1st and 2nd level spells give someone else advantage, 3rd level spells and higher are auto-successes). Whichever team gets more successes wins the scrimmage.
Man, somebody at WotC is in love with skill challenges, I'm telling you. I'm honestly not sure how you could weave this into the fiction; there's one example given, but it's pretty loosey-goosey. You'd need to abstract a lot. Personally, I'd run this as a mock combat with no damage possible to either team. So if you cast
thunderwave, you don't deal damage, you just potentially shove the other person back. I think that plays to 5E's strengths better than the skill check focused approach they're using here.
By the way, the key for the Aerojaunt field has stuff lying around like a
cloak of displacement, a
cloak of elvenkind, and an
oil of slipperiness. Who just leaves a
cloak of displacement lying around?
After the scrimmage, a blue slaad shows up with chitin embedded in it, and attacks. The adventure says that the PCs can look at the chitin embedded in the creature's hides and conclude something chitinous goaded the slaad to attack. This sort of elides the main question I have: where did the blue slaad even come from? Is someone smuggling them in for a laugh?
After this, we have another exam. Afterwards, a professor asks them to find a book, without which he cannot prepare their next exam. If they help, they get extra credit! But if they don't help...don't they not have an exam? I mean, I know which one I'd prefer. Maybe that's just me personally, but this is practically incentivizing players to not help the NPC. Moreover, doesn't this imply the instructor is preparing the exam with materials the students haven't seen? Better to say that without it, the professor can't finish an important research thesis, and he needs help. He'll give them extra credit and a notice as temporary TA's.
The adventure assumes (naturally) that the PCs rush to the aid of the struggling faculty member...right after they go drinking! The adventure swerves weirdly to the tavern, and there's yet another Fun Strixhaven Game! This time it's mage's skate park.
I was going to make fun of how cringy the boxed text is, but honestly, I haven't the heart.
By this point, you know the score: railroaded setup, skill check with zero interactivity, monster attacks at the end, no way for the PCs to discover anything actionable. It's so predictable it's boring.
Next the PCs go hunting for this book. It's an Investigation check (DC 13), and it's assumed that each character can make it, so there's roughly a 1% chance that they won't find what they need. If they all fail the check however...there's no workaround. The adventure just stops. More importantly, if they all fail, they don't find the information on mage hunters, or on the mysterious student expelled from Strixhaven 200 years ago for black magic experiments strikingly similar to what's happening now.
So this is bad design - the classic "don't put the thing the characters need behind a secret door" trap. Not great. Give yourself an out, like a friendly librarian, or a thief trying to steal the book the PCs need. From there, they're attacked by a grick disguised as an astrolabe (weird), and once again it looks like there's chitin on it! Gasp! But now, armed with the information on mage hunters, the characters will surely track them down, or lay a trap, or find a teacher to ask, or...
Nope. The next thing is the exam. If they helped the professor, they get a pass if they failed both checks, and if they failed one check, they instead are treated as having passed both. This offsets the DC 17 difficulty of the exam, which requires History and Insight. While I'm not a fan of teachers playing favorites, I do like that there's a stress valve here for the PCs to pull in case they just can't hit that 17. It stresses the social nature of the environment, which is good to do!
Oh not again with the singing fireballs! Do you know what this does to our insurance premiums???
Next up is a sing-off, baby! The PCs are challenged by their Mage Tower rivals to a sing-off. "We'll crush you in song before we crush you on the field!" announces their leader, confidently. I have to admire the chutzpah of whatever designer put this in here. This is right up the improv actor's alley. For my group, they are going to mercilessly mock the absolute crap out of these NPCs. It's gonna be brutal, and maybe that's the point, but the book seems to think the PCs will instead ad-hoc rap battle the DM. Even better, the DM gets to go first! Sooo...good luck with that. It all boils down to a DC 15 skill check anyway, so there's really no need to play this out.
After that, the reference librarian tells all these damn kids to get away from the library (where people are trying to work, for Pete's sake!), and it's time for Mage Tower! This epic clash, built up over the whole year, a meeting of titans, surely has some serious decisions the characters will have to make!
Nope. It's another goddamned skill challenge. Pardon me while I scream into this pillow in frustration. This was a layup for some fun combat mechanics! You could have taken advantage of the statblocks developed for all the mascots! You could have extended it into a several round game, with each one being matched against better and better foes! You could have leveraged some awesome social drama by having a PCs paramour go all
Knight's Tale and telling them to prove their feelings by losing, then changing their mind later in the game! This could have been so awesome!
After this, the PCs go back to the locker room. They are attacked by the mage hunters, and defeat them. Mage hunters, for the record, are nasty foes, each one a CR 5. They have some interesting abilities, like a reaction that lets them take half damage from a spell, and force the caster to save or take the other half. So this is a tough fight, and no one comes to help. My only problem is that this is once again a white-room fight - no terrain or interesting equipment to use to make it easier. After all this setup, I figured the final fight would be more interesting!
After this, the PCs are celebrated, they advance to 6th level, and bask in their glory. There's no indication that Murgaxor set these things on them at all, making it weirdly disconnected from the main narrative.
Personally, my thoughts on this chapter are mixed. The repeated use of the same gag gets stale, boring, and predictable, but the fact that the safety net is starting to get removed is interesting. The hamfisted railroading relentlessly undercuts the expected investment in the setting, but if you can invest in the setting, at least some of these beats might land, which is better than Chapter 3 managed to do. So it's getting better...but it's nowhere near good enough.