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

 

[Weiley31]

I'm not gonna lie: I like the idea of a Witherbloom Oath of the Ancients Paladin. They could Smite, have Spell Resistance, AND Change their Smites to Necrotic if they end up fighting a Radiant Resistant/Immune enemy Or even SMITE HEAL somebody that needs it! Or pass around Drinks for everybody!!!

 

[Yaarel]

Looks like the Bard IS the Shaman in a way since, with Lorehold, they end up getting an Ancient Spirit(capable of being refluffed to a Primal Spirit if ya want) companion.

Also: Ancient Companion can get a whopping 24 in PASSIVE PERCEPTION potentially, making it a better spotter/sentry than your PC(I dig it, the Primal Spirits would be able to sense things more easily in my opinion.)

And amazingly Prismari has no Bards, despite a certain card being otherwise.

For the Lorehold Bard, being able to chat and make known the needs of a certain feature of nature, makes an awesome Shaman.

It seems to me Prismari is to elementalist, and the Bard isnt really elementalist. So I understand the decision.

On the other hand, the Bard is a healer and is adept at plant magic. The Witherbloom Bard should be a thing. The Bard isnt really necrotic, but it should be fine to have the Witherbloom Bard archetype that is. The necrotic is dead cells and relevant to healing magic.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I ran Essentials-only 4e a couple of times. Worked way better than allowing both (as did no-Essentials 4e). Yes, Essentials was fully compatible with 5e, but the game was much more cohesive with one class design philosophy or the other. Trying to combine them was just awkward.

Also, part of the reason they were compatible with one another was the liberal use of errata in 4e. If you tried to use Essentials and the original 4e core books together without any errata it would be a huge mess. Given WotC’s hesitancy to use errata this edition, I think a change on the scale of 4e to Essentials would kind of have to be a 5.5e (though I’m sure they wouldn’t call it that.)

I completely disagree that there was any necessary awkwardness in allowing all of 4e in a given game. It’s not just that essentials was compatible with the core books, they weren’t two games in any sense. Essentials was entirely a set of options and collection of errata for 4e. That’s it.

I had hundreds of hours of play with everything allowed, and a mix of PHB, Essentials, and E+, classes in play, and I literally did not have to adjust anything, at all, at any point. It just worked.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That's the simplest explanation. I therefore am highly amused that the one guy who liked your post is named Occam.

There several things you could be referring to, here.

 

[Cadence]

I do not like this subclass approach. While a bard, wizard and sorcerer of the College of Lorehold all may play differently, they have underlying class mechanics that do not fit this 'flexiblity'.

What does it mean for the Warlock to have the "College serve as their Patron"? They've "eschewed their patron’s usual boons for learning these more esoteric manifestations of power." If I am a Warlock and I select this College, with whom did I enter into a pact? What types of pacts would they make with me? Why? Normally, warlock pacts have some obvious paths (although you can certainly subvert expectations).

How is the college a sorcerer origin? Or a druid's circle? I can plug it in and make it work, but it will be a square peg in a round hole.

I would not take this approach. I would do a separate subclass for each of these classes devoted to the school, but specialized for the class. They might have a lot of overlap, but they'd be designed to match the design of the class, not trying to do a 'one size fits all' approach.

It felt to me like for the Sorcerer and the Warlock, that the Origin and Patron were being used in two different ways - the fluff/background/story part and the mechanical part. Since they're coming to the school because they have powers, it would be really disappointing to me for them to do it any other way.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I do not like this subclass approach. While a bard, wizard and sorcerer of the College of Lorehold all may play differently, they have underlying class mechanics that do not fit this 'flexiblity'.

What does it mean for the Warlock to have the "College serve as their Patron"? They've "eschewed their patron’s usual boons for learning these more esoteric manifestations of power." If I am a Warlock and I select this College, with whom did I enter into a pact? What types of pacts would they make with me? Why? Normally, warlock pacts have some obvious paths (although you can certainly subvert expectations).

I dunno, filling out college application forms (or any application forms for that matter) certainly does feel like forging an unholy pact with some nefarious entity at times...

 

[Yaarel]

They did the last idea, universally applicable Themes, in the Next plautest, that evolved into Class specific Subclasses. This is actually an exciting evolution of that, because it allows them to target specific Classes that are appropriate to a theme, without having to reinvent a new Subclass for each Class.

This legitimately could be a preview of 6E, because remaking all the Subclasses this way is just 6E at that poimt.

Maybe but it would be more like the 1e to 2e class reorganization. In such a 5e to 6e, the 5e stuff would remain viable options.


But if there really is ever a 6e, I want them to rethink the ability scores. And that would be a structural shift.

 

[Charlaquin]

I completely disagree that there was any necessary awkwardness in allowing all of 4e in a given game. It’s not just that essentials was compatible with the core books, they weren’t two games in any sense. Essentials was entirely a set of options and collection of errata for 4e. That’s it.

I had hundreds of hours of play with everything allowed, and a mix of PHB, Essentials, and E+, classes in play, and I literally did not have to adjust anything, at all, at any point. It just worked.

I’m not saying it didn’t work. On the contrary, I explicitly said it was fully compatible. But having characters whose classes were designed with complete different philosophies in the same party felt awkward. Characters had wildly different gameplay feels that, in my experience, clashed. Obviously your experience was different, and that’s fine and valid as well.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I do not like this subclass approach. While a bard, wizard and sorcerer of the College of Lorehold all may play differently, they have underlying class mechanics that do not fit this 'flexiblity'.

What does it mean for the Warlock to have the "College serve as their Patron"? They've "eschewed their patron’s usual boons for learning these more esoteric manifestations of power." If I am a Warlock and I select this College, with whom did I enter into a pact? What types of pacts would they make with me? Why? Normally, warlock pacts have some obvious paths (although you can certainly subvert expectations).

How is the college a sorcerer origin? Or a druid's circle? I can plug it in and make it work, but it will be a square peg in a round hole.

I would not take this approach. I would do a separate subclass for each of these classes devoted to the school, but specialized for the class. They might have a lot of overlap, but they'd be designed to match the design of the class, not trying to do a 'one size fits all' approach.

Like I said this would have worked better as faction mechanics based on the colleges, instead of Ravnican Guilds, with its own spin on it.

 

[DeviousQuail]

I would not take this approach. I would do a separate subclass for each of these classes devoted to the school, but specialized for the class. They might have a lot of overlap, but they'd be designed to match the design of the class, not trying to do a 'one size fits all' approach.

I also like this approach. It's more pages of text but would be much easier to plug and play. No worries about how many subclass features you get compared to other classes and it'll be easier to balance how a subclass affects the class as a whole (provides exploration features at level X, combat features at level Y, etc)