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

 

[Cadence]

As much sense as it makes for every God in Faerun to grant their clerics the ability to turn undead.

There is at least a nominal notion of why clerics have been, in most editions, able to turn undead: Their gods view the undead as an affront to the divine order and give their clerics the power to turn them.

I want to blame this on 3e. Instead of letting Clerics channel a variety of things (why not any of the six inner planes instead of just positive/negative, for example), they have them all pick either positive or negative. And once you're going +/- it feels like it ties right in to the undead. Did this just crystalize things that were in the previous editions?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There are D&D bloggers who will not stop talking about witches who will be happy to give you an earful on this. There are a lot of interpretations of witches, but the warlock is only one very narrow specific one. (And there are a TON of people, inside and outside of D&D, who will happy to yell at you for hours about how warlocks are not male witches.)

Eh, all D&D classes are idiosyncratic and weirdly specific interpretation of their inspirations. Like why in the D&D land all martial artists learn to telepathically speak and understand all languages? Who knows, but that's how D&D rolls! And 'witch' and 'warlock' is a separation that doesn't even exist in many languages.

Even if you wanted to say that 5E warlock = 5E witch, it would be great to have a subclass that really doubled down on that flavor. WotC certainly knows what that flavor is, as it's drenched all over Tasha's and Van Richten's.

Sure. I'd definitely want to have that.

 

[Yaarel]

I'd almost rather go the other way and make four...

Knowledge/Recall/Psyche
Awareness/Perception/Sensitivity
Charisma/Force of Personality/Projecting Will
Will/Sense of Self/Defense against Charisma

There is value into that approach.

At the same time, during gameplay, I find little difference between "knowing" (Investigation) and "perceiving" (Perception).

Similarly, I find little difference between "will power" and "personality force".

I get that you seem to make one offensive and the other defensive, and I could live with that.

Knowing/Perception could also easily have an offensive and defensive.

However it works out, I want no ambiguity. I need each ability to be clear and without overlapping other abilities.

 

[RealAlHazred]

How are warlocks not witches?

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.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Nah, you could have kept everything the current versions do, just present it like the Land Druid environments. Could save some space by not C&P'ing [School] Savant seven times.

They’re completely different, though. They have one thing in common, other than being Wizards.

Why would Alter Memories, which allows the Enchanter to charm creatures without them knowing they’ve been charmed and make them forget part of the time during which they were charmed, be in the same subclass as Illusory Reality, which allows the Illusionist to make objects created by illusion real, or Master Transmuter which allows the Transmuter to raise the dead, cure all diseases and curses on someone, restore someone’s youth, or transmute any object that fits in a 5 foot square into another object?

 

[Yaarel]

The same stuff that the general public thinks of when they think "witch." Brooms, cauldrons, toads and frogs, cackling, seeing the future, transforming their victims into frogs, eating the diabetic kids they lure in with houses made out of cookie.

Transmuter gets closest, but it doesn't really focus on most of that.

So, devil worshippers?



In my experience, there are three kinds of "witches".

• Nordic psionic
• Scottish fey
• German fiendish

Obviously, there are many more, but I tend not to use the term "witch" for them.



I guess the "Halloween witch" is its own kind of pop meme.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Are there any books with options to let the Wizard have a bloodline (like Sorcerer) or pact (like Warlock) in their background, but still get new spells by studying?

The Players Handbook has Ritual Caster, which is exactly that. There's also several books that offer additional spellcasting outside of a class with a feat.

Is using "Witch" problematic given those IRL who refer to themselves with the term?

Possibly, but I don't think TSR would have given a crap about that, given everything else they did. I think their disinterest in witches was likely because it was a female-coded class, as their depictions in the little white booklets and Dragon magazine all unanimously show.

NOTE: Post edited because the original glib posting was casually dismissive of real-world beliefs, which was not my intent. I apologize to anyone I may have offended and did not intend to diminish anyone's sincerely held religious or spiritual beliefs.

 

[Cadence]

There is value into that approach.

At the same time, during gameplay, I find little difference between "knowing" (Investigation) and "perceiving" (Perception).

I've found lots of times DMing lately (whether PF or 5e) where I've let folks pick the ability and skill that most seem to match what they'd like to do, and in a bunch of cases I can see a lot of combinations.

However it works out, I want no ambiguity. I need each ability to be clear and without overlapping other abilities.

Certainly a lot less ambiguity than there currently is!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

looks at Mage of Witherbloom

Yeah, that's a pretty spectacular class for that and it bridges most of the classes I think people would want to play as a witch.

There's a lot of demand for witchy content out there, as a dive through DMs Guild, Drive Thru RPG and Kickstarter will show. WotC taking something like the Mage of Witherbloom and officially slapping the "Witch" label on it would make a lot of customers very happy.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

That's very specific type of witch you have in mind, but yeah, there should be spells and invocations that would let you do that. And in general, I feel there should be more support for warlock builds that are about something lese than eldritchly blasting things.