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

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Part of the problem with the Warlock class is it is built heavily around eldritch blast and related shenanigans. Can you do a Warlock without eldritch blast? Absolutely! But most of the most effective stuff you can do revolves around eldritch blast so you're going to be missing out.

That definitely and unfortunately is true. But I think that is something that really limits the potential of the class and WotC should try to break away from that.

 

[Yaarel]

@Whizbang Dustyboots

The Warlock can do all of the Halloween witch tropes, no? Including Polymorph other.

 

[Rikka66]

All I'm saying is I'd like to have a sentence or four, as a non-MTG player, explaining why an abstract concept that has nothing to do with the cycle of life and death would grant powers over the undead.

Which you're not going to get, because there isn't one. The same way there isn't one for most of the Cleric domains in the game.

I agree with what you're saying; the D&D classes don't always map well when used in the conversion of another IP to the game. It gets real awkward with MtG because the game does have Clerics and Warlocks and such, but then they have the same problem where certain settings will use those terms but not try to explain how they fit at all. I think in the case of Clerics there are several ways to approach and explain it, and maybe GGR didn't spend the word count engaging it (I haven't read it).

 

[RealAlHazred]

It would be exceptionally hard to stat up Granny Weatherwax as a warlock. Much easier as a druid, wizard or sorcerer. If there's a more iconic witch than Granny, don't let her hear you say so.

Witch Hazel? Broom-Hilda? I wouldn't want to piss off Granny.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The biggest problem, so to speak, is that everyone gets all the spells. There aren't any more barred spell schools, nobody has to roll to learn a spell, and there aren't any spells that can only be taken by members of a particular archetype (except in the case of dunamancy spells). Maybe if each school had their own list of archetype spells and no other wizard could use them, that would help. You wanna cast fireball, be an evoker.

I think that's definitely a worthwhile way to do it. I was surprised, coming from 3E, to see that specialists no longer had banned subschools, either pre-defined (2E) or chosen by the player (3E).

"Everyone casts everything" is a problem. Either they shouldn't be able to get all the spells or specialists should be straight-up better with their subschool than everyone else. (Again, see my idea of enchanters being able to charm with fewer repercussions.)

 

[Weiley31]

My wife wanted to play a wizard that had witch flavor. She held her nose and picked Transmuter, but not enthusiastically.

(Also, WotC: For real, give witch some sort of mechanical support. It can be a class, it can be a shared subclass for warlocks, wizards, sorcerers and druids, or whatever. But it's been 47 years and the lack of official witches is just plain weird.)

I tell myself that the reason why WoTC hasn't given us a Witch class yet technically is due to Pathfinder having Witch as a class and the fact that they could view the Warlock being refluffed as a Witch.

 

[Xohar17]

THANK YOU. This is very important.

I imagine that a MAJORITY of Prismari students are Bards of say, College of Glamour. But this shows the alternative educational track in the college.

Not in the fiction in magic the gathering. Firdt they are ALL spellcasters, after all this is a school of magic. Second, most are wizards or shamans, with a few bards sprinkled in, because they specialize in the use of the elements in art, not just art itself.

 

[Xohar17]

I tell myself that the reason why WoTC hasn't given us a Witch class yet technically is due to Pathfinder having Witch as a class and the fact that they could view the Warlock being refluffed as a Witch.

In my opinion a witch is a warlock.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Why does any cleric not of a god that specifically oppose undead have turn undead? The problem here is with D&D and its weird baggage, not with the Ravnica setting.

I guess. I keep asking for explanations on how Ravnica clerics make sense and keep getting told the equivalent of "because." Maybe it's just me, but I suspect I'm not alone on this hill.

I won't disagree that 5E clerics are a big step backwards from 2E and 3E, when they had a lot more flavor and clerics of different faiths were much more distinct from one another.

 

[Weiley31]

You're not going to trick me into trying to defend the Forgotten Realms or its cosmology.

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.

It's a lot harder to see why the Concept of Accounting would feel that way.

This has gone on a lot longer than I would have imagined. All I'm saying is I'd like to have a sentence or four, as a non-MTG player, explaining why an abstract concept that has nothing to do with the cycle of life and death would grant powers over the undead.

Tax reasonings. The Accounting departments in the Guilds just shake their heads over all the legal proceedings that don't apply to the undead and how it interferes with the Artificer's Trade Unions and the annual quarterly reports.