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

 

[Yaarel]

I don't go that far, but I do limit resurrection magic. Resurrection magic, in my campaign can only be perfored twice a year ... clerics of ... life/creation and cleric's of ... the dead. The former's clerics can only perform it on the Spring Equinox. The latter's clerics can only perform it at the midpoint between the fall equinox and the winter solstice. The spell succeeding is not guaranteed.

I am fine with that, and I like the narrative. By definition, the spell would be cast as ritual here, and a ritual can have timing rules.

I sometimes do things like this, including timing, to allow spellcasting that eschews a costly gp component, but prevent spamming.

Practically in game terms, the slot 3 Revivify is nigh ubiquitous. To actually die, such as have the body destroyed, rarely happens and can (and probably should) be a big deal.

 

[Yaarel]

Makes sense. If someone is dead it means that they already failed at their job!

Heh, the goddess of healing is actually a Warlord.

As long as the hit point expenditure is superficial, no problem.

 

[Yaarel]

Suppose:

White divine: divination and teleportation
Blue psionic: enchantment and phantasm
Red elemental: four elements
Black necromantic: undead and darkside
Green primal: shapeshift and healing

Colorless ethereal: force and magical energy



Thus:

Psion = White-Blue
Alchemist = White-Red
Necromancer = White-Black
Cleric = White-Green

Wizard = Blue-Red
Warlock = Blue-Black
Bard = Blue-Green

Demon? = Red-Black
Druid = Red-Green

Vampire? = Black-Green

 

[Hussar]

The game you're describing is a perfectly viable way to play, and as you mentioned many modern games operate with those assumptions. I'm happy for you that you have a group of players who want to play D&D that way. Those assumptions are not built into D&D (as you also mentioned), and the problem I have with this line of reasoning is that you are treating your playstyle preferences as objectively better than what is presumed, and the makers of D&D just "haven't gotten the message". If you want to play Fate, play Fate. If you want to play D&D like Fate, and your players are on board, by all means. Dont assume that people who dont share your gaming preferences are simply behind the times. People get touchy about stuff like that.

I do believe that it is better. And, I'd point out, D&D has been moving in this direction (slowly but surely) with every iteration. The old "DM controls your paladin" schtick is largely gone, although vestiges of it still remain. The whole "only award full xp to players who play "well" thing fell by the wayside decades ago. While 5e does strongly go for the "rulings not rules" thing, there are still FAR stronger and more comprehensive rules than, say, AD&D. Less than perhaps 3e, although, really, not very much. Less granularity maybe, but, 5e is still very much a modern RPG with the very least rules suggestions for pretty much everything.

The main issue is, the Dev's have to appeal to old school DM's who have a real issue with relaxing the grip. You said it yourself, "the DM does the work, so, the DM gets the power". As if that somehow justifies anything. If you didn't want to do the work, don't DM. If one of the reasons you are DMing is so you can maintain control over the campaign, don't. The game is improved when we make everyone at the table responsible for a good game. That means handing some of the responsibility over to the players and expecting the players to be more than passive consumers of whatever plot wagon the DM is rolling up today.

The primary roadblock to the expansion of the hobby is creating new DM's. The fastest way to create new DM's is to lessen the workload of the DM. Placing this level of control squarely into the hands of the DM, particularly a new(ish) DM without the benefit of years of experience, results in bad games far more often than not. Heck, I know that I was a terrible DM for a long time. And I'm pretty sure most of us, if we're being honest, were too. We learned. We grew. We have years of really, really bad decisions informing our decisions today.

While mechanics won't guarantee a good DM, they will guarantee that someone without experience and knowledge will make the same mistakes we all made.

 

[Hussar]

Rotating the DM solves much of this.

Sometimes the players are inspired about what kind of adventure to do, and ask for a volunteer to DM it. Sometimes a DM has an adventure in mind and asks if the players are into it.

A DM typically runs the adventure until everyone levels up, but sometimes a DM can run for a tier (four levels), or even two or three tiers.

The same characters go thru different DMs. The cooler part is the new characters are often the kids of the high powered characters, or have some other connection to the earlier connections. So the inworld becomes rich and ambient, and players invest deeply.

Totally agree with this. I am an HUGE fan of rotating DM's. To be honest, I had never seen the "One DM Table" until I got to university. We started out this way back in the early 80's that everyone took a turn running an adventure. It saves so much workload on the DM and means that virtually all table issues go away since everyone is, again, responsible for the table. No one goes all Monty Haul or anything like that because you know that you have to keep the game on a fairly even keel for the next person in line.

If I had my way, my current group would do this too. I'm back in the chair of only DM and I struggle to keep up. Heck, that's why I am running Candlekeep, just to cut down on so much of the workload.

 

[Hussar]

This simply is a matter of specific setting's metaphysics. In many settings paladins are also part of certain sects and their power comes from a deity. You can have things to work in any way you want in your setting. Personally I want divine magic to be characterised by the caster being an intermediary; it's not their power, they're channelling power of deity/spirit. That in my mind it sets it apart from the arcane.

To be fair though, weren't you the one who asked me about my clerics and not requiring the clerics be faithful? That's no more or less home-brew than what you are talking about too though. Clerics aren't an intermediary. They cast from the Weave, same as Wizards and every other caster, according to the flavor of D&D. And, since we're insisting in this thread that the flavor in the PHB must be held as important as rules, changing that flavor is heading off into home-brew territory.

Which is perfectly fine. I'm certainly not one to complain about home brewing. But, if we're doing that, then the notion that the PHB flavor text somehow empowers DM's to alter the mechanics of a player's character sheet directly - not simply through HP ablation and mitigated by the dice and a thousand other rules, up to and including various bring back the dead magics - then we should take care not to confuse the issue with changes to the PHB text.

 

[Hussar]

Do PCs in your games spend all their time being big damn heroes in between bouts of narrative angst? I just dont see how you can have a fun campaign while taking all possibility of mechanical change outside player control off the table.

Bwuh? Most classes don't allow the DM any possibility of mechanical changes. There's not even a hint that a DM can change my fighter, rogue, bard, barbarian, monk, sorcerer or wizard. The only classes that a DM has even the hint of the possibility are clerics, paladins and warlocks. And, even then, it's a pretty darn small hint in the case of warlocks.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To be fair though, weren't you the one who asked me about my clerics and not requiring the clerics be faithful? That's no more or less home-brew than what you are talking about too though. Clerics aren't an intermediary. They cast from the Weave, same as Wizards and every other caster, according to the flavor of D&D. And, since we're insisting in this thread that the flavor in the PHB must be held as important as rules, changing that flavor is heading off into home-brew territory.

Which is perfectly fine. I'm certainly not one to complain about home brewing. But, if we're doing that, then the notion that the PHB flavor text somehow empowers DM's to alter the mechanics of a player's character sheet directly - not simply through HP ablation and mitigated by the dice and a thousand other rules, up to and including various bring back the dead magics - then we should take care not to confuse the issue with changes to the PHB text.

What matters is the fiction of the given setting. If it has been established to work in certain way then that's how it works, and whatever logical consequences follow from that, will follow. I certainly am not against GMs altering such assumptions to better fir their setting and do so myself regularly. That being said, I already quoted the PHB cleric description earlier:

"Divine magic, as the name suggests, is the power of the gods, flowing from them into the world. Clerics are conduits for that power, manifesting it as miraculous effects. The gods don’t grant this power to everyone who seeks it, but only to those chosen to fulfill a high calling.

Harnessing divine magic doesn’t rely on study or training. A cleric might learn formulaic prayers and ancient rites, but the ability to cast cleric spells relies on devotion and an intuitive sense of a deity’s wishes."

It pretty much says that the cleric is an intermediary of the god's power, and that their magic is granted to them for being devoted to the god's cause.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Bwuh? Most classes don't allow the DM any possibility of mechanical changes. There's not even a hint that a DM can change my fighter, rogue, bard, barbarian, monk, sorcerer or wizard. The only classes that a DM has even the hint of the possibility are clerics, paladins and warlocks. And, even then, it's a pretty darn small hint in the case of warlocks.

The post I was answering was in reference to temporarily losing access to one's gear being somehow a "violation" (their word) of character concept, and should be avoided. Occasionally losing some access to your super powers is a big part of many stories, and I don't think it is objective truth that such stories should be outlawed.

 

[Yaarel]

"Divine magic, as the name suggests, is the power of the gods, flowing from them into the world. Clerics are conduits for that power, manifesting it as miraculous effects. The gods don’t grant this power to everyone who seeks it, but only to those chosen to fulfill a high calling.

Harnessing divine magic doesn’t rely on study or training. A cleric might learn formulaic prayers and ancient rites, but the ability to cast cleric spells relies on devotion and an intuitive sense of a deity’s wishes."

It pretty much says that the cleric is an intermediary of the god's power, and that their magic is granted to them for being devoted to the god's cause.

The "POWER" itself of the immortals flows into the Material Plane. In other words, the same "divine power source" that is in the Astral Plane where the immortals use it, is the same "divine power source" that is in the Material Plane where mortals use it. They are both learning how to use and wield the same power source.

Immortals are archetypes. These mental symbols "wish" to shape the linguistic structure of reality. Immortals often seek humans to propagandize the respective archetypes to organize a culture, and to "inform" the Material Plane.