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

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Now I'm wondering if the PhB should have a message about variability in DMs and what a player should do if they're not having fun or something doesn't seem right. (Things to ask the DM, things to look for, how to discuss why you're not having fun etc..).

Honestly? I definitely think it should, especially going on the RPG Horror stories reddit (which is not about the "good kind" of horror story lol). I remember going there expecting to read stuff from my generation, about like various unpleasant old-fashioned DMs, and not to see much from "the youth", but in fact a huge amount of the posters on there are like, late teens to early twenties, and dealing with some very naughty word behaviour, a lot of which is reminiscent of, but also quite different to what my generation dealt with. DMs find new and exciting ways to be right wankers.

And it's clear from some of the posts that these people are genuinely pretty new to RPGs, and have been directed to this reddit by other people, and are like "This isn't okay, right?!" and it's like HELL NO, that's not even slightly okay. But they're not sure because they're new to RPGs and even 5E basically rolls on the old D&D idea that the DM is kind of close to god (only 4E ever even flirted with no pushing that angle).

So yeah I think it should be more clearly outlined in any future PHB - it is in some other games.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I was talking about basic class abilities, like sneak attacks or smites, not some archetype from a later book or from a third party source.

Unless the DM is brand new to the job and literally has no experience, in these cases it's almost always a DM trying to nerf a player out of laziness or maliciousness.

Untrue. A frenzied berserker barbarian, for example, has regularly given me fits in my games, what with their high hp, high damage, and damage reduction. High AC is quite easy to achieve straight out of the PH. Spike damage from paladins and, yes, sneak attacking rogues can wreck havoc on CR appropriate encounters. I don't assume malicious intent on the part of DMs, though of course I do allow for the possibility. The game needs to do the same.

 

[Weiley31]

What use is a house to an adventurer anyway?

Ask Baba Yaga.

 

[Weiley31]

I don't know: I actually kinda think its stupid when a rogue can't use their Sneak Attacks, or the Paladin's Smite suddenly isn't useful cuz the batteries died since the Paladin was using it too much.

Says the guy who would come up with a plot reason to make sure the PCs couldn't just teleport straight to the Final Boss room.

On another note, do Strixhaven Warlocks get Financial Aide?

 

[Faolyn]

Untrue. A frenzied berserker barbarian, for example, has regularly given me fits in my games, what with their high hp, high damage, and damage reduction. High AC is quite easy to achieve straight out of the PH. Spike damage from paladins and, yes, sneak attacking rogues can wreck havoc on CR appropriate encounters. I don't assume malicious intent on the part of DMs, though of course I do allow for the possibility. The game needs to do the same.

All of those examples are doing exactly what the class is supposed to do. Combat isn't supposed to just be two people dealing roughly equal damage to each other for a long time. There's supposed to be instances where one side wins quickly.

For a barbarian, why aren't you having enemy spellcasters cast Dex or Wis save spells from hiding? It makes sense for the spellcaster to not be in sight of the obviously raging barbarian. Barbarians only get a bonus to Dex saves if they can see the source, and there are Wis-based spells that don't inflict charmed or frightened. Like hold person.

For rogues, are you actually making sure that there's things for them to hide behind? Because you can't just say "I take the Hide bonus action" and get advantage if there's nothing that allows you to Hide. I've known DMs to forget that bit. I've forgotten it as well, on occasion. If you really want to nerf a rogue, don't take away their Sneak Attack; instead, don't have random things for them to hide behind.

Paladins can do a lot of damage but not very often, since they have limited spell slots with which to smite. And if they're smiting, they're not spellcasting, and vice versa, which means that they're balancing themselves.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Frankly, I really don't get how characters doing a lot of damage could be a serious issue for the GM. I perfectly understand how adventure circumventing tricks like teleportation could be a major headache, but damage is just hit points and the GM has access to endless amount of hit points. It's not like the Monster Manual runs out of trolls or something.

 

[Sithlord]

You don't, but you also can't pretend that at least the Fiend patron is directly using that story in the lore. They just dont back it up.

That’s why that in my opinion the warlock class in the PHB with respect to fiend and great old one are villains classes. Because unless they are doing he will of their master they will lose their power or at the least not get to level up. As written it makes no freaking sense.

 

[Greg K]

@Gregk mention he had something like 50 players since the 90's. Good grief, I went through more than that in my early virtual tabletop days in a single campaign. I had over a hundred different players (I was DMing two games and playing in a third) in a couple of years. The reason you don't think tends to happen is you just don't have a large enough sample size.

I said 40 to 50 regular players and then mentioned additonal players. I also stated that even before the 90s, I did not have the problem.
if I recall correctly, you also do organized play. I and many of my friends had enough issues with organized play players in the early 80s and heard enough horror stories from others into the 90s that we stay clear of organized play. Also back then, many of the organized play players at cons were people whom had bad reputations and were kicked out of local groups. I am not saying that they were a respresentational sample of organized play players as a whole, but it is a major reason that we stay clear of organized play (in addition to no wanting to be beholden to the organized play rules).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Frankly, I really don't get how characters doing a lot of damage could be a serious issue for the GM. I perfectly understand how adventure circumventing tricks like teleportation could be a major headache, but damage is just hit points and the GM has access to endless amount of hit points. It's not like the Monster Manual runs out of trolls or something.

Well, sometimes it's not appropriate to send wave after wave of enemies to absorb the rogue's damage, and even when it is, that might be a problem for the other PCs. And sneaky casters aren't always the answer either, by the way. The point is that there are PC options that are difficult for some DMs to handle, and they shouldn't be forced to run games with them because the player decides they are indelible parts of their character.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I still haven't heard anyone admit that what they want is for the DM in question to essentially "suck it up" and run the game anyway over their own objections. People keep saying these problems shouldn't be problems. But what if they are?