Wizards of the Coast announced the setting book of Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos in the last Unearthed Arcana, the playtesting supplement that WotC uses for upcoming mechanics, races, and subclasses. The Strixhaven UA introduced a new mechanic for subclasses that allowed multiple classes to take each new subclass. However, during the recent D&D Live 2021 event, Jeremy Crawford, the lead rules designer for the game, announced that the crossover subclasses would not appear in the final Strixhaven book.
Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos is the third D&D setting book based on a Magic: the Gathering plane. Strixhaven features a magical school with five colleges based on different mana colors. The Strixhaven UA has one subclass for each college, each of which works with multiple classes that fall within the college’s wheelhouse. For instance, the Witherbloom College, which focuses on the alchemy of life and death, has the Mage of Witherbloom, which could be a natural druid or spooky warlock.
However, while this system is interesting, both flavor-wise and mechanically, there were a lot of problems with it. A lot of classes in D&D have invisible design considerations that go unnoticed when done right, but are noticeable when missing. For instance, many bard subclasses offer another way to use the class’s signature ability, Bardic Inspiration. That’s impossible when a subclass is available to a bard, warlock, or wizard, two of which do not use Bardic Inspiration.
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Crawford said as much in the D&D Live stream, explaining that “People love for D&D subclasses to speak to the distinctiveness of a particular class.” The crossover classes do something interesting, but at the expense of the individual flair of each class. Crawford also mentioned that, unlike Ravnica’s druidic Circle of Spores or Theros’s bardic College of Eloquence, the subclasses in the UA were tied closely to Strixhaven and Magic: the Gathering lore, making it hard for players to repurpose them for their home games.
Fans of Strixhaven should not worry, as the book stands to have a lot of interesting flavor and mechanics that make it worthwhile. Strixhaven will have plenty of mechanics that will help replicate the college experience, including tests and social events. Players who want to live the college life with a little more magic should check out this release, coming out on November 16th.
Source: syfywire
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