It's up to the players if they want to be friends with NPC's or not. So why (mechanically) would you ever voluntarily be on an NPC's bad side in this case? Did I miss something when reading through the relationships chapter? I may end up making things up if there's no real way to end up with enemies outside of choosing to be jerks to some NPC's.
If the NPC is a jerk themselves or gets in the players' way, they likely will have a bad relationship. As well, as players they know the NPCs are just NPCs deep in their hearts and might just subconsciously be jerks to them. Many are just like "Let's leave, if they die it's fine, they're just an NPC" if things get rough or the like.
Story as an example for my next conclusion:
I've had some players recently try to get info from an NPC to try and figure out more about her dead lover (who was cheating on his wife with her) to get info about the disease that killed him and several others (and was connected to a missing persons and missing search party case), and she very much didn't like being confronted with her dirty secret. So when she didn't answer their questions and went back inside her house and locked the door, the player with the elephant decided to ride up to the lady's window and one of the other players egged him on to bust down the wall. This lady doesn't know what a ******* elephant is btw, they aren't native to the area and now this giant monster with tusks is being told to bust down her wall and she walks by and sees it through the window.
She does the obvious thing and runs out her back door. The players chase her, and since 2 of them have mounts they quickly catch up. Player on the horse tries to intimidate her to stop and succeeds. The lady is still in great fear however and keeps running but no dash this time, as she's very shaken and sees these people are dangerous and doesn't know whether escape is better or surrender is better. The one with the elephant rides over and gets behind her and says "Dumbo, if she moves, stomp her." So now she's been threatened and had someone try to scare her down. Then the player on the horse rides up again and tries to intimidate her again to stop running. She's surrounded and so sees no escape. They then get to ask their questions and see she has no relevant answers and get sassy about how she's been useless to them.
In such a situation the town would likely not want these people to come back. Especially after they had started a fire, in public, last time from a dead pastor's corpse they had just found (he died to the disease and they found him dead in the church, undiscovered). They didn't inform the guards first about the pastor's demise. So the guards didn't know it was to stop the spread of disease. So they reacted accordingly to delinquents committing arson.
After such things, the NPCs would likely not like these people at all. But I feel sometimes DMs just handwave such things. A PC's rash actions usually lead to conflict between them and NPCs. The player on the horse could've gotten off after catching up and walked up nicely to the woman that they didn't mean to harm her. Or just not threatened her in the first place. But PCs are used to getting things by force and so they act like that. It's a pretty easy way for them to end up with enemies.
Obviously there's the caveat that not all PC to NPC interactions will be like this or that every player just hates NPCs to their core, but it is a common phenomenon.
It's up to the players if they want to be friends with NPC's or not. So why (mechanically) would you ever voluntarily be on an NPC's bad side in this case? Did I miss something when reading through the relationships chapter? I may end up making things up if there's no real way to end up with enemies outside of choosing to be jerks to some NPC's.
If the NPC is a jerk themselves or gets in the players' way, they likely will have a bad relationship. As well, as players they know the NPCs are just NPCs deep in their hearts and might just subconsciously be jerks to them. Many are just like "Let's leave, if they die it's fine, they're just an NPC" if things get rough or the like.
Story as an example for my next conclusion:
I've had some players recently try to get info from an NPC to try and figure out more about her dead lover (who was cheating on his wife with her) to get info about the disease that killed him and several others (and was connected to a missing persons and missing search party case), and she very much didn't like being confronted with her dirty secret. So when she didn't answer their questions and went back inside her house and locked the door, the player with the elephant decided to ride up to the lady's window and one of the other players egged him on to bust down the wall. This lady doesn't know what a ****ing elephant is btw, they aren't native to the area and now this giant monster with tusks is being told to bust down her wall and she walks by and sees it through the window.
She does the obvious thing and runs out her back door. The players chase her, and since 2 of them have mounts they quickly catch up. Player on the horse tries to intimidate her to stop and succeeds. The lady is still in great fear however and keeps running but no dash this time, as she's very shaken and sees these people are dangerous and doesn't know whether escape is better or surrender is better. The one with the elephant rides over and gets behind her and says "Dumbo, if she moves, stomp her." So now she's been threatened and had someone try to scare her down. Then the player on the horse rides up again and tries to intimidate her again to stop running. She's surrounded and so sees no escape. They then get to ask their questions and see she has no relevant answers and get sassy about how she's been useless to them.
In such a situation the town would likely not want these people to come back. Especially after they had started a fire, in public, last time from a dead pastor's corpse they had just found (he died to the disease and they found him dead in the church, undiscovered). They didn't inform the guards first about the pastor's demise. So the guards didn't know it was to stop the spread of disease. So they reacted accordingly to delinquents committing arson.
After such things, the NPCs would likely not like these people at all. But I feel sometimes DMs just handwave such things. A PC's rash actions usually lead to conflict between them and NPCs. The player on the horse could've gotten off after catching up and walked up nicely to the woman that they didn't mean to harm her. Or just not threatened her in the first place. But PCs are used to getting things by force and so they act like that. It's a pretty easy way for them to end up with enemies.
Fighting over a guy or girl or being academic rivals with an NPC is a great way to make an enemy of them. I personally prefer to avoid making enemies but sometimes it’s unavoidable.
Fighting over a guy or girl or being academic rivals with an NPC is a great way to make an enemy of them. I personally prefer to avoid making enemies but sometimes it’s unavoidable.
I agree. Strixhaven is an adventure. However, this is D&D Beyond's classification fault - https://dnd.wizards.com/products/strixhaven-curriculum-chaos says the book is about "rollicking campus adventures", and everyone's best friend J Crawford (doesn't deserve his bad reputation, but here goes) said "this book is primarily an adventure" so many times in streams it was hard not to know about.
I'm not sure WotC is completely excused here. First of all we don't know what DndBeyond got told and secondly when you go to WotC's product page for rpg products you can see that all the adventure books have a secondary title stating "Adventures for levels [..]" (which Strixhaven is lacking) while source books either don't have any secondary title or have it listed as "Campaign Sourcebook" or similar. So at the very least it's been unclear from WotC's side as well.
DDB has outright stated that the classification of adventure vs sourcebook is dictated by Wizards. DDB can't reclass something, even on their sales page. They have to use the terminology WotC uses.
I agree. Strixhaven is an adventure. However, this is D&D Beyond's classification fault - https://dnd.wizards.com/products/strixhaven-curriculum-chaos says the book is about "rollicking campus adventures", and everyone's best friend J Crawford (doesn't deserve his bad reputation, but here goes) said "this book is primarily an adventure" so many times in streams it was hard not to know about.
I'm not sure WotC is completely excused here. First of all we don't know what DndBeyond got told and secondly when you go to WotC's product page for rpg products you can see that all the adventure books have a secondary title stating "Adventures for levels [..]" (which Strixhaven is lacking) while source books either don't have any secondary title or have it listed as "Campaign Sourcebook" or similar. So at the very least it's been unclear from WotC's side as well.
DDB has outright stated that the classification of adventure vs sourcebook is dictated by Wizards. DDB can't reclass something, even on their sales page. They have to use the terminology WotC uses.
Could still have been a typo or miscommunication, but for me regardless of the relative %'s, I consider this a sourcebook.
I agree with you. Actually, I think it’s both a sourcebook and an adventure. In either case, I think it’s a really good book so far and I’m glad I bought it.
The feat Strixhaven Mascot has the listed prerequisites of 4th level as well as the Strixhaven Initiate feat.
Is this the first time in 5e that a feat has had a level prerequisite? The first time a feat has explicitly required another feat as a prerequisite?
How would you feel about more feats following this pattern in the future?
Edit: Personally, I wouldnt mind more feats getting a level prerequisite at least to prevent certain feats (like Fey/Shadow touched) from being taken at level 1. I also think the idea of feats that build off of other feats is really interesting. It could be a neat way to make other lackluster feats seem more appealing if it opens the door for an even better feat. I would want it to be limited, though, because I dont want feats to turn into a progressive skill tree of sorts.
They had that with the psionics feats last year, but the base 'feat that grants psionics' got nixed, so the few feats that did make it through had no such requirement in final form.
The more I read the sourcebook the more I'm also struck by how little information there is on .... well..... classes. And I don't mean dnd character 'classes'. I mean schoolwork. This is clearly dnd's/mtg's equivalence of Harry Potter. We get these rolltables for either 6 or 10 classes per 'school year'. But they literally mean nothing lol. They make a note that "these classes mostly take place in the background". Meaning they .....well..... mean nothing.
There's a full list of information on extracurriculars but we only get titles of actual classes. What is Aesthemancy? What is taught? What's the point of taking an Inkomancy course? There is literally no other mentions of the magic art anywhere.
There's so many things you could do..... you take a Lumimancy course and maybe you can manipulate a spell like light in a unique way the spell might normally not allow. Courses you take grant unique boons if you successfully pass. Instead we don't even get a list of classes and what they mean, but get a long list of extracurriculars. I'm not expecting a course syllabus here. But if as a DM a player sits there and asks me "Hey, what is this Lumimancy course?" I don't even get a guideline. I have to make it up.... and when they ask me if it matters what courses they take I legit have to say canonically "No." unless I homebrew it to do so.
Oh it is definite powercreep. It clearly assumes the main characters are all Strixhaven characters. It is a high powered setting. This is ok as long as the DM realizes this and balances accordingly.
It being setting dependent is why I still consider this a sourcebook. The adventure does not work so well without the inclusiveness the backgrounds provide. It is meant to present a specific setting intended to be played out in a specific style. If you are not a fan of that style, it is not for you. But that is true of other sourcebooks such as Ravenloft or Eberron, too.
And those who run high powered campaigns could use this either with or without the university out of context with said setting. And those who do not want or feel they need the full book can purchase only the parts they want, because DDB allows that.
As for Silvery Barbs, it is one spell. Any given DM can nerf it any way they see fit. No DM is required to use it straight up or to use it at all.
Um, Adventurer's League means that's not necessarily true. Hopefully the various additions will be treated as setting dependent.
How would you feel about more feats following this pattern in the future?
I'm in support if it means we might have a chance at getting the Skills UA feats made available officially. I really like Diplomacy being a slightly longer to set up, but easier to maintain Panache, and think that it should be feasible for more than just the swashbuckler to get. (plus they combine well with each other, as Panache could allow for a target to be quickly charmed, and then that keeps them on the hook for the minute needed to apply diplomacy) But I also recognize that 1st level diplomacy feat would be way too much. I'd even be okay with it being held back until 8th level.
The more I read the sourcebook the more I'm also struck by how little information there is on .... well..... classes. And I don't mean dnd character 'classes'. I mean schoolwork. This is clearly dnd's/mtg's equivalence of Harry Potter. We get these rolltables for either 6 or 10 classes per 'school year'. But they literally mean nothing lol. They make a note that "these classes mostly take place in the background". Meaning they .....well..... mean nothing.
There's a full list of information on extracurriculars but we only get titles of actual classes. What is Aesthemancy? What is taught? What's the point of taking an Inkomancy course? There is literally no other mentions of the magic art anywhere.
There's so many things you could do..... you take a Lumimancy course and maybe you can manipulate a spell like light in a unique way the spell might normally not allow. Courses you take grant unique boons if you successfully pass. Instead we don't even get a list of classes and what they mean, but get a long list of extracurriculars. I'm not expecting a course syllabus here. But if as a DM a player sits there and asks me "Hey, what is this Lumimancy course?" I don't even get a guideline. I have to make it up.... and when they ask me if it matters what courses they take I legit have to say canonically "No." unless I homebrew it to do so.
It's all just..... silly.
Classes do something. The problem with taking Beginning Inkomancy is that what the class does is absent from the book, for no apparent reason. Magical Physiologies is covered. The problem there is that the benefit of taking the course expires at the end of the school year, because the benefit breaks bounded accuracy, presumably. That could be fixed by just not having the ability evaporate, or you could also go one step further and have the ability not break bounded accuracy by changing its definition so it can't be stacked with other additive bonuses or something.
In the general case, taking a course does nothing unless you pass the exams. Each course has two exams, which you pass by beating a given DC on a given ability check using a given ability. The benefit of passing an exam is that you get a 1/long rest ability to add +1d4 to the ability check the exam entailed (regardless of ability used).
So to fix the fact that taking Inkomancy coursework does nothing, you need only do these two things:
Assign 2 different ability checks with abilities to the Inkomancy exams. I suggest Charisma (Forgery Kit) and Charisma (Calligrapher's Supplies).
Change the duration of passing the exams to infinity, so taking the course permanently changes you.
Optional step: change the impact. For example, the 1d4 could fail to stack with other additive bonuses. As another example, instead of a 1d4, it could be 1dX, where X is your proficiency bonus, if you want it to scale with proficiency automatically. You could also have X depend on how many Inkomancy courses you've taken, instead of PB.
But I agree, it's weird how little impact the courses have.
Just throwing my two cents into this: I'm quite dissapointed int he book, and here is why. Originally when the UA released the sperate Subclasses they seemed pretty cool and while I didn't enjoy that they worked with multiple base classes I found ways to incorporate each of them into my games in one way or another (with a little bit of finagling). Beyond what was presented in the UA I did not partake in the survey or keep up with dev decisions that followed, BUT when the book was closer to release and the offical facebook page began stating that they had "curriculums for x, y, z" I began to assume that those "curriculums" meant that they had seperated the original strixhaven subclasses into a variety of new subclasses that would better suit each base class to the colleges of strixhave (bleed doctor is the one "curriculum" I remember off hand). I though thtat would be cool, because new subclasses gives me a way of fleshing out how they interact with my world and why.
And then the book came out. No new subclasses, only a handful of new spells, lackluster magic items and a minor variance of the Aarokokra/Aven bereft of culture, background, or personality beyond their physical appearance, all slapped on an idea used by MTG but done demonstrably better by Humblewood. The short adventure path in the book makes the books relevance temporary at best and useless at worst despite the moderate focus on the plane and college as a whole. The whole thing seems lackluster and disappointing. I had it preordered on Beyond and discovered it's unfortunate contents before I bought a physical copy from my local gamestore, which I did not to own the book, but as a gesture to the establishment I enjoy. That says something in my opinion, and not a good something.
The more I read the sourcebook the more I'm also struck by how little information there is on .... well..... classes. And I don't mean dnd character 'classes'. I mean schoolwork. This is clearly dnd's/mtg's equivalence of Harry Potter. We get these rolltables for either 6 or 10 classes per 'school year'. But they literally mean nothing lol. They make a note that "these classes mostly take place in the background". Meaning they .....well..... mean nothing.
There's a full list of information on extracurriculars but we only get titles of actual classes. What is Aesthemancy? What is taught? What's the point of taking an Inkomancy course? There is literally no other mentions of the magic art anywhere.
There's so many things you could do..... you take a Lumimancy course and maybe you can manipulate a spell like light in a unique way the spell might normally not allow. Courses you take grant unique boons if you successfully pass. Instead we don't even get a list of classes and what they mean, but get a long list of extracurriculars. I'm not expecting a course syllabus here. But if as a DM a player sits there and asks me "Hey, what is this Lumimancy course?" I don't even get a guideline. I have to make it up.... and when they ask me if it matters what courses they take I legit have to say canonically "No." unless I homebrew it to do so.
It's all just..... silly.
Because classes are the boring part of school lol. Friends and dating are the fun part.
There's not really enough ASI's for feat trees to properly exist in 5e. Maybe if it's just 2 feats long, maybe. Level prereqs are great however. Could help lessen the load of many of those "too strong" feats.
This book was a wasted opportunity and a waste of resources. It's bad enough that they keep putting out MTG crossover garbage. However, they could have made this more appealing to any generic D&D setting by really focusing on creating a source book for new spells. But all they gave us was 5 spells. Just 5, and a couple of them are completely borked. New backgrounds. Awesome!!! We need new backgrounds....wait...they do what?......nevermind. At least there are some new feats....let's see what they do....uh....ok, let's file these with the backgrounds. We got a new race! It's an owl. Ok potter fans, there you go. Because the Aarakocra is so well received by DMs. Well maybe I can drop the school somewhere in my game setting, if I can de-flavor all the MTG stuff. But then it's just a hogwarts adventure. So, yeah....wasted opportunity and waste of production resources. Almost as bad as how dndbeyond wastes their resources.
I haven't read the whole book yet but is there anything that gives a reason why non-casters would enroll at Strixhaven? I read the part about Ancestral Guardian Barbarians being useful at the College of Lorehold, but what about a fighter or rogue archetype that doesn't involve magic? I get that Prismari involves art and anyone can be into art, and Lorehold involves history, etc. So should this be framed as a school that is magical and not just a school of magic where students enroll to learn different x-mancy disciplines? Maybe fighters and rogues and barbarians of strictly martial subclasses/archetypes are attending to learn medicine or art or law or become historians or mathematicians or physicists. Perhaps they are especially useful against mage hunters? It's something I want to be able to wrap my head around before planning out a potential campaign sandbox. Does anyone have any ideas they've been working on?
Non-casters could also have come there to learn magic (multiclassing) or to provide security services or some such.
But a lot of it is just the same plot hole as exists in Harry Potter, namely where the students are learning normal things like math, English, etc. They seem to have a single class in 'Muggle Studies' and even then I think not every year.
to be fair, the way it's presented is "you're still learning normal educational stuff, you're just also learning magic and how to apply it to your other studies" so it's actually *less* of a plot hole than Harry Potter.
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Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
So, I've just read the first part - I'm not reading the adventure because I'm expecting to be a player in it a few months from now. It's pretty much what I expected - an adventure book for DMs, with some sourcebook stuff at the beginning. The advertising seemed to make that clear, but yeah, listing it as a sourcebook is misleading and is gonna result in disappointed players.
Honestly what I've read is great. The setting is great fun, the new rules are great and I'm really looking forward to playing it.
But it really would have benefited from being a proper sourcebook. With a wealth of weird trolls, vampires and dryads among the students just getting the Owlin is a shame. Some subclasses to flesh out college-specific themes would be ideal; the backgrounds are great and I really like them, but less isn't always more. I really think it would have benefited from leaning more into its influences too. I'd have loved some magical school shopping for personalised casting implements and spell reagents, more focus on lessons and research, that sort of thing. The influences are there, but it doesn't quite bring it all to life as strongly as I'd wanted.
All that said though, I'm really not disappointed - it's pretty much what I expected, and I still love the setting as much as I'd hoped to. But I'm really hoping there's a future setting book that gives us all the little details, because there's a whole lot of potential here.
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If the NPC is a jerk themselves or gets in the players' way, they likely will have a bad relationship. As well, as players they know the NPCs are just NPCs deep in their hearts and might just subconsciously be jerks to them. Many are just like "Let's leave, if they die it's fine, they're just an NPC" if things get rough or the like.
Story as an example for my next conclusion:
I've had some players recently try to get info from an NPC to try and figure out more about her dead lover (who was cheating on his wife with her) to get info about the disease that killed him and several others (and was connected to a missing persons and missing search party case), and she very much didn't like being confronted with her dirty secret. So when she didn't answer their questions and went back inside her house and locked the door, the player with the elephant decided to ride up to the lady's window and one of the other players egged him on to bust down the wall. This lady doesn't know what a ******* elephant is btw, they aren't native to the area and now this giant monster with tusks is being told to bust down her wall and she walks by and sees it through the window.
She does the obvious thing and runs out her back door. The players chase her, and since 2 of them have mounts they quickly catch up. Player on the horse tries to intimidate her to stop and succeeds. The lady is still in great fear however and keeps running but no dash this time, as she's very shaken and sees these people are dangerous and doesn't know whether escape is better or surrender is better. The one with the elephant rides over and gets behind her and says "Dumbo, if she moves, stomp her." So now she's been threatened and had someone try to scare her down. Then the player on the horse rides up again and tries to intimidate her again to stop running. She's surrounded and so sees no escape. They then get to ask their questions and see she has no relevant answers and get sassy about how she's been useless to them.
In such a situation the town would likely not want these people to come back. Especially after they had started a fire, in public, last time from a dead pastor's corpse they had just found (he died to the disease and they found him dead in the church, undiscovered). They didn't inform the guards first about the pastor's demise. So the guards didn't know it was to stop the spread of disease. So they reacted accordingly to delinquents committing arson.
After such things, the NPCs would likely not like these people at all. But I feel sometimes DMs just handwave such things. A PC's rash actions usually lead to conflict between them and NPCs. The player on the horse could've gotten off after catching up and walked up nicely to the woman that they didn't mean to harm her. Or just not threatened her in the first place. But PCs are used to getting things by force and so they act like that. It's a pretty easy way for them to end up with enemies.
Obviously there's the caveat that not all PC to NPC interactions will be like this or that every player just hates NPCs to their core, but it is a common phenomenon.
Er ek geng, þat er í þeim skóm er ek valda.
UwU
Fighting over a guy or girl or being academic rivals with an NPC is a great way to make an enemy of them. I personally prefer to avoid making enemies but sometimes it’s unavoidable.
yes, that is always a fun one! :)
Er ek geng, þat er í þeim skóm er ek valda.
UwU
DDB has outright stated that the classification of adventure vs sourcebook is dictated by Wizards. DDB can't reclass something, even on their sales page. They have to use the terminology WotC uses.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
I agree with you. Actually, I think it’s both a sourcebook and an adventure. In either case, I think it’s a really good book so far and I’m glad I bought it.
The feat Strixhaven Mascot has the listed prerequisites of 4th level as well as the Strixhaven Initiate feat.
Is this the first time in 5e that a feat has had a level prerequisite? The first time a feat has explicitly required another feat as a prerequisite?
How would you feel about more feats following this pattern in the future?
Edit: Personally, I wouldnt mind more feats getting a level prerequisite at least to prevent certain feats (like Fey/Shadow touched) from being taken at level 1. I also think the idea of feats that build off of other feats is really interesting. It could be a neat way to make other lackluster feats seem more appealing if it opens the door for an even better feat. I would want it to be limited, though, because I dont want feats to turn into a progressive skill tree of sorts.
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They had that with the psionics feats last year, but the base 'feat that grants psionics' got nixed, so the few feats that did make it through had no such requirement in final form.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
The more I read the sourcebook the more I'm also struck by how little information there is on .... well..... classes. And I don't mean dnd character 'classes'. I mean schoolwork. This is clearly dnd's/mtg's equivalence of Harry Potter. We get these rolltables for either 6 or 10 classes per 'school year'. But they literally mean nothing lol. They make a note that "these classes mostly take place in the background". Meaning they .....well..... mean nothing.
There's a full list of information on extracurriculars but we only get titles of actual classes. What is Aesthemancy? What is taught? What's the point of taking an Inkomancy course? There is literally no other mentions of the magic art anywhere.
There's so many things you could do..... you take a Lumimancy course and maybe you can manipulate a spell like light in a unique way the spell might normally not allow. Courses you take grant unique boons if you successfully pass. Instead we don't even get a list of classes and what they mean, but get a long list of extracurriculars. I'm not expecting a course syllabus here. But if as a DM a player sits there and asks me "Hey, what is this Lumimancy course?" I don't even get a guideline. I have to make it up.... and when they ask me if it matters what courses they take I legit have to say canonically "No." unless I homebrew it to do so.
It's all just..... silly.
Um, Adventurer's League means that's not necessarily true. Hopefully the various additions will be treated as setting dependent.
I'm in support if it means we might have a chance at getting the Skills UA feats made available officially. I really like Diplomacy being a slightly longer to set up, but easier to maintain Panache, and think that it should be feasible for more than just the swashbuckler to get. (plus they combine well with each other, as Panache could allow for a target to be quickly charmed, and then that keeps them on the hook for the minute needed to apply diplomacy)
But I also recognize that 1st level diplomacy feat would be way too much. I'd even be okay with it being held back until 8th level.
Classes do something. The problem with taking Beginning Inkomancy is that what the class does is absent from the book, for no apparent reason. Magical Physiologies is covered. The problem there is that the benefit of taking the course expires at the end of the school year, because the benefit breaks bounded accuracy, presumably. That could be fixed by just not having the ability evaporate, or you could also go one step further and have the ability not break bounded accuracy by changing its definition so it can't be stacked with other additive bonuses or something.
In the general case, taking a course does nothing unless you pass the exams. Each course has two exams, which you pass by beating a given DC on a given ability check using a given ability. The benefit of passing an exam is that you get a 1/long rest ability to add +1d4 to the ability check the exam entailed (regardless of ability used).
So to fix the fact that taking Inkomancy coursework does nothing, you need only do these two things:
But I agree, it's weird how little impact the courses have.
Just throwing my two cents into this: I'm quite dissapointed int he book, and here is why. Originally when the UA released the sperate Subclasses they seemed pretty cool and while I didn't enjoy that they worked with multiple base classes I found ways to incorporate each of them into my games in one way or another (with a little bit of finagling). Beyond what was presented in the UA I did not partake in the survey or keep up with dev decisions that followed, BUT when the book was closer to release and the offical facebook page began stating that they had "curriculums for x, y, z" I began to assume that those "curriculums" meant that they had seperated the original strixhaven subclasses into a variety of new subclasses that would better suit each base class to the colleges of strixhave (bleed doctor is the one "curriculum" I remember off hand). I though thtat would be cool, because new subclasses gives me a way of fleshing out how they interact with my world and why.
And then the book came out. No new subclasses, only a handful of new spells, lackluster magic items and a minor variance of the Aarokokra/Aven bereft of culture, background, or personality beyond their physical appearance, all slapped on an idea used by MTG but done demonstrably better by Humblewood. The short adventure path in the book makes the books relevance temporary at best and useless at worst despite the moderate focus on the plane and college as a whole. The whole thing seems lackluster and disappointing. I had it preordered on Beyond and discovered it's unfortunate contents before I bought a physical copy from my local gamestore, which I did not to own the book, but as a gesture to the establishment I enjoy. That says something in my opinion, and not a good something.
Because classes are the boring part of school lol. Friends and dating are the fun part.
There's not really enough ASI's for feat trees to properly exist in 5e. Maybe if it's just 2 feats long, maybe. Level prereqs are great however. Could help lessen the load of many of those "too strong" feats.
Er ek geng, þat er í þeim skóm er ek valda.
UwU
This book was a wasted opportunity and a waste of resources. It's bad enough that they keep putting out MTG crossover garbage. However, they could have made this more appealing to any generic D&D setting by really focusing on creating a source book for new spells. But all they gave us was 5 spells. Just 5, and a couple of them are completely borked. New backgrounds. Awesome!!! We need new backgrounds....wait...they do what?......nevermind. At least there are some new feats....let's see what they do....uh....ok, let's file these with the backgrounds. We got a new race! It's an owl. Ok potter fans, there you go. Because the Aarakocra is so well received by DMs. Well maybe I can drop the school somewhere in my game setting, if I can de-flavor all the MTG stuff. But then it's just a hogwarts adventure. So, yeah....wasted opportunity and waste of production resources. Almost as bad as how dndbeyond wastes their resources.
I haven't read the whole book yet but is there anything that gives a reason why non-casters would enroll at Strixhaven? I read the part about Ancestral Guardian Barbarians being useful at the College of Lorehold, but what about a fighter or rogue archetype that doesn't involve magic? I get that Prismari involves art and anyone can be into art, and Lorehold involves history, etc. So should this be framed as a school that is magical and not just a school of magic where students enroll to learn different x-mancy disciplines? Maybe fighters and rogues and barbarians of strictly martial subclasses/archetypes are attending to learn medicine or art or law or become historians or mathematicians or physicists. Perhaps they are especially useful against mage hunters? It's something I want to be able to wrap my head around before planning out a potential campaign sandbox. Does anyone have any ideas they've been working on?
to be fair, the way it's presented is "you're still learning normal educational stuff, you're just also learning magic and how to apply it to your other studies" so it's actually *less* of a plot hole than Harry Potter.
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
So, I've just read the first part - I'm not reading the adventure because I'm expecting to be a player in it a few months from now. It's pretty much what I expected - an adventure book for DMs, with some sourcebook stuff at the beginning. The advertising seemed to make that clear, but yeah, listing it as a sourcebook is misleading and is gonna result in disappointed players.
Honestly what I've read is great. The setting is great fun, the new rules are great and I'm really looking forward to playing it.
But it really would have benefited from being a proper sourcebook. With a wealth of weird trolls, vampires and dryads among the students just getting the Owlin is a shame. Some subclasses to flesh out college-specific themes would be ideal; the backgrounds are great and I really like them, but less isn't always more. I really think it would have benefited from leaning more into its influences too. I'd have loved some magical school shopping for personalised casting implements and spell reagents, more focus on lessons and research, that sort of thing. The influences are there, but it doesn't quite bring it all to life as strongly as I'd wanted.
All that said though, I'm really not disappointed - it's pretty much what I expected, and I still love the setting as much as I'd hoped to. But I'm really hoping there's a future setting book that gives us all the little details, because there's a whole lot of potential here.