While putting Bladesinging up first as a SCAG release and grouping these together alone will mean that the last of these posts will only be the Order of Scribes subclass, I do think that Wildemount's two related subclasses make sense to group together. In Matt Mercer's Exandria setting, some mages have begun to explore a special kind of magic called "Dunamancy," ("dunamis" is an ancient Greek word that relates to power and potential.) Essentially, these subclasses are the "quantum physics" of magic.
The Wildemount book actually introduces new spells, and their availability for various classes has been slightly ambiguous. As a DM I more or less rule them as all available to Wizards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks as arcane magic, though some are suggested as associated with one of these subclasses or the other.
The two are Graviturgy and Chronurgy - the former dealing with mass and inertia (hence gravity) and the other manipulating time. As I think is well-documented on this blog, I'm freaking obsessed with any kind of time travel or time manipulation, so naturally I gravitate (pun unintentional) toward that subclass.
Chronurgy:
This is the subclass all about temporal manipulation. While actual time travel is the sort of thing that a DM will need to very carefully plan out if they allow it at all, you can at least futz with time in some interesting ways.
At 2nd level you get Chronal Shift. As a reaction when you see a creature make an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can force the creature to reroll, and you can wait to decide to do this until after you see if its roll succeeds or fails. The target must use the second roll. You can do this once per long rest.
This is a potential clutch move - making it far less likely for the big boss to crit the squishy wizard (i.e. you) or giving the Barbarian another chance to succeed against that dominate person spell. For a villainous example, think of this as when Thanos undoes Wanda's destruction of the Mind Stone at the end of Infinity War.
Also at 2, you get Temporal Awareness, letting you add your Intelligence modifier to your initiative rolls. As with War Magic, this is nice, as a Wizard will often want to have high initiative to set up crowd control or a big burst of AoE damage at the start of a fight (potentially before allies get close enough to make it hard to place your effects, or killing off lesser enemies before they can do anything.)
At 6th level, you get Momentary Stasis. As an action, you can force a Large or smaller creature you can see within 60 feet to make a Con save. If they fail, the creature is encased in magical energy until the end of your next turn or until it takes damage. The creature is incapacitated and has a speed of 0. You can do this a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of once) per long rest. So this is basically a built-in crowd control ability. A single turn is not enormous, but also not nothing - being able to freeze the boss's wizard minion for a turn can really help you out.
At 10, you get Arcane Abeyance. When you cast a spell of 4th or lower level, you can condense it into a mote, freezing the effect in time as a little grey bead for 1 hour. The bead is a Tiny object with AC 15, 1 HP, and immunity to poison and psychic damage. If not used before then, it is destroyed and vanishes in a flash of light.
A creature holding the bead can use an action to release the spell, and the bead disappears while the spell takes effect using your spell attack modifier or save DC, though for all other purposes this treats the creature who releases it as the caster. You can do this once per short rest.
This effectively lets you split concentration - hand this to a character who never has to concentrate on spells and you can have two spells up at a time. You can also use something like Mirror Image and hand this too a Monk to give them extra survivability. Basically, there are a lot of potential uses for this.
Finally, at 14, you get Convergent Future. If a creature you can see within 60 feet of you makes an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can use your reaction to ignore the die roll and decide whether the number rolled is the minimum needed to succeed or one less than that (your choice.) Doing so gives you one level of exhaustion, which can only be removed via a long rest (so you can't cheese this with Greater Restoration.) While I believe that Bless or Bane can screw this up (it doesn't actually say - if it only affects the d20, a Bless can screw up your forced failure and a Bane can screw up your forced success.) But barring such cases (or including them if we rule it affects the entire roll,) this lets you just choose whether one of these succeeds, which could be absolutely clutch. (Notably it doesn't say that they "have to take the result," so I think this doesn't get around advantage.) Also, I find it interesting that if you want to play dangerous, you can use this several times in a day, though you're going to need a very long time to recover.
Obviously I love the concept of this subclass. I think that in terms of power it might fall slightly behind the best Wizard subclasses, but as is often the case, the capstone is a super over-the-top ability that can be insanely good.
Graviturgy:
This subclass is all about manipulating gravity - altering the density of objects and such. Generally I think you can kind of play this as a "space wizard," which might be one of the most awesome two-word phrases that exist.
At level 2, you get Adjust Density. As an action, you can alter the weight of an object or creature you can see within 30 feet. The object has to be Large or smaller. You can double or halve the weight of the target for 1 minute or until your concentration ends.
For creatures, if their weight is halved, their movement speed increases by 10 feet, it can jump twice as far as normal, but it has disadvantage on Strength saving throws and ability checks. While doubled, the creature's movement speed is instead reduced by 10 feet but it gets advantage on Strength checks and saves. At level 10, you can now affect targets that are Huge or smaller.
This is a pretty interesting one. I think most often you'll use this to speed up allies or slow down enemies, and the fact that there's no save against it is pretty cool (also you can use it any number of times, effectively making this a "cantrip.") Situationally, this could be very cool as a way to make a foe snap the rickety bridge they're crossing to get to you, or make it easier to toss a friend across a chasm.
At level 6, you get Gravity Well. When you cast a spell on a creature, you can move them 5 feet to an unoccupied space of your choice if the target is willing or if they fail against the spell's save DC or you hit them with a spell attack. This requires no extra action on your part, so you could potentially shift around every creature that fails its save against a Fireball, or you could cast fly on an ally and then give them the 5-foot gap needed to avoid opportunity attacks while they fly away from a foe. Battlefield manipulation, even at a short distance, is always nice.
At 10, you get Violent Attraction. When a creature within 60 feet of you hits with a weapon attack, you can use your reaction to increase the attack's velocity, causing the target to take an additional 1d10 damage of the weapon's type. Alternatively, if a creature within 60 feet of you takes damage from falling, you can use your reaction to increase that damage by 2d10. You can do this a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 1) per long rest.
Now, I think the weapon damage boost should double on a crit, so you could effectively use your reaction to give a big boost when an ally crits. I don't know how often you're going to have foes falling, but being able to tack on an extra 11 damage on average is nice. This is a bit situational, to be honest.
Finally, at 14, you get Event Horizon. As an action, you can emit create a powerful gravity field for 1 minute or until your concentration ends. For the duration, creatures hostile to you that start within 30 feet of you must make a Strength save. On a failure, they take 2d10 force damage and their speed is reduced to 0 until the start of your next turn. On a success, they take half that damage and every foot they move costs an additional 2 feet of movement (effectively reducing their speed by 1/3.) You can do this once for free per long rest, or you can expend 3rd or higher level spell slots to do it again.
This can potentially really help lock down monsters - Just keep them on the edge of your Event Horizon and any creature with normal humanoid movement speeds will be able to get only 10 feet away from you if at all, so you can easily just move closer to trap them again. In fact, if a creature is coming toward you, you can actually run toward them, getting them just on the edge of the effect, and while they might have been able to get to you before, now they're going to be unable to reach you even with a dash. That this only affects hostile creatures means that this can be some serious battlefield control while giving allies full freedom to maneuver.
So, I think that both of these subclasses certainly get points for originality. In terms of power, I think they're both pretty good but not quite top-tier (though this is all theoretical, of course.) I also think that both subclasses reward clever creativity, which is always a good thing in a game like this.
Neither of these were reprinted in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (nor was the Fighter's Echo Knight,) which is a shame, but they are still very much official 5E content, so have at them if they appeal to you.
Next post we're going to end this very long series with just a single subclass - the Order of Scribes. Get your Pagemaster on and play the ultimate library nerd subclass for a class that's all about being the library nerd already!
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