Have Not Yet Gotten Strixhaven

 For the first time in a while, I didn't actually pre-order the latest D&D book. I imagine I'll get it eventually, being the completionist I am when it comes to 5th Edition, but I was a bit more excited for Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.

I'll be honest, I don't know exactly what the rationale behind the choices for the MTG/D&D crossovers. Ravnica getting a setting book made total sense to me, given that it's one of, if not the most popular MTG setting. It's also very different and unusual compared with other D&D settings (though you could make the argument that Ravnica and Sigil actually bear a striking resemblance).

So, when Mythic Odysseys of Theros was announced, I was a little surprised. Theros was a relatively popular block, as I understand it, but it was also fairly straightforward. It seemed odd to have a setting book for that rather than places like Innistrad, or Zendikar (the latter of which I know to be popular even if I don't really know why).

So, when the Strixhaven book was announced, I found it doubly strange - this was a brand-new setting that was only introduced earlier this year. Whereas Ravnica had been around for something like 13 years before Guildmaster's Guide came out, Strixhaven was, well, kind of just a riff on Hogwarts.

Lest I seem too dismissive, I will say that I think that they've done some cool things with it - MTG's worldbuilding creative team does a lot of fantastic and imaginative work. But I guess I did not really have much of an emotional connection to Strixhaven like I do with, say, Dominaria.

It's here where I put on my cynicism goggles and remember that each of these books came out around the time that a major MTG release featured the plane. We had the year of Ravnica with Guilds of Ravnica, Ravnica Allegiance, and War of the Spark, and we got Mythic Odysseys not long after Theros: Beyond Death. And, of course, Strixhaven: School of Mages came out earlier this year, with Curriculum of Chaos following in its wake. So there is a kind of "brand synergy" thing going on here, cross-promoting Wizards of the Coast's two most iconic games.

Of course, removing those goggles, I can also imagine that the D&D creative team likely picked Magic settings they wanted to play around with.

Curriculum of Chaos appears to be primarily an adventure book, though it has a playable race as well. But it seems to be that more than a broad campaign-setting book. WotC has also talked about how the intention is to allow you to drop Strixhaven into other settings of your choice - the plane of Arcavios is really not very fleshed out in the MTG set, with the story and cards focusing on this one school within it. Thus, the idea is that a DM could plop Strixhaven into a different world like Eberron or the Forgotten Realms (or maybe make it a rival to Prism University in Ravnica?)

While I have been hoovering them all up, I'll confess that adventure books are probably the publications I'm least likely to get a ton of use out of. I really prefer homebrewing adventures and campaigns.

So, I'm cheating slightly by checking out some of the contents on the book on 5E.tools. The dragons who founded each of the schools are very powerful, and I'm actually really excited about the new design philosophy for spellcasters as demonstrated by some of these stat blocks. While their damage options are reduced to one or two, the actual damage of them is pretty impressive, which means that I think a DM can feel confident that they'll really be a threat on the battlefield. As an example, an Oriq Recruiter (the Oriq are basically a conspiracy of people ejected from Strixhaven for practicing dark magic, or recruited after washing out and promised power through warlock-like pacts) is CR 4 and has a multi-attack with its Psychic Knife (a melee or ranged spell attack) that does 5d6+4 damage on each of its two attacks. It does have some spells, but these aren't damage-dealing; they're things like Charm Person and Suggestion and some illusion magic to help them sneak around. But the spells use innate spellcasting rules, just allowing you to cast each of those spells once or twice a day (or at will in the case of the illusions) while the "standard" damage-dealing action for a turn is pretty obvious.

I am very, very excited to see some of the really iconic monsters like Liches get this treatment.

Anyway, I half expect that I'll just drop by my local game store and pick up a copy today, but we'll see.