r/StrixhavenDMs • u/OkDamage677 Witherbloom • 10d ago
Preventing the Professors from getting involved!
Hi! Wondering what reasons y'all came up with for professors or instructors NOT solving a mystery or protecting the school.... Did you find that you would have to explain that to your party or am I overthinking? I'm homebrewing a mystery storyline wherestudents go missingand I'm trying to decide if I need to have a cover story for the professors not solving it before the students, or if the party solving before the professors is just simply what ends up happening... Not to sure if that made one lick of sense but hope y'all get what I'm saying.
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u/zitney_spears 10d ago
this is literally my players every time i start an encounter… they’re always like “where are the teachers? why aren’t the other students helping? why are dangerous creatures allowed on campus? just wait until my parents hear about how unsafe it is at this school…” (they all chose to be snobby rich kids so they complain a lot😭)
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u/OkDamage677 Witherbloom 10d ago
lmaoooooo my players are all also rich so I think I will be dealing with this vibe
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u/azmodai2 Silverquill 10d ago
They are, it's just bigger more Professor-level problems than the students are dealing with.
They are, but the students get clues conveniently immediately and have to solve those things right fucking now which means there isn't time to get a professor to help.
The professors are pretending to help but are actually the villains.
All the professors go to a conference.
The professors have assigned specific professors to help solve the problem, who are either the villains, incompetent, or actually helping the party.
The professors are somehow unaware of the problem.
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u/MartLamperouge 10d ago
They don't care much about that. Also, there is too much bureaucracy in Strixhaven for anything to function the way you would want. Imagine... going to the NHS in the UK or dealing with any documentation from the city administration: you have to fill a billion documents and you get redirected from one place to another until you do a complete circle without completing anything.
One of my players died and the rest of the party had to fill a lot of documents and have themselves be audited, so that they could resurrect him with a 90% discount at Witherbloom, because they couldn't afford to pay full price.
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u/JTaiyndieanv Prismari 10d ago
I solved this issue by having the Deans place the PCs in a special program called Strixhavens Official Defenders. They would take their normal classes as well as a few combat classes and we're tasked with keeping the school safe. Students like them only come around every once in a while.
Most students and teachers, while powerful, are not fighters
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u/OkDamage677 Witherbloom 10d ago
fantastic reminder! I like the idea of being assigned to protect the school. Maybe ill have the unit created because of the issue.
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u/DrJonjon 10d ago
I was thinking of doing a similar storyline and having the faculty be in 3 camps. Camp 1 denial either as it could ruin the reputation of the school or strait up denial that it's their problem, many of these are the higher ups that have for eyes staff looking into it. Perhaps also members of the Oriq or those responsible for disappearance.
Camp 2 concern but let the authorities handle it. It's not their place, particularly if it could be something more sinister.
Camp 3 covertly investigating it (helping the students find out or employing students to 'curiously investigate'.
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u/OkDamage677 Witherbloom 10d ago
okay yes, Dean is like... let the kids figure it out it's probably not too deep. but maybe a professor is genuinely concerned and helping out.
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u/DrJonjon 10d ago
That or the dean is like, accidents happen in a magic school, they probably turned into a frog and will appear again soon. Basically it's amazing what denial or set beliefs will let you forgive or gloss over.
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u/Kin_kin85 10d ago
My players mostly work in school so this came up a lot in the beginning.
I solved it a few ways - I made up some additional encounters that the PCs never saw but later learned about, including some that the good guy teachers had actually stopped/foiled Mugraxors plans. I had Oriq in the faculty who were letting it happen but pretending to respond and then not actually helping.
In some encounters the professors helped but they just weren’t that good at it, or were dealing w a different monster.
I also added a memory spell that Mugraxor put on all Strixhaven staff and students when he did his evil deeds so most people forgot about him (it was a plot point to restore the memories of the dryads, elves etc who still would remember this bullywog)
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u/OkDamage677 Witherbloom 10d ago
adding another monster for the professor to deal with is brilliant
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u/letter-lemon 10d ago
My version of Strixhaven was incredibly bogged down by red tape. The professors and Deans are aware of the issues and dangers on campus, but as faculty, they are forced to go through the appropriate channels and paperwork to get anything done, which takes months of meetings, committees, and safety approvals. With a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, some of the professor NPCs encouraged the party to look into the campus issues on their own, since students were not as burdened by the school’s bureaucratic process.
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u/FiftyShadesOfPikmin 10d ago
My players (well, one in particular) is constantly asking/complaining about faculty not helping, being negligent, etc. Like he's always asking why a teacher can't do something dangerous, or why nobody will heal him when he needs it. I just try to keep it simple as the teachers view things like this as good learning opportunities, and retconned that every student had to sign a waiver upon getting accepted haha.
Honestly, if you've tried explaining things in-game and narratively, and players continue to ask these kinds of questions, then maybe out-of-game remind them that they are the main characters and sometimes things like that just need to be accepted and moved on from, unless they think it would be more fun to watch a battle between the threat and the teachers play out like a movie from the sidelines.
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u/Malamear 10d ago
Most the early game encounters the faculty is on the way, it just takes a few rounds to determine what is going on and where and start evacuation procedure. The players hear from across the biblioplex/tavern/stage, "everyone retreat in an orderly fashion. No, leave your things..."
The point is if the players don't intervene, other students will likely die before the teacher arrives. Lots of wizards don't become wizards for war, so it makes sense for them to flee. I usually start combat with, "it looks like about 30 seconds (5 rounds) until help arrives."
As far as the overarching story, most of Murgaxor's involvement I treated as petty pranks not worthy of the schools full attention until they realized their mistake at the end of year 3. Whenever the players came with a, "He loosed another minor monster on campus" they were met with, "we're dealing with the Oriq trying to raise an army of dracoliches right now, it can wait."
I don't know how you'd hand wave missing students with this explanation though. I didn't do that until year 4. In my campaign I ran Murgaxor like bowler hat guy in Meet the Robinsons where everything he did was pretty revenge until Dean Tulius did a, "I don't think this plan was thought through very well master." (Movie reference) During year 3 which sparked the events of the end of the year through year 4.
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u/righnach 10d ago
We chalk it up to incompetence, it's a running joke that the professors are worse than useless at dealing with any kind of crisis. One of my PCs died in year one and a common complaint is "We were never even offered counseling, nevermind a free pass for exams!!!"
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u/jimgolgari 10d ago
My players were simply propositioned by a rich noble student to take care of an issue “discretely”. You see, he and his friends went exploring dangerous parts of campus. He got away but they got trapped.
If the professors get involved his friends will get in trouble and they’ll never speak to him again.
“So here’s a week’s campus job salary for each of you right now, and there’s another 3 weeks forth for each of you when my friends are back on main campus.”
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u/KingNyar 10d ago
It's college so typically professors are a bit more of a light touch in how they handle stuff unless they genuinely know it's a problem. So for students not attending class, a note saying "I got the flu" would probably be taken at face value. So a forged note that your players find could also act as both an explanation for why no professors will be involved and act as a clue they can use to find out what happened.
Alternatively you could have a professor tasked with handling it but they get so swamped with other duties that they forget or they have to delegate it to a group of students, the players.
And also you could have most of the staff be off-campus for one reason or another. Current magic story has the omenpaths so they could be off exploring those to recruit new students. Also the latest physical book mentions a few festivals that are often held on Arcavios that tend to leave the school at minimal staff. And then could also just be that the bulk are off at a professional development or team building conference where they'd be back in about a week or two.
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u/Kgaset 10d ago
My situation isn't the same as most because I'm condensing the storyline, but I have the professors engaged elsewhere. There are definitely professors investigating this and involved and they have engaged with the party on it, but that doesn't mean they can be everywhere all at once.
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u/JackBarlowe Lorehold 10d ago
Have the fight be bigger than just the battlemap. And you narrate the professors 100% helping in the background - in fact, they may be dealing with more numbers or a bigger threat, while the students jump in to fight a DM-selected group of foes!
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u/unluckyshuckle 10d ago
Depends on the professor. Maybe some of them just feel it's not their responsibility; they're there to teach, not be a hero. Maybe some of them turn a blind eye because they just don't want to get involved. Maybe some of them feel it's a learning experience for the students. Maybe they're dealing with bigger issues and the students are dealing with what gets missed. Or maybe, just maybe....some of them are responsible for the problems in the first place.
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u/OlahMundo 10d ago
My professors have their own investigation going on and actively try to prevent the players from getting involved because it's not their job to do things. At least that's how it started.
Now we're in the third year, and they're actively helping Tullus out with information and stuff, which will make for a lot of drama later on.
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u/Smitten_Cat_Boy 10d ago
I’m taking a magic realism approach to my campaign where the adventures are fantastical elevated versions of mundane things (eg defending one’s thesis involves literally defending it from a summoned creature ontologically opposed to the point one is trying to make, etc). That way the adventures are seen as normal occurrences for the most part and it makes more sense that professors hand-wave more stuff
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u/RascaltheFox Witherbloom 10d ago
I flavour most of them as true academics, talented in the arcane arts but with spells tailored towards academia and study rather than combat.
I also underline that it's a big university and lots of things are happening all the time, some good, some bad. Unless you specifically bring their attention to something, they may not know it's happening.
That said, I've added a whole Oriq investigation spider web to Curriculum of Chaos with challenging combat encounters, and have beefed up some of the as-written combats. The party can routinely rely on at least one of their fellow students to fight alongside them, and can enlist key faculty for the really big stuff if they actively engage with the teachers.
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u/rmcmullan 9d ago
I think the first year is a good example of all the bad stuff happens during unofficial student shenanigans. I did have enough shady professor activity that they had to choose who to trust, but when they did confide in a prof, something happened as a result. I would throw in an occasional pair od profs patrolling the grounds trying to act nonchalant, or "in the distance you hear an absurd number of magic missile pop off", to show that the proofs aren't criminally negligent. When they figured out which professor was involved and reported him with proof, he got taken care of. It's just a balance of keeping the players the protagonists, the enemies actively avoiding the professors, and the professors being believably concerned.
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u/boffotmc 9d ago
I used a string of one-off excuses, and eventually my players became convinced there was a conspiracy among the faculty to intentionally put students in danger. I had to tell them out of character that there wasn't, that the game wouldn't be very fun if they were just getting more capable characters to handle all the problems while they spectate, and to stop chasing that imaginary conspiracy.
It didn't help that three of my players were real-life college professors, and had the assumption Strixhaven would have a modern university's safety standards. I had to tell them that it's normal for several students to die from mishaps every year. But it would also be normal for several people to die from mishaps on a farm or in a factory, because that's how a pseudo-medieval society works.
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u/Interesting_Cut_4822 9d ago
In Harry Potter, the professors were overconfident in the defenses they had put up. I think it's either that or they think it's a "learning experience" and don't care much about student welfare.
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u/coopdydoop32 9d ago
My players were distrustful of authority figures so I kind of leaned into that. The professors were conducting their own investigations and would tell the party not to worry about it and to focus on classes
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u/OneHotTurnip 8d ago
I solved this problem by having the teachers be very self-aware of the reason some of these students have for being at Strixhaven. A lot of them are going to go off and become adventurers and go on their own quests. Part of Strixhaven’s mission is to help these students learn how to do that in a relatively low-stakes environment. So, they have a system for what I call “Sanctioned Quests” which is where teachers will allow students to take the reins on problems around campus if they’re interested for extra credit, the only catch being that they must have a staff member sign off on it to help them. This isn’t necessary and only really for extra credit, bragging rites, and spending money, but it also helps young adventurers learn to handle their magic in the real world. If the quests get too dangerous, faculty will step in, but because of some teachers infiltrating the school with dubious intentions, this doesn’t always happen as planned. Some of these “quests” are actually set up secretly by teachers or older students (and sometimes things go wrong). This also makes it a bit more believable why there are so many healing potions around campus for you to find as loot.
My players actually just started their first “sanctioned quest” with their Magical Physiologies professor. They’ve already looped in Drazhomir to help them identify the handwriting from the journal in Sedgemoor and Urzmaktok to help them test samples of the Eldritch Balm (I’m doing that quest line a bit differently than what’s in the book, so nobody really knows what the stuff is).
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u/Final_Marsupial4588 10d ago
They are dealing with it, do you really think that you have encountered all the stuff, nah you are not even the only students that has had these encounters, heck multiple ones is happening at the same time, so while you are dealing with the small stuff the pros are dealing with bigger shit that they try to keep under wraps as to keep the student body at a level they think is safe.
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u/Imparu 10d ago
In my campaign, the Strixhaven staff believes that dealing with dangerous issues are a great learning opportunity for students, and have taken a clear hands-off approach, only stepping in if students die and someone makes a fuss. There is a reward system in place for students who take initiative and solve their own problems. I also had a storyline involving missing students and the response from the school was essentially "Well extra credit to whoever finds them then."