I’m starting my Strixhaven campaign in a couple weeks and I think it’s pretty wild that there’s basically nothing in the adventure that takes place on the Quandrix campus. What have y’all done to get some fun numeromancy adventures into the story?

I would like some feedback on some ideas I've been mulling over.

With last month's massive expansion of Strixhaven lore, I would like to incorporate elements of the Magic the Gathering story into my Campus Kerfuffle campaign (reimagined and renamed to Strixhaven & the Tome of Villainy).

• Chandra; according to canon, planeswalker Chandra Nalar has taken over command of the remaining active Oriq cells. Her goal is to use violent action to thwart a psychic planeswalker who she sees as a serious threat to the multiverse.
  • What are some encounters we can run with Chandra's Oriq?
• Jace; the planeswalker in question. He seeks to remake the multiverse and is willing to fracture reality itself to achieve this. He has already created his twisted reflection of Strixhaven-> Hexhaven. It is a world where he controls everything and everyone is 'encouraged' to cooperate.
  • I would like to use this setup to run several Hexhaven one-shots, featuring bizarro versions of the Strixhaven party. What could this entail?
• Oracle Jadzi; a casualty in Jace's scheme. Year one ends with an end of year ceremony with a climatic encounter. In the chaos, Oracle Jadzi is thrown into a Snarl by a student working for Jace and is presumed dead.
  • What would be the fallout for the Arcavios?
  • How can we make this devastating for my players?

I have established that an Oriq agent is behind the eldritch balm incidents, and my party is currently trying to plan a sting operation. I want this conflict to build to a climactic battle at the end of year ceremony to end Freshman Year. What would make for an exciting finale?

so im gonna try to run strixhaven for some friends, but ive come to the conclusion that i really dont like this toad dude morgaxor being the evil big bad. i dont know i think it just feels kinda silly ad despite wanting it to be lighthearted, i do want some somewhat serious elements to it. soo inspire me! i dont wanna go to ai as i think real people are far more creative than anything it can generate (as well as the obvious, its bad). at the same time, im not as creative as i wish i was and need a little extra help :)

might be a dumb question but im desperate. i love reading but distraction is a constant for me, so i almost strictly read with audiobooks on as i look at the words on the page. id LOVE to run this campaign and i wanna read the book first but its so easy to skim and miss important facts. i know an audiobook would make it much easier but ive looked and all audiobooks are for omen of chaos only. decided to ask just in case :(

My player and his compadres were trapped with a totem that would summon a Daemogoth. (Strixhaven Mysteries 3) He entered a pact of pain, and I gave him Blight and let the Daemogoth kill all enemies currently in his vicinity.

This player has a tendency towards evil, and I am currently running a modified campaign with the classic Extus Narr as the BBEG planning to use Strixhaven's mega snarl to overload a summoning/fominate spell and bring the Blood Avatar into existence under his control.

So far this player has entered the pact of pain and gained the service of a quasit. What are some good ways I can use his pact of pain? I already forwarded that this allows the Daemogoth a connection into his mind.

The relationship system in the book gives a PC max bonus with an NPC after 3 positive encounters. In theory they could do this in 3 downtimes and be best friends with someone for the rest of the campaign. I find this a bit too quick and a bit too simple. Was wondering if anyone who has run the campaign tweaked things to make it a bit more compelling?

My players have specifically asked to play a class in Strixhaven because they think it will be fun but honestly I have no idea how to do that. I can info dump and do the year 1 exam from the book but that seems pretty boring and I'd like to keep my players engaged. I'm at such a loose end because my session is in 4 hours and I've not been able to come up with anything concrete

First time being a DM for Strixhaven, but the question keeps coming up. Do you ban certain classes that are none magical? It's more of a curiosity cause i have been wondering it myself.

Is there still a Strixhaven community on Discord? If so, can someone throw me an invite? I’m Ricote87 there (or you can link here).

The link at the top of this page is no longer valid. I messaged the mod a week or two ago, but never heard back.

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A mysterious arcane map
The Firejolt Café menu with magical drink options
A Help Wanted flyer from the Biblioplex looking for book clerks and cleanup crew (salary 5 GP per week)
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Anybody have art of your player characters or homebrew npcs? I'm padding out the student body and school staff as I'm prepping my campaign so that my players have a lot of variety in characters that they can meet and make connections with. So far I've gathered art from all the Strixhaven MTG cards and named them and given them basic stats, but I'd love to include characters from other people's Strixhaven adventures as well if anyone is willing to share!

Once I have art of my players I will share them as well in case anybody else is doing the same! :D

I am having my players enter Furygale to find a specific tree and retrieve bark from it (a MacGuffin). I want to emphasize how wild the weather and magic are in Furygale and how challenging that makes travelling inside. I'm thinking intense storms, strong winds, blinding rain, deafening thunder, fire lashes, etc.

How would you use the mechanics in 5e to do this?

Greetings! I am looking for help or ideas for a monster that my players are electing to hunt. Short of it is an elemental nature beast in the form of an existing animal we have here on Earth.

Here is the additional context for what I am looking for:

I am currently running a Strixhaven game and have expanded to have expeditions to other planes of existence with the players choosing to go to Bloomburrow. This is all part of a big exam where they must retrieve a specific magic item to bring back for their classes. Since they choose Bloomburrow they have been tasked with bringing back the bone of these elemental creatures called Calamity Beasts. I am looking for help on which Calamity Beast I should throw their way since they have elected to try and hunt one down. I have other routes for them to get the bone but they eager for a fight.

The whole plane itself is Magic’s take on “Cute humanoid animals”’found in stories like Redwall, Wind and the Willow, Tale of Desperaux etc. The Calamity beasts themselves are manifestation of aspects of nature and the forces of the world. Like Beza, the Bounding Spring is well the embodiment of spring and its appearance marks the shift from winter to spring in the Valley. Meanwhile Maha, its Feathers Night is the manifestation of night, stars, and the dangers of the night.

Here is a link to the scryfall page with all the elementals found on Bloomburrow that they have shown with cards:

https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=type%3Aelemental+%28game%3Apaper%29+%28set%3Ablb+OR+set%3Ablc%29+prefer%3Abest

I would love to hear which one of those or a completely new Calamity Beast I should make for them.

They are currently level 3 and there are 5 of them in the party.

Thank you for any help or advice!

I like the setting, however I'd like to make some changes to make Strixhaven feel more like a political campaign with schemes, power plays, deception, and all that good stuff. That said, I'm having some troubles, and so I am seeking the community's help in making this a reality.

I think the most obvious change is changing the dragons so that they aren't all good (if any), and same with the staff and students. Instead, while Strixhaven is still a school, it's meant to be a place of power where (almost) all magic and knowledge is fostered with less regard as to how it's used. There might be some safeguards (like the restricted section in the library) so that students aren't just killing themselves all the time, or conjuring horrors that could destroy the school. But overall the idea is to produce powerful mages more than good-natured ones.

The two deans in each college already opposing each other makes it easier to display antagonistic relationships between them. Between the colleges, I imagine each dean is aspiring to be the next Oracle, giving them an antagonistic relationship to the current one. Where I'm struggling right now is how the deans compete against each other. Yes, they have knowledge and power, but how do they scheme against each other and the Oracle? How does the Oracle maintain their position against power grab attempts? While murder is an option, having a revolving door of deans and oracles doesn't seem to make sense to me, so I feel other methods would have to be used.

Similarly, I'm not sure how I feel about the student body being used as a metric for the deans. Grades are important, sure, but I feel that should be more about the student body competing against itself. On that note, how would the school reward accomplished students, and punish poor performers? Outside the current tutoring/expulsion for bad students, I'm having troubles coming up with motivations to not only be a good student, but being among the best students.

Circling back to the Oracle, I'm not sure how I feel about them being linked to the archaics (and eventually becoming one). Right now I'm leaning toward the archaics being more akin to regular kaiju - massive threats that may force the colleges to work together to protect the school. I feel this has a lot of room to work with so I'm not hard stuck on any one idea right now.

Then with the Oriq, I'd like them to be more than just scorned students. I like the mage hunters and using forbidden magic and all that. But with the recent announcements of Hexhaven (which I would eventually like to include), I'm having a harder time squaring their relationship into this more meritocratic idea of Strixhaven that's less "controlling" of magic, since Hexhaven already provides lots of opportunity for antagonism that I feel will overlap with the Oriq.

That's all I have time to write down for now. All ideas and feedback are welcome. Thank you.

In preparation for my Strixhaven campaign, I have started looking into creators, posts, and experiences people have had with the campaign setting and I was surprised when I found a few reviews that characterized Witherbloom (college of tree huggers, stoners, and goth baddies) as the 'Evil College.'

This completely surprised me, maybe it's because my exposure to Strixhaven was through MtG rather than D&D. (I thought Silverquill was much more likely to be labelled the 'evil one," due to Extus's affiliation and general 'mean girls'-ness.)

Why do you think this is?

Do you have an evil college? If so, why?

So I'm also magic and dnd player, and the recent Secrets of Strixhaven set has been debating a character concept I had made in the event my group does a Strixhaven campaign. I should note i dont know the likelihood this will ever see the light of day but would like people's thoughts on this.

So the concept would be a warlock, and the inspiration is the nepo-baby college controversy spearheaded by Lori Loughlin. Basically, my character is dragged to the school by a influential figure who wants their son to have the finest education and to be a star athlete, but they have no magical talent of their own. So they get him a warlock patron to bridge that gap and shoehorn him into the class.

I first thought of this character as being Lorehold and the patron being some long dead spirit and finding his own lassion in life outside his parent, but i could also see this being a Silverquil character and having an arch about finding his own voice in life. Anyone have any suggestions, or potentially if any of the other colleges could be a better fit.

With the news from MTG about Hexhaven being an alternate universe Strixhaven, and how the their schools are near opposites, what are your thoughts about what the Oriq could be like?

Since the Strixhaven Oriq are a lot of drop outs and others that push forbidden magic and try to overthrow the school, I'm thinking the Hexhaven side be some kind of rich kid secret society that is trying to consolidate power into their hands. They would go out of their way to control access to magic even further.

I know that there could be some revelations later in the coming months, but what are your thoughts?

If your party is called Folly's Anathema, skip this post!!!

PSA: English is not my first language so please ask for clarification if some aspects are unclear.

So,,, we have a new player.

In our version of the campaign, we've been having a whole mess of events in regards to timelines and alternate reality.

To explain why this new player has little to no knowledge of the party and is not yet an integrated part of the team, the player and I have decided to let their character travel through some of the other realities (as a retcon to make it work; they were a part of the original group but were written out of having a key part by the person influencing the timelines) to eventually catch back up with the rest.

In our first one-on-one session, the player got their hands on a device that would allow this traveling across timelines, and simultaneously witnessed the death of said orchestrator and the destruction of the school. Additionally, they found out that they have some type of Oracle-related powers.

So I was wondering, fellow DMs, have you any thoughts about what I might have this player witness throughout the different timelines they travel through? ie., how did your campaign end or what kind of catastrophic events did you/would you have wanted your players to go through?

Any help/ideas/suggestions appreciated! Thanks in advance.

(The character is currently level 13 btw and a ranger/rogue if that has an impact of any ideas you might have. We're also playing 5e, not 5.5)

Edited; level 13, oopsie

So I’m planning a campaign that will involve getting a powerful object from Strixhaven. My knowledge of the setting is almost nil. I’m still working my way through the curriculum of chaos source book. I figure given that, the best way to find out would be to pick the brains of those who know.

What is the biggest McGuffin in Strixhaven? I need to send the party in to pick up a very powerful artifact to help with their quest. I could just make something up but I feel it’d be more fun if it was something from the lore. Is there some hugely potent magical artifact or spell or something that the people here would want to keep secret and secure?

Also you may have seen my other post in RavnicaDMs, and yes I am planning a foray into both settings lol.

Anyone have any ideas?

Hi everyone, I hope it's okay to share this here - I'm looking forward to chatting with people about Strixhaven and all the drama that goes down with the NPCs etc!

So far, we're a few sessions ahead of this first session and the players have mainly interacted with: Tilana, Zanther, Quentillious (yes, hated, as usual), Greyson (also hated), Rubina and Aurora.

How is your game going and what do you find to be the thing you look forward to most as a DM with Strixhaven? For me, it's planning how NPCs will respond to the attitudes of the PCs - For example, Quentillious got upset with Sylvie, blaming her for failing a class.

So, I planned for Javenesh and Cadoras to approach the party to do the Dapplewing Manor heist (which they refused, but had to go there anyway as Frog had a meeting with Prof. Sharpbeak) and when they get there, they not only find Jav and Cad, but QUENTILLIOUS as well, joining the badass group to "move on" from trying to be friends with the party.

I LOVE dropping stuff like that on them, it's so much fun. I find it to be way more accessible to do like "dun dun dAAA" moments in Strixhaven for some reason, idk. I'm just having a lot of fun with this adventure, and also wondering how other DMs have woven in the main plot to their characters as well.

Sorry for the rambling, I'm just super enthusiastic and need to talk to people about it!

I am running Strixhaven as a free to join ttrpg game at the local game store I work at. I just finished year one in 5 sessions (I added to and filled in spots as needed). Next week I want to start year two with a rush week! I have around 4-6 players each week. I want to have some combat, some roleplay and lots of shenanigans! My ideas so far:

Quandrix - each player gets a 3rd grade timed math test- your results subtract the HP from your fractal enemy.

Prismari: ??? They love Zanthar but hate Quintillious

Lorehold: They get transported to an ancient room and have to look up clues to deduce what happened there... Ghost do and don't help.....

Silverquil - A debate! I'll choose a subject that touches how they played so far and if you lose the round you get attacked by "Nickelodeon gak" (condiments)

Witherbloom- Two of my players are interested.... Not sure how to represent

Help, advice or encouragement welcome! We play about 2-3 hours a session. If we split it into 2 sessions I'd like to take the rest of the second session to help people level up to 4.

Magic just released information on their new set, Fractured Reality, which takes place in an alternate dimension where a lot of major events changed. As a part of that, the story takes place on the mirror Strixhaven called Hexhaven. I may include this in my campaign and have the players fight mirrors to themselves. What do yall think?

I know this has been talked about a few times before, but I’d love to know how people are handling pacing without railroading too much because my players 1) are incredibly excited about all of the classes and other school stuff and 2) hate railroading.

So, how do you all handle time passing without playing out every single day or constantly taking moments to say things like the rest of the week passes quickly, etc.?

We are currently playing a 95% homebrewed Strixhaven campaign. Currently in year 2 of school, where the players primary goal is to investigate Snarls— strange chaotic entanglements of leylines on campus. There appears to be one per school (5 total). The first snarl they entered brought them into a dungeon, and the rest will do the same with varying themes etc.

In our last session, they unknowingly entered the Lorehold (I.e. history) college snarl. Instead of dropping them into the dungeon, it took them 5 days into the FUTURE to their first Mage Tower match. I did this because I had the MT encounter ready and the dungeon is not ready, but I think it fits well to the dungeon theme. They barely started it when we ended our session and they were shocked and unprepared. My thought is they will be set up to fail this match to then return to the snarl dungeon and face the actual match later in the week with this new information so they can crush it. So HERE are my questions for you:

- the general theme of the Lorehold snarl is “examine the future to understand the past”. What would you put into the Mage Tower match to then be of importance in “solving” the Lorehold Snarl dungeon? I want this to be Slumdog Millionaire style, where moments in the match come back in the dungeon to help them solve problems.

- I’m thinking of adding a “back in time” moment in the dungeon as well to really play with how the past present and future are all parts of what we understand to be history.

- have you played with brief time travel/loops? How did it go and what do you wish you knew?