D&Ds Strixhaven Best New Monsters

D&D’s Strixhaven: Best New Monsters

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Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos is a brand new Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook that adds over forty new magic-using monsters to the game.

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D&Ds Strixhaven Best New Monsters

Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos is a new Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook that adapts the Strixhaven University from Magic: The Gathering into the game. The book includes over forty new monsters, many of which will be familiar to the Magic: The Gathering fans, but they aren’t restricted to any one setting. There are some monsters in Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos that are easy to adapt for homebrew campaigns so that they can be used as villains without connecting them to Strixhaven.

In the lore of Magic: The Gathering, Strixhaven University exists on a plane called Arcavios. Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos says straight off the bat that this doesn’t have to be the case in D&D. It’s easy to move Strixhaven to one of the existing campaign worlds, like Faerun in the Forgotten Realms or Oerth from Greyhawk. It’s also easy to add to a homebrew setting created by the DM. The magical nature of the school means it’s easy to establish that it’s covered in arcane defenses, which prevent outsiders from entering without an invite. This can stop the school from interfering in established storylines, as the faculty might operate under an oath the prevents them from influencing politics and only focusing on academia.

Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos has some awesome monsters, but a lot of them are far too strong to be encountered by the average D&D party. The five founding dragons, the Oracle of Strixhaven, and the Archaics are all high-level threats, as well as being tightly connected to the lore of Strixhaven. There are some low-level threats in the group that can easily be tweaked to fit into any campaign, where they will offer new kinds of combat encounters and can make for interesting villains.

New D&D Monster Mage Hunter Is A Terminator For Wizards

D&Ds Strixhaven Best New Monsters

Arcane spellcasters tend to have the highest damage output in any D&D adventuring party, especially when it comes to attacking threats over a large area. A Mage Hunter is a monster that is designed specifically to track down spellcasters and kill them. It does this through several special abilities that make render standard tactics useless, and the mages of the group will need to rely on their allies, in order to survive these xenomorph-style threats. A Mage Hunter has two forms: Sentry Form, where it can affect a spellcaster within 120ft with a magical marker that allows it to track the target wherever it goes, and Hunter Form, where it gains its combat abilities and can pursue its foes.

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A Mage Hunter has 120ft blindsight and is immune to conditions like blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, and prone. It has a special ability called Magic Sense, which detects all spellcasters, magic items, and active spells within 120ft. This means it’s almost impossible to hide from a Mage Hunter, as it will see through tricks like invisibility. The fact that it’s blind and relies on supernatural senses means that it cannot be fooled by illusions, and its immunities mean that it’s hard to incapacitate with spells.

By far the most terrifying ability of Dungeons & Dragons’ Mage Hunter is called Consume and Destroy, which is a reaction that lets the Mage Hunter only take half of the damage from a spell, and it can send the other half of the damage right back at the caster, which they have to pass a Dexterity saving throw to avoid. This means that even the evokers cannot easily stop a Mage Hunter. This creature has the chance to be the D&D equivalent of a Terminator, as it tracks the party endlessly, disregards their magical abilities, and won’t stop until its target is dead.

The Mascots Are Entertaining Low-Level D&D Threats

D&Ds Strixhaven Best New Monsters

It can be hard for DMs to come up with unique low-level encounters for D&D parties. The average D&D group will soon grow weary of fighting bandits, goblins, kobolds, orcs, skeletons, and zombies, so the DM will have to look elsewhere for their crop of baddies. Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos has lots of low-level enemies that can be slotted into games, with the Apprentices and Pledgemages from the five Strixhaven colleges making for great spellcaster bosses in early games, as it’s fairly easy to scrub any reference from Strixhaven and just use them as cultists.

The five colleges have even better enemies for low-level parties, in the form of the Art Elemental Mascot of Prismari and the Inkling Mascot of Silverquill. The Art Elemental Mascot is a being of pure expression, resembling a being that is composed of swirling colors and energy. Along with its melee and ranged attack, it can attempt to charm a party member with its Captivating Artistry ability once per day, and it can potentially blind people for one round when slain. These make for great guardians in an art gallery or museum, during missions where the players are sneaking around and trying to steal something.

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The Inkling Mascot is a wisp made from ink that can blind opponents with its spray attack, kind of like the Squid from the Mario Kart series. These would be fitting random encounters in a campaign version of Candlekeep Mysteries, or as defenders of a spellcaster’s abode. What makes both the Art Elemental Mascot and Inkling Mascot is that they’re both CR 1/4 creatures, which means a group of them can be thrown at a low-level party without too much risk, and they will feel a lot more unique as an encounter than another group of goblins or undead.

Dungeons & Dragons’ Oriq Blood Mage Is A Deadly Assassin

The Oriq are a secret society of mages that want to overthrow Strixhaven University. This element of there backstory is enough to ignore so that they can be repurposed and used in any campaign. The Oriq Blood Mage can be used as a template for a mid-level villain in a homebrew campaign, as they have a number of traits that protect them from some common player tactics. The masks worn by the Oriq protect them from Divination spells and give them a huge bonus to Deception checks, which prevents players from tracking them down with magic, or easily sussing out ones that are acting as spies. The Oriq Blood Mage has the Sanguine Sense ability, which means it can sense living beings within 60ft, regardless of cover or magical obfuscation, which means it’s also really hard for the players to get the drop on one.

What makes an Oriq Blood Mage so terrifying is its Blood Boil ability, which creates a 20ft sphere of blood-red mist. Those who are caught in the sphere have to pass a DC 17 Constitution saving throw, with a failed save resulting in 7d10 damage and being incapacitated for the next turn. The Blood Boil ability is like a high-level Tremere discipline from Vampire: The Masquerade, and those who saw similar abilities at play in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines will know how horrifying it can be. The Oriq Blood Mage also has Blood Lash as its standard attack, which prevents a struck target from healing until the Blood Mage’s next turn. The Oriq Blood Mage is the total package when it comes to being a mid-level D&D villain, as players can’t use magic to easily track them down, they have some powerful abilities that include body horror elements, and they also look really cool in their artwork.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/strixhaven-new-monsters-dungeons-dragons-curriculum-chaos/

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