You seem to enjoy going through that effort. Not everyone is so pleased to have to do it to make up for a printing deficiency. That also assumes you have the time to do it, you are by a computer, and are not running a pick-up game or something. Also by the same argument you can simply copy and past all the creatures you need too and you don't need them in the adventure either, unless they're new. Putting a line or 2 listing the important stats of the combat spells doesn't take much space, it is an easy thing for WotC to do, and it speeds up running the game.
With all that I have contributed to this thread, whether you agreed with it or not, your takeaway is that I enjoy going through the extra effort? Conversation about column widths, whether adequate information can be communicated in such a short space, the trade-off between increased spell info and loss of other content is ignored, and starting with an ad hominem attack is the order of the day?
I can assure you that I do not enjoy expending more effort on preparation than is necessary and do not think many would enjoy it at all, but I do think I understand why they were not included, and I look for solutions. One solution that seems to be working for is to print the needed spell information ahead of time. Because I am running on an adventure path, I get that opportunity to prepare ahead of time. While those who run a quick pick up game would not have that opportunity, I imagine that the number of pick up games as a percentage of all D&D played is fairly small. That is not to say they are not a valid part of the hobby. One does not need a computer for this preparation either. A stack of note cards and a writing implement would allow for the creation of spell cards, or one note card could be used per NPC with an abbreviated spell info list written on it.
While direct combat spells follow a general list of info including attack roll or DC and other information, many other spells do not. Looking at basic D&D, on the first spell page 2 out of the 5 spells could possibly be communicated effectively in two lines. On the second page, 1 out of 4 could be communicated effectively. On the third page, maybe 1 out of 6. If writing out 2-line summaries only works for about 20% of spells (1-line really does not seem to work at all), then it does not seem to really work as a solution. If all spells in stat blocks were represented as 2-line summaries regardless, there would be a lot of information lost, and spells would probably not be used with all of the exceptions, special cases and conditional bonuses that they contain. 4e had spell info in the stat blocks, but it seems like 4e spellcasters had 1/4 to 1/2 the spells of 5e. The full spell information was included, so all the information was available, but other story content did not make it into an adventure because of the long style of 4e stat blocks. This is a problem unique to printed material. If an adventure was digital then it would not have that restriction.
Yes, I agree that creatures that are not unique to an adventure (i.e. not in the MM) should not be in an adventure. That is how the Hoard of the Dragon Queen book was written. Its appendices only contain unique backgrounds, NPCs, monsters and magic items. Each item in those categories that is not unique is included by reference.
While putting a couple lines per spell does not take up much space per spell, it adds up. There are 102 spells in NPC stat blocks in HotDQ. While I would argue that 2-line summaries are insufficient to communicate spell information, at two lines per spell, that is 204 lines. There are about 120 lines per page, so those lines would take up almost 2 pages. At 96 pages, that is about 2% of the book. So, what get's cut to make room for that? The custom backgrounds and the full page map at the beginning could go. Aside from that, things are much more difficult. The descriptions of map areas are already fairly lean, and the introductions to each chapter could be argued to be necessary. WotC decided that more story content was the way to go, and they did not include spell descriptions in stat blocks.
I agree that having the correct spells on hand greatly helps the speed and flow of encounters. While players can (and should!) plan ahead during a round to figure out what their next spell or action should be, the DM does not get that opportunity. Given the decisions they had to make, I think WotC chose the right way to write the spell blocks, but that leaves me without the spell information at my fingertips. While WotC could have included that information, there would be a cost involved. My solution is to print that information ahead of time. Since my weekly game is a 3.5 advenure path converted to 5e, I have to type up all the creatures anyway, and I pretty much know that the party will encounter the NPCs at some point. There are plenty of other solutions to this, including spell cards. Dungeonscape is another. In the end, everyone will have to find a solution that works for them.
