D&D 5E The format of the spell list in the PHB is just plain awful.

[Wrathamon]

hey people wanted an old school feel!



I prefer by level then by alphabetical order, but they went with alphabetical only.

 

[Tzarevitch]

Then it's not an offence at all given they all have the Schools listed on them

Everyone of them is written like

Beacon of Hope3rd-level abjuration

... which is of very little help because they aren't indexed by spell type.

 

[GameDoc]

I suspect that in addition to reverting to an old school format, they also were trying to avoid printing the description of a spell that appears on multiple class lists more than once.

A good middle ground would have been to put the class-specific lists at the end of their respective entries in the class chapter (and for the wizard, also index them by school) and then the descriptions in order level then alphabetical order in the back.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

Spell indexes should look like this:


Wizard Spells

1st Level

Alarm (abjuration) You set an alarm against unwanted intrusion. pg. 211
Burning Hands (evocation) Thin sheets of flame burst from your hands. pg. 220​

ect...

With the proper spacing and tabs of course

 

[dd.stevenson]

Odd. Am I the only one that looks at the class lists, and then goes to the spell for more clarification, if necessary, rather than the other way around?

There are at least 2 of us.

In that case, you'd be better served if they'd included page numbers on the spell list.

No matter how you slice it, the spell lists are not well organized. I honestly don't understand wotc's intent, here.

 

[Agamon]

If we went with everyone's suggestions, we'd have 47 pages of spell list. KISS principle with no redundant info works fine for me.

 

[Stormonu]

The only thing that offends my senses is that it's a freakin' running list. Would it have been too much to columnize them like back in 1 & 2E so I can tell when one class list ends and the other begins easier.

Though, I will say for the classes where school is important some sort of superscript character/icon denoting the school would have been nice in the spell list.

 

[skotothalamos]

I require my spell lists to be numbered for random generation.

I would pay money for Wild Gazebo's formatting.

 

[Bumamgar]

I like that the spell details themselves are purely alphabetical. The 2e PHB with divine / arcane split, then grouped by level and finally alphabetized is a bit of a pain. Yes, eventually I memorized what spells where what level, but going back recently and playing a 2e game involved wasting a lot of time trying to find spells, so the 5e organization is an improvement for sure.

That said, I think the spell LISTS should be more like 2e, where they are grouped by class and then a single column per spell level, with each class being a new page / section (similar to the 2e layout). Also, adding a "spells by school" index (in an appendix?) would have been very nice. Oh, and a ritual list.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I'm OK with the detailed spell descriptions being strictly alphabetical, but the class summaries up front should include spell school and a brief spell description to save flipping back and forth. The 3.5E PHB got this right.

This PHB is missing a lot of user-centered design features. A feat table with summaries and tab markings by chapter on the outer edges of pages are two other things I would like.