D&D (2024) Arcane/Divine/Primal Spell Lists: Are the Benefits Real?

[Yaarel]

The idea of power source spell list is great.
Forcing yourself to fit the base 9 full and half caster into exactly 3 spell lists in 2022 is bad.

Each class strongly correlates a specific combination of Spell Schools.

Subclasses can tweak the School themes or import other School themes if necessary.

Compare how Paladin oaths and Cleric domains add new spells, in addition to the normal class Schools.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I think it's an absolutely terrible design choice for D&D. It seemingly confuses overall design simplicity with simpicity of actual use. It taxonomically simple at the cost of being much less accessible to anyone who hasn't already thoroughly digested the spell system. A new player is confronted with a much larger more unwieldy list of options to digest. WotC, and some commentators, seem to think a suggested list for a quick-roll-up character is a panacea for this problem, but this misunderstands new player psychology. Many new players are drawn in by the promise of creating a custom character, and a pre-gen spell loadout is no more appealing than a pre-gen character.

It is "simpler" for veterans who have semi-memorized the spells. It will be easier to go from playing a Wizard to playing a Warlock. But there will be less reason to go from playing one to the other because there will be less thematic difference in spells. It seems like a system designed to let people live out all sorts of powergamey fantasies, and then get bored because the possibilities of the system can be used up on fewer characters (especially if they follow through with making everyone a prepared caster). At the same time it will also encourage people who have found a playstyle that works for them to just recreate that on every character, which I think most will find a recipe for medium-term comfort at the cost of incurring long-term boredom.

In summary it favors veterans over new players and perhaps ultimately lets the veterans down as well. Perhaps, if I am overstating the latter problem, it would be suitable for a project like LevelUp, that is explicitly aimed at veterans of the existing game, but for the flagship gateway game for the hobby it is an absolutely terrible design choice that is so wrongheaded it makes me doubt the design sensibilities of the current WotC team as a whole.

 

[Yaarel]

@Minigiant

Even going by the 4e "power source" terminology, it is still more useful to update the Spell Schools.

Primal ≈ Transmutation (lifeform, plant, animal, shapeshifting, healing)
Elemental ≈ Evocation (earth, water, air, fire)
Arcane ≈ Conjuration (force, fly, force construct, magical energy)
Divine ≈ Divination (spacetime, planar)
Psionic ≈ Enchantment (mind effects)
"Shadow" ≈ Necromancy (Undead, but also Fiend and Aberration)

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

I did not read the whole thread so this might be mentioned before.

To me it feels like having exceptions like the Ranger uses the Primal list except evocation and the bard gets access to the arcane list but only these schools undermines any benefit a unified spell list would give you.
New players now need to learn more about spell schools to check if they are allowed a certain spell from the list.
Many might do this a few times, then go to the internet and find somebody who already did the work, print out the bard and ranger spell lists and put then in the back of their PHB for quicker easier reference.

To me it also feels like some of the spells that had their school changed in the playtest document had their school changed based on do we want the ranger or bard to have access to this spell.
And not if the school of magic was a better fit for what the spell does.

 

[cbwjm]

I think it's an absolutely terrible design choice for D&D. It seemingly confuses overall design simplicity with simpicity of actual use. It taxonomically simple at the cost of being much less accessible to anyone who hasn't already thoroughly digested the spell system. A new player is confronted with a much larger more unwieldy list of options to digest. WotC, and some commentators, seem to think a suggested list for a quick-roll-up character is a panacea for this problem, but this misunderstands no player psychology. Many new players are drawn in by the promise of creating a custom character, and a pre-gen spell loadout is no more appealing than a pre-gen character.

Oh please, the spell lists aren't really that much larger than the current class spell lists and certainly isnt "unwieldy". Any new player that wants to create their own character rather than using a pregen is going to have to read up on everything in more detail anyway, even under the current system, this is no different.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Oh please, the spell lists aren't really that much larger than the current class spell lists and certainly isnt "unwieldy". Any new player that wants to create their own character rather than using a pregen is going to have to read up on everything in more detail anyway, even under the current system, this is no different.

But they are larger, and unnecessarily so. And some classes will need to skim the larger list for specific schools, which is an additional and cumbersome level of complication (exponentially more so for the new to that class player, who has to keep in their head what particular schools they are looking for).

Overall, currently the OneD&D plan is to make a newer players both digest more spells (possibly keeping school in mind) as well as the feat system to make informed choices at character creation. That's objectively worse design for newer players, and collectively the choices seem to indicate a direction of less concern for new players than went into 5e design. Even if the spell list change is "no big deal" on this front, it seems indicative of a larger trend towards catering to veterans at the expense of novices for the new edition.

You may not care all that much about new player accessibility, but, as someone who spends several weeks every summer helping large numbers of children roll up their first characters at a summer camp, it is a top priority for me. As a company trying to keep their game the gateway game for the hobby it should be a top priority for WotC as well.

 

[Cadence]

But they are larger, and unnecessarily so. And some classes will need to skim the larger list for specific schools, which is an additional and cumbersome level of complication (exponentially more so for the new to that class player, who has to keep in their head what particular schools they are looking for).

Overall, currently the OneD&D plan is to make a newer players both digest more spells (possibly keeping school in mind) as well as the feat system to make informed choices at character creation. That's objectively worse design for newer players, and collectively the choices seem to indicate a direction of less concern for new players than went into 5e design. Even if the spell list change is "no big deal" on this front, it seems indicative of a larger trend towards catering to veterans at the expense of novices for the new edition.

You may not care all that much about new player accessibility, but, as someone who spends several weeks every summer helping large numbers of children roll up their first characters at a summer camp, it is a top priority for me. As a company trying to keep their game the gateway game for the hobby it should be a top priority for WotC as well.

Will the intro sets and free online rules have more limited choices still?

Would having suggested options (like they do for equipment) help?

Are pre-gens (with a few limited choices) the best way to get new players into a game?

 

[tetrasodium]

Oh please, the spell lists aren't really that much larger than the current class spell lists and certainly isnt "unwieldy". Any new player that wants to create their own character rather than using a pregen is going to have to read up on everything in more detail anyway, even under the current system, this is no different.

The power source list with exceptions by (sub)class like the bard's songs of restoration & ranger's mark thing* even helps spotlight an important thing for a (sub)class ito those hypothetical newbies in ways that a class specific spell list would not while avoiding any impulse to dump too much into the base list for partial & niche casters.

*I'm on my phone... The new favored enemy?

 

[cbwjm]

But they are larger, and unnecessarily so. And some classes will need to skim the larger list for specific schools, which is an additional and cumbersome level of complication (exponentially more so for the new to that class player, who has to keep in their head what particular schools they are looking for).

Overall, currently the OneD&D plan is to make a newer players both digest more spells (possibly keeping school in mind) as well as the feat system to make informed choices at character creation. That's objectively worse design for newer players, and collectively the choices seem to indicate a direction of less concern for new players than went into 5e design. Even if the spell list change is "no big deal" on this front, it seems indicative of a larger trend towards catering to veterans at the expense of novices for the new edition.

You may not care all that much about new player accessibility, but, as someone who spends several weeks every summer helping large numbers of children roll up their first characters at a summer camp, it is a top priority for me. As a company trying to keep their game the gateway game for the hobby it should be a top priority for WotC as well.

This honestly sounds like you're making a mountain out of a molehill. New players can read, they can note down which schools they're allowed as a handy dandy note, they're only engaging with level 1 spells at the beginning of the game which isn't really all that many spells. And these potential new players can ask questions if they're unsure of something, it really isn't that difficult. And if you still think that they'll have trouble, then stick with the basic rules because if they have that much trouble figuring things out then maybe you should limit their options.

Also, preselected spells are great for new players, it's not like they can't swap them out once they have a little more experience with the game.

See, it's not that I don't care about new player accessibility, I just think that it's there, you just have engage with those options instead of throwing everything at the new players.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Will the intro sets and free online rules have more limited choices still?

Would having suggested options (like they do for equipment) help?

Are pre-gens (with a few limited choices) the best way to get new players into a game?

In my experience pre-gens and suggested options are great for a few new players who just want to get into the action, but that the majority of new players are drawn to some degree by character creation and don't particularly want to make a character like every other character of that class. Even new players who will mostly unquestioningly accept the recommendations of a veteran player for spell choices or what have you, often seem to turn up their noses at WotC's suggested list (they don't want to build the man's Wizard). Ultimately pre-gens and quick-build suggestions are great to have, but they are not a replacement for accessible game design.

What makes game design accessible is not to make it simple so much as to have players introduced to systems gradually. People aren't dumb, but there is a limit to how much new stuff they can process when the whole game is still abstract. If anything 5e D&D was already too front-loaded with stuff you need to digest right off the bat before you can play your first session, and so far OneD&D is just shaping up to be worse on this front.

The reason I take particular issue with the three spell list system is not because it is, in itself gamebreaking, but that I worry that the designers, like some commenters, think that "three is a smaller number of lists than one for each spellcasting class, hence it is simpler". It is "simpler" for people who have achieved a high level of system mastery and already know it, but it is not "simpler" for beginner or intermediate players trying to digest it an make informed decisions.