D&D General A Class's Spell List Should be Listed With the Class Description.

[el-remmen]

Anytime I am creating either a stat block for a spellcasting NPC I want to follow the rules the PCs use or building a spellcasting PC for a game i am going to play in, I get annoyed that the table that tells me how much of each spell level I can cast is halfway across the book from the lists of which spells exist for each level for that class. I am not saying spell descriptions should be part of a class description (that would not work without needless repetition) but I think the spell description chapter doesn't necessarily need class spell lists. Those lists should be with the class.

Not sure if this is a consideration for the 2024 PHB but I am much more likely to actually buy it if it did. Reorganizing the books is actually a bigger draw for me than the rules changes.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Voted true, wanted to say 'obviously'.

 

[TwoSix]

I’ll be honest, I don’t see the connection between “how many spells I can cast” and looking up spells to prepare/know.

Putting the spell list with the class makes sense, but I’m not seeing how your anecdote actually works.

 

[Leatherhead]

This is an inherent problem with the medium of physical books. (And I know people are going to hate that I said that)

If you remove the class list from the spell section of the book, and you are reading a spell: Then you have to flip to 9+ different lists scattered across an entire chapter, over half the book away, to see if this spell you like is on any of them.

If you put spell lists in the both class section and the spells section, then you eat up a huge number of pages with redundancy.

Having the lists all centralized in the spell section is the lowest common denominator approach. The best solution from a pile of bad solutions.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If you remove the class list from the spell section of the book, and you are reading a spell: Then you have to flip to 9+ different lists scattered across an entire chapter, over half the book away, to see if this spell you like is on any of them.

3e solved this problem two decades ago with proper keywording.

 

[Leatherhead]

3e solved this problem two decades ago with proper keywording.

Solved is a strong word for that, considering that approach runs afoul of the problem directly below that.

 

[el-remmen]

I’ll be honest, I don’t see the connection between “how many spells I can cast” and looking up spells to prepare/know.

Putting the spell list with the class makes sense, but I’m not seeing how your anecdote actually works.

When I am choosing which spells to have prepared or know, I like to be able to back and forth from the table that tell me how many I can cast because that influences which ones I take. I guess I could just jot it down, but I end up flipping back and forth several times. Maybe it is an idiosyncratic thing, but I also just think it makes sense for spell lists to be with the class and not the spell descriptions.

 

[el-remmen]

If you remove the class list from the spell section of the book, and you are reading a spell: Then you have to flip to 9+ different lists scattered across an entire chapter, over half the book away, to see if this spell you like is on any of them.

That personally seems backwards to me. I look at spell lists, see a spell that sounds like it might be cool and then I read the description if I am not already familiar enough with it. I guess I never just read random spells and then hope my class has access to it - that seems inefficient.

 

[Clint_L]

This is one of many, many reasons why I am never going back to running games through physical books.

On a digital character sheet, there is no problem. You create the character, and then you scan up and down the spell lists, sorting as desired, and clicking on a spell to get full details as needed.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

This is an inherent problem with the medium of physical books. (And I know people are going to hate that I said that)

If you remove the class list from the spell section of the book, and you are reading a spell: Then you have to flip to 9+ different lists scattered across an entire chapter, over half the book away, to see if this spell you like is on any of them.

If you put spell lists in the both class section and the spells section, then you eat up a huge number of pages with redundancy.

Having the lists all centralized in the spell section is the lowest common denominator approach. The best solution from a pile of bad solutions.

The solution seems obvious: Make the spell lists unique to each class. I mean. There's no sensible reason why a Cleric would need access to a list of Wizard spells, for example.

This would also be beneficial in that it would require that spell lists contain only unique spells. It would make the bard more interesting since they would have unique bard spells. The wizard would have unique wizard spells etc. etc.