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

[Lanefan]

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.

"How many you can cast" would be written on your character sheet, wouldn't it?

All the info about spells should be in one (and just one) place.

 

[jmartkdr2]

True BUT

The spell listings should say what classes can take the spell as well. As in, if I look up remove curse in the section with all the spells, it should say that only clerics, paladins, warlocks and wizards can learn it.

 

[kigmatzomat]

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.

This is how Earthdawn did it in 1993.

 

[Burnside]

True BUT

The spell listings should say what classes can take the spell as well. As in, if I look up remove curse in the section with all the spells, it should say that only clerics, paladins, warlocks and wizards can learn it.

DNDBeyond does do this.

 

[el-remmen]

True BUT

The spell listings should say what classes can take the spell as well. As in, if I look up remove curse in the section with all the spells, it should say that only clerics, paladins, warlocks and wizards can learn it.

Total agreement

And in agreement that spell lists should include parenthetical page numbers

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Total agreement

And in agreement that spell lists should include parenthetical page numbers

I'm starting to suspect that reason they avoid mentioning classes in the spell section of the book is that they were expecting to add more classes to the system. There are only two real benefits for omitting classes there

1. You expect to add several new classes later on, so you avoid the problem of having to update the spell descriptions.
2. You save space in the book (a miniscule amount of space too)

Pathfinder 1 does just like D&D 3 did and mentions the classes when they describe the spells. It's really annoying that this was removed. It makes the book a lot less useful. Sure they had issues when new classes came out, or new spells came out... But that was solved completely in PF2. PF2 does not use class spell lists, they instead have different traits; Arcane, Divine, Primal and Occult; associated with different classes. When they add a new class they can just say "This class can only cast spells with the Occult tag" and bam. Problem solved.

 

[Leatherhead]

By... adding characters to the already existing Level line and thus not adding any pages at all?

It's been such a long time since I used the books directly, I had forgotten they dedicated an entire line to that, instead having be a single cell, like it is on D&D Beyond.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I wouldn't expect WotC to ever put down the classes that get it inside the spell write-ups because that will become one of the most quickly outdated parts of the book. Sure, you can put down classes... but what about subclasses? Are you going to distinguish specific subclasses in the list if they are the only ones who get it? Do you write down 'Cleric' in the Fireball spellblock? Or do you specify 'Cleric - Domain of Light' in the block? Or maybe 'Light Domain', or even exclude Cleric altogether since it's not in the actual Cleric's list? And then what happens when WotC releases a new subclass later that includes the spell as a Bonus spell for a particular class? That's now missing from the list within the spell's write-up. At some point it just becomes an outdated waste.

As far as the question of where a caster's spell list should appear-- within the Class section in the front of the book or at the top of the Spells chapter before all the spellblocks... I don't really have an opinion. I would suggest that having it within the Class section just looks messier or a little more boring-- you now have a page in the section that is just a long list of spell names across an entire page or two and thus now flipping through the Classes section is a little bit less pleasing to the eye in my opinion... but whether or not that matters to anyone picking up the book I couldn't say. But I don't think it's a coincidence that WotC puts the huge section of spellblocks at the back of the book rather than up front... because that repetitive and rather bland-looking formatting gets tiresome to read and so you don't want to put that giant section up front where people have to flip-flip-flip-flip past it continually to get further into the book.

 

[Jer]

I like how Level Up does it - where the spell list for each class comes at the end of the class and where it includes both the name of the spell and a one line description of the spell. With the full spell write-ups coming off in their own section closer to the end of the book. Watching how my players create 5e characters for the ones who used the books, the spell selection portion of the character creation process seems to be the part that gets most hung up on flipping around the book and sticking fingers/note cards into the pages.

For my current 5e game one of my players hasn't played 5e in years and has mainly been playing 13th age for d20 fantasy. He was griping about how he forgot how poorly organized the 5e PHB was compared to the 13A book where spells/maneuvers/powers/etc. are bundled with the class like 4e was.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

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.

I am not down with every spell being unique to one class. If 6 different classes are intended to be able to Cure Wounds or remove conditions with Lesser Restoration, why should there be 6 different versions of Cure Wounds, or Lesser Restoration? It's a waste of space. Spell lists that all appropriate classes draw from is one of the biggest design strengths of the game.