D&D 5E Allowing more open spell lists?

[MoutonRustique]

The one nice thing about giving Wizards healing is that it spreads the support/healing/buffing role out a bit more equally among casters so that non-Wizard casters can use their slots on more "fun" spell effects rather than saving them in case someone gets horribly injured.

Nice for everyone except the player playing the Wizard ironically because instead of his big showy effects and battle controller like spells he is going to be forced into using some of his power doing maintenance duties for the party. Niche protection cuts both ways.

I kind of agree with the previous poster who said that you might be better off rewriting or eliminating most of the spell casting classes and just have a couple of new spellcasting classes differentiated by flavor or casting mechanic, but using largely the same mechanics if you are going to have a lot of dipping into the same spell list. In 5E that is fairly easy to set up though without being over or underpowered.

hehehe
- Can you do the dishes honey?
- Sorry, I can't cast domestic spells. *hehe*
- No, no, they changed that last edition, check your new list, you can now.
- ... *grumble* *grumble*

 

[DracoSuave]

Something to consider with this--

Would you be equally as willing to allow monks to simply grab superiority dice from fighters instead of some ki ability, or for barbarians to grab the beast companion from ranger, just cause?

One underappreciated thing with spell lists is that they are individially as much abilities/options of the class they show up on as sneak attack is for a rogue. A wizard's ability isn't "casts spells" it's "casts from these specific spells and does this specific kind of magic". A paladin doesn't just "Cause divine magic" it's "Select from this list of abilities which all happen to be supernatural".

Spell lists are ability lists, don't kid yourself on that, and bleeding lists is bleeding flavor.

 

[The Myopic Sniper]

If I was going to DM something like this, I would probably just adjudicate it on a group by group, character by character and a spell by spell basis. If no one else in the group wants to play a healer but the guy who is playing the Wizard has Medicine as a skill and a background as an Herbalist, I would let him pick up Cure Wounds and Protection From Poison, but not stronger spells like Raise The Dead where they would need to find a friendly NPC to cast if they needed it.

Similarly, I would let a Barbarian have the Ranger beast companion if there isn't a Beastmaster Ranger in the group, but it might come at the expense of Reckless Attack and a Brutal Critical die and he might not be able to direct the beast companion while raging. If somehow that ended up either severely overpowered or underpowered that was to the detriment of the fun of others, I would work with the player to rework some of their other abilities to make it more in line with the power level of the rest of the group.

There is definitely a middle ground between "all classes can do everything" and "you have to stay totally in the lines of what the PHB says" if the players are on board with it.

 

[TRD23]

That is pretty much the approach I have adopted.

Similarly with races other than humans I just allow them to +2/+1 any combination of attributes.

Really loving 5E so far, without all the mechanical moving pieces of 4E, it's a dream to run.