Yaarel
He Mage
"Primal" ≈ Transmutation (lifeforms) with Evocation (elements)
D&D (2024) Arcane/Divine/Primal Spell Lists: Are the Benefits Real?
the Jester
Legend
In my opinion, this is a change for the sake of change without any real tangible benefits. It really doesn't improve anything; it muddies things for any class that doesn't (or shouldn't) have access to a full list. Clearly, my opinion isn't shared by everyone, but I just don't see this improving the game in any way. Does it simplify things? No, because the lists are not actually helping define what most of the classes get as spells- you have to comb through them by school to see what your bard can cast (and I am pretty sure a lot of bard players will accidentally take spells they shouldn't). Does it make the classes' spell lists better? I don't think so; it dilutes class identity (e.g. druids with cordon of arrows, bards with hex), and I don't think that's a plus.
If they're going to make a series of spell lists, I think they'd be better off making like 30 or 40 lists that are much more specific. Then your bard can choose three from Enchantment, Illusion, Song, Thunder, and blah blah blah, or your cleric can choose five from a long list of thematic 'spheres' (hearkening back to 2e), and so forth. But what a waste of page count.
If they're going to make a series of spell lists, I think they'd be better off making like 30 or 40 lists that are much more specific. Then your bard can choose three from Enchantment, Illusion, Song, Thunder, and blah blah blah, or your cleric can choose five from a long list of thematic 'spheres' (hearkening back to 2e), and so forth. But what a waste of page count.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
MTG has 5 colors. They have MANY lists. All 5 colors + all the color combinations separately as lists + colorless.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Illusion is right up a psion's alley, though, but Necromancy really isn't. And bard's are more likely to be conjuring things than lobbing fireballs and lightning bolts.
I'd go with...
Bards would have access to all Astral spells except Evocation.
Psions would have access to all Astral spells except for Necromancy.
The point is that in 5e when it is Evocation, 2e as Necromancy,or 3e as Conuration , you could see it logically.
It was healing/radiant/positive energy that closed wounds, restored stamina, or restored luck. Cure Wounds was energy goes from hand to body.
What changed was which school emitted radiant/positive energy. Which was never Abjuration.
No need to make it worse.
A Bard players should be able to hear about a sonic, healing, illusion, or meantal spell and say "Well that hits the bard's theme, I should be able to cast it.". Then just look up whether it is on the Bard list or Arcane.
Especially if Bard become prepared spellcaster.
The big problem is that this is your preference but not D&D's.
The Wizard class of D&D is efined as being a scholarly caster who has a spell list that includes all 8 schools of spells. Same with Cleric and Druid.
You would get Warlords in the 2024 PHB before you take away a single spell school from the Wizard or Cleric.
The main benefit of shared spell list is future proofing.
The main flaw of shared spell list is reconciliation of past and present. The Artificer, Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard don't have the similar themes.
The easiest solution is not to put 5 very different classes in the same shared list.
The main flaw of shared spell list is reconciliation of past and present. The Artificer, Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard don't have the similar themes.
The easiest solution is not to put 5 very different classes in the same shared list.
Aldarc
Legend
This thread is about the pros and cons of this new spell list system, and yet people are turning it into how they would revise the system if they were king for the day, and those "fixes" seem more complicated and far removed from either 5e D&D or the One D&D playtest that I'm not sure what purpose they actually serve in this thread.
This is all fair and good, but by my estimation as someone reading this thread, you haven't actually demonstrated that the new version is a greater barrier to entry than the old version. You certainly asserted it to be true, but the "truth" of that assumption seems to rest more on your own prejudices than any demonstrable evidence.
Benjamin Olson
Hero
Figuring out which schools the Bard can choose spells from, and then sorting those schools out of a larger Arcane list is objectively more difficult than digesting a smaller list basically anyway you slice it. I don't know what better demonstration there is than that.
At this point I've seen multiple ways in which a new player has to grapple with a larger chunk of options out the gate in OneD&D than in 5e. I've seen little that seems to make things more beginner friendly, beyond more extensive implementation of recommended or default options, which in my experience the majority of new players will simply turn their noses up at (they're good to have, but if that's what the designers think passes for making the system accessible they are confused). It may not add up to much yet but the overall direction seems to be towards higher barriers to entry everywhere I look.
Feel free to remain unpersuaded, I'm tired of talking about it.
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The underlying theme of the conversation is that the spell lists are barely "currentproofed" so it likely won't be futureproofed.
They made it easier to add new spells to a class's list by making figuring out a class's list harder.
Until they actually figure out the presentation and layout of spells in the actual book its kind of hard to make any real judgements. But if we take the current presentation as a guideline for 2024, this is what things would look like:
We will have all the spellblocks still in alphabetical order just like we do now.
- I do not believe this will change. Because of the fact that multiple spells apply to two or more of the arcane/divine/primal group lists... you can't just print the spells in their individual spell groups unless you intend on printing those spells more than once in each different list they apply to. As I do not think they would do that, I do not think they will print the spells by group and will keep them alphabetical.
In front of the spellblock section will be the three spellgroup lists-- arcane, divine, and primal-- spells listed alphabetically.
The same way we have every classes spell list right now at the front of the spells chapter, they will print the three spell group lists. This is fine for the wizard, cleric, and druid, as we expect those three classes to have full access to the entire lists. Those three group lists basically become the individual class list for those three classes.
For the other classes they will either list the schools they have access to within the spell group in their Class write-up, or they will actually print a class list of their specific spells from those groups at the front of the Spells chapter alongside the three full group write-ups.
I don't think we can say for sure which way WotC is going to necessarily do yet. Our expectations right now as players reading these playtests packets are that I think we are suspecting WotC is going to just do for all the other classes what they currently do for the Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster subclasses-- they don't have their own spell lists printed in the Spells chapter but instead we are just told in the Spells section of their Sub-class write up the two spells schools they get from within the Wizard class list. So when people are saying this will be more difficult to figure out what spells the other classes get (Bard, Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer, Warlock) it is true. You'll have to remember which of the three Spell groups applies to the class, the spell schools the class gets within that Spell group, and then go through the spells individually in that spell group to find out what schools they belong to.
But again... this of course assumes the formatting I listed above for the spell lists. WotC could save a step for us by printing the three spell groups not alphabetically... but by spell school and then alphabetically within each school. So at least it would be a little easier for players to demarcate which spells they are getting, rather than having to go into every single spellblock to find its school.
Now there is also a third option for the spell lists that is possible, but really will depend on how people are responding-- which is to just print each classes spell list at the front of the Spells chapter exactly as we have it now. The catch of course being that "behind the scenes" the spells on their list are still following the formats WotC has currently given us-- spells are still divided by spell group and certain classes only get certain schools within that spell group. But perhaps they just don't categorize the spells forward-facing like that and instead we just see what we see right now in 2014. This is certainly possible... however at that point it does beg the question of why even bother with the spell groups and selected spell schools if you are going to just print spell lists by class anyway. At that point you might as well just make individual lists as we currently have, and thus don't have to jerry-rig solutions like we see right now for the Bard and their Songs of Restoration-- you can just put those spells back into the Bard's spell list.
So this is the formatting questions we will potentially see being answered going forward. But there's the other question itself, which is how actually useful are these new divisions? Do they serve a purpose (both mechanically and/or flavorfully)?
As mentioned above... mechanically they do create an extra step or two for all the classes that will only being using parts of the spell group, because they have to figure out group and school now, not just a single list. But the question off of that issue though is this-- just how much of a stumbling block is that really?
For that I don't think we can take any of our own opinions on the ease or usefulness of this stuff at face value here... because there's one truth I've seen played out here on EN World for over 20 years... which is that any time someone posts an opinion on why something should be different in the game and their reason for that change is "THINK OF DA NEWBS!"... invariably it just happens to coincide with the exact direction they themselves want the game to go. Imagine that! Someone wants the game to be different, but not for them! Oh no! No, no... the change is for new players... to make it easier for them. The fact that the player also gets exactly what they want is just a happy coincidence.
Which is to say that none of us can really state with any objectivity whether or not asking the player of a Paladin to take two steps to figure out what their spells are-- group and schools-- is really such a hardship. I mean really, we D&D players look up so much goshdarn crap throughout all of these books all the time that there's no way to say with 100% certainty that THIS is a bridge too far. For all we know, we make mountains out of molehills about all of this. Is it an extra step that wasn't there before? Absolutely. Is that step an issue for old or new players alike? Not necessarily.
But if not that, then what? What truly is gained by changing these formats? Or is it just a re-categorization for change's sake? I'll be honest... when I first saw the packet, my immediate thought was "That seems pointless." I didn't know what was gained from the re-categorization of spells into the three groups, other than returning classes kind of back to a 4E power sources format. But that really ends up being more about flavor than it is mechanics-- they are trying to drive home the fluffy connection between Druids and Rangers by giving them the same spell group. Paladins again become attached at the hip to the Cleric... despite the 2014 having tried to separate them by saying things like "Cleric magic is granted them by their god, paladin magic manifests from the Oath they have taken."
The only reason I personally can think of why this flavorful re-direction of classes would be useful is Psionics. If you intend on making the Psion a true class and you intend on using spells as their manifestation format... having an independent spell group of "Psionic spells" that we can see as being "Psionic spells" would go a long way to separating them from the Arcane, Divine, and Primal spells. Now granted, the Psionic spell group would almost certainly include a number of spells that also appear on the other three group lists-- no reason to re-invent the wheel and create a new telekinetic magic rather than just give the Psionic group the same Telekinesis spell that is already on the Arcane list. If WotC actually did this... then maybe I could see a little bit of use, especially if they made additional Psionic classes or subclasses that only used parts of the Psionic spell group.
Although even then, to be perfectly honest... to me even this seems like barely a thing. Because the people who want true psionics don't want spells at all, so it doesn't matter what kind of "flavorful re-categorization" WotC creates, it ain't gonna please most of those players. And most of the other players who aren't that invested in psionics anyways probably wouldn't care if the Psion's magic was listed in a Psionic spell group or just in an individual Psion spell list to match the style of what we have in 2014. Either way is fine.
So at the end of the day from my personal perspective... I don't see the point in this change. I don't think it's necessary. That being said... I also don't think it causes any real issues so I won't care one way or the other should WotC decide to keep going with it. It'll be for me "Okay, fine... this has now changed a little bit, whatever." It's not going to impact me at all because... quite frankly... it's like nothing more than just changing the folder names on your computer desktop. I'll have it in head after like 30 minutes of use and I'll never think about it having been changed again.
We will have all the spellblocks still in alphabetical order just like we do now.
- I do not believe this will change. Because of the fact that multiple spells apply to two or more of the arcane/divine/primal group lists... you can't just print the spells in their individual spell groups unless you intend on printing those spells more than once in each different list they apply to. As I do not think they would do that, I do not think they will print the spells by group and will keep them alphabetical.
In front of the spellblock section will be the three spellgroup lists-- arcane, divine, and primal-- spells listed alphabetically.
The same way we have every classes spell list right now at the front of the spells chapter, they will print the three spell group lists. This is fine for the wizard, cleric, and druid, as we expect those three classes to have full access to the entire lists. Those three group lists basically become the individual class list for those three classes.
For the other classes they will either list the schools they have access to within the spell group in their Class write-up, or they will actually print a class list of their specific spells from those groups at the front of the Spells chapter alongside the three full group write-ups.
I don't think we can say for sure which way WotC is going to necessarily do yet. Our expectations right now as players reading these playtests packets are that I think we are suspecting WotC is going to just do for all the other classes what they currently do for the Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster subclasses-- they don't have their own spell lists printed in the Spells chapter but instead we are just told in the Spells section of their Sub-class write up the two spells schools they get from within the Wizard class list. So when people are saying this will be more difficult to figure out what spells the other classes get (Bard, Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer, Warlock) it is true. You'll have to remember which of the three Spell groups applies to the class, the spell schools the class gets within that Spell group, and then go through the spells individually in that spell group to find out what schools they belong to.
But again... this of course assumes the formatting I listed above for the spell lists. WotC could save a step for us by printing the three spell groups not alphabetically... but by spell school and then alphabetically within each school. So at least it would be a little easier for players to demarcate which spells they are getting, rather than having to go into every single spellblock to find its school.
Now there is also a third option for the spell lists that is possible, but really will depend on how people are responding-- which is to just print each classes spell list at the front of the Spells chapter exactly as we have it now. The catch of course being that "behind the scenes" the spells on their list are still following the formats WotC has currently given us-- spells are still divided by spell group and certain classes only get certain schools within that spell group. But perhaps they just don't categorize the spells forward-facing like that and instead we just see what we see right now in 2014. This is certainly possible... however at that point it does beg the question of why even bother with the spell groups and selected spell schools if you are going to just print spell lists by class anyway. At that point you might as well just make individual lists as we currently have, and thus don't have to jerry-rig solutions like we see right now for the Bard and their Songs of Restoration-- you can just put those spells back into the Bard's spell list.
So this is the formatting questions we will potentially see being answered going forward. But there's the other question itself, which is how actually useful are these new divisions? Do they serve a purpose (both mechanically and/or flavorfully)?
As mentioned above... mechanically they do create an extra step or two for all the classes that will only being using parts of the spell group, because they have to figure out group and school now, not just a single list. But the question off of that issue though is this-- just how much of a stumbling block is that really?
For that I don't think we can take any of our own opinions on the ease or usefulness of this stuff at face value here... because there's one truth I've seen played out here on EN World for over 20 years... which is that any time someone posts an opinion on why something should be different in the game and their reason for that change is "THINK OF DA NEWBS!"... invariably it just happens to coincide with the exact direction they themselves want the game to go. Imagine that! Someone wants the game to be different, but not for them! Oh no! No, no... the change is for new players... to make it easier for them. The fact that the player also gets exactly what they want is just a happy coincidence.
Which is to say that none of us can really state with any objectivity whether or not asking the player of a Paladin to take two steps to figure out what their spells are-- group and schools-- is really such a hardship. I mean really, we D&D players look up so much goshdarn crap throughout all of these books all the time that there's no way to say with 100% certainty that THIS is a bridge too far. For all we know, we make mountains out of molehills about all of this. Is it an extra step that wasn't there before? Absolutely. Is that step an issue for old or new players alike? Not necessarily.
But if not that, then what? What truly is gained by changing these formats? Or is it just a re-categorization for change's sake? I'll be honest... when I first saw the packet, my immediate thought was "That seems pointless." I didn't know what was gained from the re-categorization of spells into the three groups, other than returning classes kind of back to a 4E power sources format. But that really ends up being more about flavor than it is mechanics-- they are trying to drive home the fluffy connection between Druids and Rangers by giving them the same spell group. Paladins again become attached at the hip to the Cleric... despite the 2014 having tried to separate them by saying things like "Cleric magic is granted them by their god, paladin magic manifests from the Oath they have taken."
The only reason I personally can think of why this flavorful re-direction of classes would be useful is Psionics. If you intend on making the Psion a true class and you intend on using spells as their manifestation format... having an independent spell group of "Psionic spells" that we can see as being "Psionic spells" would go a long way to separating them from the Arcane, Divine, and Primal spells. Now granted, the Psionic spell group would almost certainly include a number of spells that also appear on the other three group lists-- no reason to re-invent the wheel and create a new telekinetic magic rather than just give the Psionic group the same Telekinesis spell that is already on the Arcane list. If WotC actually did this... then maybe I could see a little bit of use, especially if they made additional Psionic classes or subclasses that only used parts of the Psionic spell group.
Although even then, to be perfectly honest... to me even this seems like barely a thing. Because the people who want true psionics don't want spells at all, so it doesn't matter what kind of "flavorful re-categorization" WotC creates, it ain't gonna please most of those players. And most of the other players who aren't that invested in psionics anyways probably wouldn't care if the Psion's magic was listed in a Psionic spell group or just in an individual Psion spell list to match the style of what we have in 2014. Either way is fine.
So at the end of the day from my personal perspective... I don't see the point in this change. I don't think it's necessary. That being said... I also don't think it causes any real issues so I won't care one way or the other should WotC decide to keep going with it. It'll be for me "Okay, fine... this has now changed a little bit, whatever." It's not going to impact me at all because... quite frankly... it's like nothing more than just changing the folder names on your computer desktop. I'll have it in head after like 30 minutes of use and I'll never think about it having been changed again.
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