D&D (2024) Class spell lists and pact magic are back!

[Neonchameleon]

By coming at third level it is already a downgrade. You get access to a new spell list at the same time that you get a new spell level and can choose two new at most instead of at the time you choose the most spells known and your cantrips.

OK. Let's test this statement.

Under existing 5e rules a third level sorcerer knows four spells, total. A Divine Soul sorcerer will know a fifth. They can make any or all of these into divine spells.

Under One D&D rules a third level sorcerer knows six spells, having gained two not one at each of second and third levels. The Magical Initiate feat gives them a seventh. Even if we assume the new version of Celestial doesn't give them an eighth at third level they can know one (Magical Initiate) plus two (levelling up to third) plus one (Retraining) divine spells for a total of four - versus the "classic" version's five total. So a third level classic divine soul can have more divine spells than a One D&D Divine soul if and only if they spend all their spell slots on divine magic. This of course makes them almost strictly inferior to a cleric as the cleric has more spells prepared, can switch them up more often, has more hit points, better armour, channel divinity, and their own subclass abilities.

So to sum up a level one OneD&D sorcerer looking at Divine Soul is a strictly better healer than a level 1 classic Divine Soul Sorcerer as they have an extra spell slot. They are also a better Divine Soul Sorcerer at level 3 with access to as many divine spells as a classic Divine Soul Sorcerer who hasn't left their sorcerous casting behind entirely to be an inferior cleric plus two more arcane spells.

 

[MoonSong]

OK. Let's test this statement.

Under existing 5e rules a third level sorcerer knows four spells, total. A Divine Soul sorcerer will know a fifth. They can make any or all of these into divine spells.

Under One D&D rules a third level sorcerer knows six spells, having gained two not one at each of second and third levels. The Magical Initiate feat gives them a seventh. Even if we assume the new version of Celestial doesn't give them an eighth at third level they can know one (Magical Initiate) plus two (levelling up to third) plus one (Retraining) divine spells for a total of four - versus the "classic" version's five total. So a third level classic divine soul can have more divine spells than a One D&D Divine soul if and only if they spend all their spell slots on divine magic. This of course makes them almost strictly inferior to a cleric as the cleric has more spells prepared, can switch them up more often, has more hit points, better armour, channel divinity, and their own subclass abilities.

So to sum up a level one OneD&D sorcerer looking at Divine Soul is a strictly better healer than a level 1 classic Divine Soul Sorcerer as they have an extra spell slot. They are also a better Divine Soul Sorcerer at level 3 with access to as many divine spells as a classic Divine Soul Sorcerer who hasn't left their sorcerous casting behind entirely to be an inferior cleric plus two more arcane spells.

Why don't we unmuddy the waters by looking at just Divine Soul without Mage Initiate?

An OG Divine soul at first level knows three spells and four cantrips. All of them can be from the cleric list.
A One Sorcerer at first level knows three spells and four cantrips. None of them can be from the cleric list.

Upon level up, the OG Divine Soul learns a fourth spell known that can be from the sorcerer list or the cleric list. (4 known, 4 cantrips), while the One Sorcerer learns two more spells, that come from the sorcerer list only (0 known,0 cantrips)

At third level, the OG Divine Soul learns a fifth spell known and possibly retrain one of the others for a second level (5 known with two 2nd level, 4 cantrips). At the same time a One Divine Soul learns two spells and can retrain one on top of the bonus spell -assuming it stays-. (4 known with three at 2nd level, 0 cantrips)

This means a One Divine Soul is less thematic than an OG Divine Soul. Having the choice delayed means less ability to choose Divine Spells, particularly cantrips. Mage initiate can help to cushion this, but that only means Mage Initiate remains a feat tax and it comes at the opportunity cost of stuff like premature metamagic, choosing to fight with weapons, or even to get some armor to better emulate 3.x Favored Soul.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Why don't we unmuddy the waters by looking at just Divine Soul without Mage Initiate?

That's not "attempting to unmuddy the waters" between the old and new. That's "cherry picking". What worked before still works now - it just does it through very slightly different means.

This means a One Divine Soul is less thematic than an OG Divine Soul. Having the choice delayed means less ability to choose Divine Spells

Meanwhile by fifth level the OneD&D Divine Soul Sorcerer knows at least nine spells (remember we haven't seen the subclass yet), of which eight can be divine. The OG Divine Soul knows ... seven spells. By your cherry picked metric the fifth level OG divine soul is less thematic than the new one. Having more spells gives you more ability to pick divine spells.

The core problem here is that the OG sorcerer was a deeply flawed class that simply did not know enough spells to really be able to do its job. Divine Soul as a subclass was a decent idea on paper but crippled by the lack of known spells.

 

[Chaosmancer]

and what did you assign when you like the idea but not the execution (e.g. wildshape templates, not saying you liked them in any form....)? Sounds like 'dislike', which was my point.

You are correct I put dissatisfied. Then I put in the comments WHY I was dissatisfied. And, we know for a fact that they read the comments. So... what's wrong with that?

Certainly, my problem is more that 'needs improvement' is basically either the 'it's ok as it is' (satisfied) or the 'throw it away' (dissatisfied) rating. I cannot really say what I want to say, and chances are people underrated it because of the terms (needs improvement = dissatisfied to me).

On a related note, do we know what % is assigned to each option, is it 25, 50, 75, 100? 0, 33, 67, 100? In either case 'dissatisfied' does not make the cut, possibly drastically.

Then they probably put it in the comments. Which is a thing Crawford specifically said they look at for clarity into why a ranking happened. There is a point where "this could be more precise" is not a useful metric. Sure, they could make it five choices. Or six. Or seven. They picked four. And that isn't a bad number, because if you have a 50/50 split between satisfied and dissatisfied... they probably look into that.

Yes, your individual vote may not have crystal clarity... but it never was going to amongst literal tens of thousands of votes.

 

[Remathilis]

I think that most of us can agree that it would be pretty surprising if wotc does not do something about shield's massive design problem.

Spell redesign has been a weird black hole in this playtest. We have seen (not counting new spells) very few redone spells. So far, we've seen:

Guidance (twice)
Barkskin
Resistance
Find Familiar
The Smite spells
Find Steed
Eldritch Blast
Hex
Hunter's Mark
Viscous Mockery
Conjure Volley and Conjure Barrage
Power Word Kill
Power Word Heal

We have not seen any hint that most of the staple spells (like shield or fireball) are going to get tuned, nor are the overly broken (simulacrum) or weak (true strike). We also have seen some spells that still use monster stat blocks (conjure spells) and some that don't (find familiar and find steed). Heck, at this point we're not even sure any of the spell changes we've seen so far have Sparked Enough Joy that they won't be reprinted as printed in 2014.

I would have assumed any major rebalancing to magic would have been seen by now. It may yet happen, but I am not holding my breath that any major rebalancing will even take place and if it does, it may not be part of the playtest.

 

[tetrasodium]

Spell redesign has been a weird black hole in this playtest. We have seen (not counting new spells) very few redone spells. So far, we've seen:

Guidance (twice)
Barkskin
Resistance
Find Familiar
The Smite spells
Find Steed
Eldritch Blast
Hex
Hunter's Mark
Viscous Mockery
Conjure Volley and Conjure Barrage
Power Word Kill
Power Word Heal

We have not seen any hint that most of the staple spells (like shield or fireball) are going to get tuned, nor are the overly broken (simulacrum) or weak (true strike). We also have seen some spells that still use monster stat blocks (conjure spells) and some that don't (find familiar and find steed). Heck, at this point we're not even sure any of the spell changes we've seen so far have Sparked Enough Joy that they won't be reprinted as printed in 2014.

I would have assumed any major rebalancing to magic would have been seen by now. It may yet happen, but I am not holding my breath that any major rebalancing will even take place and if it does, it may not be part of the playtest.

I completely agree, something seems very wrong to have so few spells revised

 

[mamba]

You are correct I put dissatisfied. Then I put in the comments WHY I was dissatisfied. And, we know for a fact that they read the comments. So... what's wrong with that?

what do you think that got you ultimately, it got thrown out rather than revised, because ‘dissatisfied’ is below the threshold for revisions.

So unless your reason was ‘I do not want this’, your rating contradicted your intent and text, and I very much doubt that WotC bumps up the ratings based on the written feedback

Yes, your individual vote may not have crystal clarity... but it never was going to amongst literal tens of thousands of votes.

your vote should be crystal clear, as should the tens of thousands of others. That you do not get what you voted for should be due to the other clear votes substantially disagreeing with you.

Instead we have yours and thousands of others being unclear about what you wanted, or worse yet clear to WotC, but in a way that is different from what you intended, which is what is happening

 

[Charlaquin]

Spell redesign has been a weird black hole in this playtest. We have seen (not counting new spells) very few redone spells. So far, we've seen:

Guidance (twice)
Barkskin
Resistance
Find Familiar
The Smite spells
Find Steed
Eldritch Blast
Hex
Hunter's Mark
Viscous Mockery
Conjure Volley and Conjure Barrage
Power Word Kill
Power Word Heal

We have not seen any hint that most of the staple spells (like shield or fireball) are going to get tuned, nor are the overly broken (simulacrum) or weak (true strike). We also have seen some spells that still use monster stat blocks (conjure spells) and some that don't (find familiar and find steed). Heck, at this point we're not even sure any of the spell changes we've seen so far have Sparked Enough Joy that they won't be reprinted as printed in 2014.

I would have assumed any major rebalancing to magic would have been seen by now. It may yet happen, but I am not holding my breath that any major rebalancing will even take place and if it does, it may not be part of the playtest.

I don’t think major rebalancing was ever on the table. The focus has been on fixing problem cases (e.g. guidance and barkskin), and updating class-specific spells (basically the rest of the ones we’ve seen updates to). They also experimented a bit with shuffling schools of magic around.

 

[Remathilis]

I don’t think major rebalancing was ever on the table. The focus has been on fixing problem cases (e.g. guidance and barkskin), and updating class-specific spells (basically the rest of the ones we’ve seen updates to). They also experimented a bit with shuffling schools of magic around.

Want to hear my prediction? Most of those changes are going to be rolled back.

Any spell that got nerfed isn't staying nerfed. The D&D Community has shown no appetite for losing an iota of power, and nearly any change to fix it will not spark enough joy to pass muster. WotC might muscle a few of them though (like hex and hunters) anyway and anything straight upgrade is in (smites) will be done. I also wonder now if templated familiars and summons will be in the PHB; every argument you can make about wild shape applies to them.

I certainly don't think the "good" spells are being toned down and I'm increasingly thinking the bad ones won't be fixed either. Aside from adding some new spells, I feel the spell chapter will be largely unchanged.

I'd like to see some changes in the future that proves me wrong though.

 

[mellored]

I would have assumed any major rebalancing to magic would have been seen by now.

I wouldn't. They need to figure out the classes before they figure out the spells.
No point in tuning a spell if you don't know the base feature that will cast it.
I.e. they have changed how spell preparations, changed meta magic, and changed wizard being able to modify spells. All of which you kind of need to know before you change spells.

Figure out wild shape before you figure out polymorph.

That said, I wouldn't expect a huge overhaul. But I still expect a spell packet at some point.