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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 8581285" data-attributes="member: 6988941">There is some vestigial trace of a firm Arcane and Divine magic division in 5e D&D. Whether it was ever an explicit part of some early version of this edition or is just de facto there by virtue of inheriting so much from prior editions I can not say, but the rudiments are there. At some point the 5e designers decided not to make any explicit division on this point and just assign spells ad hoc, albeit with some general guidelines (to my knowledge the statement on 283 of the DMG that it is not keeping with class identities to give Sorcerers or Wizards healing magic is the only guideline that has been made explicit).But yes, I think one could fairly coherently divide the 5e spells into Universal, Arcane, Divine, and Primal by designating existing Wizard, Sorcerer, and Warlock spells as Arcane, existing Cleric spells as Divine, and existing Druid Spells as Primal, and anything in both the Arcane and the other two categories as Universal. I wouldn't call overlapping Druid and Cleric spells "Universal" because keeping proper healing magic (the main place of overlap) away from the arcanists (with exceptions being rare and special) seems to have been a design intent. I'd recommend a further "martial" category for the unique Paladin and Ranger spells if those are in the mix, as despite the divine and natural theming of those classes, their unique spells are mostly about providing martial combat buffs. Or don't, but be wary of trying to put their unique spells on any list some sort of full caster may have access to, as they aren't balanced for when full casters would get them (and yes Bards currently get to poach them, but getting to do this is a major class feature of Bards with a major opportunity cost).The Bard list does not factor in since a core gimmick of that class is being transgressive between the boundaries of Arcane and other (usually druidic) magic. Bards are the exception that proves the rule of there being different catagories of magic. More problematic in this sort of scheme is the Artificer, who is also a hodgepodge of different spells, but was designed when they already had a fully developed spell system and (I would posit) had gotten further away from any strong ideas of dividing "arcane" and "divine" spells.</blockquote>

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