overgeeked
Dragonbane
You are glossing over the relevant specifics to try to make a point that you're wrong about.DCC does, from my brief research, provide both: they give you a curated list and the freedom to do what you want. So I am surprised you ask how it can be done.
Similarly, 5e provides both. You maneuvers or water masteries or cunning actions, etc. or simple skill checks. My players seem ask and I give them a DC (if needed). They have the freedom to do whatever they can imagine and a list of options they know will work.
I personally like how we do it in our 5e game because the DC (for a given "Deed") is fixed and you can see growth as the PCs level. Things that might have been hard to pull off at lvl 5 are trivial at lvl 15.
5E only has a tiny list that you cannot go outside of without the referee homebrewing more maneuvers. As you mention in your game, you're homebrewing that freedom into 5E. It doesn't exist in the RAW of the game.
DCC has six-pages of examples along with several bits of text that explicitly say you're not limited to those examples.
So no. Neither game has both. Because they're opposites. "Unlimited creative freedom to come up with whatever you want while simultaneously being limited to only what's on a tiny, predefined list" is contradictory. DCC gives you the creative freedom; 5E gives you the tiny, boring list. You've homebrewed more freedom into your home 5E game. That's great. That doesn't change the RAW of the game.
Regardless, this is a tangent within a tangent within a tangent. And tedious as hell. Tschüss.