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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dcollins" data-source="post: 771887" data-attributes="member: 876">Being able to make up your own spells is a huge benefit. The fact that those spells need to be "balanced" doesn't mitigate this -- that just means they're desirable (advantageous) without entirely breaking the game.Fighters don't get to invent their own feats. Rogues don't get to invent new skill categories. Clerics don't get to invent new domains of their specification. Allowing spellcasters to invent their own class features (i.e., spell lists) without limit is a massive breakout from the whole logic of an RPG, in which players select from available options, described in rulebooks, for their PCs.DMG p. 95 says: "Introducing an unbalanced spell does more damage to your game than handing out an unbalanced magic item. " That is, one single judgement lapse on the part of the DM in this regard can potentially wreck the whole campaign. Instead of forcing the DM to make scores of these new-spell balancing decisions all the time, the high expense forces players to think very carefully before requesting a new spell. Therefore, the new-spell-design burden and responsibility are distributed among multiple people in the playgroup, and not solely the DM.Theme-wise, it can make sense to have wizards be researching new spells, so rules are given to help DMs who allow that in their campaigns. But it is definitely a huge benefit (no other class gets to design their own class features in-game), and like any increase in PC power, needs to come at the expense of some other in-game resource. I would not even want to see this rule loosened up, because by default there needs to be some "hard control" (DMG p. 96) on spellcasting abilities, if nothing else so that new players are at least basically playing the same game by the same rules as most everyone else. Similarly, it should always be crystal-clear in the rulebooks that by default players need to choose from options in the books, and not let new DMs be bullied into thinking that players always get to write their own rules for their PCs.</blockquote>

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