Essential Magic

[Xuc Xac]

D&D has a huge number of spells that cover a wide variety of effects, but it seems like many of them are just redundant. There are spells at different levels that could have been made as one spell with varying degrees of power.

If you had to trim the spell lists down to 10 spell effects, what would they be? (You can make them scalable so flaming sphere, fireball, and delayed blast fireball all count as one option.) What are the 10 most essential magical abilities that arcane casters should have access to? What about divine?

[Yora]

That really depends a great deal on what kind of spellcaster you want. With it's huge number of spells, D&D allows for a very wide variety of very different spellcaster.
10 essential spells for a necromancer would be very different than for an illusionist or evoker. If you want 10 spells to cover all these different concepts of wizards alone, you end up with only 1 or 2 spells for each archetype.
There are good reasons to have worlds in which there are no illusionists or summoners, but arcane magic is exclusively the domain of destroying stuff with the power of the elements. In that case using just 10 spells is not so much of a problem. But if you have 20 or more very different things that magic can be used for, you just need a much bigger number of spells.

[Eldan]

Well, I'd probably make one or two effects per spell school. Something like:

Arcane:

Illusion
Charm
Blast
Animate
Ward
Summon
Shapeshift
Detect
Divine
Move
Dispel

Divine:
Drop: Blast, Illusion and Charm.
Add:
Heal
Strengthen
Remove Condition

[Daftendirekt]

Divine:
Drop: Blast, Illusion and Charm.
Add:
Heal
Strengthen
Remove Condition

Oh, right, so you want to turn the cleric into the Healer. You must hate them. Take away all the cool stuff and REALLY turn them into a healbot.

[Frog Dragon]

Oh, right, so you want to turn the cleric into the Healer. You must hate them. Take away all the cool stuff and REALLY turn them into a healbot.
Yes because healing is the ONLY thing you could do with that list. I mean, there are no buffs, no necromancy, not even summons on that list! You can't even dispel! Oh wait, you can, nevermind.

Also, buffs are pretty much the best thing you can do as a cleric.

[Kurald Galain]

What are the 10 most essential magical abilities that arcane casters should have access to?
Potence
Celerity
Fortitude
Auspex
Obfuscate
Dominate
Presence
Protean
Animalism
Thaumaturgy


(and yes, when you think about it, that's actually a pretty good list)

[Darth Stabber]

Illusion
Enchantment
Conjuration
Transmutation
Necromancy
Evocation
Abjuration
Divination
Universal

There got it nine.

[Eldan]

Oh, right, so you want to turn the cleric into the Healer. You must hate them. Take away all the cool stuff and REALLY turn them into a healbot.

Uhm, look at the list again. Clerics get:

Animate
Ward
Summon
Shapeshift
Detect
Divine
Move
Dispel
Heal
Strengthen
Remove Condition

That's about what they can do now. True, they have a few blast effects, but usually, that's not the best thing they can do.

[navar100]

There are other factors to consider:

Damage type
Number of targets
Type of target
Area effect
Range

It's logical to go Flaming Sphere, Fireball, Delayed Blast Fireball, Meteor Swarm, but where do Lightning Bolt, Cone of Cold, and Disintegrate come in?

[FMArthur]

There are other factors to consider:

Damage type
Number of targets
Type of target
Area effect
Range

It's logical to go Flaming Sphere, Fireball, Delayed Blast Fireball, Meteor Swarm, but where do Lightning Bolt, Cone of Cold, and Disintegrate come in?

The same way they do in psionics or with the Energy Substitution feat: they come in as variations of those spells.