Spell List Swaps? Paladin <-> Ranger / Bard --> Warlock

[gfishfunk]

Could you swap out the Warlock's entire spell list for the Bard's spell list without causing major issues? What about swapping Ranger for Paladin (or vice versa)?

I know that the Warlock would lose some invocation opportunities without Eldrich Blast; that is granted. Mostly I am wondering if it would work and whether it would create any power-gaming combos (that is not the goal). I was thinking of homebrewing a jester god Warlock (using Bard spells), and a Ranger-of-the-faith style character.

I'm interested in whether this would have any unforeseen balance issues. I'm not really interested in alternatives, as I know Oath of the Ancients is just fine for giving paladins a quasi-ranger feel. Just interested in balance issues.

[Easy_Lee]

The two classes with significantly smaller spell lists are warlocks and sorcerers.

In the case of sorcerers, we can assume the designers may have felt certain spells are dangerous when combined with metamagic. In the case of warlocks, I believe the stated design goal was a class which casts fewer spells more often.

However, I can't see any major balance problems. Any spell of a given level should be about equally as effective as all other spells of that level. If a particular caster class having a particular spell is a problem, that's likely a problem with the spell, not the caster.

[Silavor]

The biggest issue I see with Bard replacing Warlock (and it's not even an issue, just something to watch out for) is that Warlocks can cast a highest-level-available spell every encounter if they're getting proper short rests in. Bards have a lot of scaling AoE crowd control spells that seem to have been purposely kept off of the Warlock's spell list. These aren't necessarily "I win" buttons, but being able to spam Sleep, Blindness/Deafness, Stinking Cloud, Greater Invisibility, and eventually Animate Objects every encounter will greatly reduce the difficulty of the game.

Without access to Eldritch Blast, though, spamming crowd control and utility spells is pretty much the only thing a bardlock like this could do.

[Blue Lantern]

Automatically increased healing refreshing at short rest, nuff said.

Also, unless you get back eldritch blast with a feat or go full bladelock, the Warlock becomes severely lacking in DPS.

All in all, I don't think is the best idea, getting some bard spells as expanded spell list for the new pact is probably the more balanced solution.

[R.Shackleford]

I played in a game where the sorcerer was allowed to choose which spell list they took spells from at each level.

This probabaly could become broken with enough work but... Holy hell was that character straight up awesome and gave the feeling of "I'm not a fricken wizard's little brother".

Spike liked to use Spike Growth and then thorn whip + move + quicken thorn whip.

Of course the barbarian was dragging people through it too so yeah.