Spells added via background / race

[jaappleton]

In the Ravnica book, they introduced backgrounds that add spells thematically appropriate to to your class list.

In Eberron they introduced races which add thematically appropriate spells to your class list.

It was with Eberron that they added healing spells. So you could actually be a Wizard, of a certain Dragonmarked Race, and have Healing Word be a Wizard spell keying off Intelligence.

.....How does everyone feel about this?

On one hand, I’m all for player options and abilities being expanded and playing the character you want.

I think that’s ESPECIALLY important for smaller groups, so nobody feels pigeonholed into playing a Bard, Druid or Cleric just because they have Healing Word, or spending a feat on Magic Initiate to get it. In small groups, I’ve personally got zero issue with adding a few spells to a character to shore up a glaring hole. I’m talking groups of only 2 or 3 players.

That said I think it’s also a bit.... Dangerous? Maybe that’s the wrong word. But to blur the lines between class lists is also a bad thing, overall, for the health of the game. Clerics have their spells because that partially defines them. Druids too, and the same goes down the line for all casters.

What are your thoughts?

[loki_ragnarock]

The Ravnica implementation is horrific. A blight on game design that does naught but creep power for the sake of creeping power.

The Eberron stuff is fine. Acceptable game design.


The difference is that the Eberron stuff comes with a significant opportunity cost; choosing the thing that nets you the spell you want must be balanced against other racial traits and bonuses. You don't start with automatic proficiency with medium armor and martial weapons, you don't start with the ideal racial stat bumps, etc. Apart from mechanical concerns, the flavor remains pretty intact; when you cast a healing spell as a wizard, it isn't an expression of your being a wizard but an expression being a halfling of house (insert here). You still get the lore of specificity, a reason why you aren't like other wizards.

Ravnica just gave a bolt on "here's some spells" with no meaningful opportunity cost. Barf.

[LibraryOgre]

I'm fine with it.

While class lists can thematically define classes, they are also, to an extent, arbitrary, and always have been. Why can't wizards cast healing spells? There's never been a really solid metaphysical answer, and the reasoning broke down the longer the game has gone on. It's long gone down to niche protection for the cleric, but, quite frankly, clerics seldom need it... they're built with a lot of power.

For example, I can think of two wizard healing spells in 2e... Vampiric Touch and Polymorph Self. Planescape: Torment also had Blood Bridge, which let you heal a person by damaging yourself. None of these spells worked like traditional clerical healing, but they did have the effect (in the case of Polymorph Self, a side effect) of healing a person.

Then 3e happened, and standard clerical healing was defined as an infusion of Positive Energy. All well and good, but the official line was still "Wizards cannot heal", despite wizards having a cantrip which was explicitly a shot of Positive Energy (disrupt undead), and other examples of positive energy healing living creatures and hurting undead (most of the Cure line and related spells). Folks tried to say "Arcane spells can't heal", but bards were there. The logic behind it broke down, even as clerics were given more and more thematically appropriate blasting spells, which was the other side of "wizards can't heal, clerics can't blast". But, well, why can't my fire cleric cast Fireball? Wouldn't that make sense? As that particular objection crumbled, the "Wizards can't heal" argument stayed.

Now, we're up to 5e. And, through various means, wizards and other "arcane" casters can acquire healing spells. I don't see a particular reason to stop them from doing so, especially when it meets the thematics of some other part of the character (i.e. a background or race).

[TigerT20]

Part of the thing about it though is while yeah, Ravinica's method is very dangerous - especially as martials don't get anything -, Eberron's method is probably the best way to do it. Because while you can now get healing spells as a wizard, it is at the cost of being a halfling with no bonus to Int, and a bunch of features that (other than Lucky, and even then), don't really help you be a wizard.

So you *could* spend your race on it... but it would be pretty much the same as going variant human and taking magic initiate: cleric for healing word, if not worse

[MarkVIIIMarc]

A WWII naval miniature game I played A LOT of eventually had ships of every type for every navy. It really greyed things out, taking away the uniqueness of each nation.

BUT, it is possible to play "no fantasy units" or no Ravinca so I'm split.

In the end maybe that PHB +1 thing I hear about for Adventure League will be necessary just to make characters different.

And I say this while my main character is a Lore Bard who gets to steal spells every few levels.

[Segev]

I only have hearsay to operate on in judging Ravnica, so take what I say here with a grain of salt.

I understand, in theory, what they were going for with having the Guild Backgrounds give access to new spells for your caster classes: you belong to this Guild, and they have secret techniques and must-have mystical mojo that mean they taught you these spells (or will teach them to you when you level up). However, I think this would have been better done as a series of subclasses.

Imagine if every Guild had a subclass for every class. Or even just a subclass for some number of classes, such that each class got roughly the same number of net subclasses!

...godlings, now I am tempted to buy the book to get the background info I'd need to try to design some.

The big issue with giving spells out with Backgrounds - aside from making them disproportionately good for caster classes - is that spell access is far more valuable than anything Backgrounds hand out. I know, skill and tool and language proficiencies are hard to get, and thus actually quite valuable in and of themselves, but they're a mixed bag on how powerful they are, and spells are even harder to get without a lot of opportunity cost. Especially spells added to your class list(s), as opposed to just "you can cast this 1/day."

If you're going to give spells out with Backgrounds, it should be a Cantrip or a 1/day 1st level spell, and anybody should get it. At most, it should be specified what class list it comes from and, if you're a member of that class, you might be allowed to add it as a "free" spell known/always prepared. And if you get this? It should not give you ANY proficiencies or bonus languages.

But again, the Guilds should have had Backgrounds that follow the standard format, and then made subclasses for several classes for each Guild, so that each Guild had N subclasses (give or take one or two) and each (core) Class had a subclass from M Guilds (give or take one or two). They could have pumped all the spell access they wanted into Wizard, Sorcerer, or other subclasses. If you want to be lazy with it, you could even make some of the magic-focused Guilds just create modified versions of Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster: extra spells known in exchange for giving up one or more of the subclass features, or weakening them in some way.

[Zetakya]

I'm fine with it.

While class lists can thematically define classes, they are also, to an extent, arbitrary, and always have been. Why can't wizards cast healing spells? There's never been a really solid metaphysical answer, and the reasoning broke down the longer the game has gone on. It's long gone down to niche protection for the cleric, but, quite frankly, clerics seldom need it... they're built with a lot of power.


This. When I'm DMing, I'm always willing to be flexible when it comes to Spell availability, if it's for a good RP reason. Take the recent UA for example: Warlocks get the Summon spells for Fey, Shadow, Undead, Aberrant and Fiendish - but not Celestial. But if a player of mine wanted to play a Celestial Warlock, I would be absolutely fine with letting them have Summon Celestial Spirit as appropriate for the character.

There are plenty of other examples where Spell lists are arbitrary. To a certain extent, Wizards are actually the worst class to deal with in this regard - because any spell any Wizard knows can (in theory) be copied by any Wizard anywhere into their Spellbook, which makes justifying why only this Wizard has it difficult.

Other Classes get a much more bounded set of Spells to call on - to a certain extent the "limited pick" casters (Sorcerer, Bard and Warlock) are creating their own custom spell list as they go along, and I have no problem with allowing them access to whatever is thematically appropriate for the character (while, of course, denying them access to things that aren't). Bard of course has this as an ability in the class, but it's equally appropriate for the other two (Sorcerers just manifest spontaneous magic without regard to rules, Warlocks are handed magic by their patrons).

[MaxWilson]

In the Ravnica book, they introduced backgrounds that add spells thematically appropriate to to your class list.

In Eberron they introduced races which add thematically appropriate spells to your class list.

It was with Eberron that they added healing spells. So you could actually be a Wizard, of a certain Dragonmarked Race, and have Healing Word be a Wizard spell keying off Intelligence.

.....How does everyone feel about this?

On one hand, I’m all for player options and abilities being expanded and playing the character you want.

I think that’s ESPECIALLY important for smaller groups, so nobody feels pigeonholed into playing a Bard, Druid or Cleric just because they have Healing Word, or spending a feat on Magic Initiate to get it. In small groups, I’ve personally got zero issue with adding a few spells to a character to shore up a glaring hole. I’m talking groups of only 2 or 3 players.

That said I think it’s also a bit.... Dangerous? Maybe that’s the wrong word. But to blur the lines between class lists is also a bad thing, overall, for the health of the game. Clerics have their spells because that partially defines them. Druids too, and the same goes down the line for all casters.

What are your thoughts?

I hate the Ravnica way. I'm fine with the Eberron way. There is significant opportunity cost in terms of stat bumps and missed racial features, and for wizards in terms of actual spellbook spell picks as well, there's an in-game logic to explain what is physically happening to restrict these spells from becoming general knowledge, and the spells are chosen such that there's often only really one spell you're picking up anyway. E.g. a Mark Shadow Eldritch Knight gains Pass Without Trace only, plus Dex +2 Cha +1 and +d4 on Stealth and Performance checks. All the other spells are already on the wizard list anyway IIRC. That's competitive with Wood Elf but they're both still tempting.

Jorasco Life Cleric 1/Divine Soul 5 with Extended Spell metamagic is the best healer in the game and a lot of fun, but... you get no +Cha and your movement rate is only 25'.

There are also a bunch of other races that are competitive in different ways, e.g. Goblins and Hobgoblins, plus good old variant humans (HAM, Mobile, etc.).

Overall I feel the Eberron way does a good job at still preserving meaningful choice.

[47Ace]

I think the Ravinaca way is problematic as much for the fact the martials get nothing (the backgrounds could have been universal power-ups which is still problematic if it isn't spelled out but OKish otherwise) as it is for the fact that a background is a very cheap price to pay. I also think that the backgrounds handed out some relatively powerful spells like Fireball and Spirit Guardians. Now I am biased as I have never read that book and most of what I know about it has to do with people complaining about how overpowered it is.

I think the Eberron way is decent as in order to get something different from you class list you have to generally accept a less effective stat boost. I think the mark of hospitality bumps charisma and has some spells not on the warlock list so a mark of hospitality Halfling could provide such good hospitality to a Demon that they are gifted with a fiend pact and get some different spells on their list but, I am not sure that there is anything on that list that would make a big power difference to the character. In general the given spells seem to tend more towards the flavorful then the strong. The only ones I see as intentionally worrying are the summon elemental ones from the mark of the storm (I have no idea how powerful those spells are) and armor of Agathies on the int boosting dwarven mark. But over all the spell selection and the higher cost of your race selection keep them under control. Now I have recently fallen in love with Eberron so I am Biased here too.

[Segev]

This. When I'm DMing, I'm always willing to be flexible when it comes to Spell availability, if it's for a good RP reason. Take the recent UA for example: Warlocks get the Summon spells for Fey, Shadow, Undead, Aberrant and Fiendish - but not Celestial. But if a player of mine wanted to play a Celestial Warlock, I would be absolutely fine with letting them have Summon Celestial Spirit as appropriate for the character.

There are plenty of other examples where Spell lists are arbitrary. To a certain extent, Wizards are actually the worst class to deal with in this regard - because any spell any Wizard knows can (in theory) be copied by any Wizard anywhere into their Spellbook, which makes justifying why only this Wizard has it difficult.

Other Classes get a much more bounded set of Spells to call on - to a certain extent the "limited pick" casters (Sorcerer, Bard and Warlock) are creating their own custom spell list as they go along, and I have no problem with allowing them access to whatever is thematically appropriate for the character (while, of course, denying them access to things that aren't). Bard of course has this as an ability in the class, but it's equally appropriate for the other two (Sorcerers just manifest spontaneous magic without regard to rules, Warlocks are handed magic by their patrons).

There's a difference between a work that is released for general consumption, with the statement, "This is the RAW for any game." Even when the whole book is "optional" (as anything non-core is), there's an implicit statement that this is balanced. That it's meant to work with just about any party in any table, or at least when it uses this splat. Anyway, there's a difference between that, and a DM allowing things at his table.

I would argue that, as a general-release thing, allowing a Warlock to trade out his 6th level Patron feature for Malleable Illusions and to take "major image cast from a 6th level spell slot" as his first Mystic Arcanum would not be good design and would probably not be balanced. It flat-out makes the Warlock better than the Illusionist for 99% of what he does. Let him steal the 14th level capstone in place of his Patron gift and he's head and shoulders above the Illusionist.

However, I would be fine with it in the right party, for the right character, in a particular game. As long as there isn't a wizard (particularly an illusionist) in the party, letting the Warlock be a Warlock/Illusionist hybrid via custom subclass is a boost in power (4 levels early access to at-will silent image+Illusory Reality, and a consistency of quality illusioncraft all the way from 2nd level onwards) can be just fine. But again, I wouldn't write it up as a general-release thing. It's very much a case-by-case, at-this-table rebuild that only works if it doesn't crush other options and step on toes at the table.

In that vein, allowing your Sorcerer player to pick up spells known that aren't on the Sorcerer list because they fit his character and theme? That's fine at your table, but using that as justification to say a general-release rule should enable them to pick up spells off-list just doesn't work. At least, not for me.

[iTreeby]

Are we not counting high elves, or drow for spell casting races?