Is the 5e spell list bloated?

[strangebloke]

in earlier editions, you had loads of spells like Greater Fireball that were just the good old Fireball spell, but a bit bigger and designed for a higher level slot.

5e removed a lot of these spells, and replaced it with upcasting. Greater Fireball isn't in the game, but functionally casting Fireball at 6th level has the same effect.

IMO, this was a great change since it greatly cut down on the number of effectively identical spells that were listed, and also removed a lot of one of my least favorite DNDisms, the "self referential blurb" where you're expected to go back and find the other spell that this spell is similar to. It also made things easier for certain casters (like sorcerers) who had a strong spell list but limited spells known, and made a lot of spells a lot more flexible.

Are there not more spells that could be eliminated though? We still have Major Image and Silent Image. We have Find Steed and Find Greater Steed. It seems like eliminating some of these spells or combining them would help make the system more understandable, though obviously in some cases the 'upcasting' would be pretty wordy.

[Tawmis]

in earlier editions, you had loads of spells like Greater Fireball that were just the good old Fireball spell, but a bit bigger and designed for a higher level slot.
5e removed a lot of these spells, and replaced it with upcasting. Greater Fireball isn't in the game, but functionally casting Fireball at 6th level has the same effect.
IMO, this was a great change since it greatly cut down on the number of effectively identical spells that were listed, and also removed a lot of one of my least favorite DNDisms, the "self referential blurb" where you're expected to go back and find the other spell that this spell is similar to. It also made things easier for certain casters (like sorcerers) who had a strong spell list but limited spells known, and made a lot of spells a lot more flexible.
Are there not more spells that could be eliminated though? We still have Major Image and Silent Image. We have Find Steed and Find Greater Steed. It seems like eliminating some of these spells or combining them would help make the system more understandable, though obviously in some cases the 'upcasting' would be pretty wordy.

Well I think the case of Find Steed and Find Greater Steed, aren't this ... class specific? Like for the Paladin?
So at level X you get "Find Steed" and level Y you get "Find Greater Steed."
When it's more aligned to being very class specific, I don't mind it - because then it's more of a "Features & Traits" of that class, compared to a number of classes being able to cast the same type of spell.

But I do love that they cut down on spells (as you originally stated) because it makes it way less overbearing for new people to see SO MANY SPELLS, and be like, "That looks too complicated. I'll just play a fighter."

[Kane0]

Yes there is still room to cut down on duplicates (lesser/greater restoration, (mass) cure wounds, etc) but i think the bigger issue is that almost anything fantastical generally gets bundled into a spell, plus a bunch of normal things done more efficiently. Makes for easy ways to expand in with splat content but that double edged sword leads to bloat in short order while at the same time stifling anything else that doesnt have access to those spells.

[Amnestic]

On the one hand, yes.

On the one hand, no.

There certainly are spells that are of a distinctly similar nature and could be trimmed back and replaced by adding an upcasting mechanic to one of them.

On the other hand, by keeping them as separate spells they're an extra spell known or prepared. Preparing Greater Restoration and Lesser Restoration may or may not be overkill, so do you choose only one? And which one do you choose? The one with a lower level spell slot requirement, or the one that does more stuff? Ditto for being a spells known caster like Bard. Taking away that choice is also a 'buff' to spellcasters. They now get additional flexibility with their spell slots and can say "I have the solution to that" at a lower "cost". Furthermore, while choosing between Lesser+Greater Restoration is a choice, is the combined Restoration so good as to be effectively a 'mandatory' choice?

Whether you consider such decision making worthy of retaining these 'duplicates' is going to be a personal judgment, but it is still a 'choice' one makes while choosing your spells that you're taking away - for better or worse.

I'd be fine with trimming it down, sure. But likewise I think spellcasters should have to be much more choosy about which spells they prepare/know, so those two go hand-in-hand.

[Tawmis]

On the one hand, yes.
On the one hand, no.
There certainly are spells that are of a distinctly similar nature and could be trimmed back and replaced by adding an upcasting mechanic to one of them.
On the other hand, by keeping them as separate spells they're an extra spell known or prepared. Preparing Greater Restoration and Lesser Restoration may or may not be overkill, so do you choose only one? And which one do you choose? The one with a lower level spell slot requirement, or the one that does more stuff? Ditto for being a spells known caster like Bard. Taking away that choice is also a 'buff' to spellcasters. They now get additional flexibility with their spell slots and can say "I have the solution to that" at a lower "cost". Furthermore, while choosing between Lesser+Greater Restoration is a choice, is the combined Restoration so good as to be effectively a 'mandatory' choice?
Whether you consider such decision making worthy of retaining these 'duplicates' is going to be a personal judgment, but it is still a 'choice' one makes while choosing your spells that you're taking away - for better or worse.
I'd be fine with trimming it down, sure. But likewise I think spellcasters should have to be much more choosy about which spells they prepare/know, so those two go hand-in-hand.

I think it'd be nice if they had just "Restoration" - and the description be "You touch a creature and can end either one disease or one condition afflicting it. The condition can be blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or poisoned. If cast at 4th level, you imbue a creature you touch with positive energy to undo a debilitating effect. You can reduce the target’s exhaustion level by one, or end one of the following effects on the target:
One effect that charmed or petrified the target
One curse, including the target’s attunement to a cursed magic item
Any reduction to one of the target’s ability scores
One effect reducing the target’s hit point maximum"

So that way it's under one spell, but upcasting it creates the benefit of the "Greater Restoration"

Again, just so it helps narrow down spells to try and remember what does what ("Is it Lesser Restoration or Greater Restoration that does XYZ?" - it'd just be under "Restoration" with the upcast having an additional ability)

I think this would help new people look to playing not be so intimidated by the sheer amount of spells to choose from.

[NichG]

I'd love a system in which every spell is written to be usable as a cantrip, but where they each also have a table of extra things the spell can do if cast as a 1st level, 3rd level, 7th level, etc slot.

For highly specific, esoteric effects, you could basically have a system in which you can learn 'alternate manifestations' of a given cantrip at certain slot levels, and various ways that learning those would depend on your access to magic. Maybe if you have the alternate Tier 5 variation of 'Heal' that turns it into a healing-over-time area effect rather than burst, you can't actually cast it as a burst, etc.

[Amnestic]

I think this would help new people look to playing not be so intimidated by the sheer amount of spells to choose from.

A part of me wishes that warlocks didn't get spell choices at all - their spells known would be set in stone by their patron, allowing them to function as the 'starter' spellcaster with a more limited spell-based toolkit.

I've not counted them but I'd expect the list of 'duplicates' you could trim down in 5e are probably no more than a dozen, probably closer to half that. I don't think it'd make a significant dent in the ~360 spells in the PHB's list for new players.

[Tawmis]

A part of me wishes that warlocks didn't get spell choices at all - their spells known would be set in stone by their patron, allowing them to function as the 'starter' spellcaster with a more limited spell-based toolkit.
I've not counted them but I'd expect the list of 'duplicates' you could trim down in 5e are probably no more than a dozen, probably closer to half that. I don't think it'd make a significant dent in the ~360 spells in the PHB's list for new players.

Absolutely!

[Sigreid]

For decades the trend on all fronts had been to expand rather than shrink things. The main reasons are clear and understandable. First, players always want more. Second, it gives them more to sell.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The answer (for me) to the title question is "yes, absolutely."

As to solutioning...

Better upcasting would be nice (along with reducing spell preps to compensate). But really, a crap-ton of effects just need to be moved outside the "this is a spell" bucket. Make them 4e-style rituals that anyone can learn to perform, balanced by non-spell-slot factors (exhaustion, monetary costs, explicit cooldowns, etc). Keep spells for those things that need to be done right here, right now (in the main). And then drop the total number of spells dramatically.

[Chronos]

Some of the decrease in the length of the spell list from 3rd to 5th was due to consolidating spells into upcast versions, but a lot more is spells that were just plain removed. We no longer have, at all, Shadow Conjuration or Shadow Evocation, or Shrink Item (Enlarge/Reduce doesn't cover remotely the same use case), or Hold Undead, or Hide from Animals, or Antilife Shell, or Mark of Justice, or lots of other spells.

And at the same time, they also added a lot of new spells. Nowadays, a typical cleric's loadout includes Spirit Guardians, Guiding Bolt, and Sacred Flame, for instance, all of which are new.

[PhoenixPhyre]

We no longer have, at all, ... or Antilife Shell.

Uh, wat?

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Antilife%20Shell#content

[RogueJK]

The current granularity also allows the designers to do stuff like make some of the spells of that "type" available to certain casters, but not others.

Lower level, less impactful spells should generally be more widely available, while higher level spells can be more specialized.

For example, do we want a Bard to be able to be just as good as Healer as a Cleric because they both get Cure Wounds at Level 1 and then can eventually upcast it enough to make it equivalent to the current Heal spell that's Cleric/Druid only?

If we smooth it out to just being a handful of spells with differing upcast effects, then all spellcasters will start to feel more similar.

[JackPhoenix]

If we smooth it out to just being a handful of spells with differing upcast effects, then all spellcasters will start to feel more similar.

Considering what they are doing with spell lists (and generally shoving spells everywhere as a replacement for actual features) in D&Done, I don't think WotC is concerned with that.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The current granularity also allows the designers to do stuff like make some of the spells of that "type" available to certain casters, but not others.

Lower level, less impactful spells should generally be more widely available, while higher level spells can be more specialized.

For example, do we want a Bard to be able to be just as good as Healer as a Cleric because they both get Cure Wounds at Level 1 and then can eventually upcast it enough to make it equivalent to the current Heal spell that's Cleric/Druid only?

If we smooth it out to just being a handful of spells with differing upcast effects, then all spellcasters will start to feel more similar.

Only if we continue the (bad, IMO) paradigm where spellcasters get most of their identity from their spell list (ie are spellcasters first and foremost and the big difference is what spells they can cast). That's not good design anyway. If spells were a smaller part of their identity, they could be bards or clerics first and use spells, instead of "bard vs cleric" being mostly about which spells they get. More value in actually-interesting, actually-differentiating class features and less into generic elements like spells.

Spells are ultra-generic. That's by design. They're designed as cross-class things. I'd much prefer a world where every class got most of its power and distinctiveness from class features, with spells being a parallel track. More of the size of maneuvers for BM. Nice, but even without them you still have a proper identity and Cool Things you can do.

Every class should have 1-3 Big Cool Things that are unique to them and them alone. Spellcasting, by its very nature, cannot be one of those. It's a secondary thing. Like ability checks/skill proficiencies.


Considering what they are doing with spell lists (and generally shoving spells everywhere as a replacement for actual features) in D&Done, I don't think WotC is concerned with that.

Also this.

[Leon]

D&D Magic is a bloated mess in need of a sliming down and a refit and restructure.
Spells are free and easy, magic should be powerful but costly/risky. The classes that exist currently to just fling safe magic at problems till they go away or run out of magic would need to be retuned but they would be more interesting to not rely solely on magic.

Most magic lasts far too long, the durations for most things should be at least halved if not more so that you have to make a choice of when to cast it in a combat rather be of well it'll be over before the minute duration expires, concentration while a fine mechanic is applied far to much across the entire list, many spells that have it shouldn't (the Smite series for example should be: Cast spell and on next attack within 3 rounds applies effect) and at the very least should be divided into Defensive and Offensive focuses. Defensive (Buffs and support) is your standard concentration as it is and Offensive is for combat effects that you may wish to maintain as well but at a cost to keep it running that will escalate.

[Snails]

For example, do we want a Bard to be able to be just as good as Healer as a Cleric because they both get Cure Wounds at Level 1 and then can eventually upcast it enough to make it equivalent to the current Heal spell that's Cleric/Druid only?

If we smooth it out to just being a handful of spells with differing upcast effects, then all spellcasters will start to feel more similar.

Good points.

And there is no clarity about where to draw the line. Cure Wounds could conceivably encompass the functionality of: Cure Wounds, Healing Word, Prayer of Healing, Mass Healing Word, Mass Cure Wounds, Heal. All could be one spell that is cast and/or upcast in different ways.

I think this level of class convergence is undesirable. I want the Bard to be a useful healer, but to be as effective as a Cleric should come at a high cost. A typical Bard takes either Cure Wounds or Healing Word as a known spell and lives with that choice.

Find Steed is a fine spell to be more available, or at least more easily available to certain subclasses. But I want Greater Find Steed to be costly to non-Paladins, as a general rule.

The wrinkle here is upcasting is not necessarily the same kind of restriction when comparing full casters and half casters. A full spell caster can more easily upcast to 5th or 6th than a Paladin can cast a 4th level slot.

[strangebloke]

Yes there is still room to cut down on duplicates (lesser/greater restoration, (mass) cure wounds, etc) but i think the bigger issue is that almost anything fantastical generally gets bundled into a spell, plus a bunch of normal things done more efficiently. Makes for easy ways to expand in with splat content but that double edged sword leads to bloat in short order while at the same time stifling anything else that doesnt have access to those spells.
Agreed on both fronts.

Especially because when you have things like exclusive spells, its often really the case that the spell functions like a class feature. Hunter's Mark, Find Steed, etc.

I can sort of see the original logic being applied here. Having these features be technically optional as part of a broader system opened the door for a lot of cross pollination and customization. A ranger doesn't have to use hunter's mark, and can take a different spell instead.

But overall I think we'd be better off if there was a general non-spell system where a character could choose explicit abilities to customize their character.

To take the example of Animal Messnger, there's really no reason why this has to be a spell.

On the one hand, yes.

On the one hand, no.

There certainly are spells that are of a distinctly similar nature and could be trimmed back and replaced by adding an upcasting mechanic to one of them.

On the other hand, by keeping them as separate spells they're an extra spell known or prepared. Preparing Greater Restoration and Lesser Restoration may or may not be overkill, so do you choose only one? And which one do you choose? The one with a lower level spell slot requirement, or the one that does more stuff? Ditto for being a spells known caster like Bard. Taking away that choice is also a 'buff' to spellcasters. They now get additional flexibility with their spell slots and can say "I have the solution to that" at a lower "cost". Furthermore, while choosing between Lesser+Greater Restoration is a choice, is the combined Restoration so good as to be effectively a 'mandatory' choice?

Whether you consider such decision making worthy of retaining these 'duplicates' is going to be a personal judgment, but it is still a 'choice' one makes while choosing your spells that you're taking away - for better or worse.

I'd be fine with trimming it down, sure. But likewise I think spellcasters should have to be much more choosy about which spells they prepare/know, so those two go hand-in-hand.
I think there's a difference between depth and complexity.

Sure, having loads of basically redundant spells adds complexity to the choice of which spells to prepare, but this was true with Fireball and Greater Fireball as well. In the end, 'choosing which spells to prepare' simply isn't a huge part of the game and isn't really interesting.

The needs of the normy player who just wants to build a wizard and shoot fire without referencing loads of different entries in the spell list outweighs the needs of the powergamer who finds it very interesting to think about which of two similar options he wants.


For decades the trend on all fronts had been to expand rather than shrink things. The main reasons are clear and understandable. First, players always want more. Second, it gives them more to sell.

True. Find Greater Steed bears mentioning here, since it wasn't printed until Xanathar's and thus couldn't have been included as an 'upcast' of find steed.... even though in principle it totally could have.


The answer (for me) to the title question is "yes, absolutely."

As to solutioning...

Better upcasting would be nice (along with reducing spell preps to compensate). But really, a crap-ton of effects just need to be moved outside the "this is a spell" bucket. Make them 4e-style rituals that anyone can learn to perform, balanced by non-spell-slot factors (exhaustion, monetary costs, explicit cooldowns, etc). Keep spells for those things that need to be done right here, right now (in the main). And then drop the total number of spells dramatically.
Agreed completely.

The current granularity also allows the designers to do stuff like make some of the spells of that "type" available to certain casters, but not others.

Lower level, less impactful spells should generally be more widely available, while higher level spells can be more specialized.

For example, do we want a Bard to be able to be just as good as Healer as a Cleric because they
both get Cure Wounds at Level 1 and then can eventually upcast it enough to make it equivalent to the current Heal spell that's Cleric/Druid only?

If we smooth it out to just being a handful of spells with differing upcast effects, then all spellcasters will start to feel more similar.

I would consider this to be more of a problem with how the MC-ing rules work, as well as how much crosspollination/contamination exists between the various spell lists.

Frankly every class after level ten becomes kind of a snoozer for me in terms of identity, other than the wizard. Very few of those high level unique bard spells really make me go "wow."

[NichG]

Make instant healing exclusive to clerics, make the fast healing/regeneration line exclusive to druids, and make bards get a line that gives people temporary hitpoints.

[strangebloke]

Make instant healing exclusive to clerics, make the fast healing/regeneration line exclusive to druids, and make bards get a line that gives people temporary hitpoints.

I don't think pigeonholing classes by role is a good idea. Leads to quota-based class design.

[NichG]

I don't think pigeonholing classes by role is a good idea. Leads to quota-based class design.

Then just let bards be as good as clerics at healing hitpoints :tongue:

[Greywander]

From a conceptual perspective, a bloated spell list actually feels in character for something like a wizard, where they have to study individual spells that produce a specific effect. That doesn't mean it's a good design choice, though, and certainly not a solid foundation on which to base all spellcasting.

Something that I think could work quite well is to reduce spells to general effect but then give each spell it's own list of "metamagic" (i.e. upcasting effects) that customize how the spell functions. A spellcaster would then learn both a limited number of spells and a limited number of metamagics, giving them the option to focus on a specific spell to make it more customizable or spread their metamagics between all their spells for greater overall flexibility. (Or maybe you'd have to choose between learning a new spell or learning a new metamagic for a spell you already know.) As an example, we really only need one offensive fire spell, and then it could be customized with metamagic effects to add damage, range, additional targets, increase the area of effect, etc.

Another example of this might be an invisibility spell that by default can only target yourself and breaks as soon as you do anything, even move. We can then have a metamagic that allows you to move without breaking invisibility, or attack, or cast spells. We could add an option that allows you to target another creature, with additional targets with further upcasting. Likewise, an option to target objects, with upcasting allowing either larger objects or more targets. You can then choose how to combine these. So maybe you can make a bunch of creatures invisible, but it breaks if they move because you never took that specific option. Or maybe you can do pretty much anything without breaking the invisibility, but you can only target yourself because you never took the metamagic for targeting others. Maybe you took the option that allows you to attack, but not the one that allows you to move. And of course, you only get these additional effects by upcasting; the base effect might actually function like a cantrip, giving you at-will invisibility so long as you only target yourself and stand completely still not doing anything.

Personally, I'd actually kind of like each class to use it's own spellcasting mechanic. For example, I wrote up a homebrew modification of the artificer that replaces their spellcasting with an expanded spell-storing item system. Basically, they just put their spells into items, which in turn have a limited charge for casting the spells from that item. You can then share those items with your party. I haven't done as much playtesting as I'd like, but as a concept I think it fits the artificer concept exponentially better than what it had before, and the little playtesting I've done so far has confirmed this. TBH, I think they should have exactly as many spellcasting classes as they do spellcasting subsystems, and classes that use the same subsystem should probably be combined into a single class.


But overall I think we'd be better off if there was a general non-spell system where a character could choose explicit abilities to customize their character.
I was actually going to do this in a big overhaul I was working on. For reasons, I had to make every class effectively a full caster, so what I decided to do was to generalize the concept of "spells" into more general abilities. So it could be an Arcane Spell (i.e. learned, wizard-style magic), or it could be a Divine Wonder (holy/clerical magic), or a Supernatural Power (sorcery/innate magic), or a Mythical Feat (mundane skill honed to superhuman levels). I was planning on making these distinct, but hadn't yet worked out the details. Some ideas included things like like spells and wonders requiring components (thought not necessarily the same kind as each other), or powers being linked to a specific bloodline that gives you a weakness, e.g. you can't use fey bloodline powers while touching iron. And obviously something like an "Arcane Nullification Field" would have no effect on wonders, powers, or feats.

[Amechra]

I honestly think that we need more spells with pre-requisites. And not in the "you must know 4 fire spells sense", either — we need something that cleanly and diagetically separates "adventurer" magic from "villain" magic and "quest-giver" magic.



The spell list being bloated and borked is partially an unintended consequence of how the game has shifted over time.

In pre-WotC D&D, the game was loosely designed around three phases. You'd start off as a bunch of poorly equipped chumps, graduate into being mighty heroes once you have an adventure or two under your belt, and then eventually retire and let the cycle start over again. To encourage you to retire (and to give you something to aspire to), a lot of classes got higher-level features that were super cool but clashed with the murderhobo lifestyle — the Fighter got their own keep and a small standing army, the Wizard got a sweet Wizard tower and overpowered spells, Thieves got to run their own guilds, etc.

The reason I say that it was "loosely" designed that way is because I'm not entirely sure whether it was the original intent behind those rules or if this was all just an emergent property of the (generally slapdash) rules.

Then WotC got the IP and decided that D&D should just be that "mighty heroes" sweet-spot. Which isn't a bad design goal, honestly — that's the part that most people enjoy, so why not just make that the entire game? The issue is that, when they stripped out the "hey, here's a nice retirement for your character" class features from the game, they didn't go through the spell list and cut out spells that don't fit with the overall "go on adventures and do small unit combat" paradigm that they were going for.

To put it an alternate way — the spell list is fundamentally designed for a game you don't actually get to play with half of it for extended periods of time. And, when you did, cool spells like Teleport and the like were (theoretically) balanced against the fact that the Fighter would be playing a small army and the Rogue would own the criminal underworld of whatever city serves as your home base.

[Witty Username]

I think the spells available could use some garbage collection, and a more effective guidance on creating new spells.

Their are some abimsal gaps, anyone who has tried to keep their black dragon sorcerer on brand probably knows what I am talking about.
--
I think spell casters should cast spells, If a spellcaster's primary thing is not casting spells, then they aren't a spell caster.

[Hytheter]

I think there's a difference between depth and complexity.

Sure, having loads of basically redundant spells adds complexity to the choice of which spells to prepare, but this was true with Fireball and Greater Fireball as well. In the end, 'choosing which spells to prepare' simply isn't a huge part of the game and isn't really interesting

I'm pretty sure Amnestic's point wasn't about 'depth' in the spell selection minigame, but just the fact the fact that condensing spells in this way allows casters to effectively have more spells than they do already. If I'm allowed three spells and want Fireball, Greater Fireball, Lesser Restoration and Greater Restoration, then tough! I have to give up on one of them. However, if the Fireballs and the Restorations get condensed I can have all four at once with room to spare for Shield - compared to the old paradigm, I've effectively gotten five spells for the price of three.

Of course, the simple solution to that problem is to just reduce the number of spells casters can have at once.

[MoiMagnus]

IMO, almost every (non-ritual) spell should have an effect when upcast, especially if you remove from the spell-list things that shouldn't be spells. And quite naturally when adding upcast options to spells, you will end up merging multiple spells into one.

Then, since you increase upcasting possibilities, you can significantly reduce the number of spell known/prepared, especially at high level where spell scrolls and potions exists to cover your bases (though they could benefit from being reworked a little bit, especially in term of price).

[KorvinStarmast]

I'd love a system in which every spell is written to be usable as a cantrip, but where they each also have a table of extra things the spell can do if cast as a 1st level, 3rd level, 7th level, etc slot. I think that 13th Age did something like this; you could choose to go for a higher effect at certain levels based on choices made when leveling up. Didn't get very far with that before the game broke up due to RL scheduling things.

Considering what they are doing with spell lists (and generally shoving spells everywhere as a replacement for actual features) in D&Done, I don't think WotC is concerned with that. Hard to disagree.

Especially because when you have things like exclusive spells, its often really the case that the spell functions like a class feature. Hunter's Mark, Find Steed, etc. Find steed should have been a Paladin class feature. Or, the spell should have been up-castable.


The needs of the normy player who just wants to build a wizard and shoot fire without referencing loads of different entries in the spell list outweighs the needs of the powergamer who finds it very interesting to think about which of two similar options he wants.
Fair point.


Frankly every class after level ten becomes kind of a snoozer for me in terms of identity, other than the wizard. Very few of those high level unique bard spells really make me go "wow." Prismatic Spray can be scary good, but it's also kind of clunky to implement at the table.

[JackPhoenix]

I'd love a system in which every spell is written to be usable as a cantrip, but where they each also have a table of extra things the spell can do if cast as a 1st level, 3rd level, 7th level, etc slot.

For highly specific, esoteric effects, you could basically have a system in which you can learn 'alternate manifestations' of a given cantrip at certain slot levels, and various ways that learning those would depend on your access to magic. Maybe if you have the alternate Tier 5 variation of 'Heal' that turns it into a healing-over-time area effect rather than burst, you can't actually cast it as a burst, etc.

Spheres of Power pretty much does that.

[strangebloke]

I'm pretty sure Amnestic's point wasn't about 'depth' in the spell selection minigame, but just the fact the fact that condensing spells in this way allows casters to effectively have more spells than they do already. If I'm allowed three spells and want Fireball, Greater Fireball, Lesser Restoration and Greater Restoration, then tough! I have to give up on one of them. However, if the Fireballs and the Restorations get condensed I can have all four at once with room to spare for Shield - compared to the old paradigm, I've effectively gotten five spells for the price of three.

Of course, the simple solution to that problem is to just reduce the number of spells casters can have at once.

oh fair enough and I agree on both points.

[Zuras]

I don't think pigeonholing classes by role is a good idea. Leads to quota-based class design.

I agree that it doesn’t match the style that 5e has adopted to this point, and that there are significant drawbacks to providing strong niche protection to specific classes, but it’s a design choice, not a truism.

Most 5e players like that an all-wizard party is playable rather than a complete dog’s breakfast, and I agree that almost everyone is happy to tell the new player who asks “so do we already have a healer in the party?” that it isn’t really needed in 5e. I just don’t see a system that already supports 14 classes letting you enforce strong boundaries without either inviting abuse or radically altering the system.

[Amechra]

I think that part of the problem is that some "all one class" parties are WAY more viable than others. All Bards/Clerics/Druids/Sorcerers/Warlocks/Wizards? Yeah, sure, why not. All Barbarians? Well, there are going to be a ton of things that they can't handle without outside help, though anything that gets within melee range of them will be very dead.

Quote-based class design can work if there's significant overlap in what classes can do. 4e's "bring someone from each role and you'll be fine" approach was a decent way of handling this, because it let you see at a glance where the party had gaps and made sure that you had a bunch of choices if/when you wanted to fill those gaps.

[Silly Name]

On one hand, I would say "yes" - the spell list, even just in the PHB, is definitely too big and a lot of spells are somewhat redundant or slight variations of another, even if there's enough mechanical difference to make them distinct - e.g., you have Acid Splash, Chill Touch, Eldritch Blast and Fire Bolt, which are four distinct flavours of "ranged spell attack" (and Fire Bolt is somewhat redundant with Produce Flame), which I think may be a bit much. If we expand to all possible cantrip attacks, including Save effects, the list already feels pretty big.

On the other, as I said, most spells are distinct enough at a mechanical level that they justify their existance... most of the time (looking at you, True Strike!)... So there's very little pruning you can do without sacrificing the unique and peculiar effects of this vast selection of spells.

I would still prefer if the spell list in the PHB wasn't so long, but it's partly a product of the spell level system, and partly aggregation of decades of history producing a lot of iconic spells that you really can't remove from the game.

[ahyangyi]

I wish all spells have interesting heighten effects, even if just silly numeric extrapolations (like a heightened Levitate letting me to make an elephant afloat).

Also, I like to have different spells that essentially do the same thing but differently, and I don't see that as redundancy. It's nice to be able to play a blaster whose staple spell is Shatter instead of Fireball.

[Theodoxus]

Eh, just use Spheres of Power. Problem solved.

[strangebloke]

I think that part of the problem is that some "all one class" parties are WAY more viable than others. All Bards/Clerics/Druids/Sorcerers/Warlocks/Wizards? Yeah, sure, why not. All Barbarians? Well, there are going to be a ton of things that they can't handle without outside help, though anything that gets within melee range of them will be very dead.

Quote-based class design can work if there's significant overlap in what classes can do. 4e's "bring someone from each role and you'll be fine" approach was a decent way of handling this, because it let you see at a glance where the party had gaps and made sure that you had a bunch of choices if/when you wanted to fill those gaps.

Yeah I mean in a sense one of the 'quotas' your team needs to fill is single-target damage, and barbarians can fill that role, but they do nothing else. That's the problem. Other classes can fill that role too and do other things but the barbarian is hyperspecialized on the order of a pure healbot caster or pure explosion wizard.

I think its fine that clerics are the best healers but bards, druids, rangers, and paladins can do it as well, and that you're sort of okay without a healer because of health potions and natural healing. I don't think it'd be fine if healers were 100% required and clerics were the only ones who could do it.

To get back on topic, the way the game achieves this (mostly) is through spell lists. Clerics have all the healing spells, druids have some, paladins have some. The net effect here is pretty good, I think, since it makes spell selection a kind of modular design thing where a lot of characters might have 'cure wounds' prepared, but that decisions plays out really different depending on the class.

The problem here is that a lot of these options kind of suck and others simply shouldn't have been made into spells at all. Hunter's Mark and Hex both being spells is kind of pointless. Can you imagine how lame it'd be if lay on hands was a spell?

[Phhase]

Frankly, I don't think there's enough bloat. Sure, too much redundancy is bad, but just a bit kinda lends this feel that this isn't just all the possible spells, it's all the spells people have invented over the years, which naturally means there'd be some overlap, inheritance, copied work, etc. It feels...realistic? Lived-in?


Eh, just use Spheres of Power. Problem solved.

Based.

[ahyangyi]

The problem here is that a lot of these options kind of suck and others simply shouldn't have been made into spells at all. Hunter's Mark and Hex both being spells is kind of pointless. Can you imagine how lame it'd be if lay on hands was a spell?

Alas, that's how Pathfinder 2e went.


Eh, just use Spheres of Power. Problem solved.

Kinda true but I also feel SoP could use some extra options as well.