so an thing that has been bugging me about bards is their magical secrets feature. It makes sense for bards to have the feature, they are an traveler, and often the preservers of the oral tradition, inspired by the great deeds of previous heroes. It makes some amount of sense for an bard to be able to compose an ballad that animates dead after walking bare foot on land cursed by necromancers, as he composes to create an outlet for the feelings he or she may have felt after such an experience, makes sense for them to be inspired by the divine resonance of an cleric after hearing them cast divine word or conjure celestial or by divine insight sent by a god of art and music for them to be inspired to compose an holy song, incorporating the words of creation themselves in new and interesting ways and thus being able to cast cleric spells. It makes sense for them to read the work of an great archmage and think "this is just musical notations, these verbal components are really just lyrics and these somatic components are really just chords on an instrument, i can make a song out of this!", it makes sense for them to be inspired by the beauty of nature or an visit to the feywild, and suddenly finding themselves able to attract fey creatures with their music, bards are the ultimate jack of all trades and it makes sense for them to have access to all kinds of different spells, and the feature can add to the story of your particular bard as we get to learn what magics he or she has composed

but i feel that the feature also makes a lot of sense for a sorcerer. Think about it, no two sorcerers are the same, no magical heritage should give birth to the same selection of spells as others. Because imagine the stories these new spell can tell. Imagine the mark of an demon turning a wild magic sorcerer into what is essentially a living portal to the abyss, his link to that plane giving him summon lesser demons. Imagine the influence of an dryad manifesting in a sorcerer as not only enchantment spells but also powerful nature magic such as awaken or conjure fey. Imagine an divine soul sorcerer, marked at birth to fight evil, manifesting the ability to conjure fourth an lojal magical steed who will aid him in battle like the mighty paladins. Imagine an shadow sorcerer who gained his powers after his village was devastated by an lich's army, now finding himself able to use the same foul arcane magic to create undead minions of his own but unable to find a real use for them. I feel that while these concepts can already be partially made with multiclassing and some spells the sorcerer already has, but at the same time i think that an great amount of flavor and story can be made from giving sorcerers an similar feature. And so i was wondering if i should create the following variant:

instead of an sorcerer getting an subclass feature at 6th level, they gain the magical secrets feature from the bard, thus gaining two more spells known that can come from the spell list of any class. You may also substitute learning a new meta magic option at 10th level for two more magical secrets.

this variant is built on two assumptions: the first being that since most full spell casters gain an feature from their subclass at 6th level, these subclass features should be approximately the same in power level, and so moving an subclass feature from one class to another will not greatly affect the power balance of the classes. The only fear i have with adding this potential feature is that it would make bards less special, less unique, since now one of the features giving the bard class its personality, magical secrets, is now shared with the sorcerer. And while the bard still has access to higher level magical secrets, rarely does anyone really get to this stage of the game.

so whatcha' all think? is this an balanced and valid variant feature to the sorcerer, that can add a great deal of flavor to an otherwise slightly stale class, or will this just break everything?

I like it. Seems like you might be stepping on the lore bards territory, and any spell up to 3rd level is great at that level. But unless you add it later on like at 10th level you won't get higher level spells. 

so basically you agree in all the fears that i am encroaching on the bards territory (lore bard in particular) i have with this variant and all the hopes i have for it, but say that i should give them third level spells from any class only once they reach 10th? that sounds maybe just a little silly. I get that sorcerer is supposed to have fewer high level spells than other classes, but this seems a bit harsh?

I like adding magical secrets to the sorcerer, it helps them have more spells known which i feel like they need. Lore wise i like your explanation on how it works as well.

Magical secrets adds spells to your list for only levels you can cast, so having it at 6th level means only up to 3rd level spells from any class. having it later at say 10th level, like where the bard has it, gives you up to 5th level spells from any class.

This might be better as a subclass where you get at 6th, and 14th you get magical secrets and at 18th you get something like the wizard's spell mastery. 

Hello, Glamour Bard here.

Honestly, it's really not a problem for me if Sorcerers got a round of Magical Secrets, but let me warn you that it may be more than you bargained for. The thing with Magical Secrets is that once you have chosen those spells you can NEVER change them (unless you're just changing them to a spell you would normally get) and as a result of that there is going to be a lot of hand wringing.

Balance wise, the big 'gotcha' is the ability to stack meta magic onto the spells you get from Magical Secrets, Some spells were just never really balanced around being meta'd and thus were removed from the Sorcerer spell list. So you may run into an issue if you just let your player run amok on spell choices.

The nice balance would be if the Sorcerer/DM have a discussion regarding a specific set of spells that the Sorcerer would like to include into their spell list, then you can fine-tune the balance discussion from "is the entire spell book ok?" to "is quick casting a Call Lightning Spell too powerful?". And of course, if a particular spell is both super thematic AND meta-magic problematic then you can have the 'Gentleman's Deal' not to do that particular combo. (or better yet, you CAN do it, but there may be a cost from pushing magic too far.)

thank you, will keep that in mind. Major problem tho: have made an campaign taking place in a school teaching magic, somewhat like Hogwarts. Since i have decided that in this world, all magic users cast spells in the exact same way (with study and research, the same way a wizard does), and so reflect this i have decided that instead of gaining a fixed subclass benefit at 6th level, you can choose from a list of features, with special prerequisites for each, each borrowed from a diffrent subclass. Might this have unintended effects, outside what you have already mentioned? 

Interesting, love the campaign setting.

Rather than trying to play with the subclass abilities and trying to rebalance all that stuff, it might be a better idea to include them as Feat choices for level 4 or level 8. Giving both an ASI and a feat from your custom list shouldn't be TOO bad on the balancing act and should keep your players happy since they are essentially getting a 2 for 1 (although I would recommend using standard array for their creation stats at that point to avoid players ending up with maxed out stats too early.)

I'm also fascinated by this idea that 'everything is magic', like the Cleric and the Druid are just 'Mages' that learn a specific type of magic, like college students in the 'pre-med' and 'environmental studies' curriculum. You can just handwave the whole 'get my spells from a divine connection' thing or you could try and see how they play if you add the advantages of a 'Spell book and Spell Scribe' mechanic to them. From a mechanics perspective, they'd have to find and scribe spells instead of selecting them in the morning, but they would also inherit the Wizards ability to ritual cast a spell they did not prepare by pulling it right out of their spell book.

For Bards and Sorcerer's I might just toss them the 'Ritual Caster feat' by default, so they still have some feeling of connection, but given that they are the Music and Art students it's not really surprising that they would be a far cry from the 'Pre-med', 'Env-Sci', or 'Science' (wizards) students.

Warlocks though....I feel like leaving them as-is makes for some really great plot opportunity, so that a Warlock player would be trying to keep their new found dark power under the table. 

All that assumes I'm not horribly misunderstanding what you're aiming for of course.

i have already started the campaign tho, i have a series of google word documents containing all information on all the edits i have made if you are interested in seeing what i have done. I did away with clerics entirely, since their spell list is too limiting and then started tweaking other classes. Prepare classes get an number of new spells added to their list of spell they can prepare, and otherwise i just gave em a bunch of spells into their spell book containing whatever spells i felt was appropriate thematically to that player, giving em spells that it would make sense for them to learn.

also i have made it so that all casters who know a limited number of spells know extra spells equal to their intelligence mod, so that there is an motive to getting an high intelligence mod.

yeah i make no difference between warlocks and the other casters, but i have assigned the different classes to different personalities, the warlock being the one with an higher interest into the occult, the one with magical heritage or simply the one who is exploring the weirder side of magic with their invocations being just a thing or two they picked up. 

I have this mechanic where characters can choose to study different subjects and giving them benefits depending on what subjects they choose 

For the campaign i have tried to balance it around social interaction, adding effects and balancing them around the idea that they are school children in an magical school.

as for balance it is already too late, since i have added this "curse system" where you can choose to gain several detrimental magical curses ranging from an curse that makes your bones supremely fragile to one that makes you weak to sunlight to one where you are just permanently bound to a wheelchair, gaining a different number of curse points to spend on different boons such as an flying speed or some other fancy stuff, again if you want i can send you a link to the campaign folder for more info on the awful awful things i have done to the balance of this poor system.

my idea for the campaign also was that i was going to make conflict based on the goals of the characters, making the story ahead of them, since i am great at world-building but horrible at writing conflict, an great painter but an bad animator. The only problem is that the two players who show up to sessions most often have the goals "become a robot and leave my kobold body behind" and "start an drug empire inside of the schools walls" and so now i shall cater to that... That's gonna be interesting

Ahh, I think I get it now. My brain went a different direction entirely. 

within the confines of that sort of set up. Sure, the subclass feature swapping sounds perfectly fine to me.