I'm trying to create a very minorly altered version of the Strixhaven Intitiate (Quandrix) Background/feat chain, where one cantrip has been swapped. I'm at the part where I need to actually get the feat to populate the spells, but I'm not clear on where it is pulling them from. I tried setting just hard-values a list of cantrips in the options section, but after selecting the intelligence, the baked-in ones appear.

I've tried duplicating everything up and down the chain, even looking at this when it said my feat was too similar. I don't see any triggers that are calling anything else to make these connections. My *guess* is there there is an action somewhere that is not copied over when you duplicate the feat, that does this, or maybe a link to a parent feat for all of them is maintained somehow too, and that relationship triggers the listening event to bring them in. I don't know, but I'd love to know so I can change/remove/duplicate it.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

The Strixhaven Initiate feats use a mechanic we are not able to use in our own homebrew and so it will be problematic to copy it and make changes. The mechanic applies to any feat that has a "choose spellcasting ability" option built in so this includes some dragonlance feats, strixhaven, the "fey/shadow" touched feats and similar.

Your only option is recreate from scratch but you have to specifically use the spellcasting ability, which I'm guessing is Int based on your post. If you are making this for others you would need to create a new version for the other spellcasting ability scores (as in have "Feat Name (Intelligence)", "Feat Name (Wisdom)", etc). Due to the homebrew rules you should not publish these, but you will not need to publish for you and others in the same campaign as you to use them.

Okay, thanks, appreciate that!