AU’s Adept Feats and class spells

So Arcana Unleashed has a number of “[school] Adept” feats.  All of them have a prerequisite for a Spellcasting or a Pact Magic feature and refer to a table of spells.  Their “Additional Spells” benefit says when you have spell slots, you always have the spells of that level or lower on the table prepared.

What they don’t do is say that those spells become spells on any of your class lists or tell you which Spellcasting Ability to use for them lIke other spell-granting feats.  So if I’m a Druid/Bard with 3rd level slots and have Fireball prepared through Evocation Adept, how exactly am I supposed to cast it?

Is the intent for the feats to add the spells to all your spell lists? That’s certainly not automatic, and has been explicitly stated for other feats. Maybe a feat is a “class feature” of the class you get it from for the purpose of its always prepared spells being a spell of that class?

I don't have the book yet, but what you explained seems to be an issue, because the Spellcasting Ability is not specified in the feats as it is in the 5.5e PHB or other books (e.g. Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerûn or Eberron: Forge of the Artificer)

Anyway, while waiting to see what others say, I wanted to take the opportunity to share a couple of things:

* The 5.5e SAC clarified what counts as a class spell: Which of a character’s spells count as class spells? For example, if I’m playing a Sorcerer, which of my character’s spells are Sorcerer spells? ( you probably remember from Potent Dragonmark and Spell Slots :) )

* Feats doesn't count as class features, at least in my opinion, based on on the following information from the PHB: 

Chapter 5: Feats
This chapter offers a collection of feats, which are special features not tied to a character class. [...] Your background gives you a feat, and at certain levels, your class gives you the Ability Score Improvement feat or the choice of another feat for which you qualify.

This example for Wild Shape:

Game Statistics. Your game statistics are replaced by the Beast’s stat block, but you retain your creature type; Hit Points; Hit Point Dice; Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores; class features; languages; and feats. You also retain your skill and saving throw proficiencies and use your Proficiency Bonus for them, in addition to gaining the proficiencies of the creature. If a skill or saving throw modifier in the Beast’s stat block is higher than yours, use the one in the stat block.

And this information from the Converting to System Reference Document 5.2.1: 

Feats

Feats “Feats” includes the following new and revised elements, which are presented in the order in which they appear in that section.

Feat Descriptions [New Rule]

Feats are now divided into categories, including Origin, General, Fighting Style, and Epic Boon. All feats in this section are new except for the following revised rules.

Ability Score Improvement [Revised Rule]

This rule is now a feat rather than a class feature.

Grappler [Revised Rule]

This feat is revised and is now a General feat.

Fighting Style Feats [Revised Rule]

These rules are now feats rather than class features. 

The text for abjuration (first one on the lost, thanks to alphabetical order) says:

Your prowess allows you to always have certain spells at the ready. When you have spell slots of a level specified in the Abjuration Adept Spells table, you thereafter always have the spells listed for that level and lower prepared.

So, i read it as, you have them prepared, and they use your spell slots as normal. I’d just rule you use your normal casting stat. Now, if it were one of my players, and they were a multiclass caster as the OP describes, I’d just let them choose which stat they want to use. And I mean choose once and stick with it. Really, we’re mostly looking at a 1 or 2 point difference on the save DC/spell attack bonus. I don’t see it as a big enough issue to worry about it beyond that.

Quote from Xalthu >>

I’d just rule you use your normal casting stat.

 I think that’s certainly the design intent.  Since you have to have a Spellcasting class to take the feat, it makes logical sense to have the feat’s spells be treated as spells for the prerequisite class feature.  I don’t think you would question how it works if you’re a single-class character.  But multi-class characters exist and there are lots of class features that care whether or not a spell is being cast as a spell prepared by a particular class (or is on the classes’ spell list depending on which camp you’re in).  Feats like these should include clarifying language that indicate how they are supposed to interact with those rules.

In the absence of such language and as written, a druid 4/bard 1 with Evocation Adept can’t use Charisma or use a musical instrument focus to cast fireball because it isn’t a Bard spell, and they can’t use Wisdom and a Druidic Focus because it’s not a Druid spell.  You really shouldn’t have to break the rules to use something the way it was meant to be used.

They also wouldn’t normally be able to prepare any 3rd level spells, but I guess these feats bypass that?

I'd also rule this similarly to one of the proposals made in Potent Dragonmark and Spell Preparation. (Eberron: Forge of the Artificer), so you choose which Spellcasting Feature to use (if you have more than one) whenever you cast them, and that includes the associated Spellcasting Ability and Spellcasting Focus, but I totally agree with "Feats like these should include clarifying language that indicate how they are supposed to interact with those rules."

Quote from MoribundEidolon >>

[...] They also wouldn’t normally be able to prepare any 3rd level spells, but I guess these feats bypass that?

 It seems so.

This is also something that could happen in Eberron with some Dragonmark feats and multiclass characters.

As a side note, they have this reminder in the book in the case of Ritual spells:

In the Player’s Handbook (2024), anyone who has a Ritual spell prepared can cast that spell as a Ritual. This rule means the Ritual spells granted by Dragonmark feats can now be cast as Rituals by anyone who has those feats.

Quote from Tarod_ >>

Quote from MoribundEidolon >>

[...] They also wouldn’t normally be able to prepare any 3rd level spells, but I guess these feats bypass that?

 It seems so.

This is also something that could happen in Eberron with some Dragonmark feats and multiclass characters.

As a side note, they even have this reminder in the book in the case of Ritual spells:

In the Player’s Handbook (2024), anyone who has a Ritual spell prepared can cast that spell as a Ritual. This rule means the Ritual spells granted by Dragonmark feats can now be cast as Rituals by anyone who has those feats.

I wouldn't think this feat is supposed to bypass the multiclass spell preparation restrictions. Since the feat allows spells to be prepared, I would defer to the normal rules for multiclass preparation of spells, i.e. that for the purposes of preparing spells you only have the spell slots of the single class.

That would mean a Cleric 2/Sorcerer 3 would have the feat's L1 spells prepared as both Cleric (Wis) and Sorcerer (Cha) spells, plus the L2 spells as Sorcerer (Cha) only.

That's my interpretation of the likely intent, but I also don't have access to the full rule text. 

[...] This table might give you spell slots of a higher level than the spells you prepare. You can use those slots but only to cast your lower-level spells. If a lower-level spell that you cast, like Burning Hands, has an enhanced effect when cast at a higher level, you can use the enhanced effect as normal.

For example, if you are a level 4 Ranger / level 3 Sorcerer, you count as a level 5 character when determining your spell slots, counting all your levels as a Sorcerer and half your Ranger levels. As shown in the Multiclass Spellcaster table, you have four level 1 spell slots, three level 2 slots, and two level 3 slots. However, you can’t prepare any level 3 spells, nor can you prepare any level 2 Ranger spells. You can use the spell slots of those levels to cast the spells you do prepare—and potentially enhance their effects.

Usually "This table might give you spell slots of a higher level than the spells you prepare", but in the proposed scenario I understand you're able to prepare level 3 spells through that feat.

In any case, I also don't have access to the full text... so maybe I'm wrong.

EDIT: for clarity.

Assuming the previews I've seen are accurate, the relevant text is

Your prowess allows you to always have certain spells at the ready. When you have spell slots of a level specified in the X Adept Spells table, you thereafter always have the spells listed for that level and lower prepared.

The feats don’t add to a list of spells you can prepare, which would be restricted by the multiclassing rules.  They give you spells that are always prepared (if you’ve had a spell slot of that level or higher).  Xalthu gave the exact text that all the feats share above.  It only cares about the level of the spell slot.  It’s not really a novel situation either, having prepared spells and spell slots above the level of your classes’ prepared spells is possible with multiclass elves‘ Elven Lineage spells.  I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to use your spell slots to cast those spells.

Since it says “you thereafter always have the spells listed for that level and lower prepared,” hypothetically if you had the feat and a temporary spell slot somehow, you could get access to higher-level prepared spells and thus ritual casting (although Divination seems to be the only spell that actually matters for in the various tables).  Similarly, Potent Dragonmark can give you a Spell Slot that might be higher level than the slots from your Spellcasting or Pact Magic features.  So even though Potent Dragonmark’s Spell Slot can’t be used for Adept feat spells, it could still technically expand your list of prepared spells.

Quote from MoribundEidolon>>

The feats don’t add to a list of spells you can prepare, which would be restricted by the multiclassing rules.  They give you spells that are always prepared (if you’ve had a spell slot of that level or higher).  Xalthu gave the exact text that all the feats share above.  It only cares about the level of the spell slot.  It’s not really a novel situation either, having prepared spells and spell slots above the level of your classes’ prepared spells is possible with multiclass elves‘ Elven Lineage spells.  I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to use your spell slots to cast those spells.