The common thread I see with all of the recent UA material being released is the blurring of lines between classes. I have strong opinions on that in general, but what I cannot abide is the way they are now blurring the distinction of class spell lists. More than anything else, what distinguishes casters of different classes is the list of spells that are available to them, and what is not available to them. Thematic uniqueness matters. The need to rely on the choices of other players in a group, social gamematters.
Everyone wants customization; I get that. The level of customization that a significant portion of players (apparently) want does not mesh well with a system in which the specific class(es) a character has are supposed to be meaningful. The choices that you lock yourself out of are supposed to be just as meaningful. Pros and cons to class selection. Customization to accomplish unique character concepts is intended to be accomplished through meaningful choices: specific class(es), subclass, ASI/feats, skills/tools, equipment, etc.
This is not a system in which everything is available for every character to acquire piecemeal. This isn't White Wolf. Shoehorning the things that make these specific choices meaningful to other classes does not make the system better. It does not enhance the customization options available; it merely cheapens the purpose of making a choice to begin with.
One of the things the current UA has done is expand class spell lists to include many spells that were previously unavailable to certain casters without multi-classing or acquiring a feat. Some of these additions do make sense. Adding thematic spells that some classes ought to have always had is very different from giving out restricted spells which made that class choice meaningful.
Bard
1st Level
Cause fear (Xanathar’s Guide)
Color spray Command
2nd Level
Aid
Enlarge/reduce
Mind spike (Xanathar’s Guide)
Mirror image
Phantasmal force
3rd Level
Mass healing word--This is a Cleric exclusive spell. It should stay that way. Bards can already acquire this spell naturally via Magical Secrets.
Slow
Tiny servant (Xanathar’s Guide)
4th Level
Phantasmal killer
5th Level
Contact other plane (ritual)
Rary’s telepathic bond (ritual)
6th Level
Heroes’ feast
Mental prison (Xanathar’s Guide)
Scatter (Xanathar’s Guide)
Tenser’s transformation (Xanathar’s Guide)
7th Level
Power word pain (Xanathar’s Guide)
Prismatic spray
8th Level
Antipathy/sympathy
Maze
9th Level
Prismatic wall -- This is a Wizard exclusive spell. It should stay that way. Bards can already acquire this spell naturally via Magical Secrets.
Cleric
1st Level
Cause fear (Xanathar’s Guide)
Wrathfulsmite--Clerics don't need this. Smite spells (in general) are one of the things that make the Paladin distinct as a caster.
2nd Level
Branding smite--Clerics don't need this. Smite spells (in general) are one of the things that make the Paladin distinct as a caster.
3rd Level
Aura of vitality--Clerics do need something like this, but not exactly this. Give Clerics Healing Spirit too, errata it to not be broken AF, or remove the spell entirely. As is, this just dumps on Paladins while doing nothing to address the most broken recovery spell in the game.
4th Level
Aura of life--Clerics don't need this. Auras are one of the things that make the Paladin distinct as a caster.
Aura of purity--Clerics don't need this. Auras are one of the things that make the Paladin distinct as a caster.
5th Level
Skill empowerment (Xanathar’s Guide)--I have mixed feelings on this. I don't personally see it as stepping on any particular class, but I would certainly understand if anyone did feel that way.
Wall of light (Xanathar’s Guide)
9th Level
Power word heal
Druid
Cantrips (0 Level)
Acid splash
1st Level
Ceremony (ritual, Xanathar’s Guide)--Cleric/Paladin exclusive. It's literally a religious ceremony.
Protection from evil and good
2nd Level
Augury (ritual)
Continual flame
Enlarge/reduce
3rd Level
Aura ofvitality--Druids don't need this. Come on.
Elemental weapon
Revivify--I really don't believe Druids should get this. It diminishes the value of choosing Cleric/Paladin, but it at least makes some sense to have available for a Druid subclass. Artificer shouldn't get this either. 🙄
Thunder step (Xanathar’s Guide)
Wall of sand (Xanathar’s Guide)
4th Level
Divination (ritual)--Cleric exclusive spell that is already available to two Druid subclasses. Stop.
Fire shield
5th Level
Cone of cold Dawn (Xanathar’s Guide)
Immolation
6th Level
Flesh to stone
7th Level
Symbol
8th Level
Incendiary cloud
9th Level
Mass polymorph (Xanathar’s Guide)
Power word heal--Non-Clerics shouldn't get this spell.
Paladin
2nd Level
Gentle repose
Prayer of healing--Paladins should have this spell, but why bother when it is so spectacularly bad that nobody ever uses it?
Warding bond
3rd Level
Life transference (Xanathar’s Guide)
Spirit guardians--NO. It makes RP thematic sense, but absolutely zero game balance/mechanical sense.
This is Cleric bread & butter, and is already available to Oath of the Crown Paladins. Are Paladins lacking in AoE damage capabilities? Yes, by design. They are single-target monsters, and giving EVERY Paladin access to this is ******* insane. Want a beefy Gish with decent AoE potential? Be an Eldritch Knight, Tempest Cleric, Artificer, any Druid, multiple Wizard & Sorcerer builds... Make a damn choice and live with the pros & cons.
5th Level
Dawn (Xanathar’s Guide)
Flame strike
Ranger
1st Level
Aid--Giving a Cleric/Paladin spell to a Ranger, without also giving it to Druid (BTW, don't), should tell you all you need to know about why this is a kick in the teeth.
Entangle
Searing smite--Paladin spell. Rangers don't need this; they need something different.
2nd Level
Gust of wind
Magic weapon
Enhance ability
Warding bond
3rd Level
Blinding smite--Paladin spell. Rangers don't need this; they need something different.
Meld into stone
Revivify--NO. NOT EVER. This should never be given to a half-caster.
Tongues
4th Level
Death ward
Dominate beast
5th Level
Awaken
Greater restoration--NO. NOT EVER. This should never be given to a half-caster.
Sorcerer
Cantrips (0 Level)
Primal savagery (Xanathar’s Guide)
1st Level
Grease
Protection from evil and good
2nd Level
Flame blade
Flaming sphere
3rd Level
Vampiric touch
4th Level
Fire shield
6th Level
Flesh to stone
8th Level
Demiplane
9th Level
Foresight--Twinned spell. Why isn't this a Cleric spell too? 🙄
Warlock
1st Level
Thunderwave
2nd Level
Knock
3rd Level
Animate dead
Life transference (Xanathar’s Guide)
4th Level
Greater invisibility
Phantasmal killer
5th Level
Mislead
Modify memory
Planar binding
Teleportation circle
6th Level
Create homunculus (Xanathar’s Guide)
Magic jar
7th Level
Project image
8th Level
Abi-Dalzim’s horrid wilting (Xanathar’s Guide)
9th Level
Gate
Shapechange
Weird
... Surprisingly, I'm actually okay with all of these things being put on the Warlock list. None of them are out of place with a Warlock, or obviously step on the toes of another class. The Warlock must still use their Mystic Arcanum feature to actually learn any of the spells higher than 5th level anyway.
Wizard
2nd Level
Augury (divination, ritual)
Enhance ability (transmutation)
3rd Level
Speak with dead (necromancy)
4th Level
Divination (divination, ritual)
Add these spells to the subclass spell lists for Wizard. A non-Divination Wizard has no business knowing Divination. 🙄
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
What you're saying is that nobody should ever have new spells ever, because any new spells steps on the toes of the Paladin or Cleric. Druids - naturally-occurring divine spellcasters known in part for their restorative magic - should have no access to healing spells because [Clerics are healers]. Bards, whose entire schtick is the magical force and power of song and the spoken word, should have no access to a spell called "Mass Healing Word" because MHW is a cleric thing and clerics are the only class in the game that should be allowed to heal people.
Also no other class in the game should ever [redacted] have any way, ever [redacted], to use magic to augment their weapon attacks because using magic and weapons at the same time is a Paladin thing and should stay exclusively and entirely forever and ever, a Paladin thing, as should any ability to generate an area of positive effect for their allies and the ability to be effective combat medics, because the other martially-oriented halfcasters should all just suck [redacted]. As should the cleric, who should be spending all their time casting the healing spells nobody else ever [redacted] gets access to because clearly the armor and weapon proficiencies that domains such as War or Tempest get are dirty, dirty lies and all clerics are nothing but healbots.
Also every party is absolutely flat required, forever and until the end of time, to have a cleric in them because clerics are the only classes allowed by the immutable laws of D&D magic balance to carry any form of resurrection spell whatsoever, including Welcome Back, Friend Revivify, which is honestly a CLS spell more than a magical resurrection ritual. Your hardy, self-reliant Ranger can't have learned how to bring someone back from the brink from their years of wandering isolated beyond the fringes of civilization - no. Your spiritual, animistic Druid can't have learned how to coax a spirit in the midst of fleeing a broken body back into a vessel their restorative magics have put back to working order - no.
Clerics. ONLY.All resurrection magic is a divine gift from a god and has absolutely no basis or bearing being available to any other class period, no matter how awful that is for overall game balance, because having it any other way means being a cleric isn't special anymore.
[Redacted]Class identity is a factor of the synthesis of all of a given class's features - selectively broadening the options available to a given class does not magically invalidate another class. Paladins are not obsolete because Rangers get two Smite spells and Clerics get a few Auras. Paladins are still the only ones with the actual Divine Smite feature, combining the multiple attacks of a martial class with the divine magic of the cleric to create a radiant warrior and one of the most powerful and desirable classes in the game.
Over half [of this post] consists of "this is a Paladin thing!" Have you considered that maybe [Paladins] should not have exclusive ownership of the ability to augment their spells with magic AND the ability to radiate a beneficial aura for their allies on top of the half-dozen other things they have exclusive ownership of?
Notes: Please use caution over comments that are directed at an individual over the contents of a post. Thank you!
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Your whole post there is basically [redacted] about clerics and paladins not being the Supreme Chosen Ones that can do absolutely everything anymore because a couple of other classes got a couple of thematic spells that clerics and/or paladins should not necessarily have had exclusive access to in the first place.
Did you post a similar [post] when the Forge cleric came out and had access to a few smite spells itself?
What about when 5e went live altogether and bards had the option to just straight-up hijack any spell in the game and flip "spell lists" the bird finger entirely?
Why must rangers continue to suck [on] every conceivable level [redacted] due to never being able to combine their magic and their weapon attacks the way paladins can? They just finally made Hunter's Mark a class feature instead of a spell so rangers could use the nine-tenths of their spell list that was previously a Concentration-fiesta no-go - why not give them some fun things to do with their bowshots now?
And frankly, why not give every damn spellcaster in the game Revivify? Or, and here's an idea - make Revivify a once-a-day thing anybody can do. Got the diamonds? Your team can cast welcome Back, Friend and get you back on your feet. If the window on WBF elapses, then you need a priest, but before that? Let anybody pull CLS duty. It's more fun that way.
Notes: Please use caution over comments that are directed at an individual over the contents of a post. Thank you!
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
And your argument for every single spell you "Have A Problem With" has absolutely nothing to do with game design or balance, but instead the territorial and standoffish idea that those spells belong to a different class - either the cleric or paladin - and that no other class should ever have access to spells which belong to an existing class.
Okay. Tell me - if I changed the name on Blinding Smite into Flashing Blade, would it suddenly be appropriate for rangers? Who are, by the way, martial half-casters designed to mix limited spellcasting with powerful weapon strikes, just like [Paladins]. What if we decided to call MHW Rejuvenating Rhyme, instead?
What is it about weapon-augmenting spells like Blinding Smite that makes it exclusively a paladin ability, outside of custom? Is the paladin's class identity so brittle, so fragile and flimsy, that allowing another character access to a limited selection of its weapon-augmentation magic renders the Paladin unplayable? If so, why the hell is anyone playing a paladin now?
What is it about healing magic that makes it exclusively the domain of clerics? Wizards has been working for three editions now to break the idea that clerics are nothing but healbots, to the point where clerics are basically omnicompetent monster beasts that have three quarters of the martial abilities of the fighter as well as full spell progression, on top of making healing magic much less potent than offensive magic and basic martial competency overall - and people STILL somehow think of them as just the guys you stick in the back to amke the red bars go back up.
And again - is the cleric's class identity so brittle that bards getting access to a spell that honestly fits them better than it fits clerics somehow destroys the cleric as a class? If so, why the hell are people playing clerics?
Class identity is more than spell lists. The current spell lists are in need of revision. This is an attempt to revise them. Why [comment] about paladins and clerics - two of the most powerful, desirable classes in the game - somehow "losing their identity" because someone else got two or three of their spells? Especially [commenting] about paladins getting cleric spells and clerics getting paladin spells, as if those two classes aren't basically Siamese twins anyways.
Notes: Please use caution over comments that are directed at an individual over the contents of a post. Thank you!
Power word heal--Non-Clerics shouldn't get this spell.
A quick comment on this in particular, I'd like to reference that this was Bard exclusive prior to this UA. Clerics only just got access to this spell in this UA. Bards specialize in some words that do healing.
On that note: Mass Healing Word. Bard already also gets Mass Cure Wounds via the Bard spell list. Honestly it would have been more thematic for them to have MHW from the get-go.
An interesting idea that someone I've played with before has said is "Unless you're a life cleric, if you have healing you're a half healer." Basically in a sense, classes like the bard/druid/divine sorc are just as capable of the same healing output as clerics unless you've got those boosted heals like Life Domain does (i guess Grave Domain is also an exception towards being close to "full heals" with the max heal from 0). Not to discredit Celestial Warlock because i love it and it heals well, it just has that burst healing that might not last the whole fight, so over a day I've seen it's pretty capable, but not as reliable as other classes for continual healing.
There's no rule saying a cleric has to even prepare a healing spell. Death, Tempest, and War domains would relish some smite spells given the melee abilities they get. Forge even gets a smite in their spell list by default. Some people just reeeeally like Guiding Bolt and Spiritual Weapon more than healing haha.
And really, giving classes that want to be half-healers the ability to function well in that role seems fine to me. If only the cleric has access to x amount of important healing spells, we get situations where every party has to have one at all times. Like Remove Curse. Thematically only holy people should do that, but warlock and wizard (both should arguably be solely cursing items instead) also get it, so certain utilities don't demand that one class alone is in every group.
Honestly to me, the most odd/probably broken change was animate dead for warlocks. The sheer size of the army they could make over the span of one day just lounging idly with a pile of bodies, mixed with the potential for people to play coffeelock and amass a hoard is.....frightening.
....also I love Prayer of Healing :(. Unless you're on a time crunch, you have time to give an AoE 2nd level Cure Wounds to friends. If you are on a time crunch, you're more likely to have time for this and maybe a Catnap spell than a real short rest.
The variants are all optional. Essentially, they're saying that the official word is that adding these spells to a class list won't break the game. DMs are welcome to not allow it, and players are welcome to not take them. If your party doesn't have a Cleric or a Paladin, they're allowing you to balance the party better.
I will say that in part I agree with the premise: too much mixing of the spell lists does make the classes feel a bit samey (does every class need access to fireball?). But I do disagree on a few of the particulars, for example Ceremony on the druid's list - druids are fundamentally religious (priests of the old faith), just not necessarily following the gods currently in favor/power. I have more of a problem with additions like protection from evil/good: that sounds like a spell that would be tied to a deity (and its alignment) more than to the druidic faith.
The other thing that I'll mention is that it isn't only the class list that separates classes, but also their class and subclass abilities. No sorcerer will ever be as versatile of a caster as a wizard - but they can do more interesting things with the spells that they do know due to metamagic. When subclasses step on the toes of metamagic, that is when things start to feel bad for the sorcerer. All the other caster have their specialties too: A druid has a niche due to wildshape. A Cleric has channel divinity. Paladins might lose sole access to smite spells, but they still are the only class to divine smite. A bard can choose a couple of spells to step on any caster's toes, but no one else gets inspiration. A warlock only gets a few spell slots, but they can cantrip the hell out of you.
When subclasses start to step on these things especially, that is when the classes will start to really feel too close to the same. If you want to build a wizard that can modify his memorized spells based on the situation, WOTC shouldn't provide you that option, but instead tell you to call your sorcerer a wizard in your game instead. If I wanted to build Professor McGonagall, I would use a druid and just call her a wizard.
There are no subclass spell lists for wizards, and there never will be, because doing so goes against the idea of what a wizard is. The whole point of a wizard is that every spell on the list can be learned, if a wizard chooses to. A wizard is adaptable. The closest they will get is what is in the PHB, with the reduced scribing time for your spell book for a specific school.
Requiring duplicates of common spell ideas (weapon spells and smites) to grant specific themes to classes only leads to one thing: Bloat. Which tends to be the end of an edition.
The sanctity of abstract classes, which may not be in play in the party, is not the primary design consideration. If the party is made up of a Fighter, Bard, Monk, and Druid it really doesn't matter what spells a Cleric or a Wizard have access to or what their "identity" is all about. What matters is that the party is going to need to have some healing options available to it, and the Bard and the Druid are there to fill that roll in the party. If you think that the Bard dropping a Mass Healing Word in a tough fight is going to be met by groans from the players "ugghhh, that's a cleric spell, you shouldn't be able to cast that"... well, no, they brought the bard along to be able to heal them, and they're going to be stoked that he's doing so.
They're balancing classes for the roles they play in their parties, not holding them up as some sort of sacred archetype.
Wasn't it a thing that wizards had to sacrifice a school of magic that they could learn?
And I think putting smites into the baseline cleric is a bad idea and pulls away from the more martial domains that already have smites like war and forge. (tempest ought to have the thunderous smite IMHO). Smites is not a cleric thing, for some domains it is.
I would also argue that some of these expanded spells fit more a subclass option. Like a bard of the hymn. Where you get some cleric spells like a divine sorc.
I'd like to ask as flame blade is added to sorc, shouldn't it be in wizards too?
Wizards used to have to sacrifice their ability to cast two schools of magic in order to specialize. Which only gave them the ability to cast one more spell of each level but only from their chosen school.
I much prefer the current model where they give you bonuses when casting your chosen school or thematic abilities representative of that school.
I also like Sorcerers not having an identical spell list as Wizards. Them not having access to some of the more esoteric Wizard spells but getting some of the more primal/raw magic from Druids makes a lot of sense to me.
The sanctity of abstract classes, which may not be in play in the party, is not the primary design consideration. If the party is made up of a Fighter, Bard, Monk, and Druid it really doesn't matter what spells a Cleric or a Wizard have access to or what their "identity" is all about. What matters is that the party is going to need to have some healing options available to it, and the Bard and the Druid are there to fill that roll in the party. If you think that the Bard dropping a Mass Healing Word in a tough fight is going to be met by groans from the players "ugghhh, that's a cleric spell, you shouldn't be able to cast that"... well, no, they brought the bard along to be able to heal them, and they're going to be stoked that he's doing so.
They're balancing classes for the roles they play in their parties, not holding them up as some sort of sacred archetype.
This. Having more redundancy in spell lists allows for more party creativity and flexibility of roles. Maybe a party runs a cleric as the primary melee with the bard as the healer now. I’m all for freeing up individual groups to do different storytelling. That’s more important than notions of game balance in a vacuum.
The common thread I see with all of the recent UA material being released is the blurring of lines between classes. I have strong opinions on that in general, but what I cannot abide is the way they are now blurring the distinction of class spell lists. More than anything else, what distinguishes casters of different classes is the list of spells that are available to them, and what is not available to them. Thematic uniqueness matters. The need to rely on the choices of other players in a group, social game matters.
Everyone wants customization; I get that. The level of customization that a significant portion of players (apparently) want does not mesh well with a system in which the specific class(es) a character has are supposed to be meaningful. The choices that you lock yourself out of are supposed to be just as meaningful. Pros and cons to class selection. Customization to accomplish unique character concepts is intended to be accomplished through meaningful choices: specific class(es), subclass, ASI/feats, skills/tools, equipment, etc.
This is not a system in which everything is available for every character to acquire piecemeal. This isn't White Wolf. Shoehorning the things that make these specific choices meaningful to other classes does not make the system better. It does not enhance the customization options available; it merely cheapens the purpose of making a choice to begin with.
One of the things the current UA has done is expand class spell lists to include many spells that were previously unavailable to certain casters without multi-classing or acquiring a feat. Some of these additions do make sense. Adding thematic spells that some classes ought to have always had is very different from giving out restricted spells which made that class choice meaningful.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
So..................................
Basically.........................................................
What you're saying is that nobody should ever have new spells ever, because any new spells steps on the toes of the Paladin or Cleric. Druids - naturally-occurring divine spellcasters known in part for their restorative magic - should have no access to healing spells because [Clerics are healers]. Bards, whose entire schtick is the magical force and power of song and the spoken word, should have no access to a spell called "Mass Healing Word" because MHW is a cleric thing and clerics are the only class in the game that should be allowed to heal people.
Also no other class in the game should ever [redacted] have any way, ever [redacted], to use magic to augment their weapon attacks because using magic and weapons at the same time is a Paladin thing and should stay exclusively and entirely forever and ever, a Paladin thing, as should any ability to generate an area of positive effect for their allies and the ability to be effective combat medics, because the other martially-oriented halfcasters should all just suck [redacted]. As should the cleric, who should be spending all their time casting the healing spells nobody else ever [redacted] gets access to because clearly the armor and weapon proficiencies that domains such as War or Tempest get are dirty, dirty lies and all clerics are nothing but healbots.
Also every party is absolutely flat required, forever and until the end of time, to have a cleric in them because clerics are the only classes allowed by the immutable laws of D&D magic balance to carry any form of resurrection spell whatsoever, including
Welcome Back, FriendRevivify, which is honestly a CLS spell more than a magical resurrection ritual. Your hardy, self-reliant Ranger can't have learned how to bring someone back from the brink from their years of wandering isolated beyond the fringes of civilization - no. Your spiritual, animistic Druid can't have learned how to coax a spirit in the midst of fleeing a broken body back into a vessel their restorative magics have put back to working order - no.Clerics. ONLY. All resurrection magic is a divine gift from a god and has absolutely no basis or bearing being available to any other class period, no matter how awful that is for overall game balance, because having it any other way means being a cleric isn't special anymore.
[Redacted] Class identity is a factor of the synthesis of all of a given class's features - selectively broadening the options available to a given class does not magically invalidate another class. Paladins are not obsolete because Rangers get two Smite spells and Clerics get a few Auras. Paladins are still the only ones with the actual Divine Smite feature, combining the multiple attacks of a martial class with the divine magic of the cleric to create a radiant warrior and one of the most powerful and desirable classes in the game.
Over half [of this post] consists of "this is a Paladin thing!" Have you considered that maybe [Paladins] should not have exclusive ownership of the ability to augment their spells with magic AND the ability to radiate a beneficial aura for their allies on top of the half-dozen other things they have exclusive ownership of?
Please do not contact or message me.
[You have found] conclusions that I have not stated.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
What conclusion would that be?
Your whole post there is basically [redacted] about clerics and paladins not being the Supreme Chosen Ones that can do absolutely everything anymore because a couple of other classes got a couple of thematic spells that clerics and/or paladins should not necessarily have had exclusive access to in the first place.
Did you post a similar [post] when the Forge cleric came out and had access to a few smite spells itself?
What about when 5e went live altogether and bards had the option to just straight-up hijack any spell in the game and flip "spell lists" the bird finger entirely?
Why must rangers continue to suck [on] every conceivable level [redacted] due to never being able to combine their magic and their weapon attacks the way paladins can? They just finally made Hunter's Mark a class feature instead of a spell so rangers could use the nine-tenths of their spell list that was previously a Concentration-fiesta no-go - why not give them some fun things to do with their bowshots now?
And frankly, why not give every damn spellcaster in the game Revivify? Or, and here's an idea - make Revivify a once-a-day thing anybody can do. Got the diamonds? Your team can cast welcome Back, Friend and get you back on your feet. If the window on WBF elapses, then you need a priest, but before that? Let anybody pull CLS duty. It's more fun that way.
Please do not contact or message me.
[Redacted] I provided the entire list of spells being added for each class. I then included some notes on specific spells within each of those lists.
[Redacted] I am most critical of what is being given to Clerics. [Redacted]
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
And your argument for every single spell you "Have A Problem With" has absolutely nothing to do with game design or balance, but instead the territorial and standoffish idea that those spells belong to a different class - either the cleric or paladin - and that no other class should ever have access to spells which belong to an existing class.
Okay. Tell me - if I changed the name on Blinding Smite into Flashing Blade, would it suddenly be appropriate for rangers? Who are, by the way, martial half-casters designed to mix limited spellcasting with powerful weapon strikes, just like [Paladins]. What if we decided to call MHW Rejuvenating Rhyme, instead?
What is it about weapon-augmenting spells like Blinding Smite that makes it exclusively a paladin ability, outside of custom? Is the paladin's class identity so brittle, so fragile and flimsy, that allowing another character access to a limited selection of its weapon-augmentation magic renders the Paladin unplayable? If so, why the hell is anyone playing a paladin now?
What is it about healing magic that makes it exclusively the domain of clerics? Wizards has been working for three editions now to break the idea that clerics are nothing but healbots, to the point where clerics are basically omnicompetent monster beasts that have three quarters of the martial abilities of the fighter as well as full spell progression, on top of making healing magic much less potent than offensive magic and basic martial competency overall - and people STILL somehow think of them as just the guys you stick in the back to amke the red bars go back up.
And again - is the cleric's class identity so brittle that bards getting access to a spell that honestly fits them better than it fits clerics somehow destroys the cleric as a class? If so, why the hell are people playing clerics?
Class identity is more than spell lists. The current spell lists are in need of revision. This is an attempt to revise them. Why [comment] about paladins and clerics - two of the most powerful, desirable classes in the game - somehow "losing their identity" because someone else got two or three of their spells? Especially [commenting] about paladins getting cleric spells and clerics getting paladin spells, as if those two classes aren't basically Siamese twins anyways.
Please do not contact or message me.
Hello everyone!
Just a reminder to keep discussion centered upon the game and this topic as it ties to the game, and not comments on your fellow users. Thank you.
A quick comment on this in particular, I'd like to reference that this was Bard exclusive prior to this UA. Clerics only just got access to this spell in this UA. Bards specialize in some words that do healing.
On that note: Mass Healing Word. Bard already also gets Mass Cure Wounds via the Bard spell list. Honestly it would have been more thematic for them to have MHW from the get-go.
An interesting idea that someone I've played with before has said is "Unless you're a life cleric, if you have healing you're a half healer." Basically in a sense, classes like the bard/druid/divine sorc are just as capable of the same healing output as clerics unless you've got those boosted heals like Life Domain does (i guess Grave Domain is also an exception towards being close to "full heals" with the max heal from 0). Not to discredit Celestial Warlock because i love it and it heals well, it just has that burst healing that might not last the whole fight, so over a day I've seen it's pretty capable, but not as reliable as other classes for continual healing.
There's no rule saying a cleric has to even prepare a healing spell. Death, Tempest, and War domains would relish some smite spells given the melee abilities they get. Forge even gets a smite in their spell list by default. Some people just reeeeally like Guiding Bolt and Spiritual Weapon more than healing haha.
And really, giving classes that want to be half-healers the ability to function well in that role seems fine to me. If only the cleric has access to x amount of important healing spells, we get situations where every party has to have one at all times. Like Remove Curse. Thematically only holy people should do that, but warlock and wizard (both should arguably be solely cursing items instead) also get it, so certain utilities don't demand that one class alone is in every group.
Honestly to me, the most odd/probably broken change was animate dead for warlocks. The sheer size of the army they could make over the span of one day just lounging idly with a pile of bodies, mixed with the potential for people to play coffeelock and amass a hoard is.....frightening.
....also I love Prayer of Healing :(. Unless you're on a time crunch, you have time to give an AoE 2nd level Cure Wounds to friends. If you are on a time crunch, you're more likely to have time for this and maybe a Catnap spell than a real short rest.
The variants are all optional. Essentially, they're saying that the official word is that adding these spells to a class list won't break the game. DMs are welcome to not allow it, and players are welcome to not take them. If your party doesn't have a Cleric or a Paladin, they're allowing you to balance the party better.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
I will say that in part I agree with the premise: too much mixing of the spell lists does make the classes feel a bit samey (does every class need access to fireball?). But I do disagree on a few of the particulars, for example Ceremony on the druid's list - druids are fundamentally religious (priests of the old faith), just not necessarily following the gods currently in favor/power. I have more of a problem with additions like protection from evil/good: that sounds like a spell that would be tied to a deity (and its alignment) more than to the druidic faith.
The other thing that I'll mention is that it isn't only the class list that separates classes, but also their class and subclass abilities. No sorcerer will ever be as versatile of a caster as a wizard - but they can do more interesting things with the spells that they do know due to metamagic. When subclasses step on the toes of metamagic, that is when things start to feel bad for the sorcerer. All the other caster have their specialties too: A druid has a niche due to wildshape. A Cleric has channel divinity. Paladins might lose sole access to smite spells, but they still are the only class to divine smite. A bard can choose a couple of spells to step on any caster's toes, but no one else gets inspiration. A warlock only gets a few spell slots, but they can cantrip the hell out of you.
When subclasses start to step on these things especially, that is when the classes will start to really feel too close to the same. If you want to build a wizard that can modify his memorized spells based on the situation, WOTC shouldn't provide you that option, but instead tell you to call your sorcerer a wizard in your game instead. If I wanted to build Professor McGonagall, I would use a druid and just call her a wizard.
There are no subclass spell lists for wizards, and there never will be, because doing so goes against the idea of what a wizard is. The whole point of a wizard is that every spell on the list can be learned, if a wizard chooses to. A wizard is adaptable. The closest they will get is what is in the PHB, with the reduced scribing time for your spell book for a specific school.
Requiring duplicates of common spell ideas (weapon spells and smites) to grant specific themes to classes only leads to one thing: Bloat. Which tends to be the end of an edition.
Also, artificers should get revifify. Have you ever heard of a defibrillator?
The sanctity of abstract classes, which may not be in play in the party, is not the primary design consideration. If the party is made up of a Fighter, Bard, Monk, and Druid it really doesn't matter what spells a Cleric or a Wizard have access to or what their "identity" is all about. What matters is that the party is going to need to have some healing options available to it, and the Bard and the Druid are there to fill that roll in the party. If you think that the Bard dropping a Mass Healing Word in a tough fight is going to be met by groans from the players "ugghhh, that's a cleric spell, you shouldn't be able to cast that"... well, no, they brought the bard along to be able to heal them, and they're going to be stoked that he's doing so.
They're balancing classes for the roles they play in their parties, not holding them up as some sort of sacred archetype.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Wasn't it a thing that wizards had to sacrifice a school of magic that they could learn?
And I think putting smites into the baseline cleric is a bad idea and pulls away from the more martial domains that already have smites like war and forge. (tempest ought to have the thunderous smite IMHO). Smites is not a cleric thing, for some domains it is.
I would also argue that some of these expanded spells fit more a subclass option. Like a bard of the hymn. Where you get some cleric spells like a divine sorc.
I'd like to ask as flame blade is added to sorc, shouldn't it be in wizards too?
Wizards used to have to sacrifice their ability to cast two schools of magic in order to specialize. Which only gave them the ability to cast one more spell of each level but only from their chosen school.
I much prefer the current model where they give you bonuses when casting your chosen school or thematic abilities representative of that school.
I also like Sorcerers not having an identical spell list as Wizards. Them not having access to some of the more esoteric Wizard spells but getting some of the more primal/raw magic from Druids makes a lot of sense to me.
There are some that I have a problem with and others that I think should have been a different spell.
Clerics should get thunderous smite instead of wrathful smite. And it doesn't need the auras.
Druids should not get ceremony, they don't need it and it doesn't fit. And probably don't need the aura (they have healing spirit).
Paladins don't need spiritual guardians, just no, god no.
I'm a little against rangers having revivify, but the paladin and artificer have it, so why not?
And that is it, I'm fine with the rest.
Ceremony works with druids, nature wedding. Paladins and spirit guardians i agree with, they should not be getting that unless with a subclass.
This. Having more redundancy in spell lists allows for more party creativity and flexibility of roles. Maybe a party runs a cleric as the primary melee with the bard as the healer now. I’m all for freeing up individual groups to do different storytelling. That’s more important than notions of game balance in a vacuum.
Adrik Torunn: Hill Dwarf Life Cleric of Moradin
Ando Fain: Half-elf Oath of Ancients Paladin of Miliekki, Dragon of Icespire Peak campaign
DM for home campaign
Druids aren't priests of any deity. Nature weddings would be nature domain clerics. Not druids.