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Simplified 5e: Spell Lists
🕑 Added 2025-08-26 15:39:31 +0000 UTCD&D's spell lists are the clearest sign that the game needs an overhaul.
Most editions of D&D are designed with backward compatibility in mind. Each one dutifully takes the prior edition's spell list, converts its contents to the new rules, and then adds a few new spells to spice things up.
The thought process is pretty simple. People need the old spells to use the old content, plus new content adds another feature to the list of reasons to upgrade. Over time, though, that means spell lists turn into sprawling lists of effects that a DM needs to track.
Let's do some simple math. I want to write an adventure for a 3rd level party. I can probably assume that there's a cleric in the group. The cleric picks which spells they want to prepare after each long rest. In designing my adventure, I need to account for at least 32 spells, probably more based on the cleric's domain.
I need to remember that this single character can use a spell to:
Determine if an NPC is lying
Shut down all noise in an area
Grant resistance to poison
Name an object and find a path to it
Determine if a creature is extraplanar or undead
Ward against possession by spirits
Effectively solve for food and water needs
That's one character! The character who is supposed to be a healer!
I don't think the flaw is the existence of these effects. The flaw is one of access. In its earliest days, D&D had few classes and relatively few spells. When running Basic D&D back in the day, I could keep all of the cleric's spells in my head. The list was relatively narrow in scope.
This went double for wizards/magic-users. They rolled for their spells at random. When they tried to add a spell to their book, they had to roll to see if they could understand it. If they failed, they could never learn that spell. Did you ever wonder why D&D has so many spells that are area of effect plus damage? That's why! If you could never learn fireball, you settled for lightning bolt, or cone of cold, or ice storm.
Today, after over 50 years of development, characters have spell casting mechanisms designed for sparse access to spells combined with a teeming ecosystem of magic. The result, in my experience at least, is a game where the DM is always on the back foot.
For my trim down of 5e, I have made drastic cuts to the spell list. The idea is to give DMs a starting list that they can understand. Since this is still just 5e, you can add more spells as you wish. In the class mechanics for casters, spellcasters start with a few spells known and acquire new ones slowly. However, they can add spells they find on scrolls to their list of known spells.
This approach turns spells into treasure and gives the DM an easy way to add spells on a case-by-case basis.
Later this week I'll share some of the revised spell lists and walk through my philosophy on which spells I chose to keep. Paid subscribers will also get access to the priest class on Friday.
Comments
Gene aka Trey Guido
I think if your going to make spells for caster trade off like mtg does. You need to reduce choice. So rebooting schools as limiting choices might be good. As a seasoned dm do I worry about player spells? No. If the players are having fun blowing things up or stun locking things i let it happen one time. Then challenge them next time. But decision paralysis for new casters is a big problem and I try to warn new players about that every time. Because it slows down the game and combat.
Bryan Metz
I get it if you have the premise that spellcasters can do too much (it's a common enough complaint, though it has never bothered me personally), but I guess I don't understand, on a fundamental level, why an adventure needs to be so hands-on in terms of knowing what spells all the casters have prepared. Shouldn't you write an adventure that deals with the general power level of 3rd level characters, and then separately, in a DMG or whatever, talk about how to generally handle situations that can derail your adventures? If you try do always do both at the same time, it seems like a lot of redundancy and wasted effort. (Unless I'm just wildly misunderstanding the post).
