Spell Categories and Spell Lists

 Ok, we're nearly done picking apart every tiny detail of the new Character Origins UA, our first playtesting document for the One D&D Player's Handbook. (Reminder, "One D&D" is a code name. They claim they're not going to be using terms like "6th Edition," but whatever they wind up calling it, for now it's One D&D).

One of the new things presented in the UA is three new spell lists. The lists are Arcane, Divine, and Primal. Cosmologically, Divine Spells are linked to the Gods but also the Outer Planes in general. Primal Spells are linked to the Inner Planes - the elemental planes and the Feywild and Shadowfell (the latter of which might be a bit more surprising given the flavor of Druids and Rangers, but I think this could open up some fun new ideas). Arcane Spells are then linked to the multiverse entire - the system by which these planes interact. I might also draw a connection to the Astral Plane, which would seem fitting. These lists were likely included in this UA to showcase how the new Magic Initiate feat is going to work, but there's context the article makes clear we're missing: In future Unearthed Arcanas, we're going to see how Classes use these lists, and how they interact with Subclasses as well. (Again, the style guide clearly indicates a lot more use of capitalization to make it clear when a term has specific mechanical implications.)

I've seen some people speculating that the very idea of class spell lists is going away. I'm not ready to make that leap - while there's certainly a lot of overlap between, say, Wizards and Warlocks, there are also some spells that really fit with the flavor of one class over the other.

I'd speculate that these spell categories will act as an additional tag, similar to its school of magic, to give a sense of the flavor of a spell while also just giving another thing for features to latch onto.

Unlike Schools of magic, these categories are not mutually exclusive. All three lists have Detect Magic, and Cure Wounds is found on both the Divine and Primal lists.

Now, this is why I don't think these are replacing class lists: Bards and Artificers are considered Arcane casters, but unlike Wizards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks, they've historically had access to healing spells - none of which are found on the Arcane list.

And, again, there are spells here that have historically been limited to one class - Armor of Agathys, for example, is a classic Warlock spell that is on the Arcane list. I doubt that this will simply mean that any Arcane spellcaster can pick it up.

Because of the overlap between lists, I think it might be hard to implement scenarios in which one type of magic is banned. For example, Vassalheim in Exandria (the setting that includes the continent of Wildemount) looks down on arcane magic, and is a city of the Prime Deities (the good and neutral gods of the setting, whose pantheon is basically the same as the Dawn War Pantheon with one or two additions.) In my own homebrew setting, the Shadow City of Kez-Dhazam forbids the practice of divine magic or the establishment of any temples or houses of worship.

In practice, this mostly means that you might have NPCs react negatively to certain classes casting magic. This could potentially give you opportunities to call out specific spells, but again, because Detect Magic or other shared spells could come from different sources, I don't know how easily one could implement them.

Searching existing PHB spells by class, I figured I'd see what's missing on each list.

Arcane:

Here, I'm looking at cantrips and 1st level spells (the only ones we have access to) that are available to Artificers, Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards.

Missing from the list are:

Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Guidance, Spare the Dying, and Thorn Whip

1st level: Animal Friendship, Bane, Command, Faerie Fire, Healing Word, Purify Food and Drink, Sanctuary, Speak with Animals

The lack of Eldritch Blast certainly raises some eyebrows. This cantrip is central to most Warlock builds, and so removing it from the game would really fly in the face of this whole "backwards compatibility" philosophy behind One D&D. Thus, I think that the much more likely explanation is that Eldritch Blast is going to become a class feature for Warlocks. All Warlocks will get it, but other classes won't be able to pick it up via Magic Initiate or Spell Sniper or other things. In earlier editions (I want to say 3rd was when the Warlock was introduced,) EB was a class feature - I think this might have been before the idea of cantrips was introduced, so Warlocks were special in getting this unlimited spell attack (Wizards would carry light crossbows if they didn't want to spend a spell slot on their turn).

The other spells are all spells that only the Artificer or Bard from among the Arcane classes have access to - these two classes stray the farthest from the classically arcane feel, with Bards often getting Primal-feeling spells and Artificers sometimes getting Divine-like ones (though with a very different flavor to how they're probably working).

Divine:

Here, we're looking at just Clerics and Paladins.

Missing from the list are:

Cantrips: Mending

1st level: Create or Destroy Water

So, in this case there's very little missing from the list. Both of these have always been available to the Cleric, so it's odd to see them missing. Mending, of course, I can see as being thought of more in terms of Arcane (it feels like a must-have cantrip for Artificers). Create or Destroy Water is only shared by the Druid, so might be thought of as a more Primal spell (it does deal with physical matter).

Primal:

Finally, Primal spells are used by Druids and Rangers, so we'll take a look at that list.

This one actually gets more options in some cases, which we'll list after those that are missing.

Cantrips: None

1st level: Charm Person, Protection from Evil and Good, Searing Smite,

The spells that this adds that are not currently available to Druids or Rangers: Message, Spare the Dying

Ok, so this is interesting. I imagine that they might be adding those cantrips to the Druid spell list, because Rangers don't get cantrips by default, making Druids the only class that would use Primal Cantrips.

In the case of the missing spells, Protection from Evil and Good and Searing Smite were added to the Druid and Ranger class lists, respectively, with Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. Both of these are pretty classic Divine spells (Smite spells are usually the exclusive domain of Paladins).

    So, what is the actual point of all these lists?

At the present moment, we only really have the new Magic Initiate feat, which has you choose one of the three as the source of your spells. It seems possible that subclasses could also open up options here as well.

I wonder if the intention is to move away from expanded spell lists, or subclass spells, and instead say that, for example, a Nature Domain Cleric could pick up Primal spells (whether having access to the whole list or just a select few). I could imagine implementation similar to the flexible spells for Eldritch Knights and Arcane Tricksters. EKs can only learn Abjuration and Evocation spells from the Wizard list, but at certain levels, they get to pick up spells that aren't of those schools - my EK took Mirror Image at 8th level, for example. You could possibly have something where an Oath of the Ancients Paladin can prepare up to half their proficiency bonus in Primal spells.

Again, we really don't have the full context for these lists, so this is all speculation.