Who Can Rule a Stronghold in AD&D?

This is something interesting that came up when I was messing around with the AD&D DMG's Appendix B to create a sandbox (okay, many sandboxes - I have a problem).

As I've described many times on this blog, when using Appendix B to stock a sandbox, I roll on the Inhabitation table to determine the placement of settlements, castles (which I will call strongholds), and ruins:

Generally, three out of 100 "spaces" (6-mile hexes, in my case) will contain a stronghold. To determine the type of stronghold and who rules it, we are directed to the Castle Tables in Appendix C:

Strongholds can be ruled by bandits, brigands, berserkers, dervishes, or characters/"character-type NPCs". Deserted strongholds (which I generally rule to be ruins, not proper strongholds of good construction) can also be inhabited by monsters (or totally deserted).

Bandits, brigands, berserkers, and dervishes are all "men" - that is, humans. Character-types, I figure, can be of any race which is available to the players. So if I determine that a stronghold is ruled by such a character, before I determine that character's class, I roll on this table (found earlier in Appendix C) to determine the character's race:

80% of characters will be human, 5% will be dwarves, 5% will be elves, 2% will be gnomes, 5% will be half-elves, 2% will be halflings, and 1% will be half-orcs. You can actually simplify this by making it one roll, like so:

    d100      Race of Individual
    01-80     Human
    81-85     Dwarf
    86-90     Elf
    91-95     Half-elf
    96-97     Gnome
    98-99     Halfling
    100        Half-orc

I'll then determine the class of the character by rolling on Castle Sub-Table II.B., limiting myself to those classes which are available to that race.

But there's a problem - characters can only build strongholds beginning at a certain level, and demihuman races have level limits, as outlined in the PHB:

So the question is - which demihuman characters can actually rule strongholds in AD&D? Let's find out.

The Cleric can establish a "place of worship" and attract followers at 8th level, and at 9th level can construct a religious stronghold (presumably, they would build out the existing place of worship into a stronghold, not start an entirely new construction, but this isn't made explicitly clear):

While Castle Sub-Table II.B. states that clerics who rule wilderness strongholds will be from 9th to 12th level, I would allow them to be 8th level as well, with the caveat that these are not proper religious strongholds but the lesser "places of worship".

Aside from humans, player character half-elves and half-orcs can be clerics, but they are limited to 5th and 4th level, respectively, so they can build neither places of worship nor religious strongholds. Dwarf, elf, and gnome NPCs can also be clerics, but player characters cannot - I would personally ignore this as I don't really see the logic. Dwarves are limited to 8th level and elves and gnomes are both limited to 7th level. Dwarf clerics can build places of worship but not religious strongholds. Elf and gnome clerics can build neither. Only human clerics can build religious strongholds.

The Druid does not dwell permanently in castles, but at 11th level they can "inhabit building complexes set in woodlands and similar natural surroundings":

This is not a castle per se, but I would still count it as a stronghold. I imagine it being like the druid grove in Baldur's Gate 3, which is very much a stronghold.

Castle Sub-Table II.B. states that druids who rule strongholds will be 12th to 13th level, but I would allow them to be 11th level as well.

Only human and half-elf player characters can be druids, and half-elf druids have no level limit, so they can construct and live in such building complexes just as human druids can. Halfling NPCs can be druids, but are limited to 6th level, so they cannot.

The Fighter can establish a freehold ("some type of castle") at 9th level:

A player character of any race can become a fighter, but gnomes and halflings are limited to 6th level, elves to 7th level, and half-elves to 8th level - none of them can build a stronghold as a fighter. Dwarf fighters are limited to 9th level (but they must have Strength higher than 17), and half-orc fighters are limited to 10th - they can both build strongholds.

The Paladin can only be human. It isn't clear when exactly they can build a stronghold, but they can at some point. However, it can only be of the small type (a small shell keep, tower, moat house, or friary):

I assume that, as a sub-class of fighter, they construct their strongholds at 9th level (this is consistent with Castle Sub-Table II.B., which lists the lowest-level paladin with a stronghold as being 9th level, though as I've already demonstrated - and will continue to demonstrate - that table is not entirely reliable).

The Ranger can construct strongholds much the same as fighters:

That is, rangers can build strongholds at 9th level. This makes me more confident in my assumptions about the paladin, since both are fighter sub-classes. Again, Castle Sub-Table II.B. omits 9th level rangers (it includes only rangers of 10th to 13th level).

Aside from humans, only half-elves can be rangers, and they are limited to 8th level, so they cannot build strongholds.

The Magic-User can construct a stronghold at 12th level:

Castle Sub-Table II.B. incorrectly lists 11th level magic-users as potential stronghold rulers (it includes levels 11 to 14, but should probably be levels 12 to 15).

Aside from humans, only elves and half-elves can be magic-users, and they are limited to 11th and 8th level, respectively, so they cannot build strongholds.

It is not clear from the PHB whether the Illusionist can build a stronghold, but since they are a sub-class of the magic-user and are included on Castle Sub-Table II.B., I assume that they can, and that they follow the same rule as the magic-user (that is, they can build a stronghold at 12th level).

Castle Sub-Table II.B. includes illusionists of 10th to 13th level, but like the magic-user, it should probably be 12th to 15th level instead. It's also worth noting that illusionists' strongholds "will often be covered by an illusion to appear as a mound of rock, a ruined place, or a huge castle". Neat!

Only humans and gnomes can be illusionists. Gnome illusionists are limited to 7th level, so they cannot build strongholds.

The Thief can build a stronghold, but it must be "a tower or fortified building of the small castle type" and "within, or not more than a mile distant from, a town or city":

This means that you will never encounter a thief's stronghold in the wilderness.

It sounds like the thief can build the stronghold at any level, but can only establish a gang (i.e., attract followers) at 10th level, so for the purposes of this exercise I'll say they can build the stronghold at that level as well. 

This is consistent with Castle Sub-Table II.B., which lists the lowest-level stronghold-ruling thief as 10th level (although it is worth pointing out that since I use 6-mile hexes and a thief's stronghold can only be 1 mile distant from a town or city, I will never have a hex containing a thief's stronghold - if you instead use Gygax's scale of 1-mile hexes, the table works just fine, but the thief's stronghold must be in a hex adjacent to a town or city).

Anyone can be a thief, but half-orc thieves are limited to 8th level, so they cannot construct strongholds. Dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, and halfling thieves have no level limit and so can construct strongholds.

The Assassin is tricky, but essentially, they have two types of "stronghold" - a guild headquarters in a large town or big city, "typically a warehouse or other nondescript structure", and a second headquarters "of any form - cavern, castle, monastery, palace, temple" which (presumably) may also be in a large town or big city, but "if it is a large and obvious place...must be located well away from all communities":

The assassin must be 14th level to rule the former and 15th level to rule the latter (15th is the level cap for assassins). 

Castle Sub-Table II.B. lists the assassin stronghold ruler's level as 14th (and only 14th) level. As with the thief, this works with Gygax's scale of 1-mile hexes, but the assassin's stronghold must be in a hex adjacent to a town or city. 

Since I again use 6-mile hexes, 14th level assassins can only rule guildhalls which are "always within a large town or big city", and only 15th level assassins can rule wilderness strongholds, my version of the table should include only 15th level assassins.

Dwarves, elves, gnomes, half-elves, half-orcs, and humans can be assassins. Dwarves, elves, gnomes, and half-elves are limited to 9th, 10th, 8th, and 11th level respectively, and cannot rule strongholds. Half-orcs and humans have no level limit and can rule strongholds.

The Monk can build a stronghold at 8th level, but it must be a monastery or monastery-like headquarters:

Castle Sub-Table II.B. states that "Monks' strongholds will usually be monasteries, resembling a type of enlarged moat house, having fewer of the defensive constructions of a typical castle - but being nonetheless formidable." I take this to mean that monks can only build castles of the small variety, specifically moat houses or friaries.

Castle Sub-Table II.B. includes monks of 9th to 12th level, omitting 8th level monks just as it omits 11th level druids and 9th level paladins.

Only humans can be monks.

The Bard is of course a special case. The description of the class does not explicitly state that they can build strongholds, but they are included in Castle Sub-Table II.B., so we must assume that they can.

Bards begin as fighters, then become thieves between 5th and 7th level - they must make the switch before attaining 8th level as a fighter, so they cannot build a stronghold as a fighter does at 9th level. They can attain 5th to 9th level as thieves, then must become druids - again, they cannot build a stronghold as a thief does at 10th level. Once they become a druid, they begin progression as a bard. They have their own experience table but are treated as druids of the same level (kind of - after 12th level they remain a 12th level druid until 23rd level when they finally become a 13th level druid).

Thus, I would assume that bards abide by the same rule as druids when it comes to building strongholds - that is, they can do so at 11th level, but it must be a building complex in a wilderness or natural setting.

UPDATE (January 12th, 2026): Bards will only construct a stronghold at 23rd level:

Only humans and half-elves can be bards.

Here is a summary of my findings - Who Can Rule a Stronghold in AD&D:

• Clerics: Dwarf clerics of 8th level only and human clerics of 8th level and above can rule places of worship, and human clerics of 9th level and above can rule religious strongholds.
• Druids: Half-elf and human druids of 11th level and above can rule building complexes set in woodlands and similar natural surroundings.
• Fighters: Dwarf fighters of 9th level only, half-orc fighters of 9th or 10th level, and human fighters of 9th level and above can rule strongholds of any type.
• Paladins: Human paladins of 9th level and above can rule small strongholds only.
• Rangers: Human rangers of 9th level and above can rule strongholds of any type.
• Magic-Users: Human magic-users of 12th level and above can rule strongholds of any type.
• Illusionists: Human illusionists of 12th level and above can rule strongholds of any type. They are usually covered by an illusion which makes them appear to be something else.
• Thieves: Dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, halfling, and human thieves of 10th level and above can rule small strongholds only, and they must be within or no more than a mile distant from a town or city.
• Assassins: Half-orc and human assassins of 14th level can rule a guild headquarters (a nondescript location, not a castle of any type) which must be within a large town or big city, and half-orc and human assassins of 15th level can rule a headquarters of any type (cavern, castle, monastery, palace, temple, etc.). It can be in a town or city but must be located away from all communities if it is a large and obvious place.
• Monks: Human monks of 8th level and above can rule a moat house or friary.
• Bards: Half-elf and human bards of 23rd level can rule a stronghold of any sort.

Here is a different summary sorted instead by race:

• Dwarves: Can rule as clerics (places of worship only), fighters, and thieves.
• Elves: Can rule as thieves only.
• Gnomes: Can rule as thieves only.
• Half-elves: Can rule as druids, thieves, and bards.
• Halflings: Can rule as thieves only.
• Half-orcs: Can rule as fighters, thieves, and assassins.
• Humans: Can rules as any class.

You could determine who rules a stronghold at least two ways: Do you roll to determine the ruler's race or class first? If I roll first for race and determine that the ruler of a wilderness stronghold is a human, for example, they could be of any class. If I instead determine they're a half-orc, they can only be a fighter or Grandfather/Grandmother assassin. If I roll first for class and determine that the ruler is a paladin or monk, for example, they can only be a human. If they're instead a cleric, they could be a human or a dwarf.

I'm not sure which is better, but I'm leaning towards determining class first. Just remember that thieves and most assassins don't live in the wilderness and druids and assassin Grandfathers/Grandmothers don't usually live in cities.

It is worth noting that deserted strongholds (which I treat as stronghold ruins) can be inhabited (like a monster lair) by dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings, even if these types can't rule strongholds as most classes. The wilderness encounter tables in Appendix C include these demihumans under "rough" terrain, which I believe is where you're meant to roll when populating a "castle" of the "deserted (monster therein)" type (the footnote to the tables describes "rough" as including "ruins within up to five miles of the party").

What this suggests is that individual elves, gnomes, and halflings, for whatever reason, don't build wilderness strongholds, but enclaves of them may move into such places once they're abandoned.

Interestingly, all four of these demihuman types can lair in such castles in uninhabited/wilderness areas, but only dwarves and gnomes lair in them in inhabited/patrolled area. In other words, if there's a road to the dungeon, elves and halflings won't hang out there - not on the surface, anyway. I wonder why that is.

Where are AD&D's High-Level NPCs?

This is a question I've pondered quite a bit in my exploration of AD&D. Theoretically, my assumption would be that there's nothing to restrict a character-type NPC from reaching the same level of experience as a player character of the same type. That is, a human character can become a cleric of 29th level, a fighter of 11th level or higher, or a magic-user of 18th level or higher (no upper limit is provided in the latter two cases, whereas 29 seems to be the cleric's limit for whatever reason). 

Non-human NPCs would also presumably abide by the same restrictions imposed on player characters of that type, so an NPC elf could advance as far as 7th level as a fighter and 11th level as a magic-user, and no more, just like a player character. Interestingly, NPC dwarves, elves, and gnomes can be clerics, and NPC halflings can be druids, even though these options are not available to player characters:

The PHB, in the section titled THE ADVENTURE, describes three different adventure types, characterized by the setting in which they take place: Town Adventures (which include not just towns but also cities and large villages, and so are probably more accurately described as settlement adventures), Dungeon Expeditions, and Outdoor Exploration (this is, for my money, a better configuration of modern editions' "Three Pillars of Play" - which are Combat, Exploration, and Social Interaction).

The DMG provides some guidance as to what level character-type NPCs encountered in each of these scenarios will be, so I'll analyze the subject within this framework.

I'll begin with Dungeon Expeditions, because NPCs encountered in these scenarios will tend to be of lower levels. Character-type NPCs are encountered in dungeons as early as the 1st dungeon level:

They can also be encountered all the way in the deepest levels of the dungeon, and on every level in between:

Here is the relevant section describing the level of these NPCs:

Character-type NPCs encountered on the 1st through 4th levels of the dungeon are of the corresponding level in their class. Such NPCs encountered on the 5th through 15th levels are level 6 to 12. NPCs encountered on the 16th level or deeper can be as high as 13th level. 5th level NPCs are oddly never encountered in dungeons, nor are those higher than 13th level.

This suggests that 13th level is the maximum level at which player characters should continue to embark on dungeon expeditions - that's before clerics or magic-users gain access to 7th level spells, for context.

Next, let's look at Outdoor Exploration. For whatever reason, character-type NPCs are encountered in temperate and sub-tropical uninhabited/wilderness areas and nowhere else - not in arctic, sub-arctic, sub-tropical, or tropical areas, and not in waterborne environments. Not even in inhabited areas! The occasional high-level NPC is still encountered in groups of men (bandits, berserkers, brigands, etc.) and demihumans (dwarves, elves, gnomes, etc.), but full parties of fellow/rival adventurers are not.

According to the special footnote to these encounter tables, character-type NPCs in the outdoors are always of 7th through 10th level:

But random encounters are not the only way to encounter character-type NPCs outdoors. We must also account for those NPCs who rule strongholds:

Excepting the bard, which is an outlier by design, there is a good deal of overlap with those character-type NPCs found in the lower levels of dungeons and in random outdoor encounters. Only magic-users, thieves, and assassins exceed 13th level - and, as I mention in my post on Thieves and Assassins Guilds, this table is not totally reliable when used to stock an outdoor area, since the PHB states that thieves can only build small-type castles within or close to towns and cities, and only Grandfather/Grandmother assassins (15th level) rule wilderness strongholds (14th level assassins' strongholds are always in a town or city).

Where are all the higher-level character-type NPCs, then? According to the rules presented by the DMG, characters adventuring in dungeons and outdoors will never encounter a cleric capable of casting 7th level spells or a magic-user capable of casting 8th level spells (16th level in both cases), an illusionist capable of casting 7th level spells (14th level), a Great Druid (14th level), a Grandfather/Grandmother assassin (15th level), or a monk of higher than 13th level.

This has gameplay significance because players may need to be able to find such NPCs. They may need a cleric to cast resurrection, a magic-user to cast wish, or an illusionist to cast vision. Druids, assassins, and monks will need to find higher-ranked NPCs of the same type and defeat them to advance in their own class. Where are they?

As I've already mentioned, the Grandfather/Grandmother assassin should be in a wilderness stronghold. Druids, likewise, according to the PHB, "do not dwell permanently in castles, or even in cities or towns", but "in sacred groves...set in woodlands and similar natural surroundings":

While no such restriction is imposed upon higher-level monks, it seems fitting to me that these too would be (literally) cloistered away in some remote wilderness monastery. It seems to me that the highest-level druids, assassins, and monks are left off the castle sub-table merely because they are unique individuals who should be deliberately placed in the play area with careful consideration by the DM - though this rationale again is not applied to monks in the same way, who appear on the sub-table despite the fact that those of 9th level or higher are, according to the PHB, one-of-a-kind:

That still leaves the higher-level spellcasters, which brings us to Town Adventures.

In my post on henchmen, I mention that 1-in-100 humans and 1-in-50 demihumans are "suitable for level advancement". Of those, generally, 1-in-10 are "interested in offers of employment as a henchman". Since newly recruited henchmen can only be 1st through 3rd level, this means that 10% of the character-type population in a settlement is of 1st through 3rd level, but no guidance is provided for the level distribution of the remaining 90% of character-type NPCs.

The city/town encounters detailed in the DMG shed a bit of light on the level of NPCs found in these environments:

• Assassin encounters are with assassins of an indeterminate level (my guess is that one is to refer to the Thief encounter below to determine the level of the assassins).
• Bandit and Brigand encounters at night will include "1 or more leaders" (based on the Monster Manual there could be a fighter from 8th to 10th level, a magic-user of 7th to 10th level, or a cleric of 5th to 6th level, but it's unclear how to determine which leaders and of what level will be present because the Monster Manual deals with much larger groups of bandits).
• City guard encounters include fighters of 2nd to 5th level and indentured magic-users of 1st to 4th level.
• City official encounters include fighters of 1st to 4th level.
• City watchman encounters include fighters of 1st to 5th level and indentured clerics of 2nd to 5th level.
• Cleric encounters are with a cleric of 6th to 11th level and can include lesser clerics of 1st to 4th level.
• Druid encounters are with a druid of 6th to 11th level and include either lesser druids of 1st to 4th level or fighters of 1st to 6th level.
• Drunk encounters can include individuals from many of the other encounter types, presumably at similar levels.
• Fighter encounters are with a fighter of 6th to 12th level and include henchmen of 1st to 4th level.
• Gentleman encounters can be with fighters of 7th to 10th level.
• Harlot encounters may be with a harlot who is a thief or is working with one (presumably of the same level as those described under Thief, below).
• Illusionist encounters are with an illusionist of 7th to 10th level and include either illusionists of 1st to 4th level or fighters of 1st to 6th level.
• Magic-user encounters are with a magic-user of 7th to 12th level and henchman magic-users or fighters of 1st to 6th level or 4th to 7th level, respectively.
• Mercenary encounters include 1st level fighters and may include fighters of 2nd to 5th level.
• Merchant encounters include a fighter of 1st to 4th level.
• Monk encounters are with a monk of 7th to 10th level.
• Noble encounters include fighters of 1st to 4th level, and the noble may even be a fighter or cleric of 5th to 12th level.
• Paladin encounters are with a paladin of 6th to 9th level.
• Pilgrim encounters may include a cleric (or druid) of 2nd to 8th level, a monk of 5th to 6th level, a fighter (or paladin or ranger) of 1st to 8th level, a thief (or assassin) of 2nd to 7th level, or a magic-user of 6th to 9th level (as with Bandit and Brigand encounters, it's not entirely clear how to determine which of these character-types will be with the group, as the Monster Manual details much larger groups).
• Press gang encounters will be with 1st level fighters with a leader of 2nd to 5th level.
• Rake encounters will be with fighters of 5th to 10th level.
• Ranger encounters will be with rangers of 7th to 10th level.
• Ruffian encounters will be with 2nd level fighters and may include an assassin of 5th to 8th level.
• Thief encounters will be with a thief of 8th to 11th level and may include lesser thieves of 1st to 4th level.

So, that's a lot of information that I probably didn't need to type out. Do you notice anything? The highest-level character-type NPC which can be randomly encountered in a city or town is of 12th level (and that's only individual fighters and magic-users and noble clerics). Again, where are the higher-level NPCs?

Well, they must be somewhere. The DMG contains the following list of prices for hiring NPC clerics to cast certain spells:

(Interestingly, there is no such list for druid, magic-user, or illusionist spells, suggesting that while clerics are probably happy to accept tithes to their faith in exchange for service - if the character requesting such is "of similar alignment and religion as the cleric" - those other classes will probably only provide their services in exchange for magic items or service in kind.)

This list includes 7th level cleric spells like astral spell, control weather, earthquake, gate, regenerate, and restoration. Higher-level NPCs are present in the world (and specifically in large enough settlements), but for some reason are never randomly encountered in dungeons, outdoors, or in settlements.

This suggests that such NPCs are essentially retired from adventuring (they do not go into dungeons or the wilderness) and insular (they do not leave the place in which they reside to wander the streets of towns and cities). They have to be deliberately sought out where they live, and they probably won't be happy to see you.

So where do they live? Clearly not in dungeons, and apparently not in wilderness strongholds. However, while there are certainly domain-less high-level NPCs in D&D, I have a hard time believing that retired, insular, very high-level NPCs would be without them. 

Rather, I suspect that these individuals have ruled their strongholds for a long time - long enough that they are well a part of the established order. Strongholds maintain order in the borderlands, attracting people to settle around them in tax-paying single dwellings, thorps, hamlets, and the like. Eventually, I imagine, those communities grow into villages, towns, and even cities, with those old strongholds at their core. Is this where the highest-level NPCs live?

I think so. I think cities especially probably have lots of strongholds within them - those may be ruled by NPCs like those found on the castle sub-table in the DMG, but I imagine others will be ruled by even higher-level ones. Unfortunately, there's no guidance as to what the distribution should be.

In my post on settlements (which leans towards 5e), I stated that the character-type NPCs in my settlements are broken into groups corresponding to the "Tiers of Play" - 65% will be Tier 1, 20% tier 2, 10% Tier 3, and 5% Tier 4. In a later post, I wrote about how a similar "Tiers of Play" framework might be applied to AD&D (specifically 2e). While in that post I found that the "Tiers of Play" framework did not clearly map onto AD&D, I do still find it helpful to consider here.

In my post on henchmen, I provided an example AD&D city of 35,000 people with the following character-type NPC demographics:

• 280 humans
• 35 dwarves
• 35 elves
• 14 gnomes
• 35 half-elves
• 14 halflings
• 3 or 4 half-orcs

Since the total is 416 or 417, and 10% of these will be henchmen of 1st to 3rd level in accordance with the AD&D DMG's rule of thumb, that leaves 374 to 376 character-type NPCs to be distributed as follows:

• 243 to 245 low level (level 1 to 3 but not interested in work as henchmen)
• 74 to 76 medium level (level 4 to 7)
• 37 to 38 high level (level 7 to 12)
• 18 to 19 very high level (level 12 to 20 - or 20+ in AD&D 1e's case)

We can use AD&D's Character Subtable for dungeon encounters to get some idea as to what classes those very high level characters are:

Since this is for dungeon encounters, it may not apply to cities exactly, but it's what we've got. It's also worth noting that I'm not taking race into account, which would affect the distribution somewhat. Dwarves can't be magic-users, for example, so allowing all of these NPCs to be of any class will result in skewed numbers - but this is just a broad overview.

We can expect the average AD&D city to have the following very high level character-type NPCs in residence: 3 or 4 clerics, 7 or 8 fighters, 0 or 1 paladins, 0 or 1 rangers, 3 or 4 magic-users, 0 to 1 illusionists, 1 or 2 thieves (each of which might have their own guilds or gangs at war with one another), 0 to 1 assassins (but no higher than 14th level), and 0 to 1 monks. There will be no druids, because druids do not live in cities, and you might opt to rule the same for rangers and monks depending on taste (this is how I'm leaning).

While the demographics I'm using to divide the NPCs into "tiers" are entirely of my own invention and not based on anything in particular, I think they work reasonably well for the setting AD&D is depicting. The assumption seems to be that player characters will be able to find very high level NPCs in large settlements if they go looking for them, and these numbers support that. It also makes sense that player characters will be bumping into NPCs of up to 12th level in the streets, since there are a decent number of them living in the settlement.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone, and hopefully I've demonstrated that this is not just worldbuilding and number crunching for its own sake, but that these numbers actually have gameplay implications and are important to consider when running a game. What are the chances that a high level cleric of the player character's alignment lives in the city? What is the political landscape among the city's fighter lords? If the party has earned the ire of one powerful magic-user, is there another they can call upon for powerful magical aid? How many Thieves Guilds are active in the place, what is the status of their internecine turf war, and which would it be best to align with?

The player characters are not the most important or powerful individuals in the setting, and they may never be. I for one think it's important to know who those individuals are, how many of them there are, where they can be found, what they want, and most importantly, how the player characters might have to deal with them.

Dead Gods Waiting to be Reborn: Ruined Shrines and the Syncretist Cleric in AD&D

The AD&D wilderness inhabitation tables have infected my mind. They have wormed their way in, forcing me to make sandboxes I may never use. Now that they've burrowed deep beneath the surface, living (rent free!) in my brain, so too have I begun to dig beneath the surface. I'm increasingly interested in analyzing and rationalizing the implications of these tables, picking apart the little oddities that likely exist only because Gary Gygax simply wasn't thinking that much about it.

But I am thinking a lot about it. And what if Gygax was, too? What if every idiosyncrasy in Appendix B actually has some implicit logic to it that the Dungeon Master is meant to intuit? Surely this was the intention of Gygax, who famously never over-explained anything in lengthy prose in any of his writings.

(At this point, this might as well be an AD&D Appendix B blog. If this sort of thing is not interesting to you, I promise to write about other stuff eventually.)

All this is to say that I've been thinking about ruins. Specifically, ruined shrines. Allow me to share, once again, that table which has been the source of so much of my consternation as of late:

2-in-100 (or 1-in-50) hexes contain a ruin (not including deserted castles, which I interpret as ruins). That's a ruin every 50 miles if you're using the suggested scale of 1-mile hexes (as I've explained before, I use a 6-mile hex because I like things to be more spread out - it makes getting around more challenging by slowing the pace of travel between locations, makes the movement rate math a little easier, and gives the locations more room to breathe). Of those 1-in-50 ruins, 25% are shrines - that's one ruined shrine per 200 hexes.

What's stranger still is that while there are ruined villages and cities as well as non-ruined villages and cities, there are no non-ruined shrines (nor are there non-ruined tombs or ruined dwellings, thorps, hamlets, or towns, but those are topics for another time). So, what happened? Why is every shrine a ruin?

The short answer is that every shrine is not a ruin - there are probably intact shrines in many settlements and within clerics' strongholds - but that every shrine found in the wilderness is ruined. For whatever reason, every religious group that sets out to establish a place of worship beyond the realm of "civilization" or outside the protection of castle walls is doomed to destruction. An AD&D sandbox is littered with monuments to dead gods.

Who is building these shrines? Clerics, probably. From the PHB:

This section goes on to clarify that clerics can begin constructing a proper religious stronghold at 9th-level, which must be dedicated to the cleric's deity (or deities! put a pin in that for later), at which point they can clear the surrounding territory and begin collecting revenue from trade, taxation, and tithes:

Therefore, the purpose of the "place of worship" (which includes a shrine) is for slightly lower-level clerics to begin attracting followers and men-at-arms in preparation for eventually building a stronghold.

That's not the only reason to construct a shrine. From the DMG:

Here, we see that a shrine is necessary for a cleric to research and create new spells. This doesn't quite square with my understanding of clerics. Is it within a cleric's power to create new spells? Is it not the deity who should be "creating" spells and bestowing them upon their faithful vessels? I'll come back to this.

There is one more mention of shrines in the DMG outside of the Appendices, in the section on turning undead, which may not be particularly relevant to this post but is worth mentioning as it pertains to the inherent power of the shrine - and why a(n Evil) cleric might want to construct one:

(Note that the excerpt from the PHB describes a place of worship not less than 2,000 square feet in floor space, which includes a shrine, whereas this excerpt from the PHB describes a shrine as being an area roughly 10" by 10", which is 100' by 100' in a dungeon and 300' by 300' outdoors.)

In summary, shrines are sources of power for clerics which are located within somewhat lesser versions of the strongholds they will eventually build. A shrine allows the cleric to research and "create" new spells, and bolsters the undead minions of Evil clerics against other clerics' attempts to turn them. A shrine is presumably built out into a place of worship to then attract followers, then eventually developed into a stronghold to control the surrounding lands and collect revenue. 

I think it is likely that the ruined "shrines" of AD&D's wilderness were in fact originally constructed as that middle classification - places of worship which once attracted followers and which house the shrine necessary for the research and "creation" of spells. Ruined castles are already accounted for in the inhabitation table and castle sub-tables, so we can rule that out as a possibility. I also imagine that "ruins" are intended to represent proper dungeons, which are otherwise unaccounted for in the inhabitation table. I do not feel that the 10" by 10" shrine described above fits that particular gameplay need, so I am ruling out that possibility as well.

Presupposing that the ruined "shrines" on the inhabitation table were in actuality once these places of worship lends them additional significance. The place of worship, after all, contains not just a shrine but also perhaps an altar and a chapel.

From the DMG's section on the manufacture of scrolls:

And the section on fabrication of other magic items:

Both the creation of scrolls and magic items is limited by the level of the character to varying degrees which I won't get into here. The point is that an 8th-level cleric would be capable of creating scrolls and magic items of some level of power, and that this is another reason why these ruined "shrines"/places of worship might exist.

5th-level clerics can also create holy water, which requires the use of a specially created basin:

We might presume that such a basin would also be housed in a place of worship, and thus, most likely would be present in our ruined "shrines".

Now that I've justified the existence of these ruins in the setting, let's talk implications.

Much like the deserted castles generated by the inhabitation table (both those totally deserted and those now home to monsters), these ruins present an opportunity for player character clerics. They are dungeons, yes, filled with monsters, tricks, traps, puzzles, and treasure like any other, but they aren't just another dungeon to be crawled and plundered.

If they can be secured against their dangers, these ruins can also be claimed and restored, likely for a fraction of the price of constructing them from scratch. They contain shrines, altars, basins, and maybe other features which are now dormant but which have the potential to be greatly useful to the cleric PC.

Only, these places of worship are (probably) not dedicated to the cleric's deity. You could have a monotheistic setting, sure, and even if you don't, likely some fraction of these ruins will be associated with the cleric's deity, but many more will not. The original inhabitants and their deity may have been Lawful, Chaotic, Good, or Evil, and that will inform the ruin's features and its utility to the cleric. A ruin once dedicated to the cleric's deity may need to be reclaimed. That of a rival deity may need to be consecrated (with some effort, as any undead present will be resistant to turning) or defiled (being Evil is fun too).

More interesting are those in the middle. The cleric could reclaim an allied deity's place of worship on behalf of the still-active church (a nice faction for your sandbox) and build bridges between faiths. The ruin could also be unfathomably ancient - that of a dead god waiting to be reawakened through piety. 

My last post described a cleric with a prayer book akin to the spellbook of a magic-user, a syncretist who incorporates the beliefs and rituals of adjacent faiths into their own practice, allowing them to engage in a precarious balancing act in which they are granted powers by multiple deities at once - but must simultaneously serve and please all of their patrons in order to continue to use and accumulate their divine magic.

The ruined places of worship in AD&D provide the cleric with another avenue by which to obtain such magic. I return once again to the power of shrines, and that bit about a shrine being needed to "create" new cleric spells. Within this framework, the shrine is necessary not to create but to discover new spells. The shrine is imbued with the deity's dormant power, and the library (assuming this is required of clerics and not just magic-users) are the dusty religious tomes, crumbling scrolls, and cracked tablets found within the ruin. 

The cleric can acquire new spells by forging relationships with living religions, learning their practices, and serving their cause, but they can also do so by restoring these sites of ancient worship, bringing dead gods back into the world. I think that's pretty neat!

Was this Gygax's intention? Probably not. He probably wasn't thinking that much about it. But, just because he wasn't, doesn't mean I can't! The AD&D DMG is loaded with detail. In the details there are plenty of answers for curious or confused DMs, but there are also questions. The tables in the appendices imply a setting, but not a clearly defined one. There is a lot of fun to be had in interpreting the vagaries into something more cohesive!

Clerics Need Spellbooks Too

This post is part of the papal conclave Blog Bandwagon/Blogclave. As the world turns its gaze towards the Vatican, the blogosphere turns its attention to the cleric. Subscribe to Prismatic Weekly for a roundup of all this post's siblings once the conclave has chosen a new pope!

Here's an interesting tidbit from original Dungeons & Dragons' Book I: Men and Magic:

It's accepted as a fundamental D&D-ism that magic-users/wizards have spellbooks, yet for some reason the need for clerics to keep spellbooks did not become ingrained in future editions in the same way. 

As early as AD&D 1st edition, clerics "have their spells bestowed upon them by their respective deities". Gygax elaborates that cleric spells are granted either by the cleric's "education, training, and experience" (1st and 2nd level spells), followed by intermediaries of their chosen deity (3rd through 5th level spells), then by the deity itself (6th and 7th level spells). 

Although clerics cast their spells the same way as magic-users and require the same amount of time to memorize them, the way in which they acquire new spells and what they must do to memorize them is very different. While magic-users must scribe their spells in a book and study the book to memorize them, clerics simply gain access to all spells of the next level when they gain a level, and memorizing them requires only time spent in prayer - no book necessary.

This is unfortunate. I quite like the idea of the adventurer cleric with a book of prayers bestowed upon them by their church. Such a book would contain the initiate spells typically learned during the cleric's background education. In keeping with AD&D, let's say that these are the 1st and 2nd level spells. This is convenient in that it maps neatly onto D&D 5e's "Tier 1", which covers character levels 1st through 4th and spell levels 1st and 2nd.

To acquire additional spells from their deity, the prayer book-wielding cleric must not only continue to serve the deity's cause, make contact with various divine intermediaries and, eventually, the god itself, but they must also write the prayers associated with these spells into their prayer book.

(As an aside, this same principle can also be applied to the paladin, who in many versions of D&D casts spells the same as the cleric. The druid - and by association the ranger, who is to the druid as the paladin is to the cleric - could also keep a more "nature-y" book of sorts. After all, the druid is often treated as something like a subclass of cleric. 

On the other hand, druids were not in OD&D, and so I can easily argue that the excerpt at the beginning of this post does not apply to them. Druids have also acquired their own unique identity over the years, so my inclination is for them to have an entirely different method of learning and/or preparing spells.)

Of course, I don't like how every cleric of every deity is able to cast more or less the exact same spells, so the prayer book of a cleric who worships but one deity would be somewhat limited, and the prayer books of any two clerics of differing faiths would be quite different from one another. 

However, much like the enterprising magic-user or wizard must delve into abandoned wizards' towers and lost libraries for new magic, this would incentivize the cleric to go forth and acquire additional prayers from other gods. After all, there is not usually one "true" god in a D&D setting - there are multiple, some in alignment with one another and others at odds. So long as the Lawful Good cleric remains in their principle deity's good graces and does not seek out the prayers of rival Chaotic and Evil deities, there isn't much reason why the prayers of multiple gods can't coexist in the same book.

This encourages the cleric to adventure in a slightly different way. No longer is the cleric the crusader or templar, spreading their deity's gospel, proselytizing to those who will listen and smiting those who won't. Instead, the cleric becomes a syncretist or polytheist, accumulating the diverse magics of a wide array of faiths and lesser and greater divine beings. 

The cleric must rely on their social acumen. Much like the magic-user must on occasion convince a learned wizard to tutor them in some new spell, the cleric must ingratiate themselves with people of different faiths so that they may become an initiate and incorporate their prayers into the cleric's personal belief system.

Unlike magic-users, whose spell repertoire is limited by their Intelligence and what magic they can find (and perhaps by their specialization), the cleric is limited by their piety - new spells are learned from a given deity by continuing to serve that deity's cause. It may be a simple matter of studying the proper rituals (their words, signs, and sacred components) to learn 1st- and 2nd-level spells, but more powerful magic requires direct intervention by the deity and its intermediaries, which is only earned by the accrual of favor (that is, the cleric's level of piety with each deity would need to be tracked - like experience points, for example - to determine when they can begin to cast the higher-level spells bestowed by the deity - even if the cleric "knows" the rituals and has them written in their prayer book).

If the cleric fails to continue to satisfy the deity, those same spells can be taken away. Many masters means many obligations - the more deities the cleric courts, the more patrons they acquire and must satisfy, or else lose their powers. Each new deity that is petitioned makes the balancing act more precarious (this is also why you should let warlocks, in more recent editions of D&D, petition as many patrons as they can - but that is a topic for another time).

I'm sure there are some who will feel that this somehow "nerfs" the cleric. The cleric is meant to get automatic access to all their spells, and now I'm suggesting instead that they jump through a bunch of hoops to get them? I'm long past the point of caring about those sorts of things. 

On the other hand, this would give the cleric a great deal of flexibility on par with that of the wizard, if the player is enterprising enough to take advantage of the opportunity. It makes the cleric more dynamic, grounded in the fiction of the game world, and allows individual clerics to distinguish themselves from one another. That's worth it in my eyes.

Thoughts and prayers?

Spell Lists Suck: Fiction-Focused Magic in D&D

I typically propose very minor alterations to D&D: how to fix summoning, how to fix shapechanging, how to fix weapon damage. I'm not really interested in redesigning the core system - just relatively simple fixes to pain points I've experienced in play. This time, I'm proposing something a little more drastic.

Spell lists suck. The way that spellcasters pick and choose the spells they learn and prepare is dumb.

Now that I've stated my thesis, I will walk it back slightly by saying spell lists are okay. Every spellcasting class has its own spell list that the player chooses from when deciding what spells their character learns or prepares each day. The unique spell lists for each spellcaster do a nice job differentiating the classes. Spellcasters either use "magic magic", "holy magic", or "nature magic", and two classes that use the same type are further differentiated by the specific spells available to them - warlocks have "creepy" spells compared to wizards, and paladins have more "battle magic" compared to clerics.

The existence of spell lists also allows for them to be subverted. Bards can, at certain levels, learn spells from any class's list. Clerics, druids, paladins, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks get access to a handful of thematic bonus spells to pad out their lists. For some reason, druids, rangers, and sorcerers don't always get these bonus spells, warlocks don't automatically learn them but instead can choose to learn them, despite every other class getting them for free, and some classes draw their thematic spells from other class's spell lists while others get free access to spells they could have had anyway...but this is a tangent.

I say spell lists suck because every class gets their spells the same way: by picking the "good" ones off a big list. There are minor differences in that clerics, druids, and paladins get all of their spells at each level at once and prepare a limited number each day, while bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks learn a limited number and always have them prepared. But the process by which clerics, druids, and paladins - or bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks - actually choose their spells is exactly the same from one class to the other.

The flavor text for the classes suggests that each is either channeling a different type of magic or else channeling the same type of magic in a different way (wizards memorize and recite arcane formula, sorcerers draw on their innate power, and warlocks use magic gifted to them by otherworldly patrons), but this isn't reflected at all in how the caster acquires the actual spells they can cast.

The cleric might acquire a couple spells which are thematic to their god, but they are otherwise preparing the same spells as any other cleric. The sorcerer doesn't unlock some new power specific to their unique origin - they just learn the next most optimal generic sorcerer spell. The warlock does not commune and negotiate with their patron for enhanced powers - they just get another warlock spell, most of which are available to all warlocks.

No class is acquiring spells in a way that's at all related to the fiction, and because everyone is just picking spells off their own little menu, the classes are distinct from one another, but multiple characters within a single class are often not.

The exception is the wizard, who we're told learns magic by reading spellbooks and scrolls, which is actually how they learn magic in the game...sometimes. Because the designers feel they can't trust the DM to include spellbooks and scrolls in their game, wizards also just arbitrarily learn spells each time they level up. Like everyone else.

If I were to redesign the spellcasting system in a drastic way, I would design fiction-focused rules for how each spellcasting class acquires their spells. What would that look like?

Wizards

It is a myth that wizards can only master "arcane" magic. All magic is arcane - even if the druids and the gods would like the world to believe otherwise.

In truth, wizards can learn any magic that is written down. The magic of the gods is written in prayer books and inscribed on altars and in reliquaries. The magic of nature is etched into ancient standing stones and trees. None of these are beyond the wizard's comprehension.

The process of learning a spell remains unchanged from the base rules - the wizard must spend a certain amount of time and money (representing the purchasing of magically primed rare inks and parchment), then succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana) check, the DC equaling 10 + the spell's level, in order to write the magic in their spellbook.

As in the base rules, the wizard begins their career with a spellbook containing six 1st-level spells. These spells are usually taught to them by their master, but could also be acquired and learned by chance. The DM chooses which spells they are. To encourage the wizard to adventure and discover new magic, their master should probably be dead or estranged. The adventurer wizard can always find a new master through politicking or networking.

I feel very strongly that the DM should choose the new wizard's starting spells, but I'm sure there are many who find this unconscionable. The DM and player could also negotiate what the the six spells are. Or, to simplify things, perhaps all novice wizards learn the same six spells: comprehend languages, detect magic, mage armor, magic missile, shield, and sleep. A bit dull, but classic, and not at all useless.

Other subclasses which cast wizard spells (such as the arcane trickster and eldritch knight) also have spellbooks, and learn spells in the exact same manner as the wizard. Since this is a choice which is made later in the character's career, it's best for the player to declare their intention to take this option sooner rather than later, so that the DM can plan to include a spellbook which the character can acquire. Otherwise, a character who pursues this path does not have any spells until they can acquire a suitable spellbook (another wizard in the party can help them create one, or perhaps basic primers are sold in metropolitan markets).

One of the small things that bothers me about arcane tricksters and eldritch knights is that they learn the same magic as wizards but in an entirely different way. If wizards learn from books and can learn as many spells as they can find, other classes that cast wizard spells should do the same!

Clerics

Clerics do not learn spells - they are granted spells through faith and prayer. The deity and its intermediaries provide access to the magic. This is represented by a generic cleric spell list which is then supplemented with a selection of always-ready subclass-specific spells. This is fine, but it still results in largely similar clerics with just a few unique signature spells. Why is 90% of each god's repertoire the same spell list as every other god?

In AD&D, cleric spells like bless, cure wounds, and remove curse were reversible, and the reverse versions were the purview of evil clerics only. 2e sorted cleric spells into spheres of influence and introduced specialty priests (the druid being used as an example) which had their own unique powers as well as access to specific spheres. These two elements gave distinction to good and evil clerics as well as clerics of specific deities.

Each of 5e's Divine Domains should have a unique spell list, accessible only by worshiping a god who rules over that domain. This domains akin to 2e's spheres of influence. I wouldn't only split all of the current cleric spells into these domains, but would instead go through all of the spells in the game to determine which domains (if any) each might fit into.

There would also be a general domain for the most essential cleric spells like bless. These I would divide into good and evil domains. Want to cast cure wounds? Worship a good deity. Want to cast inflict wounds? Worship an evil deity.

This is probably a great time to mention that these are broad ideas. I'm taking big hypothetical swings here. A lot of these ideas might be kind of impractical, but things that I want to toy around with on a very small scale eventually (like, if a player in my game wanted to be a Life cleric, I might create a custom Life Domain spell list for them instead of creating spell lists for every domain).

From there, clerics could remain much the same, simply choosing their domain depending on their deity, except they would have access to a specific spell list based on that choice. A single god could grant access to multiple domains at once, or a cleric may have to choose which aspect of the god they worship - i.e., the destructive firepower of the god-phoenix, or the healing power symbolized by its rebirth?

It's worth nothing that D&D is typically a polytheistic setting. I don't see why a single cleric couldn't simultaneously petition multiple deities, so long as they aren't opposed to one another. A piety system such as that in Mythic Odysseys of Theros could be used to determine what level of magic from each deity the cleric has access to, depending on their in-game actions, allowing a cleric to essentially "multiclass" with a variety of gods to gain access to a breadth of magic which rivals the wizard.

Druid

Druid spellcasting in most editions of D&D works exactly the same as for clerics, albeit with different spells. If we're making a spell list for each cleric domain, one could simply give them access to the Nature Domain spell list and call it a day, but that would be a disservice. 

My understanding of druids is not that they are just clerics for gods of nature, but instead that they are channelers of D&D's ubiquitous "background magic" associated with "nature spirits". The druid is not praying to the nature god to cast earth magic, but channeling the powers of the local earth spirits.

Because druids channel the magic of the natural spirits in their environment to cast spells, just as clerics need a unique spell list for each Divine Domain, druids need a unique spell list for each natural environment - grassland, forest, hills, desert, swamp, water, mountain, underdark, etc. Like clerics, they would also have a more general list to include things which aren't environment-specific like animal spells, healing, and the like.

Can druids cast spells in unnatural environments like settlements and dungeons? Those places still have natural elements, so I don't see why not. A mining town is still in the hills, a mummy's tomb is still in the desert, and a merfolk stronghold is still underwater, after all.

In some cases, environmental elements need to be woven into the components of the druid's individual spells. That is, casting entangle requires the presence of plant life, and call lightning requires the druid to be outdoors during a storm, which could preclude the use of those spells in certain environments.

Should druids still be required to prepare spells? If they are channeling the natural spirits of their current environment, that sounds like spontaneous casting. Spellcasters who prepare their spells do so at the beginning of the day. In the morning the druid could be in the forest, but by afternoon they might be in the swamp. Should they be able to carry forest magic into the swamp with them?

Maybe they should. There is something interesting about a high-level druid who flies quickly to the desert, communes with it, and then flies quickly to the dark wood to use the desert's withering spells against the corrupted plant monsters there. It has Pokémon vibes (complimentary). Much to think about.

Paladin and Ranger

I'll skip to these two as they are straightforward. My solution for the two of them is simple: paladin spellcasting works the same as for clerics, and ranger spellcasting works the same as for druids.

In older editions, paladins and rangers were akin to variants of the fighter with higher ability score requirements and some special thematic powers. They weren't even spellcasters until much later in their career (in 2e, 9th-level for paladins and 8th-level for rangers), and their spellcasting abilities were quite weak at that time.

I won't advocate for returning to that style of doing things. The "half-caster" spell progression of 5e works just fine (at most, I'd consider making them a "one-third-caster" like the eldritch knight or arcane trickster). 

The point is that paladins are warriors who cast cleric spells, and rangers are warriors who cast druid spells. They don't need their own spell list or unique mechanics. They will benefit from the versatility that comes from the broader cleric and druid lists.

The elephant in the room is that this requires paladins to go back to worshipping gods. I like that in 5e, paladins draw their power from the magic of the oath they swear. It's very thematic, and it implies a setting where oaths carry cosmic weight. However, I have no idea how to make it fiction-focused with regards to what spells they can cast or how their magic works.

So, paladins have to worship gods again, which is fine by me. Like clerics, their spell list is determined by their deity's domain of influence. They should still have an oath with principles they must adhere to, but the oath is sworn between them and their deity, and the deity provides the magic so long as the paladin continues to abide. The chosen deity informs which oaths are available.

Bard

In 5e, the bard learns a set number of spells and casts them spontaneously. Their spell list is mostly arcane magic, but is also a weird grab bag of divine and nature magic. Their Magical Secrets feature allows them to pilfer spells from other class's spell lists. There's some flavor text about how the bard utilizes the "Words of Creation", which are learned from "hard study" and "natural talent", but of course this isn't actually reflected in how they learn their spells.

My bard is instead inspired by the bards of editions past.

The AD&D 1e bard is famously weird. It is essentially the first "prestige class" - part fighter, part thief, and part druid.

In 2e, the bard is largely similar, except the druid spells are replaced with wizard spells. Bards in 2e keep a spellbook.

To split the difference, the fiction-focused bard uses both the wizard's and druid's rules for spellcasting simultaneously. They have a spellbook and can learn any spell that's written down, and they can also channel the magic of nature spirits and cast druid spells spontaneously. It's up to the player to choose which slots to spend on which spells.

This preserves the main element which makes bards' spellcasting unique - the hodgepodge of spells they get from different types of casters. It also fully embraces two very different interpretations of the bard of which I'm equally fond.

Sorcerer and Warlock

I'm lumping these together because the post is getting long, I don't have a lot to say about them, and the systems I have in mind for them are very similar.

In 5e, both sorcerers and warlocks learn spells as they level up and can cast them spontaneously. Some sorcerer subclasses get bonus spells that they learn automatically. Every warlock subclass gets an expanded spell list, but they don't learn the spells automatically. They have to pick them as the spells they learn when they gain levels.

Fiction-focused sorcerers have a unique spell list determined by their Sorcerous Origin, and fiction-focused warlocks have a unique spell list determined by their Otherworldly Patron. Not every sorcerer regardless of their magical origin can cast control winds. Not every warlock patron has the power to grant their petitioners finger of death. 

This makes sorcerers and warlocks the most tightly-focused casters in the game, which they should be. It doesn't make sense to me that anyone with a magical soul/anyone who makes a pact with an otherworldly entity can cast from almost exactly the same list of spells.

Conclusion

So, that is a pretty crazy system I'm proposing. The 5e PHB has eight spell lists (one for each spellcasting class). If I were to follow my own advice and make all of the specific spell lists I'm proposing - only counting classes and subclasses in the PHB - I would end up with 20 unique spell lists (seven for the cleric domains, eight for each type of natural environment, two for the sorcerer subclasses, and three for the warlock subclasses - the bard, paladin, ranger, and wizard don't need their own lists).

It is incredibly obvious why the 5e design team did not do this. The unique spell list for each class plus signature spells for things like Divine Domain, Druid Circle, Sacred Oath, and the like is an elegant solution. 

But, I just can't shake the feeling that spellcasters who use different types of magic should feel different beyond just the flavor of their spells and what kind of armor they can wear. Clerics, druids, and paladins, bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks should not be learning and using magic exactly the same way as one another.

Mostly, I want the spells that casters can access to make sense in the fiction. If the wizard is supposed to learn spells by finding them in dungeons while adventuring, they should not be stumbling upon 9th-level spells in the spellbook their master gifted them as an apprentice. Not all gods should grant access to the same magic. A druid who draws magic from the environment should not be casting the same spells in the desert as in the forest. A sorcerer or warlock with a very specific magical power source shouldn't have the same spell selection as every other sorcerer or warlock.

Well, it's easy enough for me to argue in favor of doing all this extra work without putting my money where my mouth is, so I totally understand if this sounds like a bonkers idea to anyone else. It sounds pretty bonkers to me. But in a kinda cool way.