Fluff-wise, what do you think a spell list is?
1. Spells that your particular PC is familiar with, thanks to his or her particular mentor.
2. The spells that are frequently used by members of your PC's class.
3. A representative selection of spells that members of your PC's class are able to master.
4. A comprehensive list of spells that members of your PC's class are able to master.
5. Something else.
And what does this imply about off-list spells that your character may find or research?
A. Your spell list is not comprehensive or even representative of everything your character may master. Your PC may find or learn pretty much any unique spell, or any spell from any other spell list.
B. Your spell list is not comprehensive, but it is representative of the kind of spells your character can master. Your PC may find or research unique spells, but not spells that radically depart from what your spell list includes, or common spells that are conspicuously absent from your spell list.
C. Your spell list is comprehensive. It represents the full extent of everything your PC can hope to master.
D. Something else.
And finally, would your responses change if I asked you the same of powers, vestiges, utterances, soul-binds, maneuvers, and whatever other class-based lists of quasi-magical widgets we could think of?
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4
B
No, it doesn't change, save that "find or research" may entail radically different proceedings and have different potential in certain cases. For example: I imaging developing a unique psionic power would be easier and more common than doing such for spells, if anything, but it couldn't be "shared" thereafter anywhere near as easily. Vestiges would pose the opposite situation, since they're more like Pratchettian "small gods" than anything else, and hence can't be "eureka'd" up in a laboratory or seminary like a magic spell can (after all, most vestiges were first beings who were themselves more powerful than most PCs will ever be), but once a previously-unfamiliar vestige is discovered somehow, Pact Mages can pretty much tell each other, "HEY YOU GUYYYYS - lookit, I found us a new soulmate! Here's how you contact it, have fun!"