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I had the idea for this feat as a way to improve specialist wizards, basing it off of the Divine Access Oracle feat.
(Wizard)
Prerequisites an arcane school
Your dedication to your specialty has given you access to magic that would otherwise be foreign to you. Pick three spells from any spell list that have a trait corresponding to your arcane school. Add these spells to your spellbook. If you choose a spell that is of a higher level than you can cast, instead add that spell to your spellbook when you can cast that level of spell. Regardless of what list they come from, you cast these spells as arcane spells.
Special you can select this feat multiple times, choosing different spells each time.
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I think it is to powerful:
1. Necromancers can heal now.
2. Three spells is too much. Yes, for prep casters more known spells mean less than for spontanous casters, but you can gain three additional 3 spells every 2 levels.
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Hm...depending on what other homebrew you have going on, throwing specialists a big spells-known bone might not be unwarranted, but it's worth noting that Divine Access doesn't add the spells to the Oracle's repertoire — it adds it to their spell list, and they can pick up those spells when they add to or swap spells in their repertoire. The equivalent for Wizards would be adding spells to their spell list, letting them add the spells to their spellbooks on leveling up or with Learn A Spell.
If they learn the spells directly, the Special text might not be warranted and/or the level might need to be higher than 4. If it instead works like Divine Access, then it can pretty much be added in at Lv 4 without fuss. Let Necromancers heal, I say.
Good points all around. Assuming we're okay with letting Necromancers heal, maybe change this feat to work more like Divine Access (as in you don't immediately learn the spells, you have to learn them normally), remove the Special line, and then add in a higher level feat around 10 or 12 that's basically "You can learn spells of your chosen school from any spell list as if they were from the arcane spell list" with Specialist Access as a prerequisite.
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You could change the paradigm that way and it would probably be fine (though it would be more and more spells as books are released), but I intended to get across that the Special text is totally fine if it works the same way as Divine Access, in case I wasn't clear. ^_^;
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I'd rewrite it like this
SPECIALIST ACCESS FEAT 4
Wizard
Prerequisites: an arcane school
Your dedication to your speciality has given you access to magic that would otherwise be foreign to you. Pick three spells from any spell list that have a trait corresponding to your arcane school. Add these spells to your spell list. You can select these spells when you would otherwise learn new spells. Regardless of what list they come from, you cast these spells as arcane spells.
Special you can select this feat multiple times, choosing different spells each time.
Seems like being able to poach any three of best spells from any list that just happen to have a school trait, and being able to cast it natively without any drawback for the cost of 1 feat seems overly powerful.
I'd like to point out that the wording doesn't necessarily prohibit taking something that is a focus spell. I'm assuming that isn't intended, and I'm assuming you aren't intending on having it being added to the list overriding rarity, for spells with a rarity.
For comparison, with a witches lesson, you get a related hex and a spell that might be outside your list.
With domains and bloodlines you have limited access to number of sets you can get, and they are prepackaged sets.
I'd be tempted to want the non-list spells to suffer some sort of limitation. What if the spell's effects when cast operate as 1 level lower than the slot of the spell used, or 1 level than your normal cantrips are cast at. Other limitations that might work would be limiting its use to only the extra slot for the specialist casting, or alternately, despite it being a school spell, making it not eligible to be cast of of the specialist school slot. (either way, basically limiting which slots you could cast it out of)
This would allow you to expand into otherwise unavailable regions of spells to get specific effects you want, but you would be paying slightly more for the use of the specific effect, or subjecting yourself to further limitations of those spells.
Otherwise, honestly, I'd think you'd need to limit the choice of spells to only one. Also, I'd question if you should be allowed to retake it, to choose additional spells or not.
Or at least that would be my gut reaction to the proposal.
Honestly, I'm not against the proposal of the idea of specialist wizards having wider range of spells within their school, but I think the arcane list was widened already to accommodate that, to a degree in its starting list's breadth.
Have you ever looked at Divine Access? It's a little more limited to pick with, but getting good spells on a Divine base seems stronger than thematic (but potentially good) spells on Arcane. Admittedly, being able to address the one major weakness of Arcane by picking a healing spell is pretty big, but Wizards get more flack than any class other than Alchemist, so I think it's warranted to give them interesting options. (They're also the only full spellcasters without native healing access, since even Arcane Witches and Sorcerers have healing hexes and Crossblooded Evolution, so that option in particular is less disruptive than you'd expect.)
Focus spells are not on any spell list, so they can't be added. An uncommon, rare or unique spell added to the spell list still needs to be learned, with the same restrictions as usual.
Witches, Clerics, Sorcerers, Oracles and Bards all have features and feats that can give them spells outside their spell lists, and they're all either free, supplementary to more important benefits, or less restrictive. Except Divine Access. So you're singling this homebrew feat out when it's emulating one of the most restrictive/pricy ways to get off-list spells.
Lowering the spell level by 1 would be rude enough to sink the entire option in many cases, limiting its casting in either the specialist slot or not is kind of pointless except for frustrating edge-cases or spells you want to use often (heaven forbid). And, again, look at Divine Access. Arcane is quite broad already, sure, but that doesn't impose extra restrictions on Arcane Sorcerers or Witches, and Specialist Wizards are the only class in the game that depends on schools to any serious extent, so Specialist Access helps brings Specialist Wizards up to the level of other casters a little bit while reducing the need to pad out every school in the Arcane list.
Overall, I don't think any of your concerns are well-founded, or at least I'm not convinced by your reasons for them.
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I just basically duplicated Crossblooded Evolution for my version of this, that's 8th level and adds one spell, though I dropped it to 6th to compensate for the additional requirements. The Sorcerer version ups that to three spells at 18th for another Feat, but I made the high level Wizard version only 16th level, but requiring Unified Theory (which makes sense thematically).
You can argue with those numbers a little bit (and the Sorcerer version does get you Spells Known, which is better), but when three out of Tradition spells is an 18th level Feat for one Class, there's a definite problem if it's 4th level for another.
Ok, finally found the Divine access feat and looked at it. Helps if you look for 'divine access' and not domain access (which was what I looked at before my old post, my short term memory failure).
Ok, the oracle feat gives you the ability to pick a package of pre-vetted list of thematic non-divine spells and add up to three of them to your spell list.
The options that add spells to the divine list for the clerics and oracles give a variety thematically linked spells, and you only have a limited subset of these options based on early character/class choices. (you have to trace your domain back to a deity and from that deity to another one of their domains)
DMW is good to point out the sorcerer feat. It actually adds some evidence that expanding the arcane spell list is acceptable for sorcerers. That makes it easier to accept doing so for wizards.
Yes, by limiting your choice to your school you are limiting your choices a little, but not nearly enough for me to feel like you should be choosing multiple unvetted spells to your list.
Actually, looking at his recommendations, I'd suggest using Deadmanwalking's feats. Link: For reference. You might consider having a middle feat that boost the number of spells to 2 at 10th or 12th level. Make it have the prerequisite of the first feat. But don't change his later feat require the middle one, that way they can retrain out of the middle feat, if they choose to get unified theory and the higher level feat.
All this said however, I didn't feel like the arcane tradition had a weak spell list, so that may be coloring my perspective.
If you insisted on being able to get more than one spell, I might consider adding a cantrip from the same tradition to DMW's suggested feats. I can see that adding some decent flavor.