Why isn't Disrupt Undead on the Cleric spell list?

[Statboy]

I'm thinking about house ruling that Disrupt Undead is on the cleric list. I just want to make sure I haven't overlooked something.

Is there a reason its not a cleric spell? It fits thematically to be a cleric spell and not a sorc/wiz spell. Is there something broken a cleric could do with that spell that I'm not thinking about?

[Goldcape]

I can't think of anything that would cause it to be broken. Its only 1d6 on undead.

[Pizza Lord]

Because making cantrips unlimited screwed up the balance that had been in place for decades. The spells weren't designed to be infinite and the cleric had an ability that either affected all undead in a large area (turning or rebuking) or later just did 1d6 damage to every undead in a 30-foot burst (and only got stronger each level).

Because they deliberately messed with Turn Undead (turning it into Channel), they knew making an unlimited ability available that did the same damage, at least over the first few levels, and could critically hit (and potentially add Sneak Attack damage, since they also made undead vulnerable to all of those now)
... they realized just how useless people would find Channeling against undead (ie. not as a burst heal) except in cases with a lot of weak, low-level undead. As opposed to blasting over and over at lone or paired undead, at least until higher levels. Plus they get a saving throw for half damage.

In short, they [messed] around with established game mechanics, realized they'd made one practically obsolete, and so keep disrupt undead away from clerics to obfuscate the fact and force their new 'unique class ability' to be used as default.

But no, giving cleric's access to disrupt undead very likely won't mess up your campaign in any way, unless you set up encounters that allow it to. And probably not after level 3 or 5.

[Statboy]

Pizza Lord wrote:

Because making cantrips unlimited screwed up the balance that had been in place for decades. The spells weren't designed to be infinite and the cleric had an ability that either affected all undead in a large area (turning or rebuking) or later just did 1d6 damage to every undead in a 30-foot burst (and only got stronger each level).

Because they deliberately messed with Turn Undead (turning it into Channel), they knew making an unlimited ability available that did the same damage, at least over the first few levels, and could critically hit (and potentially add Sneak Attack damage, since they also made undead vulnerable to all of those now)
... they realized just how useless people would find Channeling against undead (ie. not as a burst heal) except in cases with a lot of weak, low-level undead. As opposed to blasting over and over at lone or paired undead, at least until higher levels. Plus they get a saving throw for half damage.

In short, they [messed] around with established game mechanics, realized they'd made one practically obsolete, and so keep disrupt undead away from clerics to obfuscate the fact and force their new 'unique class ability' to be used as default.

But no, giving cleric's access to disrupt undead very likely won't mess up your campaign in any way, unless you set up encounters that allow it to. And probably not after level 3 or 5.

That makes sense. Though in practice I've found PC's rarely channel to harm anyway. If the undead are numerous enough for it to be a better use than healing your allies outside of combat, then the undead are typically too weak to scare the PC's.

So PC's don't use it against a large number of weak enemies because they don't want to waste the resources, nor against one large enemy because its a group AOE. It only see it used if there is one big scary undead leading a lot of weaker undead.