Multiclassing mayhem: should all these questions be duplicates of this question about wizards' spellbooks?

Question

Can a multiclass Wizard copy any Wizard spell they find into their spellbook? is a dupe target for a decent number of questions. However, I question whether some of them are actually duplicates. The gist of most of them seem to be that any type of question asking about learning or casting spells as a multiclassed spellcaster gets duped to this.

My problem is that several of the dupes are asking different questions. The wizard class has a very specific method of learning spells (copying into their spellbook) that no other class has a parallel to. I argue that any of the questions not asking about wizards, for example, are already out for that reason alone. The inclusion of a spellbook changes the question and complicates the answer needlessly when trying to suss out the actual answer for any other class combination. Look at the answers for the question above. They are full of fuss and debate over the requirements for copying and for preparing, a debate that has no relevance for any other class.

I posit that people searching for one of the duped questions and getting redirected to this one may be pretty confused at how the answers relate to their classes that don't have any spellbook at all and that there are better clearer ways to arrange these dupes to provide the best answers. More importantly, perhaps, to our procedures here is that the inclusion of a wizard and copying spells seems to make the questions different even though the answers remain pretty much the same.

Note: I do not want, nor do I think we should have a question for every different multiclass combination and level combination. That is not what I am saying. I simply think that multiclassed wizard questions should be isolated into their own group and something else should be done with the rest of the classes.

Here are the questions I think are not dupes (and reasons):

No wizard classes:

• Sorcerer Multiclass learning spells
• When Multi-classing Paladin with Sorcerer, could I Prepare Paladin Spells at my Sorcerer Spell Level (5th level spells max)?

Has to do with casting from another person's spellbook:

• Can a Sorcerer/Wizard prepare spells from another person's spellbook?

I honestly think that possibly more of these questions would be better off not duped as well, but I can always ask about those later after these (IMO clearer) examples are talked about.

Should these question's duplications be redone?

Answer 1

Make a new general question and answer it - then mark those other questions as a duplicate of that instead

As Kamil Drakari said in their answer, most of the questions marked as a duplicate of the wizard spellbook question are not exactly a duplicate of the wizard one, but they are very related to one another. I agree with Kamil that the aspect of the wizard question involving copying spells into their spellbook makes it slightly different from most of those marked as a duplicate of it (though the "Assuming I can do that, can I cast such a spell" part covers the same ground).

I think the best solution would probably be to ask a general question about what spell level multiclassed spellcasters can learn or prepare spells at, and then provide an answer that covers that general rule. Then it can serve as the destination of the various duplicates of that question for specific builds.

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Update (July 2019)

I've gone ahead and posted the question, as I suggested: If I multiclass into 2 or more spellcasting classes, how do I determine my known/prepared spells?

I also went ahead and updated some of the old questions that had been incorrectly marked as a duplicate of the wizard question to point to my new question instead - though I didn't go searching for any others (if at least to avoid flooding the front page all at once).

Answer 2

This sort of question should be marked duplicate, but they should point at a different question

The question currently being used as a duplicate target for those questions is strictly not about the same thing; it is explicitly asking about "copying spells into a spellbook" and not the natural spell progression, while several of the duplicates don't mention wizards at all and thus are about natural spell progression and not spellbooks. The answers to each would likely share a quote from the PHB, but they will differ in other ways especially since the spellbook answer has an even stronger piece of evidence due to errata.

On the other hand, it doesn't make sense for every combination of classes to have a separate question either. Warlocks are potentially worth a special question because Pact Magic is special, Wizards can have at least one special question because they have an extra mechanism to learn spells with its own rules (even if in this case those special rules give the same result), but the other instances of multiclassing and learning spells function the same way and use the same rules.

Conclusion

Sorcerer Multiclass, Paladin Multiclass, and Druid Multiclass should not be marked as duplicates to Wizard's Spellbook. A different question should be chosen as the duplicate target, possibly one of those three being the target for the other two. I personally find the answer on the Paladin question to be the clearest.

As for the Sorcerer/Wizard question, I think the better duplicate topic is Using an acquired spellbook, though it's hard to tell for sure because the proposed action is prohibited in multiple ways. However, the other possible duplicate targets seem to focus more on "knowing" or "copying" the spells, and the relevance of that isn't apparent until you learn that "borrowing" a spellbook doesn't work that way in the first place.