D&D 5E Why is There No Warlord Equivalent in 5E?

[cbwjm]

Healing is essential if you want the Warlord to be able to replace a Cleric in the party, and that is a vital part of what it's there for.

If they're mitigating damage, I think that should work fine. I also don't think healing is as big a deal in 5e, clerics rarely need to drop a heal in many games.

 

[cbwjm]

Yes, it is. For pretty much every outright Warlord fan I've ever spoken to, healing is in fact a requirement. Hence why it's so terrifically infuriating when that's the first thing every proposal puts on the chopping block.

The Warlord needs to be able to fill the support slot, even in parties without a single person who can cast cure wounds or healing word. That means real, actual, honest-to-God healing. It may be less healing than what a Cleric or Bard could produce (in fact, by level 4-6, I would absolutely expect the Warlord to be simply outclassed for healing, unless said Warlord has actively and aggressively pursued being a really, really, really good healer--and even then he should be struggling to keep up.) But it can't be zero healing, "only THP healing," only damage prevention/mitigation, etc. Sufficient amounts of those things that could actually obviate the need for healing would be severely unbalanced--and would make any party that does have magical healing even worse than a party that had to rely on the Warlord alone.


The problem is: it's also quite easy to die in my experience. Especially in the earliest levels, and/or in parties that don't have magic. I would know. I am the (Celestial Warlock) healer of a mostly-5.0, partly-5.5e game (very kindly run by Hussar), and dear God do we need the healing Celestial brings. If it weren't for my spell slots and daily Healing Radiance dice, things would have gone significantly worse for the party...and we've also had to rely on something like 15+ healing potions on top of that.

Hit Dice help, sure. They are emphatically nowhere near enough to keep up with the allegedly-expected 6-8 combat encounters a day, doubly so once you've spent one night out in the field, since you only get back half your HD, not all of them. That's where the Warlord's stuff comes in. It helps keep people off the floor and still in the fight. Temporary hit points cannot do that. They do absolutely, positively nothing for someone unconscious. They don't even cause a person to stabilize.

It is, simply put, utterly non-negotiable that any 5e Warlord be able to provide at least some healing. It doesn't have to be much--I quite liked the idea of "recipient spends a Hit Die and adds the Warlord's Leadership modifier on top"--but it's gotta be something. Linking it to Hit Dice serves the double purpose of calling back to 4e's mechanics (even if 5e Hit Dice have only the thinnest superficial similarity to Healing Surges), and mollifies the rustled jimmies over "no-cost healing" or various other common martial-healing gripes.


See, that's my point here. Warlords should not be comparable to frontline Fighters/Paladins/etc., unless they've invested in doing so. They're tricksy, wily, clever bastards, who should be at a slight distance removed. Pushing too much automatic, inherent warrior-ness into the class is a huge part of why the Fighter chassis doesn't work. It closes off too much other, valid, interesting design space because the Fighter chassis is already so roided out guns-blazing for personal effort. You can't take away core class features, but you can add them in with subclasses (and, as another perk of the Warlock-style/"fractal" class model, "invocation"-type selected features can do this too.)

We already know Extra Attack can be a subclass-specific feature (see: Bard, Blade Pact), as can heavier armor (Cleric, and BG3 offers it to Rangers as well). It makes sense that at least one subclass of Warlord should truly be a front-line warrior, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger, and/or Paladin. Hence my mention of the "Vanguard" subclass getting +1 HP/class level the way Dragon Sorcerers do, and I'd add heavy armor on top of that.

By leaving those things for folks who want to specialize in full-on warrior badassery, we can give folks who like that stuff exactly what they're hoping for, without forcing EVERYONE to deal with that being baked in.

And this is pretty much where people who want a warlord disagree, I've always felt they were warriors and should be built on a warrior chassis. As I stated, healing also doesn't feel essential to the warlord, temp hit points I'd be keen on but I don't think healing doesn't need to be in. Healing was simply part of the leader role, it doesn't feel like part of the warlord and I do think it could be easily dropped to make way for other abilities.

 

[cbwjm]

4e warlord was medium armor and less hp than fighter.

4e ranger had the same hit points as a warlord, they still have d10 hit dice so I feel like the warlord should have the same. I can see dropping armour to medium, but it's always felt like a warrior class to me and I think it should be as sturdy as one when it comes to hit points.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I mentioned this earlier but it was offhand and I think I should ask it directly: is heavy armour actually notably superior to medium armour? There’s only one point of AC between them and honestly to me it feels more like they’re parallel tracks of progression for DEX and STR based characters to use respectively.

 

[FrogReaver]

I mentioned this earlier but it was offhand and I think I should ask it directly: is heavy armour actually notably superior to medium armour? There’s only one point of AC between them and honestly to me it feels more like they’re parallel tracks of progression for DEX and STR based characters to use respectively.

+1 ac and no need for dex. If you want to focus say str, con and int/cha then heavy armor is much better.

 

[cbwjm]

I mentioned this earlier but it was offhand and I think I should ask it directly: is heavy armour actually notably superior to medium armour? There’s only one point of AC between them and honestly to me it feels more like they’re parallel tracks of progression for DEX and STR based characters to use respectively.

I think heavy armour is just easier since you can dump dex and still have a good AC. If I use both str and dex then I prefer medium armour, since it still let's me be stealthy.

 

[James Gasik]

In my opinion, it depends on whether Feats are in play. For me, the reason to wear heavy armor is Heavy Armor Mastery, because that 3 damage reduction is amazingly sweet. Medium Armor Master? Not so much.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In my opinion, it depends on whether Feats are in play. For me, the reason to wear heavy armor is Heavy Armor Mastery, because that 3 damage reduction is amazingly sweet. Medium Armor Master? Not so much.

I agree. I love damage reduction, and this is one of the very few places it exists.

 

[Yaarel]

I agree. I love damage reduction, and this is one of the very few places it exists.

Designers spoke about why they avoid damage reduction. The AC chance to hit versus the armor absorption of damage are equally good ways to represent armor. But together they tend to become broken.

They would need a way for damage reduction to play nice with game balance since AC is already the option that the game engine runs on.

 

[James Gasik]

Designers spoke about why they avoid damage reduction. The AC chance to hit versus the armor absorption of damage are equally good ways to represent armor. But together they tend to become broken.

They would need a way for damage reduction to play nice with game balance since AC is already the option that the game engine runs on.

See the thing with AC though, is by tier 3, unless magic armor and other defensive items are in play, AC doesn't scale, so you get hit a lot more often. The Fire Giant is my poster child for how absurd this starts to get. At CR 9 and +11 to hit (and multiattack), even the heaviest armor users are going to get hit fairly reliably, and if you're in the AC 17 range or less, yikes!

So I think damage reduction effects could be fine, unless WotC wants to come out and say "uh yeah, by level X you should have AC y", which they won't, because the claim was made that accuracy vs. AC isn't a factor in CR calculations, it's just damage in/damage out (though given that AC and to hit effects damage, I'm not sure how that even works- surely they know that miss chance affects DPR?).

I saw this play out when I played Storm King's Thunder in Adventure League. Our front-liner was a Champion Fighter who dual-wielded and had an AC of 19 with Plate and his Fighting Style. He charged up to a pair of Fire Giants. Four attacks, hitting on 8's (65% to hit) meant he was looking at (on average) 72 damage. The DM was rolling damage, so I watched a Fighter 10 go from 94 to 0 in very short order.

Given at the time I had regular old Studded and Dex 20 on my character, I realized right then and there that going anywhere near melee range with those guys was bad news.

Now there are ways to handle that situation if your group is working towards it. You could cast Shield of Faith or Haste on the Fighter if you have those spells available and you don't have a better use for your concentration. You could go Eldritch Knight and be able to cast defensive spells like Shield or Blur. And you could be more cautious, something that comes with experience.

But if he'd taken Heavy Armor Master, he could have saved himself up to 12 damage which would have at least left him alive, if badly hurt.