D&D 5E Warlord as a Fighter option; Assassin as a Rogue option

Kamikaze Midget said:

Maneuver: Surprise Strike
You strike before they have a chance to react.
Effect: When you hit with a melee attack on a turn in which you have surprise, roll all the expertise dice you spend, and add them to your damage roll. Any saving throws that your attack provokes have disadvantage on them.

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Besides the disadvantage on saving throw, isn't this again quite like Deadly Strike with a further restriction?

Personally I think that if we don't get away from the puny expertise dice of the latest package, we'll never have a decent backstab (or sneak attack).

Unless we add a death saving throw... but obviously too many people don't want to see save-or-die effects in 5e so this is not going to happen.

Kamikaze Midget said:

b) Something I noticed about the 5e Maneuvers is that they don't have prerequisites or level limits or even actual class limits. If you were a rogue, you could fill up your entire list of maneuvers from things fighters get at level 10, hypothetically. I think it's really cool like that -- they're all the same "tier," so they're easy to mix-n-match.

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That's not cool, that's terrible. It means that the best maneuver you can get at 10th level is balanced against maneuvers you can get at 1st level. The only progression comes from your expertise dice themselves, which make your maneuvers uniformly better. That means no level-restricted abilities for fighters and rogues, but plenty for clerics and wizards, who get to use better and more interesting effects.

I would much prefer it if the warlord was a speciality and not a fighting theme...

I'm all in favor of rolling some classes into the core classes but I think that we should do it in a way that will fit as many archetypes as possible.

It's also quite fitting with the way specialities are depict right now.

Some warlord feats I would like to see would be things like bigger flanking bonuses to allies that can see you, bonuse or reroll for fear saves etc

And btw, Barbarian is a background berserker is a class.

Warder

Blackwarder said:

And btw, Barbarian is a background berserker is a class.

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Yep, being primitive does make you angry, if they desperately need a separate rage class, go with berserker.

I played a warlord from 4E release to level 16. I liked the class. But it wasn't what I envision a warlord to be. With multiclassing and hybrid rules I tried to recast him, but never stuck with it (DM allowed a retcon when new rules came along, and you could play for 3 sessions max with a full refund...I always took the refund)

The problem, IMO, with the 4E warlord is that "tactical" is a player function...its the strength of 4E in general, but to push the tactical into a class feature means the player tactical "genius" is diminished. It rewards certain tactics and either ignores or in some (albeit corner) cases punishes others. Commanders strike is almost always better when used on an ally with high basic attack damage output, not necessarily the ally with the best tactical position, e.g.

Mechanically, 4E warlords are a numbers multiplier....a buff bot by other means.

While I know 4E reactions are a love/hate thing for most, If they were dialed back on most classes BUT the warlord, I think the warlord would do better. IMO, warlords should be the ultimate Immediate Reaction class: reacting to the round by round situation of the battlefield. In other words, commanders strike shouldn't be what a warlord does on his turn, but rather an extra attack he grants a PC on THEIR turn (Barbarian almost kills the orc...no free charge to BBEG. But Wait! Warlord uses Commanders Strike, Barbarian hits and easily kills the wounded orc. Free Charge! Thanks Warlord!)

That's a hard sell for 5E, but If we keep reactions a unique warlord schtick, warlord might fit better into the fighter archetype. Reactive Maneuvers might "cost" an extra ED (or more) but with the warlord build that is removed. Thus fighters/rogues could pick up those maneuvers, but the cost is heavy. Warlords would use them liberally.

To bring this ramble back to the OP. Good start, but I think warlords need their class of maneuvers to make it work.

Kamikaze Midget said:

In this thought experiment, there would be no separate warlord or assassin classes.

Instead, a player who wanted a warlord, would play a fighter with the Commander fighting style, and a player who wanted an Assassin would play a rogue with the Assassin scheme.

I'm really beginning to think I didn't contextualize this thread right...

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I got that. It's the fighter killing the warlord and taking his stuff.
But it's not making the warlord a big part of the fighter. The warlord becomes this small unremarkable bit of the fighter.
It's like taking everything that's a bard and making them a couple spells and saying bard fans can just play a wizard and always have "inspire courage" memorized. But all that made a bard a bard is suddenly lost in the list of unrelated spells.

Part of the problem of this is that fighting styles are really just recommended builds that don't really offer anything themselves. If picking the warlord build unlocked a unique class feature only warlords could get, that might be different.

Jester Canuck said:

I got that. It's the fighter killing the warlord and taking his stuff.
But it's not making the warlord a big part of the fighter. The warlord becomes this small unremarkable bit of the fighter.
It's like taking everything that's a bard and making them a couple spells and saying bard fans can just play a wizard and always have "inspire courage" memorized. But all that made a bard a bard is suddenly lost in the list of unrelated spells.

Part of the problem of this is that fighting styles are really just recommended builds that don't really offer anything themselves. If picking the warlord build unlocked a unique class feature only warlords could get, that might be different.

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If the warlord is a Fighter with "a unique class feature," wouldn't it be about as easy to make it a separate class?

I'm not sold on the four-core-classes game architecture, making all other previous classes fit into the four top categories as sub-classes. That seems clunky to me.

Better, in my view, would be to have the first player's document contain a "core" of four classes, but have a "module" in the back of the same book that gives additional classes that aren't sub-classes of the core four..

tuxgeo said:

If the warlord is a Fighter with "a unique class feature," wouldn't it be about as easy to make it a separate class?

I'm not sold on the four-core-classes game architecture, making all other previous classes fit into the four top categories as sub-classes. That seems clunky to me.

Better, in my view, would be to have the first player's document contain a "core" of four classes, but have a "module" in the back of the same book that gives additional classes that aren't sub-classes of the core four..

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I think all the fighter's fighting styles should have a unique benefit. We don't need two pages of suggested builds any more than we need examples of wizards "builds" with certain spells prepared.

I think there's design space for the warlord as a fighter build, with a unique power tied to its build, healing via its speciality, and the right mix of assisting and aiding manoeuvres.
But I also think that there's enough support for a separate warlord class, with a mixture of fighter manoeuvres and its own unique options.
Either way is fine with me.

Jester Canuck said:

I think all the fighter's fighting styles should have a unique benefit. We don't need two pages of suggested builds any more than we need examples of wizards "builds" with certain spells prepared.

I think there's design space for the warlord as a fighter build, with a unique power tied to its build, healing via its speciality, and the right mix of assisting and aiding manoeuvres.
But I also think that there's enough support for a separate warlord class, with a mixture of fighter manoeuvres and its own unique options.
Either way is fine with me.

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The problem with "fighter eats warlord" is the loss of character diversity. Suddenly all warlords become the same and no longer are free to pick a specialty (and don't forget those cannot be taken for granted, they are OPTIONAL and at the DM's whims). So Warlord as a class please.

If the OP's suggestion isn't a warlord, what is? I'm not really seeing what a warlord does differently. Obviously, there's no 3[W] + status effect or 2[W] + move, but the gist is the same.