Have you ever played a 4E Warlord past level 1?
D&D 5E Warlord as a Fighter option; Assassin as a Rogue option
- Thread starter I'm A Banana
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Have you ever played a 4E Warlord past level 1?
Jester David
Hero
True, but there could be two "warlord" esque builds if the fighter: the tactician and the marshal. One handles all the "lazy warlord" options such as granting movement and attacks, while the other might lead by example and focus on damage reduction or reacting to enemies.
Dump the inspiring and Charisma-relate warlord options and save the morale boosting warriors for bards. It held distinguish the two.
Done.
@GreyICE earlier in this and a related thread has posted quite a bit about what a Warlord's 4e fan might think is missing from the combined-with-fighter approach.
From how I take it, the more tactical choices for the Warlord allow it to control the flow of the battle beyond using its own attacks. Mechanically this would be things such as puling and pushing enemies, allowing your guys to slide or charge when they otherwise wouldn't, giving extra attacks, etc... He's also offered some ideas for how they could be fit in outside an AEDU framework (after observing the battle for some amount of time, etc...) and I'm he sure could write them up so they seemed organic instead of meta-gamey (after observing the battle the Warlord uses his tactical insight to....). Combined with some of the inspirational powers and the option to not be at point with the Paladin and Fighter, the 4e-inspired tactical type really has extremely little to do with adding bonuses to its own attacks.
As he describes it, a Warlord seems further mechanically from a Fighter to me than a Paladin does from a Cleric.
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For me, this is the real issue.
In the real world, it is possible to feint enemies, to lead them into traps, and so on. Time does not unfold in a freeze-frame fashion, and skilled tactics and/or inspiration can give one side a greater ratio of opportunities/openings relative to their enemies. Inspiration can also help people push on when others would falter. And intimidation, or an obviously superior oppnent, can cow enemies.
The question is, how does one model all this in D&D? There are not that many places it can happen.
Consider increasing the ration of opportunities/openings - this can be done either via a to-hit boost, or via improved action economy. D&D has a long history of using imrpoved action economy here (eg AD&D fighters get multiple attacks, not just bigger attack bonuses, even though attack bonus is what models the ability to exploit openings).
Consider inspiring allies to gon. If this can't be done via healing (which is its natural home, given the role of hit points in D&D), it is hard to see how it can be incorporated at all.
What about intimidating enemies? If this can't be done via imposing conditions or hit point loss, how is it to be handled? But if these can only be imposed via magic, then I guess this is out too.
And then what about feining, wrongfooting, leading enemies into traps etc? This is never going to happen organically, via the player "feinting" the GM. D&D action resolution just doesn't work in the right way for this to happen (contrast Burning Wheel scripting, in which a player can feint the GM). The only way to achieve this is via forced movement or similar. But if this can only be imposed via magic, then I guess we can't have wrong-footing by our warlords.
The weird thing about that last point is that we do permit AC-purging feinting (eg in 3E) without complaints about it being pseudo-magical. I'm pretty sure that if D&D handled combat position via some sort of "zone" or advantage sysmtem, rather than via position on a grid, then no one would object to the warlord improving his/her zone/advantage via non-magical means.
TL;DR: the nature of D&D's action resolution mechanics makes it very hard to achieve the warlord if none of the mechanics are actually allowed to keep people in the fight (via reducing their hp loss) or to wrongfoot/feint enemies (via changing their position) or to mess with the action economy.
You know, that's just given me an idea for use with The One Ring, which does use zones/stances. Inspire to get an ally to attack as if they were in a more aggressive stance, Awe to intimidate enemies into attacking as if they're more defensive. Maybe Battle to get a defensive advantage for your side. I'll have to think about it, but the concept seems workable.
I think we DO have a way: Immediate Actions (interrupts and reactions). The Creature makes an attack, warlord interrupts with "wrongfooting", the attack misses and the warlord gets a free basic (or some such). As long as the warlord schtick is "master-of the immediate (ie off-turn) actions" I think warlord can be solid, whether its a fighter (warlord) or a full class.
Action denial (to enemies) and action granting (to allies) OFF-TURN is probably the best way to capture the tactical ebb-n-flow of combat without breaking verisimilitude. As an example, Inspiring Word shouldn't heal on the Warlords turn, but do DR on the enemies turn when they are dealing damage (interrupt).
"DUCK!" may not be inspiring, but its the word I want to hear when a greatsword is aiming for my head. If it clips my shoulder, thats better than losing my head!
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
jrowland said:
Exactly. Hence the thought experiment's abilities to prevent damage, grant attacks, and move people around when it is not their turn.
It seems that those saying "this doesn't feel like a warlord" are mostly saying that it doesn't feel powerful enough. It has the ability to grant attacks and dodges and shifts on the fly. It can wrong-foot and reduce HP loss. These effects are balanced for at-will use and so are not big battlefield revolutions, and ergo, not a warlord in their eyes. Rather than saying that the thought experiment doesn't do anything right, my understanding is that they're largely saying it doesn't go far enough.
I'm sympathetic. The D&DNext fighter also doesn't have insanely significant combat-changing epochal powers of revolutionary combat dominance. The rogue doesn't either. Arguably, the wizard and the cleric do, via magic.
I think that to please a lot of 4e fans, the game is going to need an option to introduce those effects for classes that don't use magic. I can absolutely see that as a module, and a good one. One that doesn't need to interface with expertise dice at all, but hypothetically could. It's a legit thing that 4e brought to the table that was a lot of fun for people that doesn't necessarily need to be thrown out utterly. It's not for everyone, but it's a good opt-in kind of system.
I'm less clear on how that has much relevance to whether or not this particular example meets the goals of being what a warlord-as-fighting-style might look like, since one of the criteria for the thought experiment is that we stay within the fighting style mechanics, and thus it mandates that we stay within at-will, on-the-fly kind of mechanics, which, because you could do them every turn, necessarily aren't going to be tremendous battle-changing events.
Yeah, Next should have some "Martial Encounter and Daily" kind of system, so that people can have big dramatic effects without magic. It can use stamina dice or rare instances or natural 20's or whatever other kind of subsystem folks want, and in fact could use a diversity of them.
No, I don't agree that a warlord's identity is wrapped up in those big abilities necessarily. Size isn't enough of a distinguishing trait for me, and besides, every class got big booms in 4e, the Warlord's just looked a particular way. In fact, they looked a lot like those at-will abilities, just blown up to bigger sizes.
I say this as a man who has seen at least 3 different warlords in play, one of which I've played myself for about 5 levels. As someone who respects the warrior-leader archetype, and who would like to see it better supported than it was before 4e.
And even if you think I'm dead wrong, if you can't believe I'm genuine about what I'm saying here, it's probably not going to be productive to post in the thread. Because I'm pretty much done paying attention to posts that try to de-legitimize and invalidate me personally instead of or even in addition to addressing the ideas I'm expressing.
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But the opponent doesn't actually end up in a different place. The warlord hasn't actually tricked the enemy into moving into a disadvantageous position.
My persoanal image of the warlord is closer to "St Crispin's Day", or Aragorn's rallying speech outside the gates of Mordor.
I don't know if I'm among the "those", but my concern isn't about power. It's about effect. A warlord rallies allies, inspires them, and misleads the enemy. You can't achieve those effects if you won't let the warlord grant buffs and hit points, or won't let the warlord change the position of enemies on the battlefield, because those effects are deemed too magical.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
pemerton said:
Well, there's something we can suss out here.
[sblock=buffs]
Buffs: I don't see any reason that you couldn't "grant buffs" within the Expertise Dice system. The thought-experiment's ability to grant attacks...is a buff. Conceivably, you could apply those Expertise Dice to other ally actions as well -- make them slightly more narrow, usable-on-ally forms of what already exists. Instead of upping your own AC with them, or lowering your own damage with them (or upping your own attack rolls or damage rolls), you do that to an ally.
The main challenge in a purely at-will system would be buffs that had long durations, but there's no reason a commander couldn't keep his Expertise Dice on his ally each time they recharged, giving you a sort of "as long as you concentrate" kind of buff. Does the Warlord rely on long-term buffs to define it so that losing those would invalidate the concept? I don't believe so.
[/sblock]
[sblock=enemy position]
Position of Enemies: There are at-will ways to handle this that don't necessarily break disbelief, but most of them rely on the warrior actually applying physical force to the enemy, because that is how you move people without dictating their actions (something that would be within the domain of magic). But it's entirely possible to have an Expertise Dice ability that pushes enemies 5 or 10 feet or so. Again, for realism, it might need to be limited to "when you hit with a melee attack, spend some dice and send the enemy flying and add the dice as damage," or "when you miss with a melee attack, spend some dice and the enemy moves a bit and takes the biggest roll as a penalty to AC" or something similar, but there's no reason that can't be there.
The main difficulty here is that dictating bigger waves of enemy movement would be overpowered for an at-will, and achieving that pseudo-magical action dictation is something that should probably stay out of non-magical characters by default. Do warlords necessarily need to change the entire battlefield more so than an at-will ability would be capable of? Do they rely on mind control? I don't believe so. Though this is one of the points where we see some overlap with a bard: there'd be NO issue having a charm or an enchantment that forced an enemy to move like that.
One alternative, that might be a bit sticky, is kind of comparable to how 4e's marking mechanism is an improvement over the 3e knight's challenge: rather than dictate an action, it introduces a choice. Rather than pulling, sliding, or pushing enemies, I could see some Expertise Dice abilities offering that sort of choice, but we'd still have to be careful not to get into magical territory. It still has to be clear what the choice offers: a maneuver that, if the enemy doesn't move, punishes them with some damage or some penalty, might work pretty OK. Maybe a "Paint the Target" ability that lets a warlord spend ED's on allies' attacks as long as the target remains in the same place. Abilities like this are feasible, they just require more thought and caution than "pull 5 squares" so that you can keep things believable.
[/sblock]
[sblock=grant hp]
I think you run into some of the same "pseudomagical" problems here with certain games, but 5e HP is already rather explicitly 99% karma, and by all signs is likely to remain so, so this actually isn't a problem from that standpoint. Still, if it is something the designers might want to avoid, using Expertise Dice to instantly, undo, add AC, move allies, etc., all are more viable ideas that straight HP recovery. Thankfully, a commander (or anyone else) with the Healer specialty can remain entirely 'non-magical' and just drop herbal healing potions on their allies anyway, while using their in-combat abilities for something more dynamic and in-the-moment, rather than long-term. That'd be my preferred solution. But, again, the only issue with straight healing, like the only issue with straight NPC action dictation, is that desire to avoid overly supernatural powers for characters that are not supernatural, and if a particular group doesn't share that problem, there's no reason why it can't work even as straight healing.
But, I also don't see straight healing as necessarily the mechanical representation of protecting and inspiring your allies. I don't think the archetype necessarily rests on that specific mechanic for that fiction. There's a lot of ways to model protecting and inspiring your allies that don't involve simply giving them back lost HP, and in many ways, that's the least interesting way to do it.
[/sblock]
The thought experiment was mostly done to show how to think about using these sorts of abilities might look if the warlord was conceived of as a way to showcase a "war-leader" kind of character using the fighter's class mechanics. It wasn't meant to be the sum total, but rather a starting point. Does my explanation help elucidate the viability for Expertise Dice to do this kind of thing, or is there still a sticking point?
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