And look at how Gandalf inspires everyone. Gandalf was the true leader I think for most of that tale. Aragorn never truly grew into his role as king until the end. Despite Gandalf's enormous inspirational contributions to the fellowship, you never focus on that.... Curious. Plus Gimli and Legolas inspiring each other to compete for orc kills. Sam inspiring Frodo in Mordor. Again, it's very curious that none of this registers. This is why none of your arguments about Tolkein inspiration click with me. I read the exact same tale and I see the complete opposite of a warlord class. I see moments of inspiration across various characters. That a warlord class as a mechanical expression is an almost cartoonish simplification of the fiction it supposedly emulates.And in the Tolkienian/Arthurian model I'm interested in developing, the presence of a captain does inspire companions - look at how Aragorn inspires Gimli and Legolas, for instance; or how Eowyn inspires Merry, or Denethor and Beregond inspire Pippin.
It's not similar enough to me to matter. The cleric is like the priest you summon to exorcise the demon. You don't hire your devout Catholic plumber to do that. One is chosen and trained to channel the divine. The other isn't. The in-game reason is so obvious to me; it is the complete opposite of the barbarian who is unable to inspire anyone just because the Warlord (The Walking Plot Device) excludes anyone else from being inspirational in a way matters. So if you chose Aragorn as a Warlord, then you've excluded Gandalf from inspiring others. There is no good in-game reason for that, because it's not a marriage of equals (fiction married to metagame). It's frankly, a dictatorship of metagame over fiction. Nothing to do with the plumber who can't call down the gods because he learned the plumbing trade instead of learning exorcism in The Vatican.Why not? In the metagame, because the player of the barbarian didn't pay PC build resources to get this ability. In the fiction? Because the barbarian is brave but not inspiring - his/her allies shake their heads at his/her recklessness, for instance, rather than being moved to emulate.
This is somewhat similar to the fact that the gods regularly answer the prayers of cleric PCs, but rarely answer the prayers of non-cleric PCs, even though the latter may be just as devout as the former.
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