Lets design a Warlord for 5th edition

[mellored]

You can't really have attack granting, healing, an invocation etc at level 1 its to front loaded in 5E terms.

I agree you shouldn't get all 3 at level 1, but you could get to chose 1 of those 3 at level 1.
And then pick up the second at level 2.
And the third at level 3.
And so on...

 

[mellored]

yes if we went the invocation route. I'm not convinced it will work the best but I'm still needing to go back and reread your post on it. I think you are going to have vanician caster flexibility in a world of neo vanician casting.

It depends on how flexible each invocation is, how many you get, and how they stack.

For instance...
"You can use a reaction to reroll any (enemy, ally, or self) attack, saving throw, or skill check.'" is flexible enough to cover pretty much any situation.

But if you broke it up into "you can reroll an enemy attack", "you can reroll an ally save", "you can reroll an enemy skill check", and so on. Then you would need 9 different invocations to cover the same situations.


And the size and number of them also depend on what else the class gets. Like how many sub-class levels?

 

[Guest 6801328]

So you are fine with non-magical healing. It's inspirational healing "forced" upon other characters that's the problem. Good to know so we don't waste time arguing for non-magical healing when that isn't your issue.

Sure. Spending HD on short rests, for example, is non-magical healing.

If somebody gives me back 20 HP as a bonus action, though, I do kind of want to know how...approximately...that works. If the ability is just written as "As a bonus action you can grant an ally five times your level in HP" with absolutely no fluff, then some of us can assume it's like Lay on Hands, and others can assume it's your magnificent, valorous 4th level Warlord shouting some spine back into my pathetic sniveling 18th level Barbarian.

In terms of flavor, if you want an option to describe what the Warlord is doing as somehow magical without his knowledge then I'm not opposed. This reminds me a lot of bardic inspiration. Is it magical or is it non-magical? But I do require the option of claiming all the Warlord's abilities are non-magical.

So does the flavor-less text version above work for you?

Dragon's fearful presence, Battlemaster's menacing maneuver. I would be perfectly fine with a DM ruling that a monster trying to intimidate me could give me the fear condition. If non-magical abilities can give me fear then surely a monster intimidating me could also give me fear.

I interpret a Dragon's fearful presence to be magical, albeit in the "supernatural" sense, not the spellcasting sense:

Each creature of the dragon's choice that is within 120 feet of the dragon and aware of it must succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom saving throw or become Frightened for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature's saving throw is successful or the effect ends for it, the creature is immune to the dragon's Frightful Presence for the next 24 hours.

It's not that the dragon is really scary to look at or roars terrifyingly (if it were, everybody in range would have to roll). The dragon just picks as many targets as it likes, skipping over others, and "poof" they are terrified. That just doesn't sound like mundane scariness to me. And if it were meant to be mundane, and Intimidate were meant to be used the way you suggest, why not just give the Dragon a huge skill bonus?

And the Battlemaster's menacing is for use on NPCs, not other player characters.

Speaking of intimidation, how would you expect an enemy trying to intimidate a PC work? If you get to decide your characters thoughts and feelings to the exclusion of all other game mechanics, how does intimidation ever work on a PC?

It doesn't, really. Intimidation/Deception/Persuasion are primarily for adjudicating the responses of NPCs, so that the DM has an objective way of resolving those interactions.

I might roll one of those abilities for an NPC and base my narration on the result, but I'm not going to tell a player, "Yeah...the Duke got a natural 20 on his persuade so you have to rescue his daughter from the mind flayers for free."

 

[FrogReaver]

It depends on how flexible each invocation is, how many you get, and how they stack.

For instance...
"You can use a reaction to reroll any (enemy, ally, or self) attack, saving throw, or skill check.'" is flexible enough to cover pretty much any situation.

But if you broke it up into "you can reroll an enemy attack", "you can reroll an ally save", "you can reroll an enemy skill check", and so on. Then you would need 9 different invocations to cover the same situations.


And the size and number of them also depend on what else the class gets. Like how many sub-class levels?

That's not really what I'm concerned with. The solutions required to make invocations work are opposed to each other. It almost seems like it's either flexibility in short rest abilities or scalability for them.

The obvious fix for flexibility in short rest abilities is to give a warlord point that can be spent on any short rest warlord invocation any time you take a warlord short rest invocation.

The obvious fix for scalability is to grant access to new stronger invocations at appropriate levels. Maybe level 3, level 5 and level 11.

However, if you adopt this fix for flexibility and this fix for scalability you end up with a system that's inflexible as all the warlord points will go into your higher level short rest abilities and so you might as well not even have the lower level ones

Possible solution: invocation upgrades where each invocations had maybe a level 1 effect, level 3 effect, level 5 effect and level 11 effect and as soon as you hit level 3 you would automatically upgrade to the level 3 effect. Then just add in a few more invocations as you level and that might take care of scaling. For flexibility follow the previous solution for granting a warlord point for each choice of short rest invocation and allow that point to be used on any warlord short rest invocation ability.

But I think that's quite a bit different than the implementation you were thinking of. There's not another implementation I can really see working right. Any thoughts?

 

[FrogReaver]

Sure. Spending HD on short rests, for example, is non-magical healing.

If somebody gives me back 20 HP as a bonus action, though, I do kind of want to know how...approximately...that works. If the ability is just written as "As a bonus action you can grant an ally five times your level in HP" with absolutely no fluff, then some of us can assume it's like Lay on Hands, and others can assume it's your magnificent, valorous 4th level Warlord shouting some spine back into my pathetic sniveling 18th level Barbarian.



So does the flavor-less text version above work for you?

If that's what it took to get an accepted warlord I'm good with a no flavor text version of the ability. Do you think others in your camp will go for that kind of compromise?

I interpret a Dragon's fearful presence to be magical, albeit in the "supernatural" sense, not the spellcasting sense:

It's not that the dragon is really scary to look at or roars terrifyingly (if it were, everybody in range would have to roll). The dragon just picks as many targets as it likes, skipping over others, and "poof" they are terrified. That just doesn't sound like mundane scariness to me. And if it were meant to be mundane, and Intimidate were meant to be used the way you suggest, why not just give the Dragon a huge skill bonus?

I think it's non-magical mundane scare factor. Animals can make known their dislike of some people and their indifference to others. As such it's only going to be those the dragon want to frighten that will rise to the level of the 5e fear mechanic.

And the Battlemaster's menacing is for use on NPCs, not other player characters.

It's a common DM technique to make some NPC's have PC abilities. If such a NPC used that on your PC?

It doesn't, really. Intimidation/Deception/Persuasion are primarily for adjudicating the responses of NPCs, so that the DM has an objective way of resolving those interactions.

I might roll one of those abilities for an NPC and base my narration on the result, but I'm not going to tell a player, "Yeah...the Duke got a natural 20 on his persuade so you have to rescue his daughter from the mind flayers for free."

That's fair.

 

[Zardnaar]

Your not proving it. You just keep repeating yourself. If you force warlord attack granting to give allies a single extra attack on the allies turn then it's not a problem. Almost all extra damage effects get eliminated because you don't get to double dip any once per turn damage effects. The remaining damage effects make like 1d6 or so of a difference on a single attack, definitely not enough to worry about. Oh and it gives a slightly higher chance to proc something like colossus slayer. Not much higher as 2 attacks vs 3 attacks at 50% chance to hit only accounts for a 75% to 87.5% increase in chance to proc it. That's .125 * 4.5 damage = .5625 DPR from a 1d8 colossus slayer. Again it's not enough to worry about.

Even things like the -5/+10 feats at most double your damage. In the case I'm suggesting you would get 1 attack at below normal damage and 1 attack double normal damage. You are still doing no where near the damage of a second GWM or SS character and no matter what you do your not going to get anywhere near their damage output.

Yes, there will be a bit of variation but it's within the normal range of variation.

Here's the thing. Any support ability already depends on the damage of the characters you are supporting. It all scales by that. Haste, scales by your allies damage. Bless scales by your allies damage. It's almost like the very concept of a support character doing better with allies around that do more damage is something that doesn't bother you till it comes to warlords.

Oh and don't go saying bless and haste aren't at will. They might as well be when you can cast them every combat of every day.

You can't cast them every combat and they can be interrupted as well via the concentration mechanic. You also can't cast bless and holy word in the same round for example.

Even if you can cast say 8 hastes a day with a best case scenario (level 10 Sorcerer, can twin it and prof in con saves) you still can't move it onto another player (a warlord can say move it between an archer/great weapon user) and that is more or less all you can do with the Sorcerer (spam cantrips and a few level 1 and 2 spells left- at level 10). Oh and if haste gets interrupted there is a big draw back as well.

Still don't see the problem? You just compared at will attack granting to a focused level 10 spellcaster build and the warlord fans presumable want other abilities and healing to go on top of that?

Ironically if you do it my way that I have been suggesting the warlord will be coming close to at will attack granting by level 10 if they focused on it. Maybe 75%+ of the time but you don't get it for free just like spellcasters don't get haste at will either. And if you are really that keen on at will if you changed the short rest ability to 5 mins a'la 4E encounter powers you would be getting very close to at will.

 

[Zardnaar]

It depends on how flexible each invocation is, how many you get, and how they stack.

For instance...
"You can use a reaction to reroll any (enemy, ally, or self) attack, saving throw, or skill check.'" is flexible enough to cover pretty much any situation.

But if you broke it up into "you can reroll an enemy attack", "you can reroll an ally save", "you can reroll an enemy skill check", and so on. Then you would need 9 different invocations to cover the same situations.


And the size and number of them also depend on what else the class gets. Like how many sub-class levels?

My suggested WL is 1 invocation per level same rate as warlock (+ healing+ other stuff). I have not written than many though.

 

[Zardnaar]

I agree you shouldn't get all 3 at level 1, but you could get to chose 1 of those 3 at level 1.
And then pick up the second at level 2.
And the third at level 3.
And so on...

I give them an invocation each level starting at 2 a'la warlock, grant second wind level 1+ subclass ability. Attack granting comes level 3 with subclass, level 2 with "invocation". I think they get something else level 1 as well but I do not have my notes on me.

Slightly out of date I am on 2.2 but I did write some to give you an idea.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?625334-Zards-Warlord-2-0

I think I am getting close to the right healing rate though, you also get an explot per level from level 2, and I have tweaked a few of them and the inspirational word since that post. Some of the exploits have been obsoleted.

Here is a sample level 9 one you can pick. I think its based off a 4E one. Its also a daily might just tweak it into a short rest ability.

Knock them Down

Prerequisite: Level 9.
As part of an attack action you strike your opponent a mighty blow. If you hit you deal an extra 3d8 damage and may make a shove attack as a bonus action. If you knock them prone every ally within 50’ of you may use their reaction to move up to 15’ and have an attack of opportunity. You regain the use of this ability when you complete a long rest.

For scaling just level gate some of the abilities like the warlock which needs to be level XYZ to pick them.

An obvious way to upgrade them is turn single target ones into multi target. For example grant attack with advantage becomes 2 targets perhaps at 5 (and you keep the lower level one). Grant an attack with rider can upgrade to grant and action. Other high level ones can duplicate them but as a bonus action instead of standard action, level 5 would be a good place for that due to it being a 2nd attack sort of.

If they are are short rest and some are bonus action (granting advantage and healing perhaps),

 

[FrogReaver]

You can't cast them every combat and they can be interrupted as well via the concentration mechanic. You also can't cast bless and holy word in the same round for example.

Even if you can cast say 8 hastes a day with a best case scenario (level 10 Sorcerer, can twin it and prof in con saves) you still can't move it onto another player (a warlord can say move it between an archer/great weapon user) and that is more or less all you can do with the Sorcerer (spam cantrips and a few level 1 and 2 spells left- at level 10). Oh and if haste gets interrupted there is a big draw back as well.

Still don't see the problem? You just compared at will attack granting to a focused level 10 spellcaster build and the warlord fans presumable want other abilities and healing to go on top of that?

Ironically if you do it my way that I have been suggesting the warlord will be coming close to at will attack granting by level 10 if they focused on it. Maybe 75%+ of the time but you don't get it for free just like spellcasters don't get haste at will either. And if you are really that keen on at will if you changed the short rest ability to 5 mins a'la 4E encounter powers you would be getting very close to at will.

Actually, the sorcerer gets to attack with a 2d10 firebolt cantrip while granting attacks basically all day. OR he can fireball instead of granting some attacks OR he can cast a level 5 hold person... or....

You are right that when a sorcerer attack grants he doesn't get to do much else. But he is still doing as much as our theoretical warlord and he's potentially granting attacks to 2 people instead of 1. And he can do all this while having other options ready to go at a moments notice.

So yes, granting one attack per turn at level 5 at will while also making 1 attack and having a few other options you can do instead of attack grant sounds pretty comparable.

How many attacks can a sorcerer grant at level 5? Isn't it something like 24 attacks per day, along with AC and extra movement? While still being able to attack with a 2d10 damage cantrip on all but 3 turns of the day?

A level 5 sorcerer that trades all his level 1 and 2 spells for spell points ends up with 15 sorcerer points. It takes 5 to create a level 3 spell. So he can cast haste 3 times. It takes 3 to twin cast haste. Combats last about 4 rounds. Each cast of haste will generate about 8 attacks.

Yep. Sorcerors at level 5 can attack with a 2d10 cantrip all but 3 turns a day and generate 24 attacks per day along with granting those allies extra movement and AC all at level 5.

All I'm asking for is to have a warlord character that can do 1d8+mod damage per turn with his attack (very comparable to a 2d10 firebolt cantrip) while granting 24 attacks per day and having the option to do some things other than attack grant if desired.

 

[Zardnaar]

Actually, the sorcerer gets to attack with a 2d10 firebolt cantrip while granting attacks basically all day. OR he can fireball instead of granting some attacks OR he can cast a level 5 hold person... or....

You are right that when a sorcerer attack grants he doesn't get to do much else. But he is still doing as much as our theoretical warlord and he's potentially granting attacks to 2 people instead of 1. And he can do all this while having other options ready to go at a moments notice.

So yes, granting one attack per turn at level 5 at will while also making 1 attack and having a few other options you can do instead of attack grant sounds pretty comparable.

How many attacks can a sorcerer grant at level 5? Isn't it something like 24 attacks per day, along with AC and extra movement? While still being able to attack with a 2d10 damage cantrip on all but 3 turns of the day?

A level 5 sorcerer that trades all his level 1 and 2 spells for spell points ends up with 15 sorcerer points. It takes 5 to create a level 3 spell. So he can cast haste 3 times. It takes 3 to twin cast haste. Combats last about 4 rounds. Each cast of haste will generate about 8 attacks.

Yep. Sorcerors at level 5 can attack with a 2d10 cantrip all but 3 turns a day and generate 24 attacks per day along with granting those allies extra movement and AC all at level 5.

All I'm asking for is to have a warlord character that can do 1d8+mod damage per turn with his attack (very comparable to a 2d10 firebolt cantrip) while granting 24 attacks per day and having the option to do some things other than attack grant if desired.

You can do that with my warlord who doesn't get at will attack granting.

Level 5 sorcerer can do haste twice a day. In theory 20 rounds in practice 6 to 8 often less. Which is less than a level 5 battlemaster.