Lets design a Warlord for 5th edition

[Jester David]

Quite the contrary, I've already incorporated most of your suggestions, I'm going to steal some of your maneuvers, and put in in the "quick class" suggestions.

Right, but my disagreeing isn’t going to make you change your planned complexity.

I'm just not going to abandon customization and force simple just because it's a "martial" class.

Right. And I’m not going to abandon simplicity and force complexity just because that’s how it was designed in the previous edition.

 

[mellored]

Right, but my disagreeing isn’t going to make you change your planned complexity.


Right. And I’m not going to abandon simplicity and force complexity just because that’s how it was designed in the previous edition.

So why don't we work on a way to accomplish both?

 

[Tony Vargas]

What about something like...

Last Stand: when an ally is reduce to 0 HP, they are instead reduced to 1 HP.

I assume that's a reaction?

"A creature can only benifit from this once per long rest." Seems like an easy way to limit it. With maybe "and gains THP equal to your Charisma score" or some such.

But would that be good enough to replace "real" healing?

No.

It's cool trick, I suppose, but not a main form of 'healing.' That's got to be able to do the most basic, critical thing support is called on to do: bring a dropped ally back into the fight, after the fact, not just if you happen to have your reaction available the instant it happened.

It would certainly be cool to have several alternatives, just as Clerics have Cure Wounds, Aid, and Healing Word, among others.
You could have Inspiring Word that restores hps in a conventional way, tactical insight that the ally can decide to use for hps rolling over to temps or damage, Aid the Injured as a reaction, and Stand the Fallen as a mass heal.

So why don't we work on a way to accomplish both?

As a thought experiment, consider how you might design a sub-class of the wizard that's as simple as the Champion.

To have a sub-class that simple requires a simple chassis, and doesn't leave room for more than a modestly complex alternative to the simple sub-class. That's why the BM fails as a 'complex' (interesting/high player agency/flexible) fighter like the weaponmaster or even as a customizable one, like the 3.x fighter, even as it and the EK push the fighter, overall, into relative complexity.

But, there's also no need to do both in the Warlord class, the fighter chassis is available to build simpler options, and, indeed, already gave us the simple PDK.

 

[FrogReaver]

So I've switched over to a long rest design for the warlord's primary ability. I think it's going to be easier accepted. It plays nicer with healing. Attack granting on a limited resource basis is also easier to accept. If we decide it's better to change my abilities to short rest ones then it's easy enough to convert long rest abilities with enough uses to short rest style abilities.

I'm leaning toward 3 subclasses at the moment:
Guerilla
Bravaura
Hero / Savior

I'm leaning toward a level break down kind of like (abilities will be elaborated on below):
Level 1: Warlord's Aid, Warlord Style
Level 2: Helping Insight
Level 3: Subclass Feature
Level 4: ASI
Level 5: add 1d8 damage per turn, Warlord's Aid uses and power increased.
Level 6:
Level 7:
Level 8: ASI
Level 9:
Level 10: Subclass
Level 11 2d8 extra damage per turn, Warlord's Aid power increased
...

Warlord's Aid - This is your primary ability. You will have so many Aid Points you can spend per day. Each ability will cost 1 point and will require no Action unless otherwise stated. You can use Warlord's Aid once per round. There will be a list of abilities to choose from. You will start out knowing maybe 3-5 abilities and possibly have that scale some with level. Each ability will have auto scaling built in. There will be various flavors of abilities. Some will require something in combat to happen that you essentially react to and help your ally through either by inspiration or tactics, this may be extra damage for an ally or an extra attack for them or healing etc. Some be like battle plans and give some kind of benefit at the start of a battle. Some may be tactical maneuvers you can help your team achieve. Some may involve a tactical focus similar in style to how Mearls described.

At level 1 these abilities will mostly add 1d4 to various things (for the ones that require a dice). Others may have a way of auto scaling without a dice effect. They should be about as strong as 1/4 a spell. You should probably get 6-8 uses of them per day.

Warlord's Style - this gives you a small benefit similar in strength to a fighter's fighting style (or possibly a few uses of a level 1 spell like ability). You will get one of these abilities to help define your warlord.

Helping Insight - provides a resource for you to use Warlord's Aid twice a turn instead of once a turn. This gives you some NOVA potential or allows you to use a 2nd Warlord's Aid if an unanticipated circumstance arises and you need to react to it after already expending your normal single use of such abilities a round.

adding 1d8 damage per turn - added this in at level 5 to simulate caster cantrip scaling

Warlord's Aid uses and power increased (level 5) - Warlord's Aid should auto scale to be about as good as a level 1 spell now. You should also increases uses to somewhere maybe between 12-16 times per day.

Thoughts opinions so far?

 

[Hussar]

/snip


Conceptually, it was inspiration, not healing - 'healing' keyword, surge, and hp-restoration mechanics notwithstanding.
And, yes, with Inpriring Presence at the core of one of the two PH builds restoring hps, and every warlord having Inspiring Word, Inspiration modeled by hp restoration is iconic to the class.

One granted an attack, the other caused the targets shift to provoke, generally preventing it from shifting.
None of the Clerics PH at wills healed, either, two granted attack bonuses, something more iconic of the tactical warlord (Tactical Presence doing just that)

What? Are we really going to be that pedantic. Sacred Flame, a cleric at-will, granted temp HP with every single attack. Ok, sure, that's not specifically healing, but, it's pretty darn close. Never minding that 3rd and 5th are the only 2 levels in Heroic Tier that clerics can't take a healing power. Ten of the 37 powers available to a cleric healed in heroic tier. Plus one of the at-will grants temp HP.

THAT'S iconic. When almost a quarter of the available options are healing, that's a pretty clear signal what that class is about.

While I get that warlords should heal, and I agree with that, what I'm having a problem with is this idea that healing is the primary thing warlords should be doing. Warlords were middling healers at best. You were giving up a LOT to do more than just the basic healing.

To me, a walord's healing should be in the paladin's range. That's respectable. Bit better than say, a ranger and on par with a bard (although not a healing focused bard). Not a problem. Five classes have healing available in 5e. It's not like you need a specialist healing in the group.

But, when a quarter of the powers that a warlord has to choose from grant some form of action - a movement, an attack, something like that- and frequently grant actions to the entire party at the same time, THAT'S iconic to the warlord.

 

[Hussar]

Continuing my design.
I'll probably avoid uploading another batch until it's closer to done. Likely using up my "space" with uploads.
/snip
Not much here. Just a skeleton of future content.

Sorry, snipped the images, just to save space. And, since I fell behind in the thread, I might be retreading stuff. Again sorry.

But, [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] - this is not a warlord. The only action granting is by one subclass and at 10th level when he gives up an entire action to grant one attack? Are you kidding me?

Good grief, this is worse than a Battlemaster.

 

[Hussar]

And, one more thing. Can we please stop with the very disingenuous argument that clerics heal 0/day? Yes, that is possible. But, it's also extremely unlikely. Have you ever seen more than one cleric in any campaign in any edition that never had so much as a cure light wounds spell? So often that it's actually a thing?

A 10th level cleric has 15 spell slots per day. It's probably not unreasonable to think that about 30% (or 5 spells per day) are spent on healing. That's 41 levels of spells, so, again, let's use that 30% benchmark and say about 12d8+15 or so in healing per day. That's the benchmark we should be aiming for if we're presuming our warlord is a decent healer. Which means that a cleric can still heal far more than the warlord if he wants to, so, niche protection, but, gives the walord enough heaing that on average, he's doing ok.

 

[Jester David]

Sorry, snipped the images, just to save space. And, since I fell behind in the thread, I might be retreading stuff. Again sorry.

But, @Jester David - this is not a warlord. The only action granting is by one subclass and at 10th level when he gives up an entire action to grant one attack? Are you kidding me?

Good grief, this is worse than a Battlemaster.

As myself and others have said ad naseum, not every warlord is a lazylord. And none of the published builds fit that description, so it's not even an "official" build. While it should be part of the class, it's not a mandatory part: being a princess warlord is a build. A choice. A character decision. And in 5e, the main decision of your character is their subclass. You opt into that. Which means the action/ movement granting aspects should be in a subclass.

Looking at the 4e warlord and the 3e marshal, granting movement is common to both. So that's what I prioritised for the marshal subclass. The level 3 power. The level 7 power comes after the level 5 and 6, which were both big abilities (the later being the the default class' Strategem feature, which can also grant someone an off-turn attack if planned in that direction) so that level ended up being a weaker power by design, focusing more on situational or ribbon abilities. That left 10th level for the action granting.

Granting a full action is just too good. Because it's trading your two attacks for one an amazing rogue attack or three fighter attacks or a high level wizard spell. The cost you pay (what you could do on your action) is so much lower than the benefit (one of your allies' actions). Especially when you consider the action of the support character is likely not going to deal as much damage, since they're not going to have taken those feats or prioritised those ability scores.
Even trading an attack for an attack runs into the same problems, as their attacks can be so much better than yours. The "cost" seems slightly less since you still need to be in a position to make an attack, but then that means the "princess" warlord still has to make attacks to grant an attack, which removes the potential of just having the character direct actions from the back.

That said... the ability could grant an action like haste. Where you can move or hide or dodge but only make a single attack. But then that's getting into the realm of effectively being able to cast a 3rd level spell at-will and without the spell's downside (the lost turn).

And, one more thing. Can we please stop with the very disingenuous argument that clerics heal 0/day? Yes, that is possible. But, it's also extremely unlikely. Have you ever seen more than one cleric in any campaign in any edition that never had so much as a cure light wounds spell? So often that it's actually a thing?

A 10th level cleric has 15 spell slots per day. It's probably not unreasonable to think that about 30% (or 5 spells per day) are spent on healing. That's 41 levels of spells, so, again, let's use that 30% benchmark and say about 12d8+15 or so in healing per day. That's the benchmark we should be aiming for if we're presuming our warlord is a decent healer. Which means that a cleric can still heal far more than the warlord if he wants to, so, niche protection, but, gives the walord enough heaing that on average, he's doing ok.

No.
Because your argument is also fairly disingenuous. Are all wizards strikers then because they can choose to memorise a spell that deals damage? Would you make the exact same claim about the druid as you do about the cleric, given druids have access to just as much healing as clerics?

The POINT of that argument is that the cleric =/= healer. They can heal, and when they have enough spells to prep they might feel comfortable wasting one on healing, but you can also build a cleric that is a tank (War cleric) or a face (Trickster cleric) or the party sneak (also Trickster cleric) or blaster (Light cleric, Tempest cleric). You can now have a buffing cleric that isn't a healer (Forge cleric). Because 5e classes are not bound to a single role.
You don't expect the cleric of Loki or Ares or or Tiamat or Shar to heal. To focus their attentions on curing wounds over doing something else with their action.

As such, the warlord should also not be bound into the single role of the healer, and should have to opt into that build. And as I said above, the decision point for characters is typically the subclass. So a healing subclass would be just fine. Just like the default sorcerer or warlock who also need to subclass into those spells/ abilities.

If you include a healing ability in the warlord, that means all builds of the warlord have some mandated healing. But if the warlord isn't playing the healer, than someone else in the party is likely filling that role. So the warlord doesn't need to heal as there's a Divine Soul sorcerer or bard or Life cleric in the party. Meanwhile, the warlord is expected to be tanking or dealing damage. If one of their major abilities is focused on healing rather than a generic role-neutral ability, then that means they have an ability that does not fit their build and serves little purpose. They're less good at the role they chose to fill—what the player wants to do—and better and something they explicitly chose not to do.

Could the class have an ability that lets them choose healing? Like a Totem barbarian picks from 3-5 totems or a Hunter ranger picks from a few powers. Sure. I suppose that'd work as well. That could be slotted into level 5* with "extra attack" being one of the options. But why? At that point it's still coming after the subclass (or the Healer feat).
What's the benefit?


* Why level 5 and not level 1 or 2?
Fighting Style at level 2 is a little funky, but it's an important choice. Like the paladin and ranger, the class does some fighting, and needs to be able to opt into two-weapon fighting or being better at ranged attacks or wearing armour. That's a key element, as warlords shouldn't be locked into sword-and-board. And giving a choice between "fighting style" and healing would be awkward creating a nesting doll of choices where one choice has its own choices...

So why then not at first level? Because the first level ability should be a super iconic ability. Something universal. Something that helps define the class. Like sneak attack, rage, bardic inspiration, lay on hands, channel divinity, or unarmed strike. There shouldn't be a choice of abilities here. You shouldn't be able to trade out of your signature power.

 

[Tony Vargas]

While I get that warlords should heal, and I agree with that,

The game itself is dependent upon hp restoration, and support characters need to provide that, so it's vital.

And inspiration is iconic.

, when a quarter of the powers that a warlord has to choose from grant some form of action - a movement, an attack, something like that- .

Attack-granting was certainly iconic of the Lazy build.
But I think there's a distinction between thing like Commander's Strike or Knight's Move, that give away an action (no net action economy gain) and those that grant actions beyond what the Warlord gives up like Hammer & Anvil... and, for that matter, ones like Vipers Strike or Brash Assault that only set up one, conditionally, depending on enemy decissions.

But, it's still just iconic in the sense sleep or fireball is iconic to the wizard: any version of the class should have it, but any given member of the class might echew it.

 

[FrogReaver]

So why then not at first level? Because the first level ability should be a super iconic ability. Something universal. Something that helps define the class. Like sneak attack, rage, bardic inspiration, lay on hands, channel divinity, or unarmed strike. There shouldn't be a choice of abilities here. You shouldn't be able to trade out of your signature power.

1. I think you are confusing what the unique feature of full casters are... Hint (it's spells)