Tony Vargas
Legend
Wouldn't be sporting to attack an enemy like that - honor demands single combat! (But will proudly wear the princess's favor and fight all the harder for it).
D&D 5E "Warlord" Fighter sub-class from MMHFT podcast. Further duscussion.
Wouldn't be sporting to attack an enemy like that - honor demands single combat! (But will proudly wear the princess's favor and fight all the harder for it).
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
And the enemy is so flabbergasted by your not exploiting the opening that he ends up under reacting to the follow up attack you do make... and you tell the warlord see that's how it is done, fair and squareWouldn't be sporting to attack an enemy like that - honor demands single combat! (But will proudly wear the princess's favor and fight all the harder for it).
Yes the story flavors are flexible.
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G
Guest 6801328
Guest
I believe the point @bkwrm79 was making is that a mechanic might fine, but the fluff can be problematic.
So, yes, if the mechanic reads "You harry an enemy, distracting it so that a nearby ally of your choice can take a reaction to make a single attack..." or something like that, it's fine. In general, having the "warlord" mess with enemies and other NPCs, rather than command/inspire player characters, is the non-offensive way to go.
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
So you reject the Bard entirely? Even with all those martial inspiring moves it has? You can inspire others through stirring words or music. OOPS must be terrible to be told what to do/feel.
The mechanic is "target ally gets another opportunity to make an attack or charge against an enemy you select" and the flavor is yours to do with as you will
although I heard some people cannot stand to be given the choice and power to actually imagine things like that on their own and must have it nailed down for them .
Tony points out how his Paladin like character is not wanting to exploit an opening created in the way you fiind non-offensive as it would feel like cheating is instead inspired to fight more furiously (hence getting an extra attack for another in character reason) and I pulled a twist on that with the enemy not reacting as strongly as they might have because they couldnt believe the Chivalrous type didnt take the shot offered up.
Combat has a lot of psychology going on it...
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Mearls spent a decent amount of time putting together a scope for what he wanted in this Warlord design. He also did some number crunching to help ensure the design was balanced around something that already existed. These are good design practices. However, after using those two methods he begins to falter in his design process. The forming or art of creating the subclass is good, but once the form is roughed out, in my opinion, a designer should compare the form to the customer requirements or goals. He seems to fail in going back to his goals to ensure he is hitting them. In addition, a follow up step is to look at possible failure modes of this design. There are several possible modes of failure listed in this thread. If he takes the design and lists the modes of failure indicated here plus any additional concerns or modes of failure he or his team can think of, then lists how often they occur, whats the severity of their occurrence, and how easy it is to make the failure happen; he will be one step closer to having a design that I would consider ready for play tests. As it is, the design would be a first draft of a new mouse trap. He hasn't sat back and analyzed how the mouse trap may or may not work in the game environment, rules systems, with other characters, and with monsters. I also think he needs to take a look at the warlord using a P-diagram to determine: the inputs by the player and DM, the expected outputs by the player and DM, noise factors that influence performance, control factors that player has to help achieve the expected outputs, and what are some un-intended outputs or consequences of use with the design.
These design tools (failure mode and effects analysis and P-diagram) are cumbersome tools to use and not applicable to every design. I feel the warlord has so much weight associated with it after reading a lot of forum threads that a good design would require the use of them. As a comparison, I feel he has the acrobat design really close and would only need to improve the design by looking for failure modes by himself in the way that a typical designer would.
These design tools (failure mode and effects analysis and P-diagram) are cumbersome tools to use and not applicable to every design. I feel the warlord has so much weight associated with it after reading a lot of forum threads that a good design would require the use of them. As a comparison, I feel he has the acrobat design really close and would only need to improve the design by looking for failure modes by himself in the way that a typical designer would.
Cap'n Kobold
Hero
Because that thread is also one specific view of what a warlord should be and how it works, and so discussing different mechanics and resources may not be applicable in that thread.
Particularly if we're making direct comparison of mechanics/resources to Mearls' design rather than that one.
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
Tony Vargas
Legend
Any warlord that isn't abysmal will be rejected out of hand by the same people who rejected 4e out of hand, and there's certainly too many of them, so that's a forgone conclusion. Homebrews like this will also be summarily ignored by the vast majority of the on-line community, and never see the light of day outside it, so it's moot. It's just an exercise in seeing if you can come up with something, yourselves. It's not going to be published or become a de-facto standard or likely even be played by anyone, ever, and WotC's certainly not going to crib from it.
So just enjoy coming up with something genuinely good, rather than compromising the design before you even begin in the vain hope of satisfying those determined to hate it.
Bard casts spells, so has infinite slack, even when not using magic.
On the mechanic side, as long as the player of the ally is free to decline the attack or other benefit, there's no issue of the player being told how to play his character or how the character must feel.
On the fluff side the 'solution' is to leave enough wiggle room to let the players' decide what works for the relationship between the warlord and the specific ally.
It's really a non-issue, and one that could have been applied to any two classes working together, but it's not hard to resolve.
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
I reject all gods can the Cleric heal me?
Tony Vargas
Legend
Ok, maybe not that easily, everytime...
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