D&D 5E Evaluating the warlord-y Fighter

[Mouseferatu]

Sorry, adult. I was going to type "young adult"

Old school habit. there are no young adult in 5e.

Fair enough. It did get confusing at times, in older editions, with the whole wyrmling, toddler, young, adolescent, tween, teen, man-child, young adult, mid-adult, really-for-real-adult-even-though-he-doesn't-feel-grown-up, middle age, upper middle age, over-the-hill, over-the-river-and-through-the-woods, elderly, retired, discount-at-Denny's, semi-ancient, ancient, uber-ancient, wyrm, adequate wyrm, decent wyrm, great wyrm, and Betty White age categories.

 

[Rune]

You didn't mention the mid-life crisis age category. By then, the dragon ought to be able to afford that sweet sports-car he wanted in his youth.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Just requiring a save is not enough, because the dragon can always choose to save its resistance for later. In the case of Goading Attack, for example, there's no reason for the dragon to care about the effect - it wanted to kill the halfling anyway.

Once you've given it a reason to use its legendary resistance, then subsequent effects will grant the Battlemaster credit for the assist. In general, though, the effects that a Battlemaster can inflict are not powerful enough that a Legendary opponent would care about resisting them. (Situationally, there might be one which is bad enough to call for it.)

I think you're metagaming here. For one, the dragon didn't want to kill the halfling. It wanted to kill the cleric launching fire into it's cave that drawed it out in the first place. I just happened to position myself at the entrance to put the smack down when it did come out.

Secondly, the dragon didn't know our party composition, so saving a legendary resistance for a tougher spell that would eventually come it's way that it had no idea was going to happen, especially when taking into the context of how the dragon behaved (arrogant prick), would be totally metagaming.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Like I said, there may be situations where it's useful. In this case, your "legendary" opponent was over-confident and somewhat short-sighted. I have no idea how it survived to the point of becoming a legend without overcoming such behavior.

In general, legendary opponents are smart enough to not fall for such trickery. They have sufficient experience to always expect the worst, so the ability of the Battlemaster to force saving throws is not a substantial benefit there.

 

[Rune]

I'm curious why the dragon didn't swoop out of the cave, snatch up the Battlemaster, fly up out of bow shot, and drop the fighter. Or the cleric.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I haven't yet played a warlord-ish character in 5E, but speaking personally... if I wanted to I'd either use the Battlemaster and its maneuvers like you mentioned, or I'd play a War Cleric and strip the fluff off of it. Spells are basically a pool of maneuvers just like the Battlemaster's are, just in a different pyramidal scheme.

After all... when it comes to the game mechanics itself, there's really no difference between the 4E Warlord and the 4E Cleric. They both use the same AEDU format, their powers accomplish the same exact sorts of things (granting bonuses to hit, bonuses to AC, extra attacks, the regaining of HP, penalties to enemy attacks and AC etc. etc.) It's just the fluff that was different that dressed up these powers as "magical" or "mundane". Which is why using the spell slot pyramid and just stripping off the "magic" from them and calling them mundane maneuvers doesn't bother me a bit.

It's also the same reason why I've never seen the need for a "non-magical" paladin or ranger... because I can just as easily strip the magic off of their spells and call them mundane abilities (editing a bit of fluff in the process.)

 

[was]

Fair enough. It did get confusing at times, in older editions, with the whole wyrmling, toddler, young, adolescent, tween, teen, man-child, young adult, mid-adult, really-for-real-adult-even-though-he-doesn't-feel-grown-up, middle age, upper middle age, over-the-hill, over-the-river-and-through-the-woods, elderly, retired, discount-at-Denny's, semi-ancient, ancient, uber-ancient, wyrm, adequate wyrm, decent wyrm, great wyrm, and Betty White age categories.

This reminds me of the old Dragon magazine cartoon with the older dragon suffering from "scale pattern baldness"

 

[CapnZapp]

While it's not as impressive as the ~70 Warlord powers in the 4E Player's Handbook, core 5E still manages to offer an array of martial "healing" and support abilities. Yet some feel the edition hasn't really captured the feel of the 4E Warlord. Why? Here are some of my thoughts:

• As mentioned above, superiority dice are hard to come by and may not recharge often in the adventuring day. This, combined with a tendency to hoard resources until you really need them, means that a Warlord fighter isn't using his or her abilities on a regular basis.
• Most Warlord abilities are relegated to a subsection of a particular class; most options aren't available until third or fourth level and there are only a few of them. By contrast, the 4E Warlord had a whole class's worth of design space to breathe in, with many different viable builds available even from the start.
• The 5E "Warlord" lacks access to the depth and breadth of buffing and healing abilities that the 4E Warlord had - he or she can't move, buff, or heal multiple allies at once, deal with conditions, or lead the whole party in a powerful round of attacks.
• The martial support abilities available aren't totally unviable, but they're hardly topping the charts so far as character optimization goes. The "best" healer and buffer is still a Bard or Cleric, while a Battlemaster Fighter must invest many resources to even approach the utility of these classes. The most powerful "Warlord" style character is likely a hybrid, serving as the 5E equivalent of a Defender or Striker with the secondary role of a Leader.

My biggest problem is that almost all of the warlord-y features must compete against regular fighter-y features. This is not just an issue of lack-of-direction. It's a fatal weakness when you feel you must sacrifice plain better options in order to get the look and feel right for your intended class concept.

Then there's the issue of healing and buffing. Not only does magical effects destroy the core attractiveness of a warlord (and spells are the only way to gain healing and buffing currently in the game), they - by definition - can't be handed out to the Battlemaster; since that would destroy niche protection.

In conclusion; to really work, the Warlord concept absolutely must be its own class, where warlord-y features doesn't compete with or have to be balanced against the features of other classes.

Also, for many, a successful Warlord means breaking the core assumption of 5e brought along from 3e, namely that non-magical abilities can't get access to the really good stuff.

Specifically, I want healing on par with perhaps bard or druid healing (if not life Cleric levels of uber healing!), but this needs to work perfectly fine in an antimagic field. Same with Warlord buffing. I'm just saying this, so nobody expects otherwise. My guess is that a Warlord class won't ever become part of 5e core (at least not one that would satisfy the above). But perhaps it could be akin to a "DMG class" (like oathbreakers and death clerics) and be added to the forthcoming 4e compatibility articles?

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm curious why the dragon didn't swoop out of the cave, snatch up the Battlemaster, fly up out of bow shot, and drop the fighter. Or the cleric.

Well, it did use one of it's reactions to tail swipe me, smashing me against the wall. But the larger cavern we were all in wasn't big enough to keep it out of bow shot (or eldritch blast shot) range. It first tried to freeze us with breath weapons, and used it's freezing fog (which worked quite well to mess up our plans). We were all spread apart and in position when it first came out. And to be honest, it just missed us when trying to grapple. Such is how the dice fall.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Then there's the issue of healing and buffing. Not only does magical effects destroy the core attractiveness of a warlord (and spells are the only way to gain healing and buffing currently in the game), they - by definition - can't be handed out to the Battlemaster; since that would destroy niche protection.

Are you talking about 5e? Non magical healing and buffing do exist in 5e. Many of the BMs maneuvers can grant bonuses to allies, and between second wind, inspiration, healer feat, and how hit dice work, there are plenty of non magical healing options.