Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour: The Warlord

[FlyingChihuahua]

Well that's just flat out the wrong approach.
You're basically saying "If you can't make you character concept, you're character concept's wrong." Rather than "If you can't make your character concept, there's an unexplored niche a class could fill."

I'm just trying to limit class bloat here. 5E hasn't had any official additional classes added yet for a very good reason.

People need to find more ways to pare down their ideas to subclasses and not just throwing up their hands and saying "This won't work, make a new class!"

 

[Yunru]

I'm just trying to limit class bloat here. 5E hasn't had any official additional classes added yet for a very good reason.

People need to find more ways to pare down their ideas to subclasses and not just throwing up their hands and saying "This won't work, make a new class!"

Except as we discussed, this won't wprk, it needs a class!

They made a lot of unnecessary decission due to edition warring, such as the mess that is how they describe bonus actions because... it was too close to 4e to state it plainly?

Martial support being cut seems to have been another.

 

[mellored]

However, with something like the Warlord, I don't really see it. If you'll allow me to repeat myself, it feels like a Gunslinger. Something that's cool and fills a niche, but it just doesn't seem like something you could base a whole class around.

Or the barbarian, or ranger, or sorcerer, or the fighter, or druid...

But no one is saying warlords need to be alone.
There's also demand for non-magical rangers. Using your nature skills to "lead" the party through the forest, setting up ambushes, heal with herbs, and so on.
And for non-magical bards. Using performance skill to inspire allies.

They can all fit together nicely.


Though honestly, if I could, I would remake the fighter to be more modular. Have a big list of stuff to choose from, some support, some damage, some out of combat, some simple (+crit range, +1 HP), some fancy, and an action pool to spend on them.
Then it wouldn't be a problem to fit the warlord, ranger, bard, and gunsligner in as a sub-class.

 

[Remathilis]

Armored lord (warlord), Stealth lord, arcane lord, charismatic lord, self-sacrificing lord (provoke an OA to grant an attack), fear lord, passifist lord (lazy lord), trickster lord. That's 8. I'm sure others can think of more.
*Yes, charisma lord. I'm not worried about stepping on the bard's toes when eldrich knight is standing directly on the wizards foot.

A lot of other people have jumped on this, but I think its a fair place to start from.

What you described is, at best, 8 builds rather than 8 archetypes. An armored lord is a warlord who excels at heavy armor use while a stealth lord probably prefers light armor and hiding, but the question is "are those two archetypes compelling enough to develop beyond the obvious (giving the warlord the heavy-armor mastery feat or being proficient in the stealth skill)?" A better question would be "what archetypes can the warlord class hold?"

A quick brainstorm for me comes up with (and note, names are subjective).

* Marshal - Bog standard military officer. "Default subclass"
* Chieftain - a more primal/savage leader
* Noble - A charismatic/diplomatic/inspirational
* Knight - Defensive/lead-from-the-front
* Tutor - a learned, possibly lightly magical, scholarly type

So, there's five that make a lot more sense than "stealth lord".

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Except as we discussed, this won't wprk, it needs a class!

They made a lot of unnecessary decission due to edition warring, such as the mess that is how they describe bonus actions because... it was too close to 4e to state it plainly?

Martial support being cut seems to have been another.

I'm still not convinced of that.

Here's another idea I had, use the Battlemaster chassis, however, instead of adding riders to your attacks, add them to someone elses.

Simple, and doesn't require bloat.

And it's useless to complain about stuff being dropped from 4E, the rules of 5E have been made, let's work within them instead of trying to add new stuff just to make pet ideas work.

Or the barbarian, or ranger, or sorcerer, or the fighter, or druid...

But no one is saying warlords need to be alone.
There's also demand for non-magical rangers. Using your nature skills to "lead" the party through the forest, setting up ambushes, heal with herbs, and so on.
And for non-magical bards. Using performance skill to inspire allies.

They can all fit together nicely.


Though honestly, if I could, I would remake the fighter to be more modular. Have a big list of stuff to choose from, some support, some damage, some out of combat, some simple (+crit range, +1 HP), some fancy, and an action pool to spend on them.
Then it wouldn't be a problem to fit the warlord, ranger, bard, and gunsligner in as a sub-class.

I'll be honest, this just feels disingenuous, all of those I feel have enough of a mechanical difference to be allowed to exist.

Barbarian is the guy/gal with the big dumb anime super mode, Ranger is the character who knows terrain and creatures well enough to be distinct from the others, Sorcerer is the person who is filled with magic and knows how to manipulate it to their liking, The Fighter is the normal person who can push themselves beyond the physical limit via training, and Druid is a nature caster who can turn into animals.

Warlord is the guy/gal who is good enough at yelling at people that they can do things better, I personally don't feel like something like that is worthy of it's own class.

 

[cbwjm]

I'm actually fine with the warlord being a fight subclass since I tended to see them as just another kind of fighter in 4e (and yes, I'm aware of the differences between 4e's leaders and defenders). I'm not against a full class but I don't really think it is necessary. I feel the same way about the artificer as well, I don't really think it needs a full class and that subclasses could do the trick but I'm not against it being added, I just won't use it in my games.

 

[Tony Vargas]

like the idea, mainly because I love support characters.
I just think people are asking waaaaay too much and aren't looking for alternate solutions aside from their pet ones. very much aware of the hypocrisy, thank you

heh. OK, I think I see where you're coming from, now.

and why wouldn't a Subclass that can do those things help you?

Because it's not possible. Sub-classes in 5e don't all follow a fixed formula or pattern, but there's some things that are unprecedented to do with a sub-class. One of them is to yoink major, class-defining, abilities like full casting or Extra Attack. That prettymuch disqualifies ever last class. If you start with a full-caster bard or a high-DPR fighter or Rogue, you just don't have enough design space left to do all that fun stubbornly-not-magical support stuff.

Even if we set the precedent, it'd be tantamount to creating a new class, anyway. And, besides, it gets you one sub-class. As I've laid out above, the Warlord, even in it's brief 4e tenure, had the equivalent of at least 8 sub-classes- I suppose, like the Fighter & Rogue, they'd be "martial archetypes." Over 40 if you really stretch the point.

I'm just trying to limit class bloat here.

The Barbarian could have been a background. We really only needed one of the Warlock, Sorcerer, Wizard arcane triumvirate. The Bard was a Rogue sub-class in 2e. The Druid could have been a Cleric sub-class. The Paladin and Ranger could have been done with MCing.

Trying to limit class bloat was not a priority in 5e. Clinging to that so selectively is, well, hypocrisy. I'll take the assertion seriously when you start threads to get rid of the Sorcerer, Warlock, Bard, Druid, and, especially, Barbarian, and they rack up 200 pages each.

 

[mellored]

The game also has martial characters in it.

That doesn't, and shouldn't, mean that everything in the game has to be martial.

Are you worried a full warlord class would hurt the cleric's support-class niche or something?

I don't get it.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Are you worried a full warlord class would hurt the cleric's support-class niche or something?

I don't get it.

I've said it many times.

I do not think The Warlord is good enough on it's own to carry a whole class. It is that simple.

 

[Yunru]

So your saying a half-dice martial support character, for example, doesn't have enough flex?

Despite there being no current martial support class?

It's not like "martial support" is a narrow field.