So I wanna ask something real quick.
If you can replicate the Ranger and Rogue easily with just a background and/or a Fighter subclass, shouldn't you be able to do that with the Warlord?
You certainly could. But, at that point, where do you stop? Why do we need three "wizard" classes? What's a warlock but a wizard with a particular background? Never minding druids or, heck the umpteen cleric subclasses we have.
Without the mechanical background, there's nothing to actually do, in the game, that places a stamp at the table that I am playing X and not Y. And, I think, for myself anyway, that's important. I don't want to play a champion fighter that yells at people and has absolutely no impact on how the game is played. And, as far as a warlord goes, if you think people get fussy because the warlord is telling you how your character thinks (I don't wannnnnna get HP because the warlord yelled at me), imagine how unbelievably annoying it would be to play with that guy who tells you what to do every round instead of simply granting you extra actions without any actual strings attached.
That's the point that critics forget. Warlords don't actually tell you what to do. They cannot actually force you to do anything. All they do is grant opportunities. There's no loss of agency at all. I take an action that lets you do X. It's entirely up to you what you do with that opportunity. You get an extra attack, who do you attack? I grant an extra movement, where do you go? So on and so forth.
Otherwise, I'm just a really annoying player who's trying to micromanage your character and getting shirty when you ignore my suggestions because I'm an annoying git.
