D&D 5E "Warlord" Fighter sub-class from MMHFT podcast. Further duscussion.

[mellored]

1. Hit dice healing has too many issues to list but I'll make a small list of some of them:
a. In the early levels you can heal more than the cleric
b. The power balancing of such an ability will be impossible. From one perspective it's not adding any daily resources to the party so the parties power isn't increasing. From another perspective it's allowing as much healing in a narrow timeframe as a cleric that spends all his slots on healing. The cleric afterwards is spent. The warlord afterwards would still be just as effective in combat. How do you balance a class that can heal as much as a cleric out of combat but no resources are removed from the class for doing so? (Hint: it's impossible to do so)

you just said it was too powerful, and too weak.
Which is it? Because you can add a penalty, or bonus to adjust it.
Scaling up as needed.

It's far from impossible.
Really, just play test it and see for yourself.

The tacticians help ability is better but still looks to be very hard for a warlord to scale up with such an ability.

some kind of scaling, yes.
Possibly +1d8 damage, maybe attack and advantage, maybe +int to damage.

 

[FrogReaver]

you just said it was too powerful, and too weak.
Which is it? Because you can add a penalty, or bonus to adjust it.
Scaling up as needed.

It's far from impossible.
Really, just play test it and see for yourself.

Yes. There are 2-axis. Speed and Daily Resources and increasing speed without increasing Daily Resources is still adding a form of power, but it's a form of power that's only effective against a subset of all the circumstances you will face. So it will be much to strong against the circumstances it helps against while still being much to weak against the circumstances it doesn't help again.

The question I have is, how much combat power do you take away from the class for adding in an ability that increases the classes power through "speed" but doesn't actually increase it's daily resources?

You see in a good chunk of circumstances the healing granted by this ability will be just as good and have no downsides compared to hp that a cleric grants through healing spells. So in those circumstances if I heal as much as a cleric would if he had spent all his spells and do more than cantrip level damage the rest of the day in combat then we have got imbalance.

 

[mellored]

You see in a good chunk of circumstances the healing granted by this ability will be just as good and have no downsides compared to hp that a cleric grants through healing spells. So in those circumstances if I heal as much as a cleric would if he had spent all his spells and do more than cantrip level damage the rest of the day in combat then we have got imbalance.

So... Sometimes the warlord is better, and sometimes the cleric is better.

Seem like good class design to me.

 

[FrogReaver]

That's the important perspective, I think. 5e combats aren't balanced around characters getting knocked down to 0 every fight, healing's more of an emergency thing, but 5e days are balanced around the party handling up to 6-8 encounters, so whether you heal in or out of combat isn't that critically important, as long as you /can/ heal in combat, now and then.

Well it is important though. We have an ability that eliminates the need for anyone in the party to wait an hour for a short rest to use their hit dice for healing. Now consider a cleric trying to heal the party up enough out of combat so they don't have to short rest. This requires spell slots. Any spell slot used is a spell slot that can't be used later in combat. There's a trade there, healing now for combat ability later. With this proposed hit dice ability there is no trade. It's heal now and still have the same combat ability later.

Instead, the allies' HD are spent, also a serious issue. Blowing HD to heal in combat is 'better' than spending HD in one sense, but it adds nothing to the day's healing capacity, so the party is less likely to hit the magic number of encounters/day.

A party with or without this ability is just as likely to reach the magic number of encounters/day. It's just the party without this ability won't have to stop and rest for simple hp loss (a major benefit) and they will suffer no combat related downsides for having this ability.

If the party had a cleric instead of this character then they could just as easily bypass resting for simple hp loss except they will suffer combat downsides because the cleric now has less spellslots he can put toward combat in the day, thus making the remaining combats harder and thus eroding more of the other party members resources which may eventually require the party to take a short rest and expend their hit dice without being able to face more encounters than the other party.

I'm actually leaning toward the cleric that heals with spell slots to be in typically worse shape than the warlord who heals with hit dice and keeps 100% full combat ability all the time but that result isn't certain.

Maybe the Warlord should trigger HD in combat, but perform between-combat healing or before-combat temp hp inspiration? So the total hps/day can be maintained?
IDK, may be over-analyzing it profoundly, a party could have only one Cleric or other support type, or half the party could be able to heal, that's a lot of variance, the balance can't be all that delicate...

That's because healing right now is a tradeoff with combat resources. Casting a 3rd level cure wounds means your not casting a 3rd level Spirit Guardians etc.

The fighter going back to true multi-attacking after languishing with 4e exploits and 3.x iterative attacks for so long is hard to complain about, fighters get tremendous DPR because multi-attacking is so potent and acts as a multiplier on every little damage bonus you can scrape together. But it does make the game less consistent and harder to add anything to because you have classes working so very differently. It's just part of the challenge of designing for 5e, but, by the same token, there's nothing stopping a design from tackling all that. No line to have to color within. ...

Well, we do have a bit of a limit on complexity...

 

[FrogReaver]

So... Sometimes the warlord is better, and sometimes the cleric is better.

Seem like good class design to me.

Not if the Warlord is better 99% of the time. Or some other significant amount of time.

 

[FrogReaver]

I do have one question. Why are we discussing this here when it wasn't part of Mearls Warlord and we already have a thread for designing our own Warlord?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I do have one question. Why are we discussing this here when it wasn't part of Mearls Warlord and we already have a thread for designing our own Warlord?

Mearls's sub-class keeps healing resources separate from gambits, so I suppose that's a similar issue...

 

[bkwrm79]

I know it's a first draft, but I hope if they move forward they manage to avoid:

1) implying the Warlord knows better than other party members how other party members can best use their abilities

2) "you and your allies howl in rage" (or any other "you and your allies do X" things)

3) "you order your allies..." "you direct your allies..."

 

[TwoSix]

I know it's a first draft, but I hope if they move forward they manage to avoid:

1) implying the Warlord knows better than other party members how other party members can best use their abilities

2) "you and your allies howl in rage" (or any other "you and your allies do X" things)

3) "you order your allies..." "you direct your allies..."

"J.A. Warlord, Esq., cordially invites the presence of your sword into the face of the rampaging troll to your left, in the next two to three seconds.

__ Gratefully accepts your invitation to smite
__Respectfully declines the invitation"

 

[Garthanos]

"J.A. Warlord, Esq., cordially invites the presence of your sword into the face of the rampaging troll to your left, in the next two to three seconds.

__ Gratefully accepts your invitation to smite
__Respectfully declines the invitation"

Warlord clips the enemy sending him spinning or distracts the enemy nearest you leaving you an obvious opening .... oh you figure its better to ignore the opening... really? ahem?