D&D 5E WotC Developer Google Hangout on Youtube

[I'm A Banana]

Leadership and Skill at fighting are closely related?

I see. So Napoleon, well known for his martial prowess, was he? Alexander the Great, a lethal combatant with no equal? General Patton, well known for his ability to shoot a man at half a mile with his sidearm?

Leadership IN FIGHTS.

Clearly an MBA does not make you a great warrior.

Also, did you listen to the video, where Mike and Jeremy distinguished between supply line management (ie: Patton, Napoleon) from inspiring a small group of d00dz? Because this is not something I am making up.

They've got the management skills. Like most modern commanders. If you want your fighter to have management skills, that's as easy as swapping backgrounds (ah, the benefits of Profession (paper pusher)).

Napoleon never screamed at a guy not to die successfully, either, so I'm not entirely sure we want your D&D classes really modeling real-world military brass that closely, anyway.

 

[GreyICE]

Do we really have to get the list of medal of honor winners who performed extraordinary feats while badly injured, and lead people under their command to heroic deeds out? Because it exists, I assure you, and provides a perfect example of martial healing.

Anyway, you're still not grasping it. Most 'strategic' commanders also did well in tactical skirmishes. Why do you think they send sergeants out with the troops? I assure you it's not because they think the sergeant is the best marksman in the unit. That's not their role.

There really is such a thing as tactical awareness and combat skill in small units, and it is NOT the same thing as being really good with a sword.

Meh, the other thread pretty clearly demonstrated you've never played a Warlord, so you really don't have any idea what I'm talking about.

 

[Cadence]

For possibilities beyond 4e Warlord, the Black Company book for 3.5 spends quite a bit of time on leaders. They have Noble as a PC class who is an expert at using charisma and natural leadership, including inspiring courage. The prestige classes include : Great General for large-scale combat, Siege Engineer who can direct work crews, and Topkick as the squad leader. To the skill list they've added Command (Cha): use this skill to control units on the battlefield, bend others to your will, or to utilize command feats (of which there are over a dozen). Much of these rules help with the Company Scale and Army Scale combat rules in the book.

For healing, they have a Physician background (convert lethal damage to nonlethal), an Advanced Healing Feat (lets you try to neutralize diseases or work on grievous injuries), and a Physician Feat (takes 30 minutes) for out of combat healing.

 

[mlund]

Leadership and Skill at fighting are closely related?

I see. So Napoleon, well known for his martial prowess, was he? Alexander the Great, a lethal combatant with no equal? General Patton, well known for his ability to shoot a man at half a mile with his sidearm?

What is this I don't even

Actually, the awesome thing was that Patton was an Olympic pentathalon competitor - 5th place in the world in the first modern pentathlon - probably a medalist if he'd been using a .22 sport pistol instead of his .38. He was an accomplished equestrian and fencer.

But that's not really the point. The Warlord class has no powers relating to logistics or strategy. He's purely focused on squad-level tactics. Unlike an officer, he works for a living. That means he has to hold his own in the squad in front-line fighting. If you can't fight personally anymore they either retire you or make you an officer.

- Marty Lund

 

[Cadence]

It's not a slippery slope kind of situation. There's a difference enough in game history, expectations, and fiction to make it apples and oranges. The "Ranger" concept, for instance, is distinct from the "Fighter" concept from 2e on up, ...

The "warlord" concept was part of the "fighter" concept until 4e (which had a uniquely narrow "fighter" concept)...

... but it is much less clear that a warlord and a fighter are distinct archetypes.

I agree with @GreyICE here.

If 1e to 3e is the source material for what a Warlord is, it is certainly possible to give a Warlord flavored Fighter as you demonstrated in the other thread (http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pa...option-assassin-rogue-option.html#post6045523).

If the source material is 4e, then the tactical Warlord's ability to maneuver enemies around the battlefield, and help their friends get in the right position, especially when combined with the various other methods of combat support (even disregarding healing), seems more different to me from the Fighter than the Paladin is from Cleric. I also don't see anything like this Warlord concept in 1e (where I thought fighter was very, very narrow) or 2e, or even in base 3/3.5. And I think the other thread you even copped to your suggestion being elegant and easy to fit into the extant 5e fighter framework when it ignored the more profound battlefield control elements that make the 4e Warlord unique. (I can picture it capturing the inspirational aspect).

One of the eye-opening posts I saw on 5e earlier was something along the lines that, yes 1e, 2e, and 3/3.5 all preceded 4e chronologically. But for a player who started with 4e and then was only exposed to the others later, 4e preceded 3/3.5. They would have no reason to give the 3/3.5 tropes any precedence over the 4e ones. I don't think arbitrarily restricting to 4 core classes to be a good reason why those players shouldn't have their recognizable martial leader (from the 1st 4e PHB even) in 5e. [The other (non-psionic) 4e classes don't strike me as being this distinct from the classes in previous editions.] As its own class it could even be easily expanded to also give support for the tactical and inspirational leader type who isn't taking point with the fighters and paladins.

 

[tuxgeo]

As I see more and more of these types of podcasts, videocasts, and convention panels with Mike and Jeremy... and every time making points in and around these playtest packets about having them be stronger or weaker or better or worse all on purpose... to help them zero in on what they are looking for for information...

...I can't help but be even more convinced that every person who comes onto ENWorld after each packet complaining that that WotC has lost their way or doesn't know how to design a game or run a playtest... is someone who has absolutely no clue.

These guys are more self-aware of what they are doing and what they are giving us than any of us can even conceive.

Quoted for emphasis: their deliberate awareness of what they are doing should be borne in mind. This applies particularly to features that had been included before, but are not present in the current packet.

I liked that the WotC-ians are looking for other names for things, especially for the contentious Warlord class, and for the Skills-that-are-not-your-grandfather's-3E-Skills (because you don't make Skill checks).

I think opposition to the existence of a Warlord class (or whatever they end up calling it) would diminish slightly (because haters still gonna hate anyway) if WotC were to place that class in an optional "module" section in the first player's book, possibly at the back. If they were to do that, then the opponents of the Warlord class (such as K-Midget) could have their Warlord-less D&D by not using that module, but fans of the Warlord class could have their D&D-with-Warlord by using that module. It's Win-Win, with everybody (moderately) happy, right? (By getting what they want? Or am I being too optimistic, here?)

In connection with disappearing features: my biggest gripe with the latest packet is the nerfing of the Cantrips. The "Arcane Specialist" specialty fills me with boredom, because its greatest value is in qualifying the PC to take the Level 3 feat that requires wizardly spellcasting. (It's not likely that many PCs could get much use out of casting a single, paltry cantrip per day.) However, I know this isn't permanent: to paraphrase what DEFCON 1 said, I know they're just de-emplasizing things temporarily.

 

[GX.Sigma]

If the source material is 4e, then the tactical Warlord's ability to maneuver enemies around the battlefield, and help their friends get in the right position, especially when combined with the various other methods of combat support (even disregarding healing), seems more different to me from the Fighter than the Paladin is from Cleric.

If the source material is 4e, then the tactical Fighter's ability to maneuver enemies around the battlefield (Tide of Iron, level 1 at-will), and help their friends get in the right position (Covering Attack, level 1 encounter), especially when combined with the various other methods of combat support (knockdowns, slows, immobilizes, AC penalizing) (even disregarding marking), seems more different to me from the Fighter than the Warlord is from the Marshal.

Seriously, saying that a class got lots of interesting tactical tricks in 4e is a tautology.

 

[GreyICE]

If the source material is 4e, then the tactical Fighter's ability to maneuver enemies around the battlefield (Tide of Iron, level 1 at-will), and help their friends get in the right position (Covering Attack, level 1 encounter), especially when combined with the various other methods of combat support (knockdowns, slows, immobilizes, AC penalizing) (even disregarding marking), seems more different to me from the Fighter than the Warlord is from the Marshal.

Seriously, saying that a class got lots of interesting tactical tricks in 4e is a tautology.

Why do I like 4E so much? Hmmm

Anyway, there are several classes with few tactical tricks (Ranger, Sorcerer, Rogue, Knight), and a lot can be built very light on tactical tricks.

You could build a pure damage Warlord, I suppose, if you carefully picked powers and stuff, but it's a very weird place for a Warlord to be (although 4E classes have more variety than most people from earlier editions anticipate is possible)

 

[MortalPlague]

In my mind, it's pretty easy to add Warlord as a fighting style, right along with duelist, veteran, slayer, etc. For instance:

Warlord
Your presence on the battlefield inspires those around you to great feats of strength and valor.

Maneuvers:
Wolf Pack Tactics - When you make an attack, you may spend one expertise die to allow an ally to move up to their speed.

Distracting Attack - When you make an attack, you may spend one or more expertise dice to grant an ally a bonus on their next attack against your target. The bonus equals the highest result of one of your rolled expertise dice.

Shouted Warning - As a reaction, you may spend an expertise die to reduce the damage an ally takes from an attack. Take only the highest die result.


Obviously, if WotC were planning to do it, their version would be much better than my quickly-scribed one, but you can see where I'm going with this? Maneuvers could easily model the warlord powers.