D&D 5E Zards Warlord 2.0

[Zardnaar]

I would strongly recommend against using the term 'exploit' to describe your abilities. It has fundamentally negative connotations, and those connotations are within the realm of games and game design.

You grant extra ASIs at both 6th and 10th, and thus grant one more ASI than any other class in the game. Remove at least one of them. Removing both would depend on how the rest of the class is balanced.

You have various typos with discrepancies between your list of abilities by level, and your description of said abilities.

Please write out each ability's description properly, rather than merely refer the reader to another sourcebook. It's annoying to have to look up. Do, however, still note the source ability if you're copying from elsewhere.

Supreme Commander seems significantly overpowered compared to other classes' capstones.

You have 28 Exploits. Will take a while to get a handle on them all. Rather impractical to be able to evaluate their effective balance offhand, particularly as they accumulate rather rapidly with level.

You don't provide any details on the usage of Exploits. Based on the way the class is built, they are basically spells, but there's no info on usage limits or anything like that, if any.



Overall impression: A big bag of buffs (analogous to a big bag of hit points). It's interesting as a mechanical curiosity, but doesn't really grab me as an actual character.

Some of the things like Supreme Commander were put int here when I looked at the foresight spell and other players raised concerns at things like the Warlord not being able to compete with spell levels, I added things like that to address those concerns.

I did shorthand a lot of abilities recycled off other classes. One complaint is all the 5E warlord abilities are scattered all over 5E, I kind of put them in one place and I am a big believer in why create more work than you have to. The ASI rate is the same as a fighter once again I used it as the warlord is giving up warrior/rogue level damage and spells so getting more ASI and some powerful abilites are there to address that side of things.

Not claiming its perfect its still very raw this is not a final concept by any means its more of a proof of concept.

 

[Zardnaar]

Initial reactions to the class...

Things I like:

Exploits (Kinda of like martial invocations). There's a lot of design that can be placed there.

Things I dislike:
Multiple classes unique design mechanics being reused. You have the mastermind subclass ability, the battlemaster subclass ability, a paladin style aura ability in there, a bard style ability. The class tries to reuse to many other classes defining features.

I also feel the class doesn't focus enough. Exploits and subclasses should be enough to define any particular type of warlord.

Examples include things like your:

Commanders Aura (there should be an option to pick or a subclass to pick that helps party initiative). However, it should not be an ability that gets associated with every warlord ever in 5e.
Iron Will (just isn't that thematic for a warlord)
...

A few additional thoughts.
A Paladin subclass that could use a reaction and apply his divine smite damage to their attack would be cool.

I have thought of a Paladin chassis, I want to get the 2 4E PHB warlords done right 1st then look at things like 1/3rd Paladins, clerics and wizards perhaps over some of the 4E subclasses some of which do not need to exist (like the archer one).

I like my idea of mixing the fighter and warlock chasis. You can get more feats for example to pick up the warlordy feat abilities, also we know how to add in 1/3rd casters and that can be tweaked to 1/3rd Paladins.

 

[Kinematics]

The ASI rate is the same as a fighter

All classes get ASIs at 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19.
Fighters get an extra ASI at 6.
Rogues get an extra ASI at 10.
No class gets extra ASIs at both 6 and 10.


Anyway, yeah, it's still in rough draft form, and I recognize that it's not perfect. My comments were solely the things that stood out to me as immediately problematic, as it takes a lot longer to sit down and absorb all the smaller nuances.

As for not creating more work than you have to? You're creating more work for all the readers who you're asking to review this idea.

 

[Zardnaar]

All classes get ASIs at 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19.
Fighters get an extra ASI at 6.
Rogues get an extra ASI at 10.
No class gets extra ASIs at both 6 and 10.


Anyway, yeah, it's still in rough draft form, and I recognize that it's not perfect. My comments were solely the things that stood out to me as immediately problematic, as it takes a lot longer to sit down and absorb all the smaller nuances.

As for not creating more work than you have to? You're creating more work for all the readers who you're asking to review this idea.

They don't have to participate.
Good catch on the as I thing. 1.0 had the bonus feat at 10 and I changed it the other night. The other fighter bonus feat is lvl 14 not 10.

 

[Kinematics]

They don't have to participate.
Good catch on the as I thing. 1.0 had the bonus feat at 10 and I changed it the other night. The other fighter bonus feat is lvl 14 not 10.

I am annoyed, because I triple checked that, and still missed the ASI at 14. Oh well. Carry on.

 

[Zardnaar]

I am annoyed, because I triple checked that, and still missed the ASI at 14. Oh well. Carry on.

We both did it.

 

[mellored]

A few thoughts:

1. I firmly believe that a single attack can be granted on any allies next turn without breaking the game. This is the closest incarnation of at will attack granting that I'm comfortable with.
2. I firmly believe off turn attack granting can be granted with a limited resource (preferably one that can also be used for buffing or healing, etc). It can just never turn into something that occurs nearly every round of every combat.

3. I really like the flavor of warlords getting "reaction abilities" that key off something specific happening on the battlefield and helping the ally based on what is happening.
4. I may be the only person in this position but I'm leaning less towards warlords granting what is essentially a new buff every round style abilities and instead granting a major encounter long buff per combat.

I agree with 1-3, but #4 seems to conflict with #3.

If you have an encounter long buff, you can't react to what's happening.

 

[transtemporal]

I like the auras giving cool abilities unique to the warlord, I like the flavor of the paths and I like the exploits but...

Multiple classes unique design mechanics being reused. You have the mastermind subclass ability, the battlemaster subclass ability, a paladin style aura ability in there, a bard style ability. The class tries to reuse to many other classes defining features.

I agree with frogreaver. Your warlord is already a really strong support class, the extra abilities consign those other classes to the scrapheap.

 

[Zardnaar]

Warlord 2.1 is up.
Changes based on feedback and other threads.

Commander aura is gone, along with Mastermind rogue abilities, level 3 is where major subclass abilities are added. Fixed the bonus feat at 6 issue (now level 10).

Inspirational Word now scales with level can use it 2/short rest.

Added healing Surge level 2 and 2/rest at level 6. Scales with levels. Added to boost WL healing and smooth out the lower level healing hopefully is now competitive with clerical healing assuming said cleric is not a life cleric or uses all the spell slots on healing.