D&D 5E What's a Warlord? Never heard of this class before.

krunchyfrogg · Nov 14, 2015

I can onlY assume it was in a previous edition. Considering I jumped from 2e to 5e, I must have missed it.

What is this class trying to do? Was it too powerful for 5e? Is that why it keeps being imitated by other classes, but hasn't been duplicated yet?

mellored · Nov 14, 2015

It was a 4e martial support class. In 3.5 it was called the marshal. It mostly gave other people extra attacks, movement, and other bonuses, using Int for tactical analysis , and Cha to boost moral. Similar to a war cleric, but without religion or magic.

It's not too powerful for 5e. The marshal was quite weak in 3.5 And the warlord was strong in 4e if you played with the action economy and had a good team. 5e's action economy is much tighter, so that fixes alot of the issue straight out. Other tweaks can happen as well, changing the size of the bonuses.

And WotC did attempted to include it. Twice. Both as the battlemaster and the purple dragon knight have strong warlord feel. Problem is they are sub-classes, not full class. Too much of the fighter's power is tied up in multi-attack, and thus doesn't have room for the level of support people want.

People want more support, less fighter. (Roughly) bardic inspiration, battlemaster dice, and purple dragon knight to be in 1 class. Removing spells and multi-attack to make room. Or something along those lines.

Uchawi · Nov 14, 2015

I disagree with the strong warlord feel with the battlemaster or purple dragon knight. Otherwise, we would not have endless warlord threads on mechanics or feel. And a clear action economy is a boon for any class and game. 5E suffers from the action economy being very basic and loose, so there is a lot left in the hands of the DM to interpret. 4E suffered from bloat or so many options available that any class could find exploits.

EzekielRaiden · Nov 14, 2015

Since this question has come up a couple of times now, here's the answer I've given elsewhere. (Technically, the person also asked something equivalent to, "Does this class-archetype appear in other games, like Pathfinder?" but I figure the extra info can't hurt.)

EzekielRaiden said:
Well, unfortunately, we get this sort of question a lot, and it's not always asked with an open mind, but I'll try.

The Warlord was the continuation of a concept that appeared in 3e, the Marshal class. The two go about their business in different ways, as I understand it--I'm not very familiar with the 3e Marshal--but they both had a fairly similar core idea. Martial characters (those who use arms, skill, armor, and tactics, rather than arcane secrets, divine favor, or otherwise "mystical" assistance) who rely heavily on one or more mental attributes (Int/Wis/Cha), and who possesses moderate skill at fighting but is more about enabling other characters to be better at what they do. Both the Marshal and the Warlord had abilities to help maneuver allies around the battlefield (though the Warlord was arguably better at it), and both of them had some kind of passive benefit that all allies nearby received (for the Marshal, it was called "auras," while for the Warlord it was called a "presence").

Pathfinder doesn't appear to have any *core* classes that are absolutely equivalent, but it does have a "base" class (not sure what the difference is) called "Cavalier" which is very similar, just with the addition of mounted combat stuff. Archetypes can let you get even closer--it's not perfect, but it's very similar. For example, instead of having a "command presence," the Cavalier can "provide the benefit of a Teamwork feat" to all allies within 30 feet as long as they can see and hear the Cavalier. There's also at least one PrC called "Battle Herald," though (sadly) it requires Inspire Courage, which is a magical ability--why it needs that I'm not sure, since it doesn't actually advance that ability and isn't explicitly magical. Regardless, the point is that classes which do stuff very similar to the Warlord are present in Pathfinder.

I, personally, would argue that the Warlord is what happened to a part of the Fighter that was shed at some point: the interaction with followers. The Fighter used to become a Lord at some point, and gain men-at-arms; this hasn't been a thing since 3e, and possibly earlier (my 2e experience is solely with CRPGs, so I don't know if the followers were removed from it for programming reasons or if they were just absent by that point). However, because "hirelings" in general were no longer a major feature of the game, the focus of that "captain leading fellows" switched from NPCs to the Fighter's fellow party members; the Marshal expanded that, and the Warlord expanded it further (and differently).

One of the things that is almost always stressed about the Warlord--a major positive for fans, a major sticking point for detractors--is that the Warlord was explicitly non-magical. I already mentioned this above, but I just wanted to be clear: nothing the 4e Warlord did was considered "magic." In my opinion, what exactly, "magic" means to any given person--literally all things "supernatural" or which couldn't happen here on Earth, or just those things which are arcane secrets/Divine boons/Nature's esoteric power--has a lot to do with how people feel about the Warlord class.

As for the specific things the 4e Warlord did, it varied slightly depending on how you put it together. 4e was big on having each class contain no less than 2, and often 5 or more "styles" or "builds" by choosing class features (much like PF's Archetypes, but the choice is baked into the class from level 1). For the Warlord specifically, you chose a style of leadership--your method for either improving or assisting your party-mates at doing stuff. Eventually there were six different "style" choices, which emphasized different behaviors (defense vs. offense, risky attacks vs. tactical coordination, etc.) There were also some options that could let you specialize in ranged combat instead of melee combat (the default for Warlords). Also, was juuuust possible, if you picked the right options, to play a Warlord that never actually made any attacks at all--instead, that specific kind of Warlord worked by granting special, off-turn attacks to party members; this is known as a "Lazy" or "Princess" Warlord, and was somewhat popular even though it never had any "official" status. Additionally, and this is a sticking point for some people, Warlords had an ability that could restore HP up to a limit*, but generally they weren't especially good at that (they could invest in being better at it, but it wasn't their strongest suit).

So, to sum that all up briefly:
1. Yes, this class has existed since at least 3rd edition, and yes, it has analogous classes in PF (both a "base" class and a PrC, just taking the first one I found that worked).
2. Although it's debated, I'd argue it hearkens back to something the Fighter used to have, but shed at some point.
4. The 4e Warlord had a support-focused kit, and specialized in moving allies around the battlefield (4e combat is less mobile than 5e), improving allies' offensive abilities (attack, damage, sometimes even initiative), and allowing allies to take extra/off-turn actions.
5. Some Warlords never attacked at all, but most were melee attackers who favored Strength plus one mental stat (Int, Wis, or Cha) depending on chosen class features.
6. The 4e Warlord could heal, though only up to a limit*, and other support (aka "Leader" in 4e lingo) classes were better at it.

Anything I could say beyond this--and I've tried to write this paragraph four times now--would be either coercive or trying to frame the argument in my favor. Suffice it to say, *I believe* those who oppose the Warlord either see something deeply wrong with one of the typical features of the Warlord (particularly its ability to restore HP without magic), or feel that "Warlord fans," as a group, are unpleasable without breaking the game...or just oppose the addition of any new classes whatsoever. Suffice it to say that I am not opposed to the addition of new classes, I think there is nothing wrong with the general idea of many of the Warlord's mechanics (but definitely that they need to change to fit a new edition), and have no problem with a Warlord that can restore HP.

As for whether it exists in 5e, that question is extremely hotly debated, and I think MelloRed's statements on the subject should be interpreted as his personal attitude, not an objective fact.

Some people think the Battlemaster is ample support for the archetype. Some people think it's strictly insufficient. Probably the only objective thing you can say about any of this stuff is that certain subclasses--Purple Dragon Knight (Fighter), Battlemaster (Fighter), Mastermind (Rogue), Valor (Bard)--contain at least one element similar to the 4e Warlord. The controversy, and the existence of this temporary subforum, is driven primarily by those who see these things as prodigious support (and thus find it onerous or even tendentious to ask for anything more), and those who see these things as meager/partial/piecemeal (and thus find it onerous or even tendentious to be told they're not allowed to have better).

Edit:
The (*) asterisk in the paragraph about what Warlords could do in 4e, and in summary point 6, is something I forgot to add to the original post. Basically, 4e had a mechanic which put a very hard limit on the total amount of healing a character could receive for a particular "adventuring day" (though, just like in 5e, an "adventuring day" need not be "one 24-hour period.") This mechanic was called "Healing Surges." Every character had a number of Healing Surges based on class and Con modifier; classes that were meant to take a beating (Fighters, Paladins, Barbarians, etc.) had a high base number, generally 8-10, while those that were fragile (Wizards, Rogues, Warlocks, etc.) had a comparatively low base number, generally 6-7. Spending a Healing Surge restored 25% of your hit points.

During combat, spending Healing Surges was difficult, and in general most characters could only use a single HS per combat by using a generic ability called "Second Wind." Classes that gave built-in support features, aka "Leader" classes (just a label to indicate "has default support features," not meant to describe personality or story), had features that allowed allies to spend Healing Surges during combat, usually with some extra HP added on, and sometimes with some other minor benefit. Even Healing Potions relied on the drinker spending a Healing Surge (and, like most forms of magical healing, also added some extra HP). If a character ran out of Surges, it was very difficult to heal them--not impossible, many classes got once-a-day powers that healed without requiring a Surge, but difficult and almost never repeatable. Pretty much, if somebody was out of Surges it meant the adventuring day needed to come to an end, because they were tapped out.

Basically: yes, a Warlord could restore HP, but not indefinitely. There was a hard limit on the amount of gumption a Warlord--or anyone--could draw out of an ally without the aid of powerful, and rare, magic.

Tony Vargas · Nov 15, 2015

krunchyfrogg said:
What's a Warlord?

The primary concept was as a tactically brilliant and/or inspiring battle-leader, a familiar archetype from many genres, including heroic fantasy. To that were added a number of variations, including resourceful, aggressive/intimidating lead-from-the-front, insightful/perceptive, and even oddball 'lazy' builds that were more kibitzing bystanders or victims in need of rescue than leaders.

What is this class trying to do?

It's trying to capture a swath of character concepts that neither the Fighter nor Rogue have ever been able to model well. The Fighter has often been expected to cover them, but was given no mechanical abilities to do so. Perhaps incidentally, the Warlord also opened the game up to themes and playstyles that were previously impractical without heavy modification, like all-martial parties and low-/no- magic pulp/S&S style campaigns (not just low-/no- item, but limited or no PC casting).

Now it's debatable whether you need several different classes - Fighter, Rogue, Warlord, Barbarian, Cavalier, Knight, Champion, Slayer, Swashbuckler, etc - to model the various non-magic-using archetype from genre, or whether you just needed to finally give the fighter a sufficiently diverse range of abilities. 5e hasn't done the latter, so it's stuck with both Fighters and Rogue, plus one Barbarian sub-class (myabe) and a noticeable lack of other non-magic-using options.

Was it too powerful for 5e?

It was neatly balanced with other support classes (like Cleric and Bard) in the past, and those classes are much more powerful in 5e than they were then, so, no. If anything, the Warlord is going to have to be powered up substantially to fit in 5e. A direct port would be underwhelming, indeed.

Is that why it keeps being imitated by other classes, but hasn't been duplicated yet?

There's no telling what the 'why' may be. Worst-case, the chief developer, Mike Mearls has made comments that could be interpreted as deeply prejudiced against the class, for instance, so it could, literally, be personal. More cynically, there was an epidemic of on-line nerdrage called the 'edition war' in reaction to the release of the last edition, and since the Warlord was introduced in that edition, there's a fear that introducing it could re-ignite the flames (in any discussion of the Warlord, you'll see someone taking the opportunity to say something negative about 4e). More pragmatically, 5e is being developed with fewer resources than any edition since the earliest days of the game, so it may have just seemed too daunting a task to create a viable support class without leveraging the existing spell lists, tackling the sorts of mechanics it'd require a few at a time in other classes may be a way of spreading out what would otherwise be an impractical development challenge.

Miladoon · Nov 15, 2015

krunchyfrogg said:
I can onlY assume it was in a previous edition. Considering I jumped from 2e to 5e, I must have missed it.

What is this class trying to do? Was it too powerful for 5e? Is that why it keeps being imitated by other classes, but hasn't been duplicated yet?

if you got 10USD you can pick up the pdf on dndclassics and read all about it and how it fit into 4E.

In 5E, the concept of a leader using resources to help the party was absorbed by the Fighter/Battlemaster and Bard/College of Valor.

Conceptually, any class can imitate the role of a warlord. Mechanically, Battlemaster and Valor Bard are seemingly insufficient to cover the scope of 4E warlord abilities.

I doubt it will be duplicated because of the current direction of providing subclass updates, like the purple dragon knight, to cover that particular 4E territory. And 5E is doing well enough to focus limited resources on settings and campaigns. They will probably release a couple more ranger fixes before they realize they can not please everyone and drop that struggle also.

Zardnaar · Nov 17, 2015

krunchyfrogg said:
I can onlY assume it was in a previous edition. Considering I jumped from 2e to 5e, I must have missed it.

What is this class trying to do? Was it too powerful for 5e? Is that why it keeps being imitated by other classes, but hasn't been duplicated yet?

Its a 4E class. IN 2E terms it is a type of warrior I suppose that could buff the allies etc. 4E had clear roles and classes were shoehorned into them so fighters became defenders and the Warlord was a leader. 2E had Warrior, Mage, Priest and Rogue tags I suppose, 4E had striker, leader, defender and control which were hard coded into the game. A fighter for example was always a defender and had no ranged option support (or at least minimal options).

All leaders had some for of non magical healing and in 4E you had a reserve of hit points known as healing surges and each one gave you 25% of your hit points back. Leaders could improve on this or let someone use one faster than you normally could.

MoutonRustique · Nov 17, 2015

Zardnaar said:
Its a 4E class. IN 2E terms it is a type of warrior I suppose that could buff the allies etc. 4E had clear roles and classes were shoehorned into them so fighters became defenders and the Warlord was a leader. 2E had Warrior, Mage, Priest and Rogue tags I suppose, 4E had striker, leader, defender and control which were hard coded into the game. A fighter for example was always a defender and had no ranged option support (or at least minimal options).

All leaders had some for of non magical healing and in 4E you had a reserve of hit points known as healing surges and each one gave you 25% of your hit points back. Leaders could improve on this or let someone use one faster than you normally could.

This is a perfect example of why these debates can get heated, convoluted and (sadly), at times, nasty.

This definition fits almost none of the principal points I associate with the Warlord and uses conceptual structures I find contrary to my understanding with regards to presentation and emphasis.

This is not to say it isn't a good one - just way different than mine.

The concepts the Warlord class needs to fill (for me) :
- a battle leader that uses a potential mix of : charisma, smarts, tactical knowledge, authority, fear and probably something else, to increase the performance of his allies
- she will often be a leader by example (also a front-liner)
- she will often be a helper by advice (the "lazy-lord")
- she will often serve as a form of "coach" to the "team" ("down-time/rest" effects)
- most figures of leadership schooled to leadership would fall into this class (as opposed to a grunt that climbs the ranks)
- has these kinds of "D&D abilities" : healing, offensive bonuses, positive action economy tampering, defensive bonuses
- ideally, would open possibilities of intra-party cooperation unavailable without her (think Chrono-Trigger combo strikes or something)
- the warlord as a class should be non-magical (or, if magic is used, it should be easily refluffable as non-magical)

The advent of the Warlord (concept) for use in fantasy/RPG : ... always/was never absent.

The advent of the Warlord as a class :
- 2e (some kits allowed for this kind of play)
- 3e (Marshal, and plenty of PrCs and etc - there was so much stuff in 3e, but honestly, you could pretty much say anything and find it in there somewhere)
- 4e the Warlord class gained it's current name and was a whole class that offered depth and the ability to be this kind of character w/o needing to be something else also that you kind of had to forget that you were kinda supposed to be.
- 5e the Warlord as a conceptual entity has been enabled in many classes, but in diluted form. A complete (as in 4e) implementation is absent from 5e for the time being.

Zardnaar · Nov 18, 2015

MoutonRustique said:
This is a perfect example of why these debates can get heated, convoluted and (sadly), at times, nasty.

This definition fits almost none of the principal points I associate with the Warlord and uses conceptual structures I find contrary to my understanding with regards to presentation and emphasis.

This is not to say it isn't a good one - just way different than mine.

The concepts the Warlord class needs to fill (for me) :
- a battle leader that uses a potential mix of : charisma, smarts, tactical knowledge, authority, fear and probably something else, to increase the performance of his allies
- she will often be a leader by example (also a front-liner)
- she will often be a helper by advice (the "lazy-lord")
- she will often serve as a form of "coach" to the "team" ("down-time/rest" effects)
- most figures of leadership schooled to leadership would fall into this class (as opposed to a grunt that climbs the ranks)
- has these kinds of "D&D abilities" : healing, offensive bonuses, positive action economy tampering, defensive bonuses
- ideally, would open possibilities of intra-party cooperation unavailable without her (think Chrono-Trigger combo strikes or something)
- the warlord as a class should be non-magical (or, if magic is used, it should be easily refluffable as non-magical)

The advent of the Warlord (concept) for use in fantasy/RPG : ... always/was never absent.

The advent of the Warlord as a class :
- 2e (some kits allowed for this kind of play)
- 3e (Marshal, and plenty of PrCs and etc - there was so much stuff in 3e, but honestly, you could pretty much say anything and find it in there somewhere)
- 4e the Warlord class gained it's current name and was a whole class that offered depth and the ability to be this kind of character w/o needing to be something else also that you kind of had to forget that you were kinda supposed to be.
- 5e the Warlord as a conceptual entity has been enabled in many classes, but in diluted form. A complete (as in 4e) implementation is absent from 5e for the time being.

If you skipped 3E and 4E though you are not really going to know about most of the stuff you listed. COntro was not as good in AD&D as boom was a lot better all things being relative. 2E did not really have muchin the way of copmbos at least not without throwing splat books at it to get access to kits.

In AD&D you oculd build a decent fighter that used dagger, longbows/shjort bows, sword and board thats what I meant with 4E being hard coded relative to 2E. You are a defender and you have a choice of sword and board or two handed (in the PHB anyway) and that is it.

2E was more fluid in that regard. It had roles in a loser sense. Wall warriors had the same THACO but you could build a tank or ranged fighter or striker type fighter using 4E terms. You did not really have anything like the defender mechanic in 2E.

A Warlord ability in 2E was raising a small personal guard I suppose.

mellored · Nov 18, 2015

Zardnaar said:
If you skipped 3E and 4E though you are not really going to know about most of the stuff you listed. COntro was not as good in AD&D as boom was a lot better all things being relative. 2E did not really have muchin the way of copmbos at least not without throwing splat books at it to get access to kits.

In AD&D you oculd build a decent fighter that used dagger, longbows/shjort bows, sword and board thats what I meant with 4E being hard coded relative to 2E. You are a defender and you have a choice of sword and board or two handed (in the PHB anyway) and that is it.

2E was more fluid in that regard. It had roles in a loser sense. Wall warriors had the same THACO but you could build a tank or ranged fighter or striker type fighter using 4E terms. You did not really have anything like the defender mechanic in 2E.

A Warlord ability in 2E was raising a small personal guard I suppose.

You could build an offensive fighter in 4e, or defensive one, or a controlling one, and could even get a few support abilities.

Given the large swath of powers, particularly for the fighter, and the innumerable feats, it was possible to build pretty any class in any role. Yes, they had a tendency towards a role, but it wasn't as strict as you make it out to be, particularly as the game expanded.

Heck, i built a Str wizard who charged people with a 2-handed weapon, and he did fine.

Though you did need to stick with 2 stats. You would simply not be able to hit anything if you split them 3 ways such as Str/Dex/Int. You still take a penalty in 5e as well, but running around with a 14 Int wizard is still possible.

D&D 5E What's a Warlord? Never heard of this class before.

krunchyfrogg

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