D&D 5E What the warlord needs in 5e and how to make it happen.

For Subclasses, again quoting Wrecan I see the following:

Practitioner

The warlord who is most concerned with maintaining and boosting his allies and keeping them in the fight. This warlord specializes in martial healing, granting temporary hit points, resistance to damage, and ending conditions. He does this through a combination of first aid, improvement to morale, and an intimate knowledge of how a body can adjust to and react to combat situations.
Signature Power: Martial Healing

Vanguard

A warlord who leads by example. He attacks enemies in ways that show allies how to fight them more effectively. This manifests as the warlord hitting a foe, thus granting allies a bonus to either hitting that same foe or hitting a similar foe (as in "Here's how you take down a giant!").
Signature Power: Impose a condition that encourages allies to attack that target.

Grandmaster

A warlord who spots tactical weaknesses in position and directs allies on how to get the most advantageous position. This usually manifests as free movement, extra benefits from positioning, or off-turn parries.
Signature Power: Grant allies off-turn movement.

Captain

This is the warlord who oversees a battle and directs the allies to give them benefits to their attacks. Unlike the vanguard, who exploits an enemy's weakness, the captain deals primarily with his ally's own strengths, granting off-turn actions, added damage, or bonuses to attempts to trip, grapple, etc.
Signature Power: Grant allies off-turn attacks.

Hector

Rather than use his strategy to boost allies, he uses it to demoralize and disarray his enemies. With choreographed attacks that are designed to be as demoralizing as they are damaging, he causes enemies to miss opportunity (attacks), take penalties to hit or damage, or to incur fear-based conditions. Like the vanguard, his powers trigger off attacks, but unlike the vanguard, his attacks are meant to affect other enemies, rather than his allies.
Signature Power: Hit an enemy and impose a condition on nearby allies of that enemy.

What, if anything would fellow warlord fans add to this?

Paul Smart said:

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What, if anything would fellow warlord fans add to this?

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I think that covers a lot.

I think a big mistake many make is dumping action economy for others into the core class. I think the warlords core should be where his healing is focused on. Then you add two subclasses. One focused on action economy for allies, this one will use INT. The second one will focus on buffs/tempHP, and use CHA. The core classes healing should be less than the clerics but more than the pally's. Im thinking Sdice or warlock style short rest is how you dish out abilities. I think attack increases should be decided by the subclass with the chalord getting a standerd second attack while the intlord gives out some sort of action with his(I do think there would have to be rules limiting rogues SA).

mellored said:

All the warlord abilities are already in the game. They just need rearranged into a single class.

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So the question is then:

When will WotC finally do this? (I'm only interested in discussing official first-party printed products for the purposes of this question. Thanks)

And why do y'all think they haven't already?



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FrogReaver said:

1. Covered by battlemaster
2. Covered by battlemaster
3. Covered by bard
4. Covered by battlemaster
5. ...
6. Covered by bard
7. Covered by battlemaster (temp hp)
8. Covered by bard
9. Covered by battlemaster
10. Covered by battlemaster
11. Covered by bard

So that collection of abilities is basically already in the game between 2 classes. I'd say those abilities may could be combined into one class and probably balanced as long as you don't allow them to be at will.

I don't think that combination of abilities is really what warlord fans are looking for.

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Not to forget the archetypes from SCAG.

FrogReaver said:

Trading action is OP

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doctorbadwolf said:

No, it isn't.

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How can it not be OP?

In any given round, you get to pick the single best course of action.

That's completely against what the division of classes and "niche protection" is all about.

There's a reason a Fighter can't cast spells, a Wizard don't heal and a Cleric can't sneak attack.

Having a party member that can transform into a Rogue one round, a Bard the next, and a Monk the third is obviously the cream of the crop.

The point is that there are times a Fighter (or Sorcerer, or Ranger) has to make do with less than a best-in-class action.

That must remain true for a Warlord as well. Any trading actions ability cannot be free as in "unlimited".

On the other hand, I agree such an ability won't be fun unless it is "trade its action to give an action, no extra strings or restrictions. Just a 1-1 trade".

We just need to acknowledge how this is, quite literally, the best ability the game can have (since, at its admittely drastic extreme, it allows the Warlord to "cast" Wish without the strings attached), and limit it accordingly

CapnZapp said:

We just need to acknowledge how this is, quite literally, the best ability the game can have (since, at its admittely drastic extreme, it allows the Warlord to "cast" Wish without the strings attached), and limit it accordingly

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Not really. The party is still only going to have 1 Wish, because it's resource limited. All the Warlord has done is changed the action economy to allow the Wish to be cast on its turn instead of the Wizard's turn. At 17th+ level, I'd rather have another Wizard who can cast a second Wish!

The downside to any action granting Warlord is a simple one; they don't bring their own resource pool or unique function into the party. They give you greater diversity of options allowable on the Warlord's turn, but not a broader pool of options that another class could have brought. Any combination of abilities that a Warlord + Class X could do could just as easily be done by having two of Class X.

TwoSix said:

The downside to any action granting Warlord is a simple one; they don't bring their own resource pool or unique function into the party. They give you greater diversity of options allowable on the Warlord's turn, but not a broader pool of options that another class could have brought. Any combination of abilities that a Warlord + Class X could do could just as easily be done by having two of Class X.

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Yes, but the pool of options available on any one turn is like having two of any of the other classes in the party, plus the unique warlord abilities. That level of diversity is powerful.

I would suggest that the ability where the warlord grants a full action is not unrestricted. It should include something along the lines of " . . . as if it were still their previous turn." or similar. Thus it would allow casting a non-cantrip or sneak attack, but only if the ally hadn't already done that on their turn.
This would be a valuable second chance for a character with an ability normally restricted to once/round, or allow tactical delaying or positioning, but it isn't going to encourage prioritising a single party member for every use.

TwoSix said:

Not really. The party is still only going to have 1 Wish, because it's resource limited. All the Warlord has done is changed the action economy to allow the Wish to be cast on its turn instead of the Wizard's turn. At 17th+ level, I'd rather have another Wizard who can cast a second Wish!

The downside to any action granting Warlord is a simple one; they don't bring their own resource pool or unique function into the party. They give you greater diversity of options allowable on the Warlord's turn, but not a broader pool of options that another class could have brought. Any combination of abilities that a Warlord + Class X could do could just as easily be done by having two of Class X.

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While this reasoning might be valid for a very small group; once you have four characters covering all the major bases, adding a character that can "be" any one of the preceding roles is way stronger than adding merely a "second fighter" or whatever.

So your objection to the Wish example is just silly. Let's pick a different example. At mid level the Warlord grants access to twice as many Fireballs in a given round, twice as many Sneak Attacks, or twice as many Bardic Inspirations.

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Not saying this to argue "arlord is bad and shouldn't happen". But I am saying this to argue "completely free action trading is quite literally the strongest action there can be" and that it needs to be balanced accordingly.

CapnZapp said:

So the question is then:

When will WotC finally do this? (I'm only interested in discussing official first-party printed products for the purposes of this question. Thanks)

And why do y'all think they haven't already?

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No, because they want to avoid making new classes, and they already made 3 attempts at the warlord. Battlemaster, Purple Dragon Knight, and Mastermind rogue.

All of which are about 1/3 warlord, but there is still too much of the power budget in the base class to make a full warlord.

I did post a Frankenstein version which just took all 3 sub-class features (plus bards inspiration) and smashed them into 1 class. It works pretty well, and is semi-offical.