D&D 5E Warlording the fighter
Hussar
Legend
To be fair though, allowing Warlords to grant access to HD in combat is an idea with legs. You could have the Warlord grant standard Hd healing in combat and then significant bonuses to HD out of combat. Say plus Xd6 depending on level.
Thus you get a different kind of healing without the Warlord burning out the party's adventuring day. Day length is continued through the bonus hp granted while in combat healing is possible too.
Thus you get a different kind of healing without the Warlord burning out the party's adventuring day. Day length is continued through the bonus hp granted while in combat healing is possible too.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Saying "you don't get to produce effect X because classes A, B, and C already exist for doing that," with a side of "the effect you're asking for cannot possibly be nonmagical, why aren't you just playing a magic class." Also, assuming that all possible (mechanically distinct) forms of HP refilling have been exhausted by the Bard, Cleric, and Druid, despite the fact that there's even one other core supernatural healer (Paladin, esp. Devotion) and there are already nonmagical exanples qhich can be expanded upon, extrapolated from, or taken as meaningful inspiration.
In-combat Hit Dice are a bit of a thin example, since HD fall behind significantly after level 5 or so (even without specialized healers). It's not a bad place to start, by any means. But even supported by a stat mod boost, it's only equivalent to ~90% of most characters' HP getting restored over the course of the first day, and then only ~50% every day thereafter. With monsters hitting as hard as they do, and Hit Dice recovery being so slow, the Warlord simply wouldn't be able to keep up with the demands of 3-4 average-to-light adventuring days*, and certainly not a "we're rolling badly, they're rolling great" day (which, statistically speaking, *should* happen now and then).
*"Moderately light" adventure days would, presumably, be about 6 encounters, not all combats, where those that are combats are not "deadly" difficulty and most are much less of a resource expenditure than that.
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Tony Vargas
Legend
So you're not going to be streaming any invective?
Congratulations, you are now almost 0.28% informed on the topic of the Warlord.
There's that stream of invective you weren't going to use. You held out for over 20 words. Congratulations. It's better than you've been doing.
Here are those suggestions:
And my response:
Clearly, it's not HD that's the stumbling block. A 5e action instead of a 4e minor is a major limitation, and the implied reliance on Temps, and the lack of scaling, and the inability to affect allies at 0 hps all make it inadequate.
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Tony Vargas
Legend
Magic Missile smacks of magic, too, but that doesn't stop anyone from using arrows. Cantrips take attack rolls and roll dice for damage, doesn't stop anyone from making attack rolls and rolling dice for damage with weapons (and vice versa).
The issue you're talking about is edition war hyperbole. No one will be excluded from the game by ignoring that invalid screed. Anyone honestly bothered by such things can just choose not to play Warlords, or, when playing Warlords, avoid those options that they've convinced themselves are problematic.
Fans of Warlords are the ones who have been excluded, and would be marginalized by knuckling under to the unreasonable and irrational demands of edition war rhetoric that was never valid, and is now utterly irrelevant.
Just make sure that the 'objectionable' (ie, good/balanced/viable) choices have alternative options. Every class should have that much flexibility, really.
As is paying attention to concerns that actually are rubbish. The edition war produced a lot of rubbish.
Address their concerns by making the edition-war hot-botton features of the Warlord optional at the player level. That way they need never play a warlord with those features. If Inspiring Word is one of many choices, choosing something else is trivially easy.
It's a simple solution, entirely in line with 5e design philosophies. Even mechanics that aren't hot-buttons could do with such enlightened treatment.
Yes, that would have been a more consistent design. But there was a great hew & cry from the usual suspects against HD during the playtest (because they are conceptually similar to surges). Instead of integrating HD into most hp-restoration sub-systems the way they were in 4e, and giving the game a firm foundation for day length in a fairly stable amount of available healing, /and/ providing a 'touch point' for modules that could, across the board, make the game 'grittier' or 'more epic' by restricting or enhancing healing, they isolated HD from other sub-systems so modules could constrict or eliminate them (and overnight healing), /without/ impacting the healing available from spells, potions and the like.
That's another unfortunate argument against using HD to fuel Inspiring Word. As elegant a possible solution as it may be when done well, it's not workable with modules meant to constrain or virtually eliminate non-magical healing be reducing HD, slowing their recovery, slowing natural healing, or eliminating the HD mechanic entirely. (It's not a very strong argument, because, really, why have a Warlord in campaign using such a magocentric module?)
[MENTION=59506]El Mahdi[/MENTION]: One take-away from all the above. Give players /options/ with your class or sub-classes. Don't hard-code in hp restoration or temp hps or any other mechanics (whether spurious objections were raised about them in the edition war or not) or specific concepts, but make your class & sub-classes /flexible/. There's a tremendous amount of versatility - at chargen, level-up, and even day-to-day, in most 5e classes. The Warlord, a leader, tactician, & strategist, needs to be designed to be resourceful and flexible. You can't just throw some big-number at him like you can the fighter and call it a day and expect to do the concept justice, let alone have a worthy successor to the original.
epithet
Explorer
Oh, I know what Healing Word is. I know, in fact, because it is a 5e spell. I wasn't familiar with Inspiring Word, because it's from 4e.
I'm not interested in making a 4e Warlord class, because it seems like 4e already has one. I'm interested in a 5e class, and I play and DM in 5e games... so I'm qualified. You, on the other hand, seem like you're having problems discussing this issue without having flashbacks to 2009 and becoming defensive over imagined hostility to what seem to be your favorite edition and class.
One thing I've noticed is that while you are consistently dismissive toward just about everything I have to say on this matter, you never actually provide anything to back up your dismissal. You say that the amount of healing I suggest is inadequate, but refuse to quantify what you want to see. You rail against my invalid criticisms, but can't be bothered to invalidate them.
Since you seem to have these 2009 debates so fresh in your mind, why don't you favor us all with a few highlights, demonstrating why everything I have to say in this thread is without merit? Take your time, I'll be here.
The truth is, Tony, that your efforts to drive me and others from this thread and this discussion prove that you are only interested in one thing: finding people who agree with you and your very particular concept of what a Warlord ought to be. Anyone who disagrees with you is spouting "rubbish." Anyone who suggests an alternative to your Shining Perfect Platonic Form of a Warlord (which you seem unwilling to actually describe with specificity) is being "counter-productive."
There has been a lot of "edition war nonsense" in the past several pages of this thread, Tony. It's all been from you. And so, instead of exchanging ideas about a class we all might enjoy having in the 5th edition of D&D, we're instead talking about the asinine way you've turned this into an argument. You're out of line. If you don't agree with something I have to say, fine... express a contrary position and back it up. If all you have to say is "that's nonsense from 2009" then I can only interpret that as "I don't like what you are saying but I can't argue with your reasoning."
epithet
Explorer
No, what I actually was saying is that HD based healing shouldn't be dismissed just because the magical healers don't do it that way. I suggested the possibility that non-magical healing and magical healing might use different mechanics. That seems like a fairly simple, non-threatening suggestion, but clearly it seems to have struck a nerve.
Using HD seems pretty flexible. The Second Wind ability essentially gives the fighter a couple of extra hit dice every day that he can burn in combat with a bonus, and the resulting heal remains relevant even at higher levels.
One thing that I think should be avoided is to take a healing spell and copy its effect verbatim, then say "but it's not magical." It's like the development of psionics for 5e in that sense - you don't want to just copy a bunch of spells that the psionic class can cast and say "but it's psionic, not magic." There should be a way to make psionics different from spellcasting, and there should be a way to make non-magical restoration different from magical healing.
epithet
Explorer
That was me being nice. The stream of invective would have much more creative, descriptive, and sincere.
Manbearcat
Legend
Don't have any dog in this fight at all anymore, but the most fascinating aspect of the last 3 years (the evolution of the playtest from all angles including forum behavior, the nature/framing of the questionnaires, and the retreating/morphing design goals...each subsequent iteration and finally the finished product) has been the weird gatekeeing aspect of our cute little nerd culture.
In the beginning it was full court press of outrage over various "controversial" elements that were included in various iterations. This outrage was framed in "BUT, BUT, BUT you can't taint MY D&D with your NOT D&D stuff...you can have it, but only in the modules...oh you're crying about this?...you reactionary baby, 5e is modular and there will be an onslaught of modules to recreate your preferred play experience...you'll have to build a friggin ark to survive the deluge". The "NOT D&D" stuff was removed or retreated from in subsequent iterations. Gatekeeping.
Fast forward a year later and (presumably) interested parties are still waiting for various modules so 5e might recreate their preferred play experience so they can buy-in (they're posting in these kinds of threads, afterall). The reasoning for modular design provided was that a light, mostly neutral chassis would be agile enough to plug in add-ons without too much second and third order wonkiness which might cause the system to crash. A nice side-effect would be that "controversial" elements (D&D is serious business) could be siloed away from "D&D is serous business and we don't take kindly to your kind around here" guy so he won't have any fits of uncontrollable nerd rage or perhaps an aneurism (uh oh liability!). Makes sense. Fair enough.
So now that certain official modular stuff isn't here, our nerd culture gatekeeping goalposts have shifted from "5e is modular, just be patient and you can have your nice things too" to "ok, so you didn't get your modules...tough break...oh and any of those prospective modules that you want the devs to spend their time working on (rather than something else)...they have to pass my smell test...what, are you unreasonable now and you can't compromise!!!"
One day, when aliens do a fly-by and nuke us from orbit (its the only way to be sure), they're going to download these last 3 years of our nerdom into their cool alien ship hard-drives and have a good laugh on the way home to Alpha Centuri 0009er.
