Robert Schwalb releases his version of Warlord

Love it so far! Only real disappointment is that its yet ANOTHER Charisma based class.

Also I do find the idea of people being so prickly about someone giving orders kind of funny, like yes sometimes people just will take the lead hell some people even train for it.

Stacie GmrGrl said:

I find that the En5ider Noble class, the MHP Warmage class and the Arcanis 5e Fighter class remake (with the Tactician subclass) all make for better Warlord classes than this one.

Not Sold.

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Could you elaborate on what makes these Warlord takes great? Especially curious about the Warmage.

Over 10 pages in a Warlord thread and no @Tony Vargas.

Consider me nonplussed.

EDIT: Just saw that the North American meaning of the word nonplussed is considerably different to the UK meaning of the word. In this instance it is very much the UK version being used (surprised..etc).

Matrix Sorcica said:

Could you elaborate on what makes these Warlord takes great? Especially curious about the Warmage.

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I’m not the poster you’re quoting, but I’m familiar with all of those.

The Arcanis tactician fighter archetype gets Int mod number of dice like bardic inspiration (that scale like those, too) that it can give to allies to apply not just to d20 rolls but to damage rolls as well. The kicker is that it has to be spent on pursuit of whatever directive you gave them, which could be as specific as “cast firebolt at that guy!” or as vague as “win this battle!” The tactician also gets maneuvers (like battlemaster, but no extra dice) that are all geared toward teamwork. Overall the archetype might be OP, but most of Arcanis’s stuff is a little OP anyway, so it’s fine as long as everyone else is using that stuff.

I am playing one on EN5ider’s Nobles right now (using the tactician archetype!) and it’s great. I have a few different ways to divide up my attacks while divvying out different amounts/types of attacks to my allies, while still remaining fairly in-bounds in terms of power. (Although If one of these was in a party with a rogue, it could help the rogue get sneak attacks off turn, which could be pretty strong.) It also gets maneuvers like the battlemaster, except it can only give those maneuvers to allies.

The Warmage is a great class by Mage Hand Press, with a lot of cool archetypes. It is an intelligence based class built around the concept of empowering and tweaking cantrips. The base class gets a number of cantrips but no leveled spell slots. The original set of archetypes are all based on chess pieces, with the pawn really into defense, Bishop gets 1/3 casting, knight gets offense/weapons, rook gets movement/stealth, and king gets leadership maneuvers. (They rolled queen into king since they’re both leaders, I guess). It’s probably the king archetype that the person you quoted was talking about.

While the Noble leans toward charisma, its tactician archetype can be done as int-based with little drawback. The Arcanis tactician fighter needs int as its secondary stat. The Warmage needs int as its primary stat. Combine that commonality with the ability to use teamwork based maneuvers that they all have, and I think we’ve hit on what makes a “warlord” concept, with some other good ideas thrown in that all seem great but couldn’t go in one archetype... but might could be combined in a class possibly with different archetypes.

Elfcrusher said:

Wait...no....seriously?!?!?! They had a section on "how not to be a douche while playing this class"???

I'm speechless (but laughing hysterically inside.)

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Now if only you could learn how not be one yourself when talking about this class.

Kite474 said:

Also I do find the idea of people being so prickly about someone giving orders kind of funny, like yes sometimes people just will take the lead hell some people even train for it.

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See? Confirmation that people think it's the class that gives orders. I knew it!

Aldarc said:

Now if only you could learn how not be one yourself when talking about this class.

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You figured out my secret: I'm a Warlord IRL. So I can't help it.

Stacie GmrGrl said:

I find that the En5ider Noble class, the MHP Warmage class and the Arcanis 5e Fighter class remake (with the Tactician subclass) all make for better Warlord classes than this one.

Not Sold.

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Kibblestasty (who did the amazing Artificer) is working on a Warlord next, so I'm very hopeful it'll be closer to what I'm looking for.

I like the idea of a warlord, though I never played 4e.

But I would prefer an Int based option.

Battlemaster allows for both strength and dex versions after all, so an Int or Cha Warlord seems ok to me.

BookBarbarian said:

I like the idea of a warlord, though I never played 4e.

But I would prefer an Int based option.

Battlemaster allows for both strength and dex versions after all, so an Int or Cha Warlord seems ok to me.

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Ok, to be less snarky for a minute...

I agree with this. As I tried to do with my Bravura homebrew a while ago, going with Int removes the "Natural Leader" bit that I find so antithetical to the D&D ethos, and allows you to use cleverness to manipulate NPCs, leaving your fellow PCs alone.

When I came up with it, I was taking at face value the claims that, "It's not about giving orders, it's about tactical options." Ok, so I tried to build something with tactical options that didn't involve dictating how other players' characters feel about your character.

Some Warlord fans liked that approach, but others seem stuck in the "No it must be pretty much identical to the 4e Warlord, and must include non-magical healing."

Sigh.

Anyone else notice a TWF warlord can get all of their normal action attacks and then bonus action hand out free ally hits?

Im sure this was mentioned. I tried to check but there are a lot of comments here hahaha