D&D 5E How Important is it that Warlords be Healers?

[Jester David]

Designing a 5e Warlord
Pick two (and only two) from the below list:
a) tactical powers (granting movement, attacks, and damage bonuses)
b) choices of action (not spamming a basic attack)
c) healing (a daily resource 1/day at low levels)
d) inspirational powers (extra damage, advantage)

5e classes start with very few options. There's little front-loading going on (as overcompensation reaction from the choice paralysis of 4e) and they're slow to get more options. Martial classes in particular get few powers in total.
A warlord, based around the design of the fighter and rogue, would only get a couple maneuvers at low levels. There's fewer choices because you can do the same thing again and again for the entire day.

Option "a" are the powers unique to the warlord. Only the warlord can use those powers, while "d" overlaps with the bard. An inspiring warlord is very similar to a militaristic bard (bard with a knight or soldier background).

If you add healing, than means halving the maneuvers of the character, so you lack "b". Even if you pair "a" with "c" to get a class that can do some uniquely warlordy actions and powers, it won't have many actions or options: a basic attack or the ability to grant an ally an attack OR a basic attack and the ability to grant an ally movement. Plus the heal.

 

[D'karr]

But is that healing? Kyle's wound's don't go away and he's still moments from death.

Kyle never had wounds. HP have never effectively simulated wounds.

A boxer that is knocked down/out can still come back in the fight, even getting "inspiration" from his ringside coach. Then again there have been boxers that got knocked out and died.

Does one preclude and prevent the other? In D&D no.

 

[Jester David]

Kyle never had wounds. HP have never effectively simulated wounds.

A boxer that is knocked down/out can still come back in the fight, even getting "inspiration" from his ringside coach. Then again there have been boxers that got knocked out and died.

Does one preclude and prevent the other? In D&D no.

Ah, so he had been shot multiple times and was near dead but was never actually wounded.
Boxers get punched by padded gloves, not backstabbed by bugbear rogues or poisoned by drow archers. The analogy doesn't work.

See, I get arguing that hitpoints are not entirely physical. 100% meat hitpoints are silly. But arguing they are 100% fatigue is equally silly. There are too many situations in the game that rely on actual physical injury. Scorpion stings, werewolf bites, 30 ft pits that drop into acid, fire breath, etc.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Jester David]

In D&D, healing is restoration of Hit Points; and Hit Points are an abstract metagame mechanic incorporating physical wounds, fatigue, luck, force of will, etc., etc.

True, because at higher levels it's unrealistic to withstand three or four sword wounds. Your physical health does not double as you gain levels.

But at low levels you can only take a single sword blow. 5e is not 4e where abstraction begins at level 1 because everyone hitpoints in the mid 20s. A fighter might survive only a single sword blow for levels 1 and 2 and a wizard might only take a single bow as high as level 5. So hitpoints are entirely physical as no abstraction is needed until higher levels.
You don't need to denote the fighter's skill at avoiding blows in hitpoints, as that's what Parry is for. Parry doesn't give temporary hitpoints or heal.

That said, I like the approach 5e is taking and splitting the difference, with hp being an abstraction for the first half of your hitpoint total and real lasting wounds being the second half. It's a reasonable compromise without actually drifting into a wound point/ vitality point system and allows reflavouring and gives the DM some wiggle room, where they can narrate damage as either physical or fatigue.

But it's hard to balance martial healing around that, without capping the healing at half your hp total or giving the DM explicit permission to say "no, you can't heal that."
Instead, it's easier to have martial "healing" be damage reduction, the ability to keep fighting.

 

[D'karr]

Ah, so he had been shot multiple times and was near dead but was never actually wounded.
Boxers get punched by padded gloves, not backstabbed by bugbear rogues or poisoned by drow archers. The analogy doesn't work.

Try getting punched by a boxer sometime and see if those padded gloves really do anything to mitigate the "hurt"

Hit points are plot protection, and always have been. You're not getting stabbed by a bugbear, you are turning potentially deadly attacks into scrapes and scratches. When you get scratched, and that blade is poisoned, then you have a different effect.

Healing is a misnomer and always has been. The same as Hit Points is a misnomer, since some Hits are obviously not. HP Recovery has been called healing, but since HP are plot protection there is nothing to "Heal".

See, I get arguing that hitpoints are not entirely physical. 100% meat hitpoints are silly. But arguing they are 100% fatigue is equally silly. There are too many situations in the game that rely on actual physical injury. Scorpion stings, werewolf bites, 30 ft pits that drop into acid, fire breath, etc.

Arguing about hit points in general is silly. When used as intended by the game for 40 years is the simplest way to achieve all of those options without complicated subsystems. But taking them as anything than plot protection is not what they were meant to be.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The recent discussions about the warlord class has got me thinking. The biggest controversy about the class in 4e was its ability to heal by inspiring others. This kind of "cheerleader healing" bothered a lot of people. What I'm wondering is, for those who are hoping that the warlord class will be in 5e, how important is it that they be able to heal? Couldn't the class be just fine as a warrior type that has powerful leadership and tactical abilities, without being able to shout wounds away? After all, when I hear the term "warlord" nothing about healing pops into my mind. To me, the term evokes images of generals, tacticians and warriors.

So how big of a deal is it to you that warlords have (or not have) the ability to heal?

And please, let's not turn this into another debate about how abstract hit points are or aren't. That topic has already been argued to death, and its dead corpse beaten until tenderized. I'm just wondering how important the healing issue is to those who like to play warlords, and whether or not it's something they'd be willing to do without.

Well, first of all warlord healing is fine. It is a perfectly good example of how things like hit points are not in-game constructs, they're just models, rules we can use in different ways to make the game work.

I don't have some sort of huge problem with HOW warlords work. It wasn't the fact that 4e has warlords that is great, is the fact that it DOESN'T DEPEND ON CLERICS, and that it is making full use of the healing abstraction to open up the game. The 4e warlord is the happy consequence of this, not the cause of anything. If you removed the warlord from 4e it would be too bad, it is a cool class, including inspirational 'healing', but the point is you'd still have a model that supports the shaman, the bard, etc as leaders, who (albeit capable of magic) are all doing something different from the cleric thematically.

I think the warlord would be diminished by losing its healing attributes, and I don't want them removed. MORE THAN THAT however is I want to keep the model of healing that 4e has. I have NO interest in DDNs healbot cleric revival, blech!

 

[Jester David]

The problem with including martial healing has always being one of playstyle exclusion.


If you favour hitpoints as abstraction the inclusion or absence or martial healing has no impact on your game.
If you favour the meat dependency model of hitpoints then having martial healing negatively impacts your playstyle.


Sidebars and optional rules/ modules is fine. I'd be disappointed if they didn't. Martial healing as a warlord bonus, or even a maneuver for other classes (why can't a bard or high Charisma fighter also have the option?).
Still, having martial healing be a key part of the warlord suggests the entire class should be optional. But an entire optional class might not be the best use of space for the core books. Space is at a premium, and including everything they want to already will be a challenge.
That leaves us with warlords without martial healing, including it as either an option or not. But it will be tricky balancing the class around two separate features.


But that likely still won't satisfy many people.

 

[D'karr]

The problem with including martial healing has always being one of playstyle exclusion.

The same way that Vancian magic is a problem of playstyle exclusion. For those that don't have a problem with Vancian Magic including it is not a problem. For those who favor a more freewheeling spellcasting model Vancian casting negatively impacts their playstyle.

Still having a spellcasting class, the Wizard, built on an optional component suggests that the class should be optional. But an entire optional class might not be the best use of space for the core books.

Do you see why that argument really holds no water.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's incredibly difficult to balance.

Temp HPs are a lot weaker than actual healing - there's the "back from unconsciousness" angle. And the stacking issue. And out of combat use. And the proactive bit, where you know who needs healed, but not necessarily who will need healed.

Temp HPs can never replace a cleric, either. And imo that should be a design goal.

So it would need to have other perks to mitigate these downsides. And balancing it seems like a heck of a lot of effort and complexity when just using the alternative - actual healing - solves all these problems and is simpler, to boot.

I also don't see how temp hps, damage reduction, etc. make more "verisimilitude" sense than actual healing. Because if hit points are meat points, what in the world is a temporary hit point?

-O

Right. It just seems like to me, after thinking about it, that the whole concept of healing, in the non-combat sense, should be divorced from clerics. I mean if someone is going to be casting CLW then it should be a 'healer' option, which can be attached to any class. You can be a DDN warlord, with all the general morale and tactical benefit stuff, and if you want the 4e aspect of it you can add on 'healer'. Likewise a cleric can bless, and do all that other jazz, and if he's going to be healing then he can be a healer too! There's no reason that EITHER archetype has to be lashed to that one function. wielding the powers of your deity is not tantamount to being a healer, and this would be the best way to both avoid that and allow for both cleric-free parties and other healer archetypes.