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

[Nagol]

Prestige class is short hand for "No you cant play the character type you want" right now...maybe if you earn it...

The miracle working cleric.. the wizard when do they get to do awesome impossible things.. oh thats right level 1. Its not like Alexander the great wasnt damn near a child when he directed a world conquering tactical escapade. (ok much larger scale than the warlord class does)

Prestige class is short hand for 'the concept is too narrow a specialty to support a base class without stepping on other class toes. If you really want to be a specialist in this here is a way.' It also works really well for 'Here is a set of abilities any other class could reasonably develop if the character should choose."

 

[Jester David]

Well, I haven't seen the paladin yet. But compared to a cleric, I would expect lighter armour and therefore greater mobility. That is, elements of a monk (as are found in the actual avenger class as it currently exists).

Cleric armour proficiency is based on their domain, so the base is none. And a character might opt for Dex and go light armour, especially if multiclassing.

Compared to a rogue, I would exect magic - invisibility, dimension door, etc; plus oath mechanics. As for the ranger, given that I don't know how the ranger differes from the fighter, I can't really answer the question yet. But 4e managed to distinguish these 3 classes even though they're all strikers.

Those are mechanical differences. You can think of an infinite amount of mechanics. I wouldn't suggest the fighter from the first package and form the fourth package were different classes because they use different mechanics.
If you picked the right domain and multiclassed rogue/cleric getting most of those abilities (other than the oath) would not be hard. "Oath of enmity" is not so big of a class feature that it requires it's own class.

I'm not sure that any class is completely divorced from personality - I find it hard to imagine a genuinely cowardly fighter, or an anti-intellecual wizard. But in the case of the cleric (of a given god), paladin or monk I think the range of personalities is narrower. Avengers are a bit more like that.

Divorced? No. But offering up a single personality as the basis of a class is a bit extreme.

 

[Garthanos]

If the Warlord is a base class that grows in power over its 20 levels, then the abilities need to be spread around all those levels in a granular fashion.

Correct you dont become entirely fully capable of the whole class competency by multiclassing. Most inspirational leadership is mingled with resource management and tactical/strategic leadership. Medieval culture also associates it with basic weapon styled combatant. (though that element is not always emphasized if varies like differences in build from Bravura to Lazylord in 4e)

Hmmm still not grokking the difference in potency betwixt a dabbling vs a commonality as both must compete in the action economy of choices. (but I guess the specialist does need to be better that should be always be true)

I have been considering things like allowing "warning shouts" and various other things that allow allies teamwork and defender and leader capabilities ... similar to the broadly defined "help action".

I find more modern fictional sources emphasize the whole team supporting one another and I think as commonalities that gets brought back in to the game more.

I also think that if you have that common base. Then looking at what a specialist might accomplish has a better foundation.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The idea wasn't articulated perfectly, but is quite accurate. It may be that there are fictional examples that one can map an avenger to (or a warlord, or another class), but that's not what precipitated the development of the class. Nor is it is justification for creating a class for that concept. This whole line of reasoning is no better than the fighter=Hercules mess.

What makes you think you know what was in the minds of the designers of 4e better than anyone else, lol? [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] clearly listed a number of characters that OBVIOUSLY, without even a moment's thought, match up quite well to the Avenger. The mere fact that these types appear again and again in literature indicates that there is a fundamental archetype there. The fact that we can ARTICULATE it proves that it has distinct identity.

A class isn't a convenient way of aping your favorite fantasy character, it's a representation of a career/profession/persuasion within the game world.

Maybe not, so say you. I agree it would be a waste to design an entire class JUST so you could make one character using it, and you'd be much better to make a class that can serve a variety of characters. That doesn't make niche classes WRONG, it just makes them niche. Given the popularity of the Avenger class in 4e it seems to me it is broad enough to be a class.

Most clerics aren't adventurers. They run temples or travel and proselytize. Most fighters are military officers, mercenaries, gladiators, or otherwise not adventurers. Most wizards are academics or hedge wizards. Most monks are ascetics. And so on and so on. There are many characters in the world, some of whom have levels in adventuring classes but almost none of whom organize in four-man groups and dungeoncrawl for a living.

Again, I totally disagree. SPECIFICALLY in 4e the notion is that NPCs are NOT associated with a class, that classes are tools used to create a PLAYER CHARACTER around an archetype. NPCs are supporting cast. ONLY the PCs have classes. Thus the priests who run temples are probably mostly just NPCs without stat blocks, who might become minions if necessary, or possibly even CCs or whatever, in which case they may evince some divine powers sort of like a PC cleric (who is nothing like them in social role, he has no temple, instead he's a unique crusader, the guy who plunges into the dark between the points of light, totally different). Military Officers are almost certainly (in the standard pseudo-dark-ages setting) hereditary ruling caste members, nobility. They MIGHT also be combatants with stat blocks and some powes, which might be similar to a warlord or fighter (or could be different). The same with all these other types. Most 'wizards' are old guys who study musty tomes in libraries and don't have class levels at all. Maybe they can cast some rituals? Maybe they can even manage a combat spell or two if they happen to be good.

Of course there ARE potent NPCs, worthy enemies, and stout allies. They STILL aren't PCs, they're elite or solo 'monsters' with thematic powers. Stat blocks which the DM is free to and encouraged to modify as-needed during play. These characters may be intended to fill the same sorts of world-roles as PCs (IE they maybe rival adventurers, mighty wizards, etc) but they are mechanically nothing like PCs.

Go to the back of the 4e DMG and read through the Town of Fallcrest you find there. Show me EVEN ONE character in that town that has class levels. There are none. In fact MOST of the NPCs aren't even given stat blocks, they are just described in RP terms. They have goals, personality quirks, relationships, etc suiting them to interact with the PCs, provide plot hooks, etc, but you aren't supposed to fight them. The few that you CAN fight, the bully, the rogue, the retired adventurer, etc have no classes. Notice that the town wizard and town priest don't even rate stat blocks at all, nor does the town's ruler, Lord Protector Markelhay.

4e simply doesn't work this way and PC classes ARE NOT and need not be designed to serve as NPC templates.

What is an avenger that isn't part of a small party of treasure-seekers that regularly fights small-scale combats and needs a "striker"? (Or a warlord without a party, for that matter).

As is often the case, this is not to say that such characters can't exist, merely that they aren't classes unto themselves.

Again, once we remove the notion that classes are templates that describe everyone in the world your argument pretty much falls apart. There are no warlords or avengers without a party. In a given setting the PC is unique, each one is a special snowflake that exists nowhere else, a hero with a story and a destiny. NPCs are totally different.

 

[Garthanos]

Prestige class is short hand for 'the concept is too narrow a specialty to support a base class without stepping on other class toes. If you really want to be a specialist in this here is a way.' It also works really well for 'Here is a set of abilities any other class could reasonably develop if the character should choose."

Not when it's designed as wait n levels and if you have this pre-req and that pre-req... etc
(that is what made them "prestige" isnt it). Where as a theme means its designed to be broadly useable cross class even early on.

 

[Jester David]

Meh, the gamist came first. Look at Chainmail, the mechanic was invented for THAT game and it was certainly not modeled on Vance. It just happened that Dying Earth came along and was recognized as a convenient fluff for it when the mechanics were stolen for D&D.

....
I like how you're clearly on a computer that has the Internet and you couldn't pause posting for ten second to Wiki "Dying Earth".
The first two collections or stories were published in the 1950s and 1960s respectively. And were stories Gygax knew of and enjoyed.

No, actually the cleric is precisely designed for OD&D. He's actually PRIMARILY a fighter at low levels (he doesn't even get his first spell till level 2), but not allowed to have the sword (good magic weapons). He transitions to more of a spell caster/wonder worker as you level up, and of course has a role against the common threat of the undead, which were bad news. He's actually quite well and purely gamistly balanced with the fighting man and magic user classes. The party wouldn't really work well if he was a squishy. LATER ON it might have made more sense to make the cleric squishy. He wasn't not for story reasons but for legacy reasons, nobody wanted to change the design of the big 3 classes.

This is irrelevant.
Yes it was balanced for play with the other two classes. Of course it was designed and fine-tuned for gaming. But the inspiration and basis for a religious warrior was there first.

4e lacks several combinations of source and role, notably including a martial controller. No doubt when they had a concept for a combination that didn't exist yet it was going to be more likely to get priority, why force people to play only martial or arcane strikers? That doesn't mean they just pounded a square peg in a round hole to make some mechanical implementation fit some concept.

This contradicts several design statements.
They played around with mechanics for a potential martial controller specifically because the game lacked one. They created the battlemind quickly because their original (more story based) psionic defender didn't work out and they still wanted a psionic defender. There were many grid filler classes that existed because there was a game gap. The invoked doesn't add much in terms of story either.

Classes like the invoker and avenger and warden exist because they hadn't yet made the leap of classes with multiple roles. We would have just seen a controller build of the cleric.

A lot of what was done in 4e was to split up aspects of overpowered 3e classes into narrower archetypes. Thus the 3e Druid becomes the 4e Druid, Warden, and Shaman. The cleric becomes the Cleric, Avenger, and Invoker, etc.

This is the crux here. 5e is neither 3e nor 4e. It can fold those classes back into the fold but do so without making the class overpowered.

I'd also like to point out that 4e actually has several classes which MUST exist purely for thematic reasons, such as 4e's Sorcerer, which uses EXACTLY the same mechanics as the wizard and is really largely redundant from a role standpoint (they are both striker/controller types, and nowadays the wizard is actually the better at both roles).

The sorcerer should go away too.

I think what I would say is that 3e shows the lesson that you must have MORE THAN STORY to make a class really solid. This is why role and source were invented, to insure that both story and mechanics would get adequate focus in every class. So that each one would have a shtick and would work. This was VERY successful. Very few 4e classes aren't useful and fun to play, adding something interesting to the game. Even when a 4e class has no real mechanical reason to exist, like the Sorcerer, it has fun unique thematics and just enough mechanical flair to work (if 4e were rewritten some of these classes might indeed go away, or become sub-classes, but that doesn't mean they were bad classes in 4e). The very few classes that don't work well? Seeker lacks a good MECHANICAL concept, its a perfectly fine concept (again like sorcerer it COULD be reduced to a sub-class pretty effectively).

The point is, yes, 4e is designed to make sure that each class works mechanically so that there are no more idiotic things like the 3e Samurai and Martial, which have crap mechanics and are pretty much unplayable as written without the player doing some massive min/maxing and basically MCing out of the disaster of his class.

I would disagree for 3.0 but agree for 3.5, which was so much worse for needless classes than 4e.
I think both editions have taught us class bloat is bad. And that the designers should work hard to make each class that does need to exist mechanically interesting and worthy of taking at all levels. Quality not quantity.

I don't agree with many of your assertions here. It is quite easy to make monsters and situations that require preparation and tactics. PCs are just as hard to kill as ever, the DM just uses the amount of force needed to do it, no more and no less. I can't imagine how magic could be more 'everywhere' than in AD&D or 3e!

Tactics yes, preparation no. Earlier editions were much more strategic and less tactical in than you can buff before a fight and mitigate much through careful forethought. And the edition is much more forgiving for being unprepared for certain monsters as powers and spells and abilities are always useful. Silver might help you speed up killing a werewolf but it's not ignoring 5 damage every attack but regaining 5hp every round so it's possible to just skip silver and hit harder.

Frankly I haven't done hard core horror-tone in 4e, but if I were to do it, I'd use small numbers of highly deadly monsters that have nasty effects, which do exist and can be created in 4e. I could also use masses of weak monsters, like a zombie horde scenario. A Solo would make a perfect boss monster, what in fact could possibly be more perfect for Straad than a solo vampire? I've done many solo fights, they are quite good when done well.

Which is getting me to change my game to fit the edition and not playing the game I want. Suddenly the quaint English fishing villiage haunted by a single ghost suddenly has zombies, lesser ghosts, and traps because of the needs of the game.
And solos were very poorly designed back when I was playing 4e (I stopped just after MM3 came out) so I have horrible memories of trying to use boss monsters.

As for the issue you have with novas, I'd use traps, tricks, etc to wear the PCs down instead of monsters. Let them wander trapped in some horrible dungeon knee deep in cold water, with only nasty alternatives for escape routes. Once they're tired and weakened and they've finally fought free, then the truth comes out, they still have the boss monster to face. Oh yeah, I can do that with 4e, and in fact IMHO the way it will play out will be even more cool than it was in 2e where I personally didn't have a ton of luck making it click.

Dungeons. Ugh.
Again, the game is change my campaign rather than letting me do what I want. And I don't want tacked on encounters designed just to weaken. Nothing derails a story faster.

I don't know of any version of D&D that does firearms. There have been rules for them in various places and they CAN be done, to some extent, but they've never been commonly used weapons. I'm not sure why they would be necessary in a horror genre adventure, but neither can I see why 4e cannot do them as well as 3e etc. Frankly I'd make them just bows refluffed. Maybe give them large damage dice and 'brutal' or something, but make them Load Standard, so they make a nice opening gambit, then you pull out your blades/bayonets and go at it.

Was it OD&D that had conversion rules for Boot Hill?
Plus Ravenloft had guns back in 2e and the rules were also in the 3e DMG.
4e could do them quite easily. But the designers never did. How many optional rules are there for 4e? Alternate play styles just weren't considered.

I think overall your right, 4e is NOT designed for a game that focuses entirely on supernatural horror. OTOH I never thought earlier editions were either, just for slightly different reasons. In 3.x PCs just had too much magic. Full casters in particular are answer machines with a vast array of tools at their disposal. Its pretty hard to make a 9th level Wizard feel helpless. OTOH the 9th level fighter has squat, he feels plenty helpless, especially against enemies that swords aren't good against. You can make it work of course, but the system wasn't designed for it. 4e OTOH just doesn't have fragile heroes, though you CAN achieve it if you want to bend things.

Your make my point for me. Because the 9the level fighter was unprepared, they have squat. That's a feature not a bug.

4e struggles over low magic games. You get four +1 items at first level (never a level 1 though. You will never see the most common magic item on previous editions: a straight +1 long sword) and get a +2 item at second level. And it struggles over low combat games or even non-dungeon crawls with encounters every few days (such as travel or exploratory games). Low combat games can be troublesome as almost every power, feat, and option grants combat bonuses. So the player is looking at their suite and combat powers that are taunting them, screaming to be used.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And "implacable, single-minded, ideologically-driven zealot" is a description of a personality, not a class. You could role-play an avenger as a cheery, bouncy Pinky Pie character but it would still be an avenger.

Yes, and "aggressive proselytizer for my god" is also, so what? I can run a wizard as a drooling idiot who likes to fight with daggers, but that doesn't invalidate the wizard class...

And the above examples aren't so prominent that they scream "this MUST be a class." Not without first looking at the gap of the divine striker and wondering "what could fit here?"
They toyed around with designing a martial controller for the same reasons.

Really? They did? Where is it? lol. Were you a 4e closed playtester or something? No such class appears or was ever rumored to appear except in the wish fantasy of some crunch lovers. Notice that WotC paid them no mind at all and proceeded to make classes that were thematic, not 'filled that grid hole'.

There are many, many archetypal characters that don't have classes. Because they're character archetypes and not class archetypes. Not every potential character idea deserves to be its own class.
There's no lightly armoured Dexterous swashbuckling class yet the Three Musketeers is very iconic. The wrestler/ brawer/ mixed-martial-artist is quite big and lacks the ki powers of the monk, so it's a very different creature. And with rangers getting spells from level 1 there's the Robin Hood archer type character that's not magical. And D&D has never done the Van Helsing/ Rudolph Van Richten smart monster hunter archetype well, always forcing it down the rogue or ranger path.
But we don't need more classes. They're redundant.

What's an avenger?
Depends on the character. The more religious might be a paladin or cleric. Some might be multiclassed with the ranger (for favoured enemy) or the rogue. Or they might be straight rogue/ranger/fighter with a religious-based background (acolyte IIRC) and the flavour of church sanctioned assassin. Or even just straight fighter with flavour-based faith in a higher power.
There are lots of ways to play the religious-themed hunter of evil.

Or they might be the Avenger class. This argument is becoming silly. In fact if you play 4e you will find that it can do a LOT of stuff that previous editions have real problems doing. Part of the reason is that they got rid of the idea of 'class as world building tool', it simply doesn't exist in 4e as it did in 3e (and to a lesser degree in AD&D). This frees up the notion of class greatly (though WotC hardly seems to have ever acknowledged the constraint you claim that is inherent in that). The other thing that 4e did was free up the concept of class from being a NARROW tool. In past editions if you used the Ranger class it meant you were a very specific type of character (albeit one which covers a lot of characters in fiction). 4e certainly built each class around an archetypal concept, but the system is broader and each class can be shaped a LOT by using common mechanics (IE taking feats, MCing, hybrid, or just taking PP/ED choices).

I can make Van Helsing, Porfirio, Jackie Chan, Felsig, etc all in 4e with very little problem. 4e's rich array of classes really helps. Of course you can pick out a few experiments that didn't work out as well as others, but conceptually it was quite successful. I think 5e would do well to embrace that kind of design and perfect it. Perhaps that means making more things sub-classes, shifting some options around between being a class and being something else, but I don't think it means you should have far fewer classes. I also think that the whole concept of stacking together different classes ala AD&D MCing never worked well. I'd rather come at it from 4e's direction and just make classes with enough options to encompass what people want and enough customization to tweak it to your needs.

 

[robocoastie]

If you want to fight and heal then you need to be a Paladin or (even better) a warpriest. I really despise the anti-cleric and anti-fighter movement. I've never even been a fan of Paladins and Rangers because they take away the fighters job. All a "paladin" should be is a fighter who is dedicated and prays (the Castles & Crusades one is the BEST I've seen bar none), and all a Ranger is is a fighter who wears lighter armor and uses a bow, choosing DEX over STR. Period.

But I'm just an old Basic player I guess.

Part of the reason is that they got rid of the idea of 'class as world building tool', it simply doesn't exist in 4e as it did in 3e (and to a lesser degree in AD&D). This frees up the notion of class greatly

true, BUT 4e does hold to "controller, defender, striker, leader" archetypes and if you do not have a cleric in that leader build you risk a Warlord who didn't choose healing powers and your party is SOL.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

Was it OD&D that had conversion rules for Boot Hill?

<snip>

AD&D 1e DMG had Boot Hill and Gamma World cross-over rules.

 

[Ahnehnois]

What makes you think you know what was in the minds of the designers of 4e better than anyone else, lol?

Definitely not making that claim. I doubt if anyone knows what was going on there, including they themselves.

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] clearly listed a number of characters that OBVIOUSLY, without even a moment's thought, match up quite well to the Avenger. The mere fact that these types appear again and again in literature indicates that there is a fundamental archetype there. The fact that we can ARTICULATE it proves that it has distinct identity.

Indeed. The same is true of many kits, archetypes, prestige classes, or even feat chains. Not every distinct identity requires a base class. In fact, most don't, or we'd be drowning in them (even more than we already are).

In a given setting the PC is unique, each one is a special snowflake that exists nowhere else, a hero with a story and a destiny. NPCs are totally different.

That one's been pretty thoroughly debunked over the years. Some PCs might fit that description. However, it is not definitionally true.