D&D 5E [Warlords] Should D&D be tied to D&D Worlds?

[urLordy]

"You have to be this tall to ride" (i.e. the Warlord needs a functional equivalent to spike healing) is not the same thing as saying that anything over the set height is a kid and so can ride the rollercoaster. A cardboard cut out picture of a kid passes the height check but isn't a kid.

I guess, but you did say "[not] meaningfully different". I know it's just semantics, but when you're better about owning up to what you said or didn't say (to me, to KM, and others), I'd be happy to continue the discussion.

 

[urLordy]

Double post

 

[I'm A Banana]

What it will take to make the warlord is the ability to organise a non-magical party to function without significantly reduced capacity. A significant part of this is something with the utility of spike healing.

I think we might be able to work with that as a thesis, yes?

And I note that it doesn't involve spike healing as a class ability, or any reference to a need for a class at all. I'll take this as agreement that you don't necessarily need a warlord class to get the effects you want. Whether or not the effect is a class ability is open to discussion, at least.

If you mean that the Fighter can get Inspiring Word in place of most uses of expertise dice and the rogue can in place of sneak attack I do not consider that meaningfully different from a unique class feature. It'll be ... interesting ... to balance. But that's details.

That works. But I think you're still tethered to this idea of it being a class ability too intimately.

Lets take something no one is seriously proposing, but that meets your criteria above. I've been thinking about equipment recently, so what if it was, say, a mundane item, a piece of gear only as character-defining as a greatsword or heavy armor or a shield might be.

Battle Standard (xxx gp): When this item is worn, it provides hope and resolve to all who fight in its presence. This may take the form of a flag, a pennant, a medal, an insignia, or even a particular battle cry any other rallying point you can imagine. If it isn't a specific item, the GP represents the training and practice that goes into having the capacity. A bearer of a battle standard can (insert favored spike healing rules here, copypasta'd from the identical cleric ability).​

That would allow a player to organize a non-magical party who would benefit from spike healing and so be mechanically and psychologically indistinguishable from a cleric doing the same thing magically. It would not be a class choice, it would be a choice of equipment, like choosing to wear plate mail.

I imagine it fails to meet some un-stated threshold of yours for "working," probably for a litany of reasons. I've got a few problems with it myself, and that's the point. Lets silo the reasons that are about the specific balance of the item (slots or gp value or whatever) and dig down on the most significant way that fails to meet your thesis above conceptually, to see how we can refine that thesis to more accurately represent your actual position. Presume the item is properly balanced with other items and the action economy and whatever (ie, that it is a valid item): in what way would it not "work" conceptually?

If you mean that everyone gets Inspiring Word, that would have a very bad impact on the game. It means any smart NPC is going to confirm kills with a coup de grace. And it's going to render focus fire a very weak tactic.

I don't follow your logic, but that's irrelevant. This would presumably happen in a 4e party full of warlords (or other leaders), too. Or, hell, a 4e party full of warforged.

But we can fix what may have been problems in 4e, so lets put in a hurdle. Instead of everyone automatically getting inspiring word, we have a feat that lets you use the equivalent of inspiring word, but limited to characters with a Cha of 13+. Now it requires an investment in terms of ability score opportunity cost and a feat: likely only one member of the party is going to opt in, and occasionally you might have two or three, but you're not realistically going to have them ALL do it (hypothetically possible, though, still).

This also allows you to have a party that isn't magical that has spike healing exactly equivalent to a cleric's spike healing. It still does not require a class. Does this also fail to meet some un-stated threshold of "working?"

 

[Cyberen]

[MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION], you baffled me too !
In the OP, you tell a beautiful story about Warlords adding to the depth of D&D-compatible tropes.... (this, I could get behind)
Then your argument take a Gamist point of view, advocating for "spiked healing" and "focus fire", which seem tangential at best to our make-believe gumdrop elves. This, I will oppose vehemently ! Focus fire is a DDism I would like to die in a fire ! Only in D&D can you see people refusing to engage their adversaries, and being rewarded fof such a smart tactic.
At least, your gripe becomes obvious : you are pissed off with the demise of 4e, and particularly with Mr Mearls (I sympathize, but it's time to move on and accept 5e won't copy and paste whole pages of 4e, for obvious marketing reasons)

 

[Ahnehnois]

Two things : 1) If HPs are not an abstraction of a few elements, how do you model psionic damage, the chilling touch of the undead, etc.?

In whatever way that makes sense for the health system you're using. For those examples, psionic damage or energy drain would cause real physical wounds, so they would be treated similarly to things that do.

2) If we're throwing out years of understanding that HPs are an abstraction, then we also need to throw out the abstract nature of attack rolls, redefine the damage expectations of weapons and spells, create separate ways of tracking poison, environmental damage, along with the nature of what type of protection(s) armour provides, how character gain "HPs" (or their equivalent replacement), and how they can regain that resource. That's a lot of work, and I'm not sure the result would be something you could call D&D (unless you worked tirelessly on it for a few years or made the transition to such a game model a progressive process).

There are several perfectly viable alternative health systems for D&D. Unearthed Arcana had at least three. The point is not that hp not an abstraction. Pooling different types of physical wounds together is very abstract. The point is that there needs to be a separation between things that are physical wounds and those that are not.

Bards = nope, draws all her spells from the magic-user's (read wizard) list.

I know I had 2e bards casting cures, so it must have been in some supplement somewhere, if not in the original core rules. They definitely can in Baldur's Gate.

But what if it's not a wound? What if it's fatigue, or a psychic attack? What if it's just your "luck" that ran out or your "ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one" that just failed? Couldn't a not-magical healer do the trick then?

Yes. Exactly. That's why vp/wp systems are so great. You can do all kinds of things to vp, because they clearly aren't real wounds, but leave wounds to be treated more "realistically". That being said, there is no more need to have a nonmagical (or magical, for that matter) class focused on shouting back your energy and vitality than there is to have a class focused on shouting your wounds closed.

3rd Edition "fixes" this by codifying a lot of effects into either skills or "combat maneuvres" that a character can attempt. The problem with the latter is that, for some reason, it's punishingly (and arbitrarily) difficult to succeed within the accepted fantasy milieu of the game (I get that it should be difficult to grapple a tank in a modern military game, but making a dragon fall on its scaly ass should be something an experienced character, be she a fighter or a wizard can reasonably do). At the same time, the game segregates the supernatural, mystical, and mythical to the strictly "magical" spectrum of things, while still using mythical, supernatural, and mystical exemplars for classes that have no access to such mechanics.

Some fair points in there. I think that PF's mythic rules might do something for you. I disagree that grappling dragons is part of the "milieu", but it should be a possibility somewhere in extreme cases of the rules. I've also always been of the mind that magic should work the way skills and feats do, and basically every class should look like the fighter, only with different class skills and bonus feats.

Polymorph, Knock, Tenser's transformation, Divine Power... I could go on naming spells or class features that completely trample the actual abilities of non-magical characters. Knock is really the poster child for this : it's a spell that renders an entire skill pointless. The rogue has to roll a check with a non-impossible chance that he might fail, but the wizard can just wave her fingers, no checks required, and open the door. But, you'll say, she can only do it once, maybe twice, before she runs out. That's when the rogue'll shine! Sure, I answer, but only if there are other locks in the dungeon or if the PCs don't rest before meeting another one. Same goes for fights : in this encounter, the cleric completely outpaced the fighter in efficiency, but surely she'll get a chance to be the hero in the next one.

Some of those spells are pretty dubious, it's true. They're usually fixable while maintaining how the game works in general. That being said, in practice most casters won't choose those spells. It makes more sense to just let the rogue and fighter do their thing and learn spells that aren't redundant to their abilities.

Conan, to name just one. Or even in D&D-inspired fiction : Drizz't, Bruenor, Wulfgar, most of the heroes of the Lance, etc. King Arthur, Beowolf... I could go on.

None of those strike me as being particularly supernatural or not well modeled by existing classes. Neither is any of them a warlord.

 

[Weather Report]

The names still irks me, can't help but think of a 3rd World local dictator douche.

 

[Sunseeker]

Yes. Exactly. That's why vp/wp systems are so great. You can do all kinds of things to vp, because they clearly aren't real wounds, but leave wounds to be treated more "realistically". That being said, there is no more need to have a nonmagical (or magical, for that matter) class focused on shouting back your energy and vitality than there is to have a class focused on shouting your wounds closed.

The problem is still IME, WP/VP systems are too easy to utilize to bypass HP entirely, leading to certain classes and certain builds becoming excessively powerful.

There needs to be a connection between the two, ie: being unable to take "wounds" if you're not below a certain HP threshold. Having two parallel systems is pointless.

 

[Ratskinner]

There needs to be a connection between the two, ie: being unable to take "wounds" if you're not below a certain HP threshold. Having two parallel systems is pointless.

That sounds like a nice basis for a modification of the "only the last swing hits" concept.

 

[Jester David]

Whether it's a fix or an option, the end result is the same. And between powers and feat support the 4e warlord is among the best healers in the game, though still below a cleric with similar investment, and the statement that they're bad healers is puzzling at best.

The "with similar investment" is the key bit.
Yeah, if you're playing a warlord and you sink all your powers and feats into being a healer you'll be a better healer than a cleric who did not. However, if a cleric (or another class) does the same then you're right back to being a poor healer. You have to exclude feats and powers because they're neutral. Things have to be treated the same to compare. If you give the warlord a dozen feats to make them a better healer then you should give the shaman, bard, and artificer comparable feats. If the warlord is the best healer in the game because of its feat choices than it has the best healing feats in the game and we're suddenly comparing feats and not the class itself.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The problem is still IME, WP/VP systems are too easy to utilize to bypass HP entirely, leading to certain classes and certain builds becoming excessively powerful.

There needs to be a connection between the two, ie: being unable to take "wounds" if you're not below a certain HP threshold. Having two parallel systems is pointless.

I would not claim that the concept is devoid of problems. However, having two parallel systems is precisely the point. Your stamina and skill need to be independent of the amount of physical damage you have. That way, there is no ambiguity as to what is or is not real wounds.

IME, this system leads to favorable tactical dynamics, where getting in one good hit is a viable alternative to a war of attrition, and martial skill is rewarded. However, this depends on how well the system is implemented. The official system in UA is nice but incomplete.