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

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Doug McCrae]

In 26-years of DMing I have never felt a cleric/"leader" was necessary.

Do you think some kind of healer is necessary in pre-4e D&D? If not, how do you handle the situation where one PC is injured and out of action for a long time?

My groups mostly, maybe even always, seemed to regard some kind of healing, usually from a cleric, as a necessity pre-4e. In one of our 2e games, the DM created an NPC cleric to travel with the party as we had no PC cleric for most of the campaign. Mostly a player would agree to play the cleric. It should be noted that these were all games with a fair bit of combat, and that all my groups have adhered to the modern play model of The Party as a fairly cohesive unit. We never used the old school 'stable of PCs' model, where each player has many player characters and henchmen, so it doesn't matter if one is suffering long-term injury.

 

[Starfox]

Spoiler alert: I think it's possible that D&D Next is creating that world.

I'd love this if it was true and well implemented. But I will only believe it when i see it.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Tho those stating a cleric is not needed; I find the need of a cleric irrelevant to the warlord class really. If a player wants to contribute to the team by healing instead of by defeating enemies faster, that is a valid role-playing choice.

Yes...

If said player wants to play a mundane character to do this, that is also a valid RP choice.

No, it isn't. Players can't simply state what they desire and get it. That's why we have rules. And the main point of having rules is to prevent players from doing things they shouldn't. Nonmagical, instantaneous healing of lethal wounds is not even a borderline case in that regard. It doesn't make sense. A player making that kind of "roleplaying choice" either doesn't understand why it's out of bounds or is being purposefully subversive.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Do you think some kind of healer is necessary in pre-4e D&D? If not, how do you handle the situation where one PC is injured and out of action for a long time?

Well, since I'm on the same track of thinking, I'll go ahead and say this. If one PC is significantly injured, you rest. It's quite unusual that you can't rest. And if you can't rest and are injured and are being attacked, that's a pretty serious challenge, and it should be. No need to change any of that.

But realistically, wands of CLW have always been a cheap cop-out for that type of healing.

The in-combat healing that this thread is about is a different issue. That's a nice niche, but it's very easy and generally pretty advantageous to play the game without casting healing spells in combat.

 

[urLordy]

I don't know if this is a good or bad idea... What if the DM can hand out optional quest powers (or whatever you want to call it), especially if the party lacks a healer or has fewer players.

You Shall Not Fail
A greater power or destiny mandates that you and your companions will fulfill a vital purpose
Duration: One Adventure
Effect: Choose one location or goal. As long as the party is on course, each PC receives a second wind/extra healing surges or other boon. In some cases, the trigger may be assigned to one (or more) PCs, usually the party leader or one most affiliated with the benefactor.

In-game, each PC might view it differently. The cleric has complete faith in divine oversight, the atheist fighter knows its really his inner focus and not some superstition, and the ranger dreams every night of a shade with a halo following them on their journey. Who is to say who is wrong or right? For HP-as-meat-and-fatigue crowd, it can represent as morale, luck, destiny, etc. layered upon a physical hit point paradigm.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Bam. Yes. Awesome. We're on the same page for that. If we live in a world where there is something big enough to contain the non-magical spike healing other than a class feature, the non-magical spike healing can go into that, and thus we don't need a warlord class.

Yes. I just have not seen anything of this sort floated for Next by the Next design team, and most of the feats currently in there are pathetic. Especially for non-magical characters. In a game that didn't have the design assumptions of historic D&D you wouldn't need spike healing for the warlord.

So it seems like I grok your goal, here. You seem to believe that this goal can only be realized in a class feature, but in a world where something else was big enough to contain it, you'd be cool with it going in there.

We have entered a world where a warlord class isn't necessary for you, just a way for players to get a non-magical equivalent of the cleric's healing. Lets work with that.

Indeed. We're in hypothetical land. A warlord in Fate doesn't require a non-magical version of healing, or any healing at all. The thing I've never got out of this thread is why we've wandered quite so far into hypothetical land in a D&D Next thread.

I think we're agreed that non-magical spike healing probably isn't going to work for the HP-as-meat crowd. That crowd may be right or wrong or whatever, but we can agree that they would not want such a mechanic, even if they're idiots for not wanting it -- non-magical spike healing does require a particular view of HP-as-not-meat to work, yes? While magical spike healing could really be either or both or whatever?

Indeed.

If we're agreed, is there any objection in your mind to tagging the HP-as-not-meat non-magical healing options (feat or item or new bucket or whatever) with something? Maybe an [Inspiration] keyword? So that people who want HP-as-meat know that they shouldn't pick it and that the people who want HP-as-not-meat know they should?

None at all. In fact I'd just go for a [Cinematic] tag and bring back my monks with wire-fu stunts that worked using short distance flight mechanics. I think it's more about cinematic vs "realistic" worlds than meat vs non-meat.

Spoiler alert: I think it's possible that D&D Next is creating that world.

Spoiler alert: I wish I had your optimism.

 

[Alzrius]

The basic premise here is that the warlord should be able to fill the survial-boosting role the cleric does. An ability that gets people killed clearly does not do that.

Indeed, that's why I clearly didn't suggest an ability that gets people killed. Being up and active is superior to being down and helpless.

In NPCS in your game waste time killing downed foes, that is a feature of your campaign. I don't think that is a common DM attitude and one that I'd not enjoy either as player or DM, and frankly it is irrelevant - the ability to let a "dead" character get one final shot off does not meet the stated survial-boosting goal of the warlord.

I think that's more correctly flipped around - if the NPCs in your game don't take the time to kill downed foes, despite the PCs near-instantly bringing them back up again, that's merely a feature of your campaign. I don't think that's a common GM attitude, and it's not one that I'd enjoy as a player or as a GM, and what's more it's irrelevant anyway: letting a "dead" character have no further ability to do anything, even defend themselves, while the NPCs finish them off doesn't boost survival in any regard the way letting them stay active would (which is the goal of a warlord).

 

[pemerton]

A "captain" might be misleading then. A captain leads and inspires soldiers that look up the chain of command. I don't see that being true in most stories of adventuring companions.

I'm using the name "captain" because some people don't like "warlord", and it is the word that Tolkien uses. And in the Tolkienian/Arthurian model I'm interested in developing, the presence of a captain does inspire companions - look at how Aragorn inspires Gimli and Legolas, for instance; or how Eowyn inspires Merry, or Denethor and Beregond inspire Pippin.

I don't like the kinds of stories created from the mechanical expression of the 4e Warlord as is.

It's not a story I like, in the way I understand the human condition.

That's fine. No one is making you build or play a warlord, either in 4e or in the hypothetical version of D&Dnext that includes one.

What if the mechanical expression overcompensates? For example, what if a character had the "Beautiful" trait, and every PC and NPC was mechanically expressed as considering the character to be beautiful. Now the mechanical expression has forced only one story

It depends on the point of the trait, the players' expectations etc.

For instance, in Burning Wheel if you take the Beautiful trait for your PC that means that your are the most beautiful one around. But the expression of this, in play, is primarily under the players' control.

In 4e, the player gets to decide who his/her warlord inspires, and how inspiring the character is, by choosing when and how to use his/her powers.

If the barbarian jumped down the dragon's throat first, is the Bravelord impressed too? Enough to get extra hitpoints? If no, why not, if the Barbarian's actions are just as brave and inspiring?

Why not? In the metagame, because the player of the barbarian didn't pay PC build resources to get this ability. In the fiction? Because the barbarian is brave but not inspiring - his/her allies shake their heads at his/her recklessness, for instance, rather than being moved to emulate.

This is somewhat similar to the fact that the gods regularly answer the prayers of cleric PCs, but rarely answer the prayers of non-cleric PCs, even though the latter may be just as devout as the former.

That's a gamist concern, which is separate from the point that pemerton raised. The more pertinent question is if a "fight on a 0 hit points" rule fulfills the question of the mechanics representing inspiration.

If the gamist concerns aren't met then the mechanics don't match the fluff.

I'm with Neonchameleon here - if the mechanics don't in fact produce an outcome whereby inspiration from the battle captain will turn the tide of battle, they are not doing their job. In D&D, the most fundamental and time-honoured way to turn the tide of battle is to infuse extra hp into the PCs.

 

[pemerton]

If one PC is significantly injured, you rest. It's quite unusual that you can't rest. And if you can't rest and are injured and are being attacked, that's a pretty serious challenge, and it should be. No need to change any of that.

I assume that you are describing your own gameplay here. It doesn't particularly correlate to the sort of D&D game that I want to run or play.

wands of CLW have always been a cheap cop-out for that type of healing.

By "always" I assume you mean "in the period 2000-2008". Wands of CLW did not exist in AD&D or classic D&D. And they don't exist in 4e.

Players can't simply state what they desire and get it. That's why we have rules.

Here's a radical idea: let's design a game, and its rules, that will give us (and other players like us) the game that we desire!

the main point of having rules is to prevent players from doing things they shouldn't. Nonmagical, instantaneous healing of lethal wounds is not even a borderline case in that regard. It doesn't make sense. A player making that kind of "roleplaying choice" either doesn't understand why it's out of bounds or is being purposefully subversive.

This is so outrageous it's hard to know where to begin.

First, who is talking about instantaneous healing of lethal wounds? As I posted way upthread, it utterly goes without saying that anyone who is using inspirational healing in their game (which would include any mainstream 4e player) is not using a model of hit points a meat.

Second, how are you entitled to tell other RPGers what is or isn't "out of bounds"? If I, or anyone else, wants to play a game in which hit points are not meat, in which 0 hp represents a swoon rather than disembowelment, when PCs die from a failure of spirit rather than simply from their physical injuries - in short, a game that emulates the feel of fantasy romances (Arthurian, Tolkienian, 1990s HK fantasy films) - why would or should you be able to veto that?

Third, the main point of rules, in an RPG, is to provide an agreed-upon mechanicsm for determining the content of the fiction. Rules can do this either directly - via process or outcome sim - or indirectly, by bestowing narrative authority in respect of some matter upon one of the participants. The rules don't tell us whether or not we can have inspirational healing - rather, we decide that we do or don't want the fiction to include inspirational recovery, and then having made that decision we choose a set of rules that will or won't permit such things to occur in the fiction.

I want a game with inspirational recovery, resulting from the presence of a Tolkien-style battle captain. I want rules that will permit this. Within the context of D&D, that is pretty easily achieved, as 4e has shown: inspirational martial healing.