D&D 5E How many fans want a 5E Warlord?

[Mistwell]

It's good to make the argument in posts. That at least has the potential to change minds. Gauging the numbers of people who don't want something - which by the way, as I said, is something even WotC doesn't do with their polls - can only be irrelevant at best, most likely contribute to cementing people's positions, and at worst possibly harm the goal of this in the first place. That goal being: getting WotC to take notice - in a respectful way* - in the hopes that they'll revisit the possibility of making an Official Warlord.

I edited my post, sorry you didn't see that portion. The edited part said, "WOTC offers a LOT of choices in their polls so they can get a bead on the things most desired and least desired - they never ask "do you want X, answer yes or don't answer" - you need some means to measure the pool of respondents and their relative desires against other options, otherwise you're polling in a vacuum. Also, game content has an impact on games, both the good content and the bad"

Here are reasons why it's relevant:

1) You want WOTC to take notice - but take notice of what? If 50 people say they want X, does that mean most people want X? Does that mean X is popular? Without some means to gauge the population of people who want something more than X, or who do not want X, you have no context to know what the 50 means. It's relevant to get context here - but the way you asked it, it's in a vacuum. It's important that WOTC work down the list of "most in demand" options. If there are, say, 100 options they could work on, and Warlord ranks near the bottom of that 100 list, they need to know that. ALL WOTC polls provide better context than the way you ran this poll.

2) The concept of opportunity cost is real. Having WOTC spend their limited time and money working on project X detracts from their ability to spend that same time and money working on Project Y - we don't necessarily know what Project Y is, but we know they can't work on it with the same time and money they spend on Project X. So if people don't want Project X, or want Project Y a lot more, that's deeply relevant to WOTCs interests, and the interests of the fans.

3) Divisive options split the fan base. This is a lesson learned from "Damage on a miss". Some people liked it, others hated it, and overall it was just better for the game in general to get rid of it and replace it with something that effectively did something similar but which split the fan base less. You want to know if something is divisive. This one is - so much so that one of the designers commented on it during the development phase of 5e.

4) People already made up their minds about Warlords by now - nobody is going to have their position more cemented by having an option in a poll to voice their opinion on that. It's more "position cementing" in my opinion to not give people the option in the poll they want to choose - they do things like wonder why the option they want to choose isn't presented.

5) You're making the argument that you should give people the game options they want, and it does little harm to have a game option offered that someone doesn't want. Don't you see any irony in you simultaneously arguing that for a game option, and then the opposite of that for a poll option? People WANT a poll option to voice their dislike of warlords, or at least their preference for WOTC working on something else prior to working on Warlords. It strains credibility to claim a game option does no harm if you don't want it, but a poll option does harm even if people want that poll option.

 

[Gadget]

How is that a problem? Are not the DMG's fear, madness, sanity, honor, hero points, facing & flanking rules, etc. mechanical hole fillers that we have already been given?

None of these are classes though, and I would argue that some of them are more for setting at tone or genre of the campaign (fear, madness, sanity, honor) then mere mechanical hole filling.

 

[MechaPilot]

None of these are classes though, and I would argue that some of them are more for setting at tone or genre of the campaign (fear, madness, sanity, honor) then mere mechanical hole filling.

I could just as easily argue that a warlord class sets a tone as well, especially if you acknowledge that a healing warlord could be just one subclass of the warlord class. If healing is but one of the subclass options, a warlord would fit in well in most D&D worlds.

Even if you don't acknowledge that a healing warlord could be just one subclass of the warlord class, a healing warlord does enable setting a tone. For example, if you want to run a game where magical healing is rare but don't want to negatively affect the pace of the game through frequent resting, the warlord would be quite relevant. Dark Sun games in particular could probably benefit from a warlord class if the DM doesn't want a slower paced game. And don't forget about Planescape. If I recall my 2e Planescape correcly, divine power faded in the outlands the closer one gets to great spire below Sigil. Warlords would do very well in the outlands.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Nice trolling there.

As I, and El Mahdi, have said elsewhere: you are assuming that the poll is about determining whether MORE of the community wants it than doesn't. It's not, and he was pretty clear about that in the OP. This is not a survey. It's a petition. It just happens to be in poll form because forums don't have a "petition" format that can collect together all the "signatures" in a convenient numerical fashion. Or, at least, no forum I've been on can do that.

Wisards asked about a warlord as an addition... I recall it didn't fare well...

Did they? I recall a (relatively) recent survey about what classes people wanted to add, and Warlord specifically wasn't listed. It was a bit of a hoodoo that they left it out; some people argued it was left out because they "already knew" it would be highly requested and thus didn't need to ask.

A poll which lets you only choose from "I want this" or "Lemon Curry" is starting out, from my perspective, with a deeply inadequate and biased set of choices. I voted "I want this" but I regret that choice. Simply out of disrespect for game-playing with polls in that way, I should have voted Lemon Curry. I mean come on, you couldn't have included "I don't want this" in your choices?

First: see the first bit of my response to Aramis above. Second: If you're really that upset about it, you can always retract your vote by clicking the red "Unvote" text in the upper right-hand corner. Of course, doing so simply makes the poll even more statistically worthless than it would've been, even if it had been designed exactly the way you wish it had been (that is, designed as a "serious" and minimally-biased poll, rather than a petition that was forced to take the form of a poll). Because being able to remove your response from the data--or change your response after the fact--poisons the sample to a much, much greater degree than even self-selection would. A single persuasive voice on one side or the other can cause the data to change after the fact.

Hence why I have said, repeatedly, here and elsewhere, that forum polls are already absolute garbage as far as statistical significance is concerned. Yeah, you can go to the effort of making minimally-biased options and minimally-biased presentation. Those changes will do pretty much nothing in the face of self-selection, checking the current status and discussing it before voting, and the ability to retract or change your vote arbitrarily often after placing it.

You know I see this stated in D&D/rpg circles... but that's about it. Anywhere else that hit points are used... mainly in videogames which reach and influence the perception of way more people... I have never seen this narrative of loss of hit points as something other than wounding. I've never seen where a character looses hit points but the game doesn't show him/her being physically hit or wounded. I have to wonder if the majority of people, regardless of what D&D claims, are going to regard hit points as physical in nature because that's the perception they've encountered everywhere else...

Depends pretty heavily on the game. Doom, and many of its descendants, visually depicted HP loss as wounds (the Doomguy Face gets pretty seriously bloody and beat-up if you get to single-digit health). But as far as games that are like D&D but not D&D, particularly the really popular ones? HP are treated as a pure abstraction with little to no physical significance until you die. And while neither one has "martial healing" in a way analogous to the Warlord, two of the most popular RPGs of the last decade--World of Warcraft and Skyrim--feature completely mundane food which causes (near-)instant health recovery, often taking someone from death's door to full health from a single "meal." The Burning Crusade expansion for WoW even hung a lampshade on this; there's a troll vendor in the city of Shattrath, by the name of "Griftah," who's basically a snake-oil salesman, peddling fantastically expensive (for their time) amulets which purport to give you abilities that all player characters naturally have, like the "Polished Pendant of Edible Energy," whose description reads, "Focusing one's metabolism, this pendant allows the wearer to draw great energy from ordinary food and drink - even heal wounds!"

More or less, I think you are correct to say that the raging debate between meatpoints and inspirepoints is pretty tabletop-centric--but I think you've drawn an incorrect conclusion from that. It's not that VG players think of HP as physical wounds nor as a loss of luck/fate/stamina/etc. It's that they don't think about what HP represent at all. They just accept them as a game construct. Or, as I have said elsewhere, quoting someone else (from another forum): "HP are HP. They model HP, they signify HP, they represent HP, and nothing else." Many games even feature either innately rapid HP regain outside of combat (Guild Wars 2, for example), or provide an only-outside-combat ability which fills up your HP (and "MP," if applicable) bar after just a few seconds of use (SW:TOR, for example).

 

[Umbran]

If folks want to go and develop a warlord class to use, that's just great. You should be able to do that as you desire.

If folks want to use EN world as a platform to lobby WotC, in a way that generates arguments, that is less great. Less great enough that we have had to close down such threads in the past.

If you have an agenda to push with WotC, we strongly urge you to take it up with WotC - they have venues of their own. Yes, you will argue that EN World is a place they read, so doing it here is a thing. But I remind you that is a side-effect, not the main purpose, of the community.

So, all in all - please stop arguing.

 

[Gadget]

I could just as easily argue that a warlord class sets a tone as well, especially if you acknowledge that a healing warlord could be just one subclass of the warlord class. If healing is but one of the subclass options, a warlord would fit in well in most D&D worlds.

Even if you don't acknowledge that a healing warlord could be just one subclass of the warlord class, a healing warlord does enable setting a tone. For example, if you want to run a game where magical healing is rare but don't want to negatively affect the pace of the game through frequent resting, the warlord would be quite relevant. Dark Sun games in particular could probably benefit from a warlord class if the DM doesn't want a slower paced game. And don't forget about Planescape. If I recall my 2e Planescape correcly, divine power faded in the outlands the closer one gets to great spire below Sigil. Warlords would do very well in the outlands.

True enough, in a game that so radically alters the base magic assumptions of the game, such a class could be of benefit. One thing that 5e does do is make magic (character class magic, not necessarily item magic) more prevalent than ever before, with most classes having at least the option of magical abilities. However, there are still things like the Healer feat, changing the default healing and/or resting mechanic to match such an environment (i.e. short rests are 5 min, or allow 1 or more hit dice to be regained, etc.). In my experience, some such campaigns do these things to create a gritty, 'fantasy Vietnam' vibe, and bringing in a 'martial healer' class that has all or most of the benefits of the cleric class but 'it's not magic so it's okay' runs the danger of being at cross purpose to this design goal. Personally, for such campaigns I might prefer an additional optional mechanic called...inspiration or some such that would follow along with the honor, insanity and other optional systems we have already. That way you could take your fighter, barbarian, rogue, knight, or whatever thematic character classes you already had and layer the mechanic on top of them.

I guess my feeling is that there is more than one way to skin the 'mechanical hole' cat, and a new character class is not always the desired way to do so.

 

[Mistwell]

This is not a survey. It's a petition.

[Edit - Ninja'ed by Umbran!] If you really want a warlord class to eventually become an official class, your best bet is to change the minds of people who don't care about it or don't want it. That's hard to do, I know. But it's really your best option. There are a lot of reasons to like the Warlord - why not focus on explaining all the good things about Warlords and why you like to play them? Then once you've changed some minds, a petition done through a better site for petitions, linked through Twitter and Facebook, has a better chance of working.

 

[MechaPilot]

Personally, for such campaigns I might prefer an additional optional mechanic called...inspiration or some such that would follow along with the honor, insanity and other optional systems we have already. That way you could take your fighter, barbarian, rogue, knight, or whatever thematic character classes you already had and layer the mechanic on top of them.

Well, here's a really simple idea for an ability to give to all PCs that I've never seen anyone advocate before.

Inspiring Word
You rally an ally through stirring speech, inspiring her to fight with renewed vigor. Make a DC 15 Charisma (Persuasion) check. If you succeed, an ally of your choice may spend up to half of her Hit Dice to recover Hit Points on her next turn. A character can only benefit from this ability once per short or long rest.

I guess my feeling is that there is more than one way to skin the 'mechanical hole' cat, and a new character class is not always the desired way to do so.

Well, you probably could create a warlord class from the fighter or the paladin class. If I were going to create a warlord class, I would start with the paladin class, convert its spell slots into spell points, rename/retheme those spell points as inspiration points, and then create warlord abilities that consume those points. Although you could do the same thing with the eldritch knight subclass, and if I wanted to make a warlord subclass of fighter, that's how I'd start.

 

[Imaro]

Something else I've been thinking about while reading this thread was that I remember WotC stating that the online CB allowed them to gauge how popular classes were... does anyone remember if the Warlord was ever mentioned as being a particularly popular class at that time? I ask because I noticed it didn't get put in the Essentials reboot/new corebooks when they came out, and I would have thought if it was a really popular class that would have been a no brainer... especially in the second class/race book for essentials. But then for it not to show up in 5e as well, is making me wonder just how popular the class really was and whether WotC maybe knows there was only a small minority who were actually playing the class during 4e's run.

 

[Imaro]

Depends pretty heavily on the game. Doom, and many of its descendants, visually depicted HP loss as wounds (the Doomguy Face gets pretty seriously bloody and beat-up if you get to single-digit health). But as far as games that are like D&D but not D&D, particularly the really popular ones? HP are treated as a pure abstraction with little to no physical significance until you die. And while neither one has "martial healing" in a way analogous to the Warlord, two of the most popular RPGs of the last decade--World of Warcraft and Skyrim--feature completely mundane food which causes (near-)instant health recovery, often taking someone from death's door to full health from a single "meal." The Burning Crusade expansion for WoW even hung a lampshade on this; there's a troll vendor in the city of Shattrath, by the name of "Griftah," who's basically a snake-oil salesman, peddling fantastically expensive (for their time) amulets which purport to give you abilities that all player characters naturally have, like the "Polished Pendant of Edible Energy," whose description reads, "Focusing one's metabolism, this pendant allows the wearer to draw great energy from ordinary food and drink - even heal wounds!"

More or less, I think you are correct to say that the raging debate between meatpoints and inspirepoints is pretty tabletop-centric--but I think you've drawn an incorrect conclusion from that. It's not that VG players think of HP as physical wounds nor as a loss of luck/fate/stamina/etc. It's that they don't think about what HP represent at all. They just accept them as a game construct. Or, as I have said elsewhere, quoting someone else (from another forum): "HP are HP. They model HP, they signify HP, they represent HP, and nothing else." Many games even feature either innately rapid HP regain outside of combat (Guild Wars 2, for example), or provide an only-outside-combat ability which fills up your HP (and "MP," if applicable) bar after just a few seconds of use (SW:TOR, for example).

I think you're also missing my point or delving deeper than my statement goes... do you ever take hit point damage in any of these games and the fiction not show a physical hit? I can't think of any... so hit point loss equates to taking physical damage... the kind of wounds you seem to be talking about here are different from the point I am making... now you're trying to quantify levels or verisimilitude from the physical damage in the games. This is going to vary wildly depending on the particular game and really isn't center to my broader point about physical damage. My Point was simply that hit point loss is equated to physical damage in most gamer's minds.

I also disagree with your contention that most view hit points as a game construct as just hit points since most use "life" interchangeably with (and arguably more than) the term hit points... so there is definitely a common viewpoint around what they represent.