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

[Lanefan]

Forced movement should be a base assumption. People should be ranging all over the place due to forces (eg terrain and combatants imposing their will upon their allies/enemies and putting them in positions for success or failure due to technique/acumen/agility) external to their own personal locus. Again, this reinforces both genre tropes and "what happens in real life in martial exchanges."

This opens up yet another branch of discussion/argument.

Forcing (or at least trying to force) someone you're in melee with to move is just fine - push the orc backwards against the wall, or throw it sideways into the mud, or drag it towards you and away from its allies, etc.; and don't complain if a smart foe tries the same thing against you. I'll go out on a short limb and suggest nobody anywhere has any real issue with this sort of thing.

Where problems arise is when you're non-magically forcing someone else, not within your physical reach, to move. That's where you lose me, though I may be a lone voice in the wilderness. Sure you can *suggest* your ally move to a better position or yell at the left-flank fighter to shove her foe into your reach, but it should be up to them-as-characters whether or not they follow those suggestions (or orders) unless you're doing it by spell or charm effect or whatever. And non-magically forcing enemies to move at a distance makes no sense at all.

I agree that in many combats more overall movement would be nice, but forcing movement at range without magic breaks it for me.

Lan-"the one exception I'd make is a really intimidating fighter might force a weaker foe to flee the field by his mere presence"-efan

 

[aramis erak]

Somehow I think your evaluation of the way Mearls and Company view their business is seriously flawed.

Otherwise, how do you explain their work on Psionicists and Rangers?

Those are being designed for, and use feedback from, those who are already bought in on 5E.

Psionics: will sell more units than will cost in future sales. Probably won't be aimed at AL play, and so won't matter to a large chunk of the most active playerbase. Has a LONG history of being included in D&D - AD&D 1E, AD&D 2E, D&D 3.0, 3.5, 4.0....

Warlord, however, is being clamoured for by a bunch of people who want it for AL play, and it will drive off a significant number of GMs from running if it is. And, it has very little history - 4.x only. And no prior comparable classes before 4.0.

And note that Mearls isn't really a business guy - he answers to some suit at Hasbro, and that's be business guy. He has to answer that question every time, either by inference or explicit statement.

People clamoring for the warlord seem to feel it should have been in the PHB - and that quite possibly would have cost more players than it would have added.

Psionics? liekly to generate more sales than it costs, especially if not added to AL play.
Alternate ranger? not likely to drive many people off, even if added to AL play. Likely to add more than it costs.
Adding warlord, much more iffy. No tradition, not many holdouts, and likely to cost a fair number of GMs if added to AL play.

 

[Rygar]

If the Warlord had ever "shouted arms back on," then 'Warlord Healing,' wouldn't be an oxymoron, and the mechanics of it would have been nonsensical (perhaps still perfectly OK, mechanically, but as nonsensical as any other fantastical element when judged by standards of sober realism).

But that was never the case: It was just edition war rhetoric.

5e's style of presentation and prioritization of DM empowerment lets you exclude things you don't like about the Standard Game. When it comes to excluding optional elements (which any version of the Warlord introduced at this late date would be), it's a trivially easy matter of not opting in.

Bad mechanics do. A bad mechanic is not a matter of opinion, though, it's one that's actually problematic - broken, incoherent, imbalanced, unclear, or just plain not playable as written. But just because you don't like a concept a mechanic models or the way it models it doesn't make it bad.

And, there are mechanics that only become bad if you muck about with the assumptions upon which their based. In the example of making something like Inspiring Word literally 'healing,' for instance, by changing the meaning of hit points from the slightly unintuitive, abstract mix of factors first articulated (exhaustively) in the 1e AD&D DMG, to a nonsensical-in-it's-own-right all-meat variation. For another instance, changing the assumed day-length from an attrition-based 6-8 encounters to typically only 1 per day, renders daily resources imbalanced and a 'bad' mechanic. In neither case is it really the mechanic that's bad, though, they're each fine within their context, it's just that changing the context requires changing the mechanic in some way to fit it better.

To illustrate with both the above examples:
If you decide to institute all-meat hps in a game with some sort inspirational or other non-magical 'instant' hp-restoration, you could change that mechanic to restore hps only until the next rest or until the end of the encounter, instead (not healing, but not max-hp-exceeding temps, either, but something slightly inferior to both - and compensating them for the reduced effectiveness in some other way, like more hps restored or more frequent use).
If you decide to run 1-encounter days consistently, you could salvage and re-balance daily resources by making them 1/6th or so as available and/or making short-rest resources as powerful as long-rest ones (essentially there's no difference in availability between the two in such a campaign).

That's a matter of your personal opinion and how you want to play the game, and it would be trivially easy for you to opt-out of any such optional material.

A personal feeling of alienation could be brought on by anything. A change in a perceived pattern of game design, an improvement in game balance that leaves a favored class less-unfairly advantaged, a different style of art, a smaller book format, a new font - anything.
It's an irrational, very human, unpredictable thing.

When it comes to optional material, I have to disagree. Don't like a new thing, don't opt into it. Simple. The alternative is nothing more or less than dictating to others how they play the game.

Now, when it comes to the Standard Game, yes, material should be as balanced, inoffensive, and greatest-common-denominator* as possible. And, no, no game's perfect at that, either.



Edit: * trying to avoid the negative connotation of 'least common denominator' while still getting across the idea of maximizing breadth of appeal by limiting content.

I think we need to be a good bit more specific here.

First, your assertion that Warlord healing equating to shouting wounds closed being edition war rhetoric is true if and only if you play D&D the way Tony plays. If you are someone who treats being damaged as being damaged, then your statement is patently false. It is not edition war rhetoric and it is *exactly* how the Warlord works. Which makes your last point rather ironic, because you are not only trying to dictate to others how to play the game, you are also trying to shame others into not discussing it by accusing them of doing *exactly what you are doing*.

Second, the Warlord is incoherent.

-If I am attacked by a Purple Worm and a 20 is rolled, I am swallowed, so I must have been physically hit.
-While I am swallowed I am exposed to Hydrochloric Acid, so I must be being burned.
-If my party frees me, I have now lost some of my hitpoints, and since I was hit, I will need healed.
-If there is a Cleric present, she casts Cure Wounds upon me and I am healed.
-But! If there is a Warlord present instead, then he comes over and talks to me, and my hitpoints are returned. So I cannot have been hit, nor can I have been swallowed. We now have to state something completely different happened to me that contradicts what happened in combat.
-If both a Cleric and a Warlord are in the party, then whether or not I was hit and whether or not I was swallowed depends entirely upon which one gets to me first.
-If both of them heal me then we have a real problem, because now I was hit and swallowed but I couldn't have been hit and swallowed, so no one can say what happened in combat. If I was hit, the Warlord couldn't have healed me and we cheated, if I wasn't hit the Cleric couldn't heal me and we cheated.

The Warlord immediately makes the entire game incoherent. It immediately forces you to abstract everything in the game in order to avoid dealing with the myriad paradoxes he causes simply to justify his existence. Anything that warps the game to the degree that it forces everyone to avoid describing something as integral as combat because being specific causes the game to descend into nonsense is an objectively horrible thing.

 

[El Mahdi]

Psionics: will sell more units than will cost in future sales.

Really? And here I thought it was free in UA.

I must have a special computer that gives me anything I want online for free.

Next stop: Amazon!!!

(Psionics) Probably won't be aimed at AL play...

Again: Really? As soon as they get to an adventure path that uses Psionics - something I think is safe to say is a matter of when and not if - it most certainly will be part of AL play. Not to mention that the Psionics needed for the campaign will probably move from UA and come in the form of - again - a Free supplement; as they've done with the three adventure paths they've made thus far.

Warlord, however, is being clamoured for by a bunch of people who want it for AL play, and it will drive off a significant number of GMs from running if it is.

You really love making claims that you have no factual support for, and about subjects we both know you aren't qualified to this level...unless you have some RPG publishing and management bonafides that you've kept secret?

Also, though anecdotal, most of those here at ENWorld who voice a desire for a Warlord don't play AL. Across the D&D spectrum though, neither you or I have any way of knowing the demographics and involvement in AL (or lack thereof) of Warlord fans.

A poll on that would be interesting though..

(Note to self - future poll/thread ideas: How many Warlord fans play AL? and How many 5E fans would quit the game if the Warlord was officially included?)

And, it has very little history - 4.x only. And no prior comparable classes before 4.0.

You mean other than the Marshal in 3E. Right?

I agree that 12 years might not seem very long to a couple of old guys like you and me, but it's nothing to sneeze at either.

btw: Pathfinder added a Warlord also (6 years ago), one very similar to the Battlemaster, that seems to be popular (judging from talk on the Paizo forums).

People clamoring for the warlord seem to feel it should have been in the PHB - and that quite possibly would have cost more players than it would have added.

Psionics? liekly to generate more sales than it costs, especially if not added to AL play.
Alternate ranger? not likely to drive many people off, even if added to AL play. Likely to add more than it costs.
Adding warlord, much more iffy. No tradition, not many holdouts, and likely to cost a fair number of GMs if added to AL play.

You've really got my curiosity piqued now. Your continued claims make me wonder if you just might know something that the rest of us lowly fans don't.

Would you mind sharing the data you base these claims on? I think it would be a fascinating read.

 

[The Human Target]

I guess I don't understand why these arguments are still going on.

4e fans= we aren't getting any more 4e in 5e.

Accept it as I have and move on.

 

[El Mahdi]

If you are someone who treats being damaged as being damaged, then your statement is patently false.

Depends on what you mean by Damage. 5E's official definition of Hit Points includes far more than just physical damage.

Can one's Mental Durability be damaged? Yes - and that's an official component of Hit Points.
Can one's Will to Live be damaged? Most certainly - and that's also an official component of Hit Points.
I'm pretty sure that even one's Luck can be "damaged"; it's called Bad Luck.

Does it seem realistic for a Warlord's inspirational based healing to affect one's Mental Durability, Will to Live, and Luck (especially since, in a very real way we make our own Luck, and something that we can be inspired to do)?

Unless one is just being obstinate, the answer to all three of these is Yes.

But can a Warlord affect Physical Damage? In my opinion, also Yes.

Is the Warlord yelling wounds closed? Of course not. But considering that it's not really wounds themselves that kill, but the resultant loss of blood pressure (part of homeostasis), and that a Warlord's inspiration could induce a significant surge in adrenalin (raising blood pressure), and possibly doing so long enough for the person's own clotting to stop their blood loss - then a Warlord affecting physical wounds is not outside the realms of believability. (A much more detailed explanation here .)

Just because the physical presentation of the wound is still present, doesn't necessarily preclude regaining Hit Points. If the wound is no longer really affecting the character, it is effectively healed.


So, Warlord healing is consistent with the game's definition of Hit Points, consistent with fictional tropes* (in this case, I didn't give you permission to die), and it's consistent with real-life.


*(Many unrealistic tropes are included in D&D with nary a person batting an eye at them. Some of them have even been hard-coded into the rules over the years.)

Second, the Warlord is incoherent.

You're conflating not understanding it with incoherence. The difference between it doesn't make sense and it doesn't make sense to me.

The Warlord immediately makes the entire game incoherent. It immediately forces you to abstract everything in the game in order to avoid dealing with the myriad paradoxes he causes simply to justify his existence. Anything that warps the game to the degree that it forces everyone to avoid describing something as integral as combat because being specific causes the game to descend into nonsense is an objectively horrible thing.

This simply is not true. The presence of a Warlord does not create any paradoxes or vagueness that isn't already present in the rules.

Just look at any thread about the nature of Hit Points as proof...

Your assertion that Warlord healing equating to shouting wounds closed being edition war rhetoric is true if and only if...

On this I largely agree. While there may be some out there for which their motivation is edition warring, it does not follow that everyone that uses the phrase yelling wounds closed is edition warring.

Personally, I think that most of the time it's just a disconnect, a misunderstanding, that leads people to see Warlord healing in that manner.

Assuming malicious or belligerent intent is uncalled for.

 

[El Mahdi]

I guess I don't understand why these arguments are still going on.

4e fans= we aren't getting any more 4e in 5e.

Accept it as I have and move on.

You make the assumption that it's only 4E fans that want a Warlord.

That's an incorrect assumption.

 

[Aldarc]

Second, the Warlord is incoherent.

The Warlord immediately makes the entire game incoherent. It immediately forces you to abstract everything in the game in order to avoid dealing with the myriad paradoxes he causes simply to justify his existence. Anything that warps the game to the degree that it forces everyone to avoid describing something as integral as combat because being specific causes the game to descend into nonsense is an objectively horrible thing.

Your post highlights one of my biggest criticisms of people complaining about Warlord healing: the game is already made incoherent whenever magic exists. We blindly accept the idea that magic works. Divine magic heals just because. Why or how does magic heal? It's nonsensical according to all metrics of rationality, biological science, and physics, but it just does in this game. And throughout all this apologists of HP constantly defend the abstract nature of HP such that it makes sense for clerics to heal HP in of its abstraction. But should a warlord heal abstract HP through their own abstract abilities, then suddenly people put on the brakes? Why can't the "non-magical" be effectively "magical" when an entire cosmos is permeated by magic?

 

[Lanefan]

Your post highlights one of my biggest criticisms of people complaining about Warlord healing: the game is already made incoherent whenever magic exists. We blindly accept the idea that magic works. Divine magic heals just because. Why or how does magic heal? It's nonsensical according to all metrics of rationality, biological science, and physics, but it just does in this game. And throughout all this apologists of HP constantly defend the abstract nature of HP such that it makes sense for clerics to heal HP in of its abstraction. But should a warlord heal abstract HP through their own abstract abilities, then suddenly people put on the brakes? Why can't the "non-magical" be effectively "magical" when an entire cosmos is permeated by magic?

Because magic in and of itself has - or can very easily be made to have - a certain internal coherence with itself and with the rest of the game world.

A large part of that coherence, however, comes from a reasonably clear deliniation between what can be done mundanely and what requires magic to accomplish.

Instant healing of physical injuries requires magic, pure and simple. If we accept that someone who's gone to 0 h.p. is almost certainly in some way physically injured enough to force them to collapse, non-magical healing should simply not be able to patch them up. But if you allow that it can then you either have to somehow redefine the coherence of magic in the game world (I wish you luck with that) or abandon it entirely.

Lanefan

 

[Duganson]

The delineation between what we are and aren't okay with when it comes to healing confuses the bejezus out of me...

If HP are all 'meat' and only magic can instantaneously heal, then are you allowing short rest HD healing? If you got an arrow in the knee in the last fight and the Cleric can't cast Cure Wounds does a Healing Kit make that hobble all better in an hour? Seems... incoherent... to me.

I don't want to toss this convo further into the rabbit hole but - seriously - the game already asks us to suspend disbelief (BIG TIME) when it comes to physical injury so much already, what's the big deal with Martial Healing?