In theory. In practice you and I both know there's players out there who like to boss other players around; and this gives them a mechanical excuse for it. That's why I'd be all for changing the class name. (I thought the 4e role names were poor too, for the same sort of reason, though the concept held some water)
The concept of Role was always there, in 4e it was formalized, in 5e it's informal again. FWIW.
IMX, the more 'alpha' style player who wants to lead or boss everyone around gravitates towards higher-impact classes, particularly casters, so the Warlord presents a quandary for them. The concept fits, the mechanics don't.
There's players I've seen - and who I still play with - who, if given a Warlord as a PC, *would* take it as license to boss the other players around. Then the arguments would start...
A daunting hypothetical, I suppose. I'd expect a player that anxious for such an excuse to find one, anyway, though. Noble background, for instance.
Less hypothetically, I played and ran 4e a lot for it's entire run and never saw a player use a Warlord as a pretext to dominate play. (But, again, 4e players were a self-selected lot.)
Really, though, that sort of player is a lot more likely to dominate play by monopolizing the DMs attention, especially in the planning phases that are so prominent in the 'CaW' style of play. The Warlord's conceptual leadership mainly came up in actual combat, because of the way the mechanics were focused.
I could see a well-done 5e Warlord offer more opportunities for that kind of abuse. 5e tends towards a more open style of design that does leave more room for abuse - but Empowers the DM to head it off or otherwise deal with it. I think it's well worth the risk of letting non-4e-veterans get a hold of it, and maybe have a power-mad RP disaster or two before they figure it out.
Hmmm...all these people want to play the Warlord support class yet so many complain bitterly about playing the other big support class: Cleric. Sometimes I don't understand gamers...
No mystery. Heroic archetypes are more relateable than pious ones.
Sure it's unrealistic, but when there's a choice given between taking it closer to or farther from realism I tend to go with the "closer-to" option if all other things are equal.
Sure. Old debate, like Out on a Limb, c1980 old. Clearly we were on opposite sides of it. One of my taglines on an RPG BBS I frequented back in the day was "Realism Kills."
No, in that while I-as-DM need to know you're moving this round I'm not going to hold you to your declared course of movement if circumstances arise to change it. But if we're halfway through the round and your initiative comes up and only then do you tell me you're moving from A to B and attacking Orc F, I have to back everything up and see what you might have encountered during your move - did you get clipped by the fireball that went off partway along your logical route, or did Orc G break off from its original opponent (who it had already swung at) and try to block you instead? Inevitably one of two things happens: lots of retconning, or characters get away with moves they realistically shouldn't have.
That seems like an excessive amount of detail to go into, and like it'd slow down even 5e's famously fast combats, but it's easy enough to accomplish via rulings as needed - even if you don't go all the way and introduce a variant initiative system.
You are making me think a better-developed, more detailed variant initiative system would be a nice edition to the game, though.
And here we reach a deep disagreement. You seem to see (and correct me if I'm wrong) in-combat h.p. recovery as a natural part of combat; where I see it as something that should happen rarely if ever at all and then with risks attached.
It is a natural consequence of the D&D combat system, yes. Whether that /should/ be the case is a separate issue.
A battle in which the heroes at first find themselves overwhelmed and on the verge of defeat, then come back strong and carry the day, is downright cliche in fantasy, and indeed, any heroic or 'action' genre, and D&D hps, saving throws, and in-combat healing of various types do support that trope.
In the form of a pious mace-wielding glowy-handed healer standing behind the fighter and making his wounds disappear, though, it's arguably strayed pretty far from genre (other than the self-referent D&D genre, and the MMO's derivative of it).
In the form of a hero finding his 'second wind,' a berserker shrugging off wounds, or a warlord rallying his party, it's less of a departure. It's still not exactly perfectly modeling genre, but it's closer.
My primary opposition to the Warlord is the flavor attached to it, not the mechanics.
What I don't like is the notion that a character is the "leader" by dint of having chosen a certain class.I have to be honest, despite proponents' repeated claims that they just want more tactical play, it's hard not to suspect that what they really want is to just roleplay the Boss.
Well, you can be a "Noble" just by taking a Background, so that particular desire for social rank and aggrandizement is neatly available in 5e from the get-go. Basic Game, even. Or you can play a Cleric or Paladin and play up the Authority From God. Or you can try to climb the ranks of your faction more rapidly than the next guy in AL play. Seems like those who actually want to RP 'da boss' have more opportunity in 5e than ever.
I'll also point out, as I did to Lanefan, that Warlords simply weren't played that way at actual 4e tables, and I was playing & running the game for it's full run (still am, in addition to running 5e). And, I'll re-itterate that 4e tables, obviously, are self-selected folks who were at least willing to play 4e. I doubt those who skipped 4e are such intransigently bad players that it'd be a problem going forward, though.
Clerics I play are support to the protagonists...which includes themselves.
Nod. PCs are in effect the protagonists of the campaign's story. And they tend to be a lot more co-equal and 'all protagonists' than is typical of ensemble casts in genre, for the sake of the game being fair (let alone balanced), playable, and fun for all.
Right now I have a decent-level Cleric in a 1e-variant game who is happy to support the party...
But he doesn't run around telling people what to do.
Though, if you were so inclined, he could. Spokesman for The Gods is a pretty strong claim of authority. And, if you hear someone called a 'cleric' in the news, today, it's very likely in the context of him telling some fanatics what to do.
I think the reason why they were shut out is because Warlord is an inherently 4E:ish concept.
This discussion can probably be repeated for any class that was not included in 5E for various reasons.
There was a debate about adding Psionics to the game not so long ago. There was some serious disagreement about the form psionics might take, in particular the magic vs not-magic issue was one each side wanted the game to validate for them so they could be 'right.' But, even though the concept is strongly sci-fi and far less appropriate to a fantasy game than the Warlord, few (possibly no, IIRC) people approached the discussion with an adamant insistence that no one ever be allowed to play a psion in 5e, even as an obscure option.
A basic premise of a real Warlord is running 5E the 4E way.
I don't see that as necessarily so. There isn't really a '4e way' of running, 4e just happened to have balanced classes and clear rules, while that may have facilitated styles that were poorly supported before, it didn't create a OneTrueWay of 4e.
Sure 3e and 4e were arguably 'player empowering' and 5e has swung to a diametrically opposed 'DM Empowering' extreme, but the /concept/ of the warlord can co-exist with Empowerd DMing, so long as the DM is so inclined.
But posters like @
pemerton are stating that the Warlord is a type of warrior so why is the fighter chasis a no-no? Especially if he's using his bonus feats and class pics to take warlord type abilities? Or is this a case of the class name has to match up?
Why are Paladins, Barbarians, Rangers, and Clerics (described up-thread as 'holy warriors') not Fighters? Actually, I'm not sure why Barbarians and non-casting Rangers aren't just Fighter's with an appropriate Background, nor why Paladins and caster-Rangers not just MC'd (OK, I do know that one: because MC'ing is optional).
Clearly, there's no if-it-can-be-a-fighter-it-must-be-a-fighter requirement. But, even if there were...
Edit (2) : Even the warlord in 4e wasn't just a buff/debuffer... he was able to competently attack & do damage...
Primarily buffing, of the two, as too much debuffing stepped on the Controllers' toes - that'd be less of an issue in 5e, so hopefully more debuffs & battlefield control via (abstract) tactical acumen will be a possibility in the 5e version.
Everyone in 4e could deal damage, even 'Pacifist' Clerics. The Warlord, as a Leader, dealt reasonable damage depending on the exact build, so did Defenders and other Leaders (Controllers did a bit less single-target but more once you factored in AE, and layered on more de-buffs). Strikers were the DPR kings.
In 4e terms, the 5e fighter would be a Striker, it's primary contribution is high DPR. That comes from class features, not archetype features, so it's locked in. In D&D's death-spiral-free race to 0hp combat system, that's a very potent thing to be (especially to be 24/7, via mostly at-will abilities), so it lacks the design space to be much else.
I'm asking what actual abilities in a properly built/spec'd warlord are missing that are necessary for him to be a warlord... and you're giving me vagueness. So I'll ask again, what can't the Battlemaster do that the 5e warlord should be able to do?
The Battlemaster has 3 warlord-like maneuvers, the Warlord had 339. There are approximately 336 things the warlord could do that the Battlemaster can't. It's less than 1% of a warlord. On top of that, the Battlemaster is, as mentioned several times already, not just above, a very high DPR class, which leaves it no room to make up that difference. It doesn't even do a tiny fraction what the Warlord could and it devotes the lion's share of it's effectiveness to things the Warlord concept doesn't require.
To me the Battlemaster is to the Warlord as the Eldritch Knight is to the Wizard.
Obviously, yes. Both remain multi-attacking, moderately-high-hp, high-DPR characters, while getting a touch of versatility from an alternate sub-system.
Saying that the Battlemaster 'is' or fulfills the need for a Warlord is like saying the Wizard can be excised from the game because the Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster fills the bill. Well, if the EK and AT only ever got 1st level spells.
I'd struggled to make a 5th edition Warlord myself (and instead made a Pathfinder Fighter archetype that brings into Pathfinder much more modularity to the fighter class and also some elements of the Warlord such as enabling lazylord builds and having limited martial healing.
Doesn't Pathfinder already have a nominal 'Warlord?'
