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

[BryonD]

Inspirational healing is quite consistent with treating every episode of hit point loss as corresponding to some sort of physical harm: what the inspirational healing does is permit the victim of the harm to go on despite the harm, and unimpeded by it. Rocky and Die Hard are often mentioned in this context.

And yet the main character in each movie still goes to the hospital at the end of the movie.

The mechanical system you are advocating completely removes the harm. Temp HP, which have been rejected as a viable option, would work here, but true healing doesn't not provide a satisfactory solution. At least to a lot of people. If it works for you then great. But, as been the issue for a long time, you can't persuade people on the other side of a point by demanding they accept your premise. You need to offer something that supports the desires of the people you are trying to convince.

In 4e nearly all healing is inspirational, and so non-magical in this sense.

Funny how, yet again, things that got you blasted for being an uneducated h4ter for saying them 4 years ago are now the talking points.

But if you take an approach which puts humility and providence closer to the heart of things, then the idea that even someone like Aragorn might be inspired by Gandalf - and vice versa - makes more sense. Characters in Tolkienesque romantic fantasy aren't self-contained or self-sufficient. They do not already bring to the conflict, within themselves, all the determination that is required. They have needs - emotional needs, providential needs - that only other characters can meet. The warlord (together with the paladin/cleric archetype of the charismatic holy warrior) belongs to this genre.

So Rocky and Die Hard are Tolkinesque?

1E did a perfectly adequate job of delivering this experience and, for a very successful size marketplace, so did 3E.

I'm not going to tell you that it doesn't enhance that experience *for you*. But when you suggest it is a truism that "Tolkinesque" play is hand in glove with the Warlord and this entire approach to healing, it smacks of blinders.

 

[Guest 6801328]

What I don't like about "inspirational healing" is that it's roleplaying my character for me. It's dictating not only a change in mental state, but also what the initial state must have been.

Magical healing (and other magical effects) avoid this. "It's magic." But as soon as another character influences my character through inspiration/leadership/etc. then I've lost some control. If I wasn't interested in the plot hook the DM was offering me, I would object to the DM telling me, "So-and-so gives you a rousing talk, and suddenly you're inspired to go on this adventure." Whereas if the NPC casts a Geas spell on me and I fail the saving throw...oh, well. C'est la vie.

I'm struggling to see how inspirational healing is different.

The Rocky Effect, or Aragorn inspiring his comrades, work great as a narrative device in fiction, and they exist in the real world of course. But not everything in real life and fiction translate well to an RPG.

By the way, I'm also firmly against PC's using Persuade/Intimidate/Deception on each other as well. That should never be a die roll.

 

[mellored]

I personally would like to see different style of healing rather then simply HP or THP.

And yet the main character in each movie still goes to the hospital at the end of the movie.

How about barbarian style?

Your not dead yet!
When an ally takes damage that would reduced his HP to 0, you can use your reaction to have him reduced to 1 HP instead. A creature can only benefit from this once per long rest.

 

[I'm A Banana]

You slightly overstate your case.

Inspirational healing is quite consistent with treating every episode of hit point loss as corresponding to some sort of physical harm: what the inspirational healing does is permit the victim of the harm to go on despite the harm, and unimpeded by it. Rocky and Die Hard are often mentioned in this context.

I feel that would be MUCH better represented mechanically with a "die hard" mechanic that lets you stay operational at 0 hp - it's not something that heals injury, so it shouldn't recover hp, but it is something that lets you ignore injury, so removing the consequences for being injured makes sense fictionally and mechanically. You still are injured, you're just too dang tough to go down (or, your party member is too dang inspiring for you to go down in front of 'em).

A thought that is related to this is that, if the characters are heroic enough to get to such a state on their own in a pretty short time, then with a bit of inspiration they cn get to that state in an even shorter time!

Sure, but instantaneously and without consequence is a bit of a tough pill to swallow.

So for inspirational healing to be at odds with hit point loss corresponding to physical harm, it has to additionally be the case that a player regards hit point recovery as actually undoing that physical harm, not just overcoming its debilitating effects. Which then makes the healing times start to look more like Wolverine-ish or newt-ish regeneration ("I sleep my arm back on!"). (Because if the physical harm is anything less than this, where the short times and lack of surgery nevertheless are sufficient fro it to be undone, it follows that it can probably be overcome by someone acting with sufficient determination.)

Even with injuries being wounds, we're not talking severed limbs or holding your guts in your hands, but we are talking about injuries that have the capability of killing you. You can ignore their effects with determination and inspiration, but you can't heal them with that, which makes HP recovery a poor way to model that effect.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

The Haste spell exists.

Not off-turn. Limited resource. Opportunity cost. Concentration.

The battlemaster's action-granting abilities exist.

Limited resource. Opportunity cost. Requires off-turn actor's reaction.

Cunning Action exists.

Not off-turn. Limited options. Cannot use to take an action.

The WotC team put out the UA ranger with an action economy boost.

Rough first draft playtest bait. Has boilerplate caveats to use with caution as it is untested.

There is clearly no general principle of 5e design that precludes mucking around with the action economy.

You are wrong. Sort of. There is wiggle-room to muck around with the action economy. Of course, I never said there wasn't. What I said was that it is a delicate thing and easily broken. As evident by the various homebrew stuff being bandied about that tries.

 

[mellored]

I made my own warlord attempt here.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?469013-Class-Tactician-(warlord-replacement)

 

[Guest 6801328]

I thought over the weekend about my resistance to the Warlord, which honestly have been as much emotional as logical, and think I can enumerate my objections:

1) The big one is that many of the abilities associated with the warlord, and the fluff that goes with them, takes agency away from other players. In Chameleon-X's recent homebrew, some of the phrases he uses language such as "makes all those around you", "instills unwavering loyalty in those who fight at your side", "cause others to", "pulling your troops", and the doozy: "Those who fight at your side follow you out of respect and admiration, confident that your clever plans will lead them to victory." That stuff is all perfectly fine on NPCs, but not on my character thank you very much.

This is also a problem with most descriptions I've seen of Martial Healing. I'm not opposed to Martial Healing on principle (I'm totally fine with Second Wind, for example) but I object to being told that my character's morale was flagging, for instance, and that listening to my teammate changed my attitude. That seems like it should be my decision, not another player's. The reason I don't at all mind buffs from magical classes is that, well, it's magic. It doesn't require narrating that my character had a change in thoughts or mental state.

2) Similarly, abilities that have the Warlord telling me how to do my job ("Tells you when to strike" "points out a flaw in the defenses", etc.) suggest that the Warlord is better at fighting than my character is. To take an extreme case to illustrate the problem: can a 1st level Warlord provide this benefit to a 20th level Champion? It's very easy to re-fluff these abilities as "...distracts the monster, giving an ally of his choice an opportunity", thereby affecting the monster, not the other PC, so I don't see the need for the language that diminishes other players relative to the warlord.

3) My preference is to get "Leadership" out of the class completely. That should be entirely decided upon and roleplayed by the players, not built mechanically into the game. In the more general case, I strongly object to social skills (Deception, Persuasion, Intimidation) being used by PCs on other PCs. That should never be a die roll, and one player's Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma should never be a factor in modifying another character's "story".

But if Leadership-based skills must be added to the game, they should be Class-agnostic. You shouldn't have to pick a specific class to be a "Leader". That's why I keep arguing for them to be in Feats (and Backgrounds, I suppose) rather than in a class.

4) Finally, I really loathe the term "Warlord" as a class name. (I never played 4e, so this is not leftover bitterness at any OP-ness the class might have had.) "Warlord" is an earned title, not a profession. 1st level Rogues are not called "Godfathers", 1st level Wizards are not called "Archmages", and 1st level Clerics are not called "High Priests."

But more importantly, the connotation of a Warlord is the giving of commands and the holding of authority. In an RPG, the implication is that this is applied to other player characters (see objections 1 through 3). I'm simply not ok with fluffing a class to have this role, even if it is not roleplayed that way.

EDIT: And I'll add one more of a different tenor...I think the stridency and intransigence of the Warlord continent, insisting that it has to be a certain way and no other (e.g. non-magical healing) is so single-minded and uncompromising that it makes me skeptical. It's like if a car salesman gets really pushy about a lease option instead of purchasing, and you start to think, "Wait a second...he's not telling me the whole story here." I can understand liking certain classes and mechanics, but the whole Warlord thing seems completely out of proportion to its importance. There's no other class that gets this kind of evangelism, or hatred.

Is there something else going on here? Is it (as somebody suggested) really just a proxy fight for the religious war over "HP are (not) Meat"?

 

[mellored]

2) Similarly, abilities that have the Warlord telling me how to do my job ("Tells you when to strike" "points out a flaw in the defenses", etc.) suggest that the Warlord is better at fighting than my character is.

Would words like "advice" or "guidance" work for you or not?

 

[CaptainConundrum]

You won't find Warlords in my campaign, but to each his own!
I like the Battle Master martial archetype just fine.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

If you think of the characters in a D&D game as essentially self-contained entities who don't need anybody else, than the idea of inspirational healing or leadership will seem silly. Conan doesn't need a leader, for instance! Though he can lead other, weaker characters.

But if you take an approach which puts humility and providence closer to the heart of things, then the idea that even someone like Aragorn might be inspired by Gandalf - and vice versa - makes more sense. Characters in Tolkienesque romantic fantasy aren't self-contained or self-sufficient. They do not already bring to the conflict, within themselves, all the determination that is required. They have needs - emotional needs, providential needs - that only other characters can meet. The warlord (together with the paladin/cleric archetype of the charismatic holy warrior) belongs to this genre.

So maybe what is needed is a "Tolkienesque" rules variant with a Wise Leader/King class/feat/whatever, as well as other rules and options for supporting Tolkienesque tropes in play.