That's a meaty digression, ER!
Indeed. I just realized, partway through, that I was not so much talking about the OP's proposal, but rather digging into the conceptual and design framework under-girding the Warlord. A parallel but separate topic, if you will.
If we were to make a class/subclass aimed at bringing more of the 4e warlord into 5e, I think this gives us a good starting point. It's not hard to imagine a mechanic that works a little like bardic inspiration or superiority dice where when the warlord attacks an enemy, they put a die on it. Then, the next person to also attack that enemy can spend that die to do something to it (imagine a BM who put Rally onto an enemy, rather than using it themselves - "Next person to wail on this guy gets temp hp!"). Aside from porting over manuevers or inspiration effects, there might be some interestingly unique things to be done with a mechanic like that (like extending the effect through more hits, or to more of the party, or affecting nearby enemies, etc.). And if you require a hit rather than just another attack, you might be able to get some of the "risk/reward" vibe of the Bravura.
That seems reasonable, though if I were really trying to capture the Bravura spirit, it might require a bit more risk for a bit more reward than the "called target" baseline (or whatever we want to call these vaguely Inspiration/Superiority-like dice). For example, a "basic" Warlord maneuver could do that, "get temp HP for blasting this guy," and a Bravura Warlord specifically could tweak it to be high-risk, high-reward. The only example that comes to mind right now seems too fiddly (having an ally break away from the thing they're *currently* fighting to attack the new target), but surely some design iteration could hash that out.
Thinking about the healing from the perspective of "other PC's use my class abilities," I wonder if a warlord subclass who could use Second Wind...on someone else...might work OK for skeptics and fans alike. Generally speaking, in-combat healing isn't very valuable in 5e (one of the virtues of short fights!), so that could definitely get an allied PC back in the fight when they've been downed, and, hell, the fighter gets to use it in every fight (3x 1d10+Level is actually not bad for a day's worth of healing!).
"Every" fight sounds like a bit of an exaggeration--as I had understood it, the expectation is "a rest of some kind (long or short) every other fight." And your numbers calculated there seem to reflect that, 3x uses rather than 6x-8x (the expected number of fights per day, in addition to whatever non-combat situations arise--unless I'm mistaken about that?)
That said though, this certainly could have legs. I fear it might not be acceptable to many of the skeptics, since it's still martial healing, but at least it builds from an established mechanic, giving it greater "legitimacy" (or whatever term skeptics would prefer for being pre-established). It is a goodly amount of healing; strictly less than a Paladin (5xlevel HP from Lay on Hands vs. average 3.5x level for "shareable Second Wind"), which is slightly disappointing, but still quite meaningful. I do agree that in-combat healing is...I would call it less
expected rather than less "valuable" per se, but it is not as much a
thing in 5e at least after first level.
What do you think of a potential 5e warlord whose schtick was that other people got to use their class features? You could Second Wind other party members, the manuevers were things other party members could trigger (once you set them up)....maybe even share some of that extra attack love....
As above: it has legs. The issue here is of a wholly different nature than the issue with the aura I mentioned earlier. It's not about being boring or non-tactical. It's that this is a pretty high-level concept, a "resource mechanic" rather than an "action mechanic" per se. So the execution would make or break it. The ideal, of course, is to let people choose:
1) Whether, and how much, they heal HP, avoid loss of "real" HP, and/or mitigate incoming damage;
2) Which stat they use, which also signifies their overall "focus" (Cha -> Bravura/high-risk; Int->Tactical/high-coordination; Wis->Resourceful/high-efficiency?)
3) Whether, and how much, they allow others to take actions on their behalf (none at all->"Spearhead" style, 100%->"Princess"/"Lazy" style, or a mix of both)
2 is, IMO semi-obviously, its own particular choice, best represented as either a Warlock-like split in what constitutes the "subclass" (both Pact and Patron make significant differences in playstyle), or as a
slightly more 4e take on the different ways Battlemaster can cash out (e.g. the set of Warlord maneuvers is split among Int-, Cha-, and Wis-favoring choices, which naturally support the intended "focus"). 1&3 strike me as the kind of core subclass difference that lets a class be highly flexible (e.g. Moon vs. Land Druid) while still retaining meaningful similarity between one subclass and another. The kind of thing where "all" 5e Warlords might get token ability to do several of these things, just as all Druids can both cast spells and shapeshift or all Clerics can Turn Undead, but only
specific types of Warlord can do any of them "well," and
no specific type can do
all of them well.
Incidentally, this is one reason why I think the Warlock is a tragically overlooked source of interesting mechanical ideas for a "5e Warlord." The different Pacts are loosely analogous to different "styles" (action-granting, healing, mitigation), while the Patrons are loosely analogous to the different stat and behavior "focuses" (Cha/Bravura, Int/Tactical, Wis/Resourceful). Short-rest spells, short-rest "gambits." Invocations, "leadership presence" and "training regimens." It requires a hell of a lot of from-the-ground-up rebuilding, but I really do think that a properly-considered blend of the Warlock structure with Bard and Battlemaster elements (the "giftable inspiration/superiority dice" idea, plus mitigation BM features and healy/cleansy Bard features) could go a
long way.
Fighters are not clearly weak, and your comparison with the sorcerer, the paladin, and the ranger all come up roughly on par, if not often better.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but I at least wasn't responding to "the Fighter is weak." In fact, in my last post in this thread, which was in reply to you, I was not talking at all about the Fighter being weak. I was questioning your claim, or at least apparent claim, that the Fighter has a significant lead in damage. The exact phrase was "a fighter probably IS the highest-damage-output at most levels," and the clear discrepancy between the examples cited gave a very clear impression of Fighters having a significant damage advantage.
This is also not really the impression I got from Hussar's argument; I did not see anything that said the Fighter was "weak," that is, that the Fighter
cannot do damage, nor that its damage was too small to be meaningful. Certainly, the word "weak" was not used anywhere on that page (well, the quote of my post did, but that was a Warlord encouraging weak-point exploitation). The impression I got is that Hussar was using his own experience as an example of the same thing I'd suggested, that the Fighter is often
said to lead in damage (even dramaically), but that empirically (for Hussar) and theoretically (for me), this doesn't seem to bear out. Or that at the very least it is definitely not a guarantee, when it is usually implied to be guaranteed or nearly so.
And...I really don't think they come out "often better." Again, my experience is primarily academic, but "often better" implies that "significant positive difference," and I really don't see it mathematically. By the numbers, they seem to have a slight advantage; and if we begin to assume that Paladins (or even Barbarians) don't exclusively use
their resources for combat (if they have a choice), it seems reasonable to expect that a Fighter does not always use Action Surge for combat either, which puts us more or less back at square 1.
Didn't mean to belabor the point!
