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

[ChrisCarlson]

I have a question: If someone played a warlord in 4e, and chose zero action granting abilities. At all. Were they playing a warlord correctly?

 

[mellored]

What kind of manuvers/ tactis are there that require more then one person ?
Flanking and makinf a shield wal are 2 things that come to mind.

Combo-attacks. Having one person grab someone's shield while the other stabs.

Maybe some magical combo's. Wind + fire = bigger fire. grease+ fireball = fire field.

 

[Aldarc]

I'll ignore the accusations of hypocrisy and arbitrariness and respond to the above: in my view the inner mental state of my character is entirely under my control. I can't control if orc swords pierce my body, or if my senses perceive things, or what knowledge my character has. But I and only I can think thoughts, feel emotions, choose motivations, and decide courses of action for my character.

Magic can override that because it's, you know, "magic". I don't mind losing a saving throw against a Geas spell (is that still in the game?) because it's not really my character deciding to pursue that course of action, it's the magic.

But if somebody uses a non-magical ability to persuade me to take a course of action, and I the player am not instigating it, then somebody else is controlling my thoughts/actions/emotions.

Look, I'm not inventing this because I'm looking for an excuse to invalidate Warlords. I'm explaining it to help those who are interested to understand why at least one person is opposed to some of the proposed class design. Am I going to being contradictory? Probably. I'm human. There may be other cases of this sort of loss of agency that I haven't really noticed before, for reasons I haven't thought through yet.

Instead of trying to prove that I'm a hypocrite or tell me why I'm wrong, I'd love to hear another way of understanding this problem, or hear a proposal for a different sort of fluff that maybe wouldn't be offensive.

Whatcha got?

Have you considered the possibility of discussing with the warlord player about their abilities when they use them? It's what people commonly do in cooperative games - talk to each other about what they plan on doing - especially since people who use scarce-use abilities tend to not want them to go in vain, particularly to people who will be ungrateful about it. But if you have not considered talking to others to discuss when people use their abilities on you, have you considered saying 'no' to its effects, since you believe it's in your fiat to do so? Imagine if I yelled, "Look out!" for something you may not have seen and you then look. Did I remove your agency if you look? Of course not. I imagine that warlord abilities operate along similar lines. They have an eye for the big picture when it comes to combat. They may not be as good at fighting as a fighter or other heavier slugger (e.g. barbarian, paladin, ranger), but they know how to optimize the tactical field of play.

But what if the warlord was a martial class, but the flavor fluff text echoes sentiments along the lines of "the extraordinary efficacy of the warlord's inspirational words seemingly blurs the lines between the mundane and the magical" such that people can fluff the 'power' of the warlord to be either mundane or magical? Your character could then view it as almost bardic magic, while the actual warlord player may regard it as mundane as it comes.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Have you considered the possibility of discussing with the warlord player about their abilities when they use them?

Sure, and if the 4e Warlord ever makes it into the game I'll have to do that. But my hope is that instead a "master tactician" makes it into the game that gives you all the mechanics you want, without a few pieces of the fluff that I don't want. That is, anything that suggests the character is "leading" the other members of the party. (Tony: I wasn't using "leader" in the sense of 4e combat roles, I meant "leader" in the conventional sense.)

Seems to me that's a decent middle ground. I don't know how an unwillingness to change anything, as seems to be the case with some posters, constitutes the basis for moving toward a compromise.

"You had your way with first PHB, we get our way with next one" is not really meeting anybody halfway. The question should be "Can we design a class that will be acceptable to the majority?"

 

[Tony Vargas]

I have a question: If someone played a warlord in 4e, and chose zero action granting abilities. At all. Were they playing a warlord correctly?

There were plenty of warlords like that. Action-granting exploits included some good ones, and some cool, flavorful ones, but they were less numerous than, say hp-restoring exploits. Many of them were added in a Dragon article when the 'lazy' build had generated so much discussion. Even after that article, it took a bit of determination & system mastery to get a pure 'lazy'build that did nothing but grant actions, usually involved hybriding with Shaman.

Ideally, a 5e warlord would be the same way, customizeable enough that the player will be able build to the concept he wanted, whether that was a virtual-non-combatant 'princess build' that granted most of it's actions under the melodramatic rubric of needing to be rescued constantly, or a lead-from-the-front 'bravura' type who never granted an action just took actions that left his allies with some residual bonuses, or anything in between.

On the flip side, can you imagine how awful it would be if all players showed up for the first session all toting warlords, each hoping to add that extra synergy to the team. A whole team of warlords! "You go." "No, you go." "No, really, you go." "You've got a great shot there, why don't you take it." "But you've got even a better shot, so go ahead." "I'm just going to be over here distracting the orc, so you can clobber it again." The orc shakes his head and walks away.

All multiplier and no force.

That joke's made the rounds of 4e tables, yes.

 

[Aldarc]

Sure, and if the 4e Warlord ever makes it into the game I'll have to do that. But my hope is that instead a "master tactician" makes it into the game that gives you all the mechanics you want, without a few pieces of the fluff that I don't want. That is, anything that suggests the character is "leading" the other members of the party. (Tony: I wasn't using "leader" in the sense of 4e combat roles, I meant "leader" in the conventional sense.)

Seems to me that's a decent middle ground. I don't know how an unwillingness to change anything, as seems to be the case with some posters, constitutes the basis for moving toward a compromise.

"You had your way with first PHB, we get our way with next one" is not really meeting anybody halfway. The question should be "Can we design a class that will be acceptable to the majority?"

Elfcrusher, how do you feel about the Fighter Battlemaster's 'Rally,' 'Maneuvering Strike,' and 'Commanding Strike' abilities which are already in AL?

 

[Manbearcat]

That Is why I would sugest that the healing a warlord would do is to alouw characters to spend healing hitdice during combat instead of during a rest.
This way It would not add a kind of healing that is not already in the game.

I agree. It would be good thematically and tactically compelling from a Warlord player's perspective (I would think).

In some thread or another, I envisioned a 5e Warlord as follows:

a) Valor Bard chassis.

b) Heals via unlocking PCs' Hit Dice in combat (with the proper scaling augmentation) a la the DMG module.

c) Can forgo own Action to allow allies to use either a Basic Attack or a Cantrip.

d) Refluffed form of Bardic Inspiration that gives outl dice for the attack checks, skill rolls, and saving throws.

e) A form of Cunning Action that only works on allies and allows them to Dash or Disengage.

f) Some appropriate limited use stuff refreshable on Short Rest and Long Rest that hews to the thematic/tactical portfolio of b - e above but amps it up.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

c) Can forgo own Action to allow allies to use either a Basic Attack or a Cantrip.

What's exactly do you mean by "basic attack"?

And a warlock is probably totally cool with allowing cantrips...

 

[ChrisCarlson]

Originally Posted by Wuzzard

On the flip side, can you imagine how awful it would be if all players showed up for the first session all toting warlords, each hoping to add that extra synergy to the team. A whole team of warlords! "You go." "No, you go." "No, really, you go." "You've got a great shot there, why don't you take it." "But you've got even a better shot, so go ahead." "I'm just going to be over here distracting the orc, so you can clobber it again." The orc shakes his head and walks away.

All multiplier and no force.

That joke's made the rounds of 4e tables, yes.

You joke, but if you go nearly all the way there you have something else entirely. One serious striker and four warlords was a terrifying force of nature.

 

[Manbearcat]

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

Which takes place off-screen (if it happens at all). On screen (of which we devote time toward playing at the table), whatever "injuries" (of which no one ever suffers any demonstrable effect besides the binary condition of "out of the fight momentarily or dead") occur in the fiction must be reconciled by an even more mundane expenditure of Hit Dice. Forget the hospital, the trauma ward, the ICU et al.

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.

The mechanical system itself completely removes the harm! It is embedded in the Basic and Standard system in 5e! If you want to excise Hit Die (and your having to reconcile "injuries" with their expenditure and utterly muting those non-impactful, imagined ailments), you are free to do so via modules in the DMG. Your Advanced game could (a) remove/mute the effect of Hit Die on play, (b) use the Exhaustion system to simulate lasting injuries, and (c) would by default not need to include any Warlord class because it was already excluded from the Basic and Standard system! It would take opt-in to have it at all!

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.

I've perused various threads as of late and seeing you say this a lot lately. You have a very different perception of how the last several years have gone than I do. You probably have a very different view of how this playtest went than I do.

First, 4e players are not monolithic. I can't account for any number of random people on other boards or even on here (which is the only community I actively take part in these days). Second, I can fairly comfortably say that all the major, outspoken 4e advocates on these boards wouldn't disagree with the contention "the majority of healing that takes place in 4e is inspirational/martial/nonmagical." Spending Healing Surges at Short Rests is nonmagical. Second Wind (which everyone has) is nonmagical. Beyond those, there are an enormous number of Feats, Theme Features/Powers, riders from nonmagical Attack Powers, Utility Powers, Skill Powers...on and on...that trigger the access of your Healing Surges in combat which are nonnegotiably nonmagical.

The majority of healing in 4e is nonmagical. I suspect the same can be said for 5e now given the devs excised the primary impact of the Healing Surge system (including its supporting infrastructure) on play (which is the embedded combat narrative of "The Rally"), while cribbing the secondary impact of the Healing Surge system in Hit Dice (out of combat healing which extends the Adventuring Day and relieves the pressures toward the 15 minute work day).

I don't know who "blasted you for being uneducated" if you said "the majority of healing in 4e is inspirational/martial/nonmagical", but they wouldn't be correct. And I'm 100 % certain they are not in the majority. And these aren't "talking points" to win a debate. These are facts now (after I've run the system probably as much or more than any other human on this planet) just as they were facts 4 years ago.

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.

Tolkein's works are a mash-up of two subgenres of fantasy fiction; Romantic Fantasy and Heroic Fantasy.

Rocky and Die Hard, while not aspiring to precisely the same message as The Hobbit and LotR, are both "Tolkeinesque" in that they have a great deal of trope and theme overlap, thus qualifying them for the same subgenres.