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

[Aldarc]

Honestly I don't have a really good one.

"Warlord" "Officer" "Captain" "Marshall" are all categorically different from "Fighter" "Ranger", etc. They imply rank not profession, and especially connote command and giving orders.

"Tactician" "Strategist" and the like are kind of boring. Like calling Wizards "Casters". Plus they just sound like modern words, whatever the etymology is. (Anybody for "Compleat Strategist"?)

So I don't know what the answer is. It's a tough one. Perhaps partly because the archetype from history, fiction, and myth doesn't exist as a profession: nobody starts as a Warlord. There's no such thing as an apprentice Warlord. It's something you become. That and it's an amalgam of concepts. I.e. giving spur of the moment tactical advantage is not a Marshall/Warlord thing, it's a...well, I don't really know.

Maybe we should just call it "Warlord" and always include the quotes. When speaking we can use air quotes.

Could anyone start off as a wizard (at least in D&D terms) along similar terms? Training and study are required. Hell, it's not as if there is anything such thing as an apprentice Fighter either. You have to expand the terminology and conception beyond the name 'fighter' to include things like 'knight,' 'soldier,' 'man-at-arms,' or 'guard.'

 

[Shades of Eternity]

Could anyone start off as a wizard (at least in D&D terms) along similar terms? Training and study are required. Hell, it's not as if there is anything such thing as an apprentice Fighter either. You have to expand the terminology and conception beyond the name 'fighter' to include things like 'knight,' 'soldier,' 'man-at-arms,' or 'guard.'

When I wrote my rpg (Dark Revelations - The Role Playing Game) - I created a soldier path to act as both fighter and warlord within the d20 system.

At the risk of back peddling, perhaps soldier would be a similar term. Not a true fighter, but a class that has the potential to act as officer and follower (that still gives bonuses to party members) at lower levels?

 

[Manbearcat]

So, depending on the party, style of play, pacing and other factors you could have a party that uses nothing but non-magical healing (an all-martial party with no potions), or one that only gets non-magical healing when they rest overnight, and that incidentally if someone sacks out with a few hps of damage they didn't bother to get healed before.

Really, that was one of the cool things about 4e: that the game's traditional need for 'healing' didn't dictate a 'cleric' or Wand of Cure Light wounds or other magical box o' band-aids, nor make removing one source or another problematic.

Just a couple things as it is a wee bit of an aside to the thread. This is definitely one of the great things about 4e. The amount of non-magical healing made available within the system is rife, thus enabling the all martial party (with Warlord as primary Leader) and the (quite common) dedicated-healerless-party. My last 1-30 game featured such a setup.

The only thing I'll say is that I think you're giving a wee bit of short-shrift to Second Wind. Discounting Dwarf, there are an extremely large number of ways to get Second Wind without spending a Standard Action on it (Minor Action, Immediate Action, Free Action, triggered on another turn when someone uses only a Minor Action). There is also the Fighter Feat that lets you sub + 2 to defenses for an MBA with Healing Surge rider on your Second Wind. My last group of players tricked out their PCs with Second Wind shenanigans that took the standard action economy out behind the woodshed (one of them getting 2 SWs for minimal action economy on an encounter basis). It is pretty simply done without much PC build investment. That group had no dedicated healer (the Druid was rebuilt twice, once featuring Warlord hybridizing and the other Shaman hybridizing), but each player had Second Wind shenanigans + a Skill (encounter) Power that triggers HSes for themselves or their allies with Minor or Immediate Actions. The 3 PCs could access 10ish Healing Surges (if necessary) per encounter through solely mundane means.

 

[Manbearcat]

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

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

"Weapon Attack" in the jargon of 5e.

And honestly, I don't think 5e's loose balance (intra-party balance with respect to combat or across pillars, and the dubiously reliability of the encounter budgeting system - at all - but especially so when considering the effect on Bounded Accuracy and the expectant Saving Throw paradigm that the synergy of a few class features/spells and/or feat combos has) would be too terribly concerned about the terrifying specter of a Warlock + a Warlord.

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.

What makes you think anything tended to live long enough to deplete the striker's surges?

This is one I've seen many a time. It just doesn't hold up in play when you have a GM that is (a) familiar with the suite of challenges at his/her disposal and their prospective synergy, (b) is familiar with the "holes in the game" of the team PC, (c) spends their encounter budget wisely, and (d) has a workday paradigm of 5 scenes; 3 difficult non-combat challenges (whereby PCs are taxed Surges on micro-failures and macro-failure is punitive with respect to the stakes and story trajectory), and two combats of level + 2-4/level 5-8 (depending on tier).

Little to no melee control can be devastating. What is that Striker going to do if I spend a fair portion of my encounter budget on Traps/Hazards that serve as blocking terrain/control/damage and can't be ablated via HPs? How much damage potential value is lost when you're trying to manage an encounter with level + 2 Artillery Minions that are protected by terrain? What about when you're being slid next to an abundance of Challenging Terrain that immobilizes or puts 5/10/15 damage on you...by a Solo Controller who crushes you with status effects and is protected by Swarm guards that eat your super duper Striker damage as an Immediate Action (thus mitigating it dramatically) and chew through your (low) HPs with their Aura auto-damage (or 1/2 your Surge value)?

What about when the goal of the encounter isn't about HP ablation? What if it is about saving a little (Minion) girl when her skiff is attacked by a giant Tentacle Monster who has a dozen or more Tentacle Minions and likes to throw you in the water and drown you? What if it is about defending against wave after wave after wave of slimes and oozes that are seeping out of the ceilings/walls/floor until your ally (NPC or PC) can successfully exorcise Juiblex from a possessed fallen Paladin in a "haunted" throne room (via a difficult Complexity 3 SC)?

Sooner or later, you're going to wish you had some legitimate ranged control and the melee control and beefiness that a legit Defender provides. Sooner or later, you're going to wish you had some breadth of noncombat resources to call upon. Otherwise, your (TPK/major story fail) number is going to come up much sooner than you would like. The game isn't just about curb-stomping sack-full-of-HP encounter budgets filled with Brutes on neutered battlefields. Well. It might be. If it is, it is GM user error and not symptomatic of poor system design.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

This is one I've seen many a time. It just doesn't hold up in play when you have a GM that is (a) familiar with the suite of challenges at his/her disposal and their prospective synergy, (b) is familiar with the "holes in the game" of the team PC, (c) spends their encounter budget wisely, and (d) has a workday paradigm of 5 scenes; 3 difficult non-combat challenges (whereby PCs are taxed Aurges on micro-failures and macro-failure is punitive with respect to the stakes and story trajectory), and two combats of level + 2-4/level 5-8 (depending on tier).

I've seen that claim many times as well. It just doesn't hold up in play when you have a group of players that are (a) familiar with, and good at, synergizing, (b) know the "pitfalls" of what they are doing and how to compensate, (c) spends their various resources wisely, and (d) manages their workday such that they don't overextend themselves.

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

It would need some robust "spell-equivalent abilities," since a bard is a primary caster, but that's not the hardest design challenge in the world. It would be a significant departure from the bard as-is, but totally a viable thing.

I sugested using supririty dice as you can make a aquation comparing thew fighter subclass that gets superiority dice to the one that gets spells.
And sugested at around level 11 there would be more manuvers that you can chose from that take more then one dice to activate.

so you would start with 4 at the levels the bard gets new spell levels you would gain more dice ( 3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17)
One thing I wonder about is if from level 11 you should gain 2 dice each time as spells of 6th level or higer are considered more powerfull then the ones of 5th elvel or lower.
So you would end with 12 or 16 supriority dice.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

so you would start with 4 at the levels the bard gets new spell levels you would gain more dice ( 3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17)
One thing I wonder about is if from level 11 you should gain 2 dice each time as spells of 6th level or higer are considered more powerfull then the ones of 5th elvel or lower.
So you would end with 12 or 16 supriority dice.

Depending on the way it's presented, a minor concern could be the flexibility. Unlike spell slots, this proposed warlord might be able to spam lower level abilities a great deal more finely than a caster can with equivalent low level spells.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

What if, instead of the way the fighter does it (his dice remain relatively static in number but grow in die-size as he advances), this warlord get's different number and size of dice (like a caster gets higher level slots)?

 

[ChrisCarlson]

Which brings me to name suggestions: What about "Maneuverist"?...

 

[steeldragons]

Ok. Here's my last go 'round on this...I've got witches n' things that interest me infinitely more to create...

PDF available for those interested here, post #39. Comments, about anything there, welcome.

Enjoy...or don't...I'll just sit back and wait for the inevitable onslaught of all the ways this isn't "right" or "enough."