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

[mellored]

It was many pages ago but people were talking about polls on favourite classes. WotC published the results during the D&DN playtest and the warlord was near the bottom of the heap with something like 3 or 4% of the vote. The Wizard won with 15% as the most popular class.

In the Warlords defence it was not the least popular class and IIRC it beat the Druid and Monk.

Which might of bumped it out of the PHB, particularly since they made an attempt with the battlemaster.

But like the ranger, they didn't quite hit the mark.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No one needs to be cut at all. There's no reason you can't use a warlord with inspirational healing while I use one without it. The idea is to disentangle the character type from the HP model, since we can generally agree the character type would be a nice addition but we cannot generally agree that HP should be inspirational

The problem here is you lost this fight neigh 15 years going now, and there's no point to continuing the struggle. 3.0 and every edition beyond that has utterly eschewed 'meat' hit points in every way possible. There are a dozen mechanics spread across the entirety of 5e that completely undermine any attempt to call hit points meat and not (to a large extent) 'morale' or 'inspiration' or whatever you want to name it. Adding a warlord with inspirational healing is only killing an already dead horse that you continue to beat on. Its pointless, and it just foists an unnecessary constraint on the design of the class that has no value.

EDIT: and to be clear, this isn't a case of "I won't try to give you what you want" or I'm trying to make you 'play my way' or any of these sorts of comments that are likely to ensue. Its just that there's nothing I can do about the way Mike and Co already designed 5e. They clearly designed a game with hit points largely representing willingness, energy, and mental capacity to continue fighting, not 'what percentage of your body has been turned to hamburger'. I can't change that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Since I got specifically called out I thought I should probably respond. Objecting to the Warlord appearing in UA or another supplement wasn't really my intent. At least partly because I think there's zero chance of that happening, with or without me. I originally engaged to try once again to understand the appeal of the class to some people, and why certain characteristics were non-negotiable, and to find out...mostly as an exercise in game design...if there was something that would address my concerns while still being acceptable to the proponents.

I honestly do find it a curious puzzle why this one class, in one specific form, is so precious to some players. I think the analogy to Illusionists is a great example: some people liked it as its own class, and the Illusionist sub-class bears almost no resemblance to that original class, and yet you don't find 100 page vitriolic threads about Illusionists. And if the debate did arise, I would think that Illusionist fans would be so eager to have their class back that they'd be in a mood to compromise on the details. Not so with the Warlord crowd.

Somebody should write their psychology dissertation on this one.

Anyway, the discussion reverted...unfortunately but perhaps inevitably...to "why can't you just not use a class you don't like?" and "if you oppose it you must just be a mean & selfish person" and to defend myself I got sucked into a pointless side debate. Sure, if the Warlord ever becomes official I will do my best to refluff it or ignore it. My interest in this discussion isn't to make sure the Warlord doesn't happen...Mike Mearls doesn't need my help with that...but because I like game design and solving hard problems.

If this thread (or ones like it) had arrived at a point where all the participants said, "Ok, I'd sign off on that" I would have found it a rewarding use of time, even if doing so would have zero impact on official content. Props to mellored for being willing to have that discussion, but he seems to be in the minority.

I don't think you can get ALL fans to sign off on anything in D&D. I'll sign off on something that allows me to create a 4e-like warlord, a martial character with a primarily mundane feeling theme that can 'heal' by inspiration, at least to an extent that replaces the cleric (and I don't really buy banana's healing isn't needed in 5e position, IME going without a healer is a bad mistake). It doesn't have to work exactly the same as the cleric, like it pretty much did in 4e.

It should also allow for other tactical assistance functions backed up by mechanics, so things like buff/debuff, initiative bonuses, some sort of forced move/positioning capability, morale bonuses/penalties, etc are all possibilities. I don't object to some sort of social sphere kind of ability either. I wouldn't object to some sort of exploration sphere ability, except I can't think of one that would seem to associate with the archetype.

I think something on the lines of granting use of hit dice in combat and some bard-like healing bonus do sound like good options that have been suggested. If those are acceptable to opponents of 'inspirational healing' as well, great. OTOH I am not exactly worried about there being some perfect compromise. I'm primarily concerned with what WotC can produce that I can use. If it has to be made less useful to me so that it will exist at all, well so it goes, but I want what I want, and that won't really change.

 

[Remathilis]

I think I fall more on Tony's side. The problem with a fighter subtype is that it is TOO good with weapons. Not that SOME warlords shouldn't be, but it should be possible to have a range there from 'about as good as a cleric' up to a bit shy of a leaderish battlemaster. Give it several possible major shticks, inspirational healing, commander's strike/positioning/initiative, and buff/debuff, with the ability to mix and match them a bit (IE you'd have 3 subtypes but at least one class feature would be common to all three but give a choice that fell into one of them, so that any given warlord could double down or diversify a bit).

That's how I would do it.

This is interesting. There is nothing in the 4e battle-master that implies he's not good with weapons or as good as a fighter with them. (Going on my memory of PHB1, a fighter got a measly +1 to hit to show it was a better combatant than any other class, with the majority of its powers being focused on defense/retaliation and occasional large hits. The warlord got a little less hp, and his powers rarely buffed himself, creating the illusion of being less effective. A fighter and warlord using a longsword, chainmail and shield had the same AC, to hit, and base damage (before powers) and the warlord had slightly less hp. There is nothing there that screams "I'm not as good a fighter as a fighter", just a different focus given by role.

What this seems to be proposing is less a "warlord" and more a generic "leader" class; something akin to the Noble class of 3e/d20 era. Someone who could fight (medium bab, d8 hd, but all weapons/armor) but in reality was highly focused on the social pillar (contacts, inspiration, favors, teamwork, cha-skills) that could work as a politician, diplomat, noble-scion, or military commander, depending on subtype or build. If that's the case, that might be a good class (certainly not a unique one, as mentioned it saw print on Star Wars d20, Dragonlance 3e, and other d20 games) and a "warlord" subclass for this noble class that gives it a boost on combat abilities would work well too, but it does seem like at that point we've considerably drifted form the notion of "4e warlord as a base-class in 5e" then.

But that might be a perception thing. I saw the 4e warlord as "fighter with leadership powers" rather than "leader with some combat training". My "warlord subclass" for fighter was built with that in mind; if the latter is required I could see the need for a full class.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, @Elfcrusher, could it possibly be that A) We have a full Illusionist class in 5e, complete with pretty much everything a 1e Illusionist could do, plus more or B) there is a larger contingent of players who want a warlord class than an illusionist class or C) both of the above?

If you want a very similar discussion to this one, surf back a few months at En World and look at the Psionicist threads. Only difference is, the Psionicist crowd GOT what they wanted - a full Psion class. Every single argument applied to Warlords equally applies to Psions. So, pretty much, the arguments against warlords hold about as much water as the ones agains Psions. IOW, none.

But, out of curiosity, what does a 1e Illusionist have that a 5e one does not? What's missing? Other than the fact that 5e uses a somewhat different casting system, what spells or abilities does an illusionist have from previous editions that is missing from 5e?

Yeah, I played a 1e illusionist, up to high levels (I recall having demi-shadow magic, though most of the rest is pretty well lost to time). I don't recall being really dismayed by the 2e illusionist. It was appreciably different, but pretty much better in all respects. It was a class that was very seldom used, interesting, but not mainstream, and it didn't add a huge amount to the game in the sense that you couldn't do the same stuff basically with a wizard, you just started off a bit slower on illusions and had other spells you could fall back on.

Later editions have had pretty much the same thing as 2e, except for 4e, which pretty much doesn't do illusions. There are some in 4e, but not so many and there's no build/class that really exemplifies that archetype. Its nice that 5e has something at least as robust as 2e had, even a bit more robust. I like that, but even as a 'fan' of the old 1e illusionist I wasn't feeling very deprived, except maybe in 4e.

 

[Remathilis]

Not really, you could always take ritual caster as a fighter if you had an INT 13, not exactly a high bar

Huh. I though "no magic" was "no magic", ritual included. Either way, I guess its a feat-tax for a warlord as every other leader gets ritual casting for free...

There are of course always some people asking for pretty much anything you can imagine, but the very fact that we have 100 page threads on Warlord in 5e tells me that its a hot topic.

My point is that being in PH1 didn't save other classes. Elements of basic, 1e, and 2e all got dropped. You can't argue something should be there just because it was in PH1 of an edition.

 

[Remathilis]

If by "non-magical, non-supernatural" you mean "historically realistic" then I agree. D&D is a fantasy gaming system.

No, by non-magical, non-supernatural, I mean literally, "talking to you makes you healthier" power.

Take a barbarian and a fighter. Give them both weapons and armor, and they look very similar in terms of combat. Then, both of them find something that really pisses them off (insert trigger here). The barbarian taps into the primal fury locked deep within, touching some element and suddenly, he hits harder, shrugs off blows, can attack with reckless abandon, etc. The fighter, uh, is really, really mad when he makes his d20 roll. There is a mechanical reason the barbarian is getting rage bonuses right now (rage class feature) and the fighter isn't, but there is also a story purpose; barbarians touch the primal forces of nature and draw on their power to fuel their rage while a fighter does not have that power; he can't simply draw on rage because he's angry, no matter how well Role-played it is.

Warlords need a "pool of primal fury"-like power source if they are going to do amazing things. If their words can heal wounds or inspire allies, a bit of latent magic might go a long way to explain why a charismatic fighter can't do the same thing. If a warlord's abilities are credited to intelligent tactics, something needs to explain why anyone with the soldier background and a high Int score can't pull off similar abilities.

It (obviously) not impossible to run with "special training" as a handwave, but I think it would go far to smooth out some bumps to give a 5e warlord some supernatural force aiding in doing its more extraordinary actions...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It was many pages ago but people were talking about polls on favourite classes. WotC published the results during the D&DN playtest and the warlord was near the bottom of the heap with something like 3 or 4% of the vote. The Wizard won with 15% as the most popular class.

In the Warlords defence it was not the least popular class and IIRC it beat the Druid and Monk.

Eh, the big 4 are always going to garner the lion's share of the vote in that sort of poll. They're familiar to everyone and pretty much consistent across all editions. They can pretty well cover any character concept too, to some degree. EVERYTHING else is niche, and I note that nothing else gets much MORE support than the warlord either, so really that poll IMHO didn't say a lot about what the priority would be in terms of including classes. In any case, as you note, since classes that people insist MUST be part of any D&D were less popular than warlord we can conclude that the poll had no bearing on WotC's actual decisions about what to include or not include.

 

[mellored]

I wouldn't object to some sort of exploration sphere ability, except I can't think of one that would seem to associate with the archetype.

Marching formation (move overland faster).
Secure encampments (spend 10 minutes and enemies have disadvantage to sneak upto you).
... I think that's it, beyond basic skills.

But that's ok, they can be weak on that pillar.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

They promised a lot of thngs and then quietly never mentioned them again.

I'm sure early on they had all kinds of ideas popping around, things and goals then change but people take all that as a promise that was now broken. Its why I don't blame them for not announcing things they are working on until they are ready to ship.