Tony Vargas
Legend
The point behind that statement was, I thought very clearly, that 4e fans shouldn't go off the deep end and assume they were being willfully excluded just because the Warlord was the only full class to appear in a prior-edition PH1 that wasn't in the 5e PH. That there's no reason to think the class, and as I had already suggested, other 4e-ism, couldn't be included in the Advanced game as it filled out over the
And I've already answered it completely, so I won't repeat myself, as we've already been warned twice that this thread is threatening to degenerate into back-and-forth bickering.
It really didn't mean much in 4e, either, calls for a 'Martial Controller' went unanswered for years (and were arguably never answered), the Shadow source only ever had Strikers, the arcane source had two strikers and two leaders, the divine had two leaders, the Druid had both leader and controller sub-classes, etc, etc... only the Psionics Source was neatly one-of-each-Role.
Plus, 5e has pendulum-swung away from 4e formal roles, past traditional D&D roles, to focusing on class concepts.
That's fantastic for Warlord fans, since the Warlord is a concept that was constrained by the heal/buff definition of the jargon-'Leader' formal Role. Tactical Warlords, for the most dramatic instance, had a few (11, according to the late, great, Wrecan on the WotC boards), exploits that represented maneuvering enemies into unfavorable tactical positions. There were also some that imposed conditions. But, they were kept few and limited because they'd tend to step on the Controller role, and the Warlord was already conceived as a secondary defender (though that only worked out with the Bravura). In 5e, design space is open to allow a Tactician or Strategist type Warlord to specialize heavily in such maneuvers, pursuing a concept of defeating the foe before a blow is even struck (though, obviously, since that'd be a little /too/ CaW for an RPG, not literally), or be a Chess Grandmaster style player of mind-games and deep strategy, all contained within the character, rather than asking the player to become a tactical genius before he could be allowed to play the concept (which is only fair - no one has to bulk up like Arnold Schwarzenegger to play a Barbarian).
Potentially awesome, and enabled by 5e's looser more concept-oriented design philosophy.
The fighter /is/ deeply committed to high-DPR as it's prime contribution in combat, it's class features put it there with little flexibility to temper it with anything else, and no way at all to opt out of high DPR in favor of something else. Same with the Barbarian, and, in-combat, the Rogue, and a number of other classes. DPR is a major thing in D&D, like focus fire, and healing, because of the way hps work, and doubly so in 5e because of the emphasis on fast combat, so that doesn't make those classes suck or anything, it just makes them focused.
Looking beyond defined roles I can see even more things for the Warlord to do. Can we do what the warlord could in 4e with what we have in 5e now? What the Warlord concept should be able to do when unconstrained by 4e formal Role? No to both, not even close. The non-magic-using options in 5e are tightly constrained - there are only 5 (though one of them has been called into question up-thread) sub-classes out of 38 that don't use magic, they all primarily contribute DPR in combat. No buffing, no hp-restoration, no battlefield control, just DPR. The warlord-like options in 5e are extremely limited, of questionable viability, and spread out among several classes and other options. Some of those are helpful. There's no need for the Warlord to grant or require military or social rank (potentially contentious issues), for instance, because that's available from Backgrounds (where it makes more sense, anyway). There's no need for the warlord to reach outside it's concept and become a medic physically treating wounds to fill some part of the 'leader' role, it can stick to inspiration as a means of restoring hps.
5e & the Warlord could be great for eachother. We just have to get over the baggage of 4e, most especially that of the edition war.
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