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

[Wuzzard]

I played a *lot* of D&D in the 80's. Never heard any of these terms, and never had any role expectations, except that wizards usually hung out in the back. In fact, I often remember clerics being the heavily armored ones that stood in the front, and a lot of times fighters did use bows primarily (cuz weapon speed and 2x a round.) My guess is that people are retcon'ing the past to justify the now.

I think the idea of roles are fine (in any given battle), but I don't like the concept as a character design crutch or constraint. I think that the pervasive roles in use today are a good distillation of an effective technique at RPG combat. RGP group tactics optimiaztion.

I don't recall playing any D&D games, just about ever, where the group was concerned about optimizing tactics, until after the MMO revolution and late into 3E play, and then all of a sudden my peers were over conscious about optimal team play. The vast history of the game is a rag-tag group of players that were generally overly concerned about their individual contributions and spot-light (even if that wasn't a term yet either.)

 

[TrippyHippy]

Yeah but you're not emulating a level 1 4eLord until level 6/7. You don't start emulating a Warlord until level 3. Compare with a Fighter, who gets a Fighting Style and recovery at level 1, or a Rogue who gets Sneak Attack and Expertise at level 1, etc.

To me, that's more of a criticism of the overpowered nature of 4E Classes. And the point that the Warlord Class was based on the flawed notion of having 'rank' at Level 1 without having any literal experience to justify it.

 

[Yunru]

Nowhere is it said Warlords have a rank. Hell even the class name "Warlord" is only the name of the class, and has zero influence on the ingame world.

 

[steeldragons]

No, I didn't. They weren't used in the books. They weren't used around the table. They weren't used in whatever circles I encountered D&D. It was only something that became widely used in the aftermath of things like World of Warcraft and D&D4th of course.

Right. 4e's "roles" are a video game conceit...that existed before 4e. But that doesn't make them an "always been in D&D" thing as 4e advocates love to reiterate. It makes total sense, for example, that the earlier poster that said they came to D&D via Neverwinter Nights...Of COURSE they think video game "roles" are a core part of D&D.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

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.

That's actually not true. A high-level fighter is in an excellent position to become a tank or a defensive "controller" for much the same reason he excels at DPR: grappling, like DPR, scales with number of attacks.

Imagine a 12th level Eldritch Knight with the Enlarge spell, Str 20, and Heavy Armor Master, Shield Master, and Grappler feats. He can grapple/push anything up to size Huge after enlarging himself, with Advantage on his Strength checks, and he can attempt it four times per round. He can Grapple/Prone an adult red dragon with near-certainty (+8 with advantage vs. +8, up to four times). He's sacrificed high DPR in the sense that he doesn't have anything that you need for truly high DPR (GWM or Sharpshooter) and the fact that he usually doesn't have a free hand for weapon-use anyway, although since this is 5E he always has the chance for cantrip-level DPR even he's just using his shield as an improvised weapon or head-butting things with his forehead.

(He would of course be even better at his chosen role if he were an Eldritch Knight 11/Rogue 1 for Athletics Expertise, but that is neither here nor there.)

 

[Remathilis]

Bully for you and your group. However, they were still not in the books or explicitly defined anywhere. If you and your group thought of them that way, they it merely highlights the way you and your group thought about the game. It doesn't present a universal truth - and the fact that so many D&D players were vocally uncomfortable about the notion of imposed 'roles' in 4E speaks volumes about the number of people who played D&D without them.

It's no different to people insisting that D&D always used grids and miniatures to play (which happened quite frequently with 4E). It didn't.

As I said before, the roles were DESCRIPTIVE; they described how the character was USUALLY played. Now, it was certainly possible to break the molds (something every edition but 4e did right; allow out of the box thinking) but the fact that they could be broken does not deny that a lot of people DID view the guy with low AC and high HP as the one to get beat up in combat or that the moment you find yourself with half the party in single digit hp or dying, the "gee, maybe someone should have played a character with cure light wounds" didn't happen.

4e got it wrong when it said roles were PRESCRIPTIVE: they defined the class more than described it. Why does a fighter tank? Because he's a defender and that's what defenders do. Why does an artificer heal? Because he's a leader and that's what leaders do. That kind of thinking got 4e in trouble with grid-fillers, boxed thinking ("This is a new leader class. It MUST have encounter-based healing.") and rewriting of flavor to make the old classes conform to the new paradigm (such as druids losing most of their healing magic until Essentials). That was a bad choice, and one that Essentials started running away from pretty hardcore (though as early as PHB2 it was noticeable that classes were often descibed as X, with a little Y)

But to assume that the concept of roles sprung forth whole cloth in 2008 is ridiculous. It was an attempt to give game-mechanics and codify something people had been using unofficially for decades. 4e just went overboard with its implementation.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Which is why the saga noble is a better model than the warlord. It is broad enough to be a class.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

OH! Well that's simple. It is systematically "just different" from other class ideas because it was created, quite literally, to follow/fill a systematic class grid that was completely artificial and developed for a different game.

Again, to be clear, that's not 4e bashing. That is just simple fact. Exactly what it was created for. They needed a "martial" "leader" to fit into their little boxes and said..."How 'bout this guy?"

So, yes. The warlord is "just different systematically" and, thus, does not fit/work to include in a non- class "role"/power source grid organization. 5e is not such a sysutem.

I guess we're all done here then. That was easy. Someone shoulda just asked that on page 1.

Except the warlord existed before 4e, so...nope.

They wanted a martial leader, and said ok, add morale healing to the warlord and translate it over.

 

[Wuzzard]

As I said before, the roles were DESCRIPTIVE; they described how the character was USUALLY played. Now, it was certainly possible to break the molds (something every edition but 4e did right; allow out of the box thinking) but the fact that they could be broken does not deny that a lot of people DID view the guy with low AC and high HP as the one to get beat up in combat or that the moment you find yourself with half the party in single digit hp or dying, the "gee, maybe someone should have played a character with cure light wounds" didn't happen.

4e got it wrong when it said roles were PRESCRIPTIVE: they defined the class more than described it. Why does a fighter tank? Because he's a defender and that's what defenders do. Why does an artificer heal? Because he's a leader and that's what leaders do. That kind of thinking got 4e in trouble with grid-fillers, boxed thinking ("This is a new leader class. It MUST have encounter-based healing.") and rewriting of flavor to make the old classes conform to the new paradigm (such as druids losing most of their healing magic until Essentials). That was a bad choice, and one that Essentials started running away from pretty hardcore (though as early as PHB2 it was noticeable that classes were often descibed as X, with a little Y)

But to assume that the concept of roles sprung forth whole cloth in 2008 is ridiculous. It was an attempt to give game-mechanics and codify something people had been using unofficially for decades. 4e just went overboard with its implementation.

I agree that 4e did not create the roles, just made them explicit in the design. But that does not mean the roles were always there in the past, even though some players found the designations useful when they played. I believe the formulation of healer, tank and DPS may have existed at some tables early on, but that would take a focused group of players trying to optimize and win the game, etc. Which is not at all what I experienced, until, you know, the internet happened and MMO's and forums occurred.

So its likely that some used these terms and methodology before 4e, and before MMO's, but its not likely they were wide spread until the inflection point of the internet that allowed a global community to exist. I would imagine that MMO's caused much of the spreading of usage, because they are so competitive by nature. Because of the mechanics of the MMO's, structured similar to D&D, these tactics were effective and obvious eventually that they worked better than random mobs of snowflakes doing their own private thing, which is in my experience what happens at most all tables playing D&D by default.

edit: I do recall a lot of loner, snowflakes in Everquest too (early days). It took a while for these definitive concepts to sink in as group tactics, or even that group tactics were expected of players. Eventually that changed and playing the roles to win the adventures became the norm. The snowflakes were ostracized and probably left the major MMO's and sought other pastures. Those now indoctrinated in the one-true way of playing RPG's, group tactical combat for the win, probably took it back with them to the table-top games, if they hadn't already been playing that way.

 

[steeldragons]

I agree that 4e did not create the roles, just made them explicit in the design. But that does not mean the roles were always there in the past, even though some players found the designations useful when they played. I believe the formulation of healer, tank and DPS may have existed at some tables early on, but that would take a focused group of players trying to optimize and win the game, etc. Which is not at all what I experienced, until, you know, the internet happened and MMO's and forums occurred.

This. All of this.