I guess my concern is that 5e--especially at low levels, but AFAICT it's true all the time--is a VERY dangerous, high-damage game. That is, either you don't get hit at all, or you get hit for 30-50% of your maximum HP every hit. THP can help give you an extra hit, but unless you're fantastically lucky, you are going to go down sometimes, and a "naturally supportive" class (since we can't use the R word) that can do absolutely diddly-squat nothing about that seems unwise and possibly unfair, giving the impression that it's an equally viable option when it isn't.
The high-damage perspective is pretty accurate from what I can see - fights are made to be quick, after all. But THP and healing don't differ in that they both give you extra hits between max HP and 0 hp. Where they do differ is that THP can't make you conscious again, but can exceed your normal max. And I can totally get the fact that when you want to play a support character, part of what you want to do is wake people up from unconsciousness. The Battlemaster doesn't have a specific class feature or ability that allows them to do it. If you wanted to play the battlemaster as someone who can wake people up from unconsciousness, and you wanted to do it without feats, you'd need to look at things like
potions of healing and how Action Surge can let you use them without giving up your attacks or doing two healing potions in one turn. While that would cover that base nicely (healing potions are cheap, after all!), I can totally understand why that's not greatly satisfying for warlord fans and why having some class feature that could undo unconsciousness would be a valuable thing.
There are ways to wake people up from unconsciousness that are not healing, of course. A "last stand" manuever that allowed someone to press on at 0 hp without unconsciousness, for instance, or which you could activate as a reaction to them falling to 0 hp and if they make a Con save (+ your superiority dice on the save), they can stay at 1 hp (a little like the 5e zombie mechanic) would all fit the bill. There's probably other ways to go about it as well. That + THP means that you have everything a true healer has and then some, all without invoking the specter of "martial healing" and inspirational HP.
It wouldn't satisfy those who view martial healing as a dealbreaker, though, and it would still have a lot of options that WOULDN'T be increasing allies' potential.
Basically: I believe that people should have control, to a certain extent, over what general "regions" or "sections" of the game's mechanics they have direct access to. That is their behavior (both as a player, and as a character) shaping their mechanics.
So like how choosing the BM gives the player access to the game's manuever mechanics, or how choosing the cleric gives you access to the game's spellcasting mechanics?
But at the same time, I believe that the mechanics you have access to majorly shape how you'll have the character behave. A character which is highly enabled to open her own can of whoop-arse is going to do so, at least some of the time. Exceptions will be rare, particularly when doing so is even slightly advantageous. The Battlemaster, at very most, can grant attacks to allies a couple times in a fight--the vast majority of her focus will still be on her own efforts. Action Surge only benefits her own efforts; Second Wind and Indomitable only improve her own survival.
At best, two or three of the dozen-or-so attacks she makes in a given fight will be granted to allies--offensively or defensively--the vast, vast majority of her contribution will still be her own. Even if she spends every single one of her Superiority Dice on ally-boosting effects, her player is strongly incentivized to think primarily about how she can personally-and-directly affect fights--not just the current fight, but future ones. The player's choices of ASIs/feats, gear, "boons" (unique non- or semi-equipment rewards of all kinds)...all of this will be shaped by the fact that a good two-thirds or more of her abilities are wholly centered on making herself more damaging, more survivable, more engaged (Action Surge). This mechanical fact shapes player choices and character behavior--which, in turn, shape the future of the character's mechanical reality. Hence, a "mutual shaping" relationship--each can be said to play a part in determining the other.
Since most of the issues I have with the Fighter chassis are baked into the fundamental class itself (3-4 attacks/Attack; Indomitable; Action Surge), but others are also baked into the subclasses (90%+ of maneuvers boost your own damage/hit rate, and the Champion is exclusively self-only passive benefits), I am very much of the opinion that trying to re-work it is not going to cut it. The mechanics will still naturally encourage the Fighter toward self-benefitting actions, and away from ally-benefitting actions. I would like a class that, by its very mechanical construction, encourages actions that make allies better at what they do *instead* of just doing most of the work yourself--whether "proactively" (e.g. hitting stuff to give bonuses when other people hit it?), "passively" ("presence"-style stuff?), "indirect" (granting actions?), or whatever other categories seem interesting/reasonable.
As someone very nicely put it in another Warlord thread: I see the Battlemaster as "the Fighter that picked up a side of Warlord," in much the same way that an Eldritch Knight is "the Fighter that picked up a side of Wizard." That's why it's perfectly reasonable for the vast majority of the Battlemaster's special mojo to be so self-supporting, rather than ally-supporting: that subclass has pinched the beneficial parts of another class to get better at its own native shtick, which is (more or less) being a durable bruiser. A 5e translation of the Warlord, on the other hand, would have features the Battlemaster doesn't get, lack features it does get, and have an enormously greater focus on working with/through others rather than "merely" next to them (if that makes sense).
Totally reasonable. If you wanna be an inspiring leader who helps party members, you're better off with bard and paladin since they're easier to take in that direction, and fluff-wise, those have supernatural stuff going on (though it's reasonably easy to fluff the supernatural out of them in a lot of situations, too, that's still "work"). Fighters still plow attacks into enemies on their default mode.
Yeah, I'm afraid I just don't have the emotional investment left to "hope" for an official Warlord-alike coming out any time soon. Whether it was intentional or not, whether it was hype or not, whether it was "just business" or not, 5e left me feeling like my interests had gotten the cold shoulder. The blanket silence on a lot of important topics (like the TCM), particularly when direct communications from the devs to me indicated (at least to me) that it was still to come, hasn't helped.
"Still to come" on a slow supplement release schedule is definitely a long view.
I think WotC had some trouble identifying what people actually
want out of a warlord that isn't "be exactly like a 4e warlord." The BM seems like it was designed to be the "fighter with lots of tactical and strategic options in a fight," someone who was making a lot of turn-by-turn decisions to capture the "what power do I use?" feel of many 4e classes. It has some inspirational leader capacity, but it's not designed around that concept.
I've just been told by more people than I can count on four limbs that feats are, and always will be, banned from their tables, fullstop. The intense antipathy I've encountered for feats (among other things) suggests to me that, if the 5e translation of the Warlord is to be viable at a majority of tables, I'm of the opinion that it absolutely *cannot* be dependent on feats. There are DMs that are a-okay with custom classes, but absolutely adamant that there be zero feats present at their table--for whatever reason, be it charop-avoidance, desire for simplicity, whatever. Making it depend on feats means making it hard-banned from too many tables that might at least consider it otherwise. It's already going to be an uphill battle at some tables, sure--I just see it as unnecessary fuel for the fire to make it feat-dependent too. You need DM approval for absolutely everything in 5e, if we're going to get technical--the whole thing is Schrodinger's Rules, where you never truly know what the rules are until the DM tells you (and, IME, even that is not wholly reliable). ((Yes, this is hyperbole, but it isn't completely devoid of experiential basis; as I was once told about the traffic laws of Boston, "the rules are a suggestion" and nothing more.))
Plus, I really do feel that my other reason for that request is the more interesting and meaningful of the two. With all of this, assume a character of level 2 or 3, since 5e intentionally makes the first couple levels "apprentice" stuff (or "training wheels," as I prefer to call it). An "archer" character--regardless of class--values picking up Archery feats because they directly improve and expand what they're capable of; there's nothing lost/wasted/redundant about them, as far as I know. Greatweapon fighters start off good at greatweapon fighting, and get even better at it if they spend the feat. But for this character concept--a heavy-support martial character--not only is a feat mandatory to really start supporting the whole party, but it's mutually exclusive with the main class feature people keep pushing (THP-granting)? That seems really unfair to that archetype, particularly when most other "gotta spend a feat, bro" archetypes have had that opportunity cost completely eliminated, whether through general rules ("Finesse" is now universal, not a feat) or backgrounds. For a simple example: my 5e "Academy Graduate" Bard is more of an academic and thus vaguely Wizard-like, while the "Entertainer" Druid is an actual public performer, and literally gets called "the Bard that isn't," and variations on that theme, by several other players.
Making a Warlord that doesn't need feats, but can still totally benefit from them--would even find them highly desirable!--seems like a better choice. It avoids the feat-antipathy issue I've seen, it follows what seems to be a 5e paradigm (feats are for enhancing more than enabling), and finally...it just means the player has greater control over how they build their character. Perhaps, instead of going for Inspiring Leader, a "5e Warlord" grabs Medium Armor Master and thus becomes a Dex-"tank"--"You can fail to hit me, or you can waste your efforts on my friends, they'll just shrug it off!" Or maybe a Strength-favoring Warlord goes for Polearm Mastery; or a "lazy-ish" high-Int, high-Cha Warlord goes for Actor because that leverages his prodigious social skills and Spy background better (which also strikes me as "enhancement" more than "enabling," just for non-combat). Since you seem to find it very appealing that, through choice, a 5e character actively makes a role, rather than "having" one, I feel like this is exactly the same logic applied as a design principle--give players the most opportunities to make the role for themselves, and that means NOT requiring them to take feats. A Battlemaster who wants to become more Warlord-y takes Inspiring Leader; a Warlord takes Inspiring Leader to *specialize* in Warlording, and takes Great Weapon Master (or Martial Adept) to become more Fighter-y.
I don't think a feat is necessary to take a BM in a heal-y direction, just useful.
Potions of Healing do the job of getting you up when you're down well enough (and you can even craft them with herbalism kit proficiency), and Rally takes care of most of the rest. But just because you can take the BM in a healy direction and be fine doesn't mean the BM is made to be party support, and I get the perspective that wants to be party support without spells out of the gate. While possible with any class, there's not a class that is good at it on auto-pilot.
The latter, at least in 4e. Of course, that doesn't have to remain true in 5e--I could quite easily see a 5e translation of the class which gets its abilities "a la carte," much like the Warlock or Battlemaster Fighter does (which would be sorta halfway between "when building" and "when acting.") But in general, you could create a (4e) Warlord who valued any one (or, for "Lazy"/"Princess" builds, two) of the "mental" stats. Some "presences" (core features--gave passive buffs to allies and boosted certain powers) benefitted solely from one stat (Int or Cha, usually), while others were flexible and could go for either of two stats (e.g. "half your Charisma or Intelligence modifier"), and one even got different boosts from different stats if an ally spent an action surge to attack (+Int+half level to damage) or didn't attack with it (+Cha+half level THP).
Now, just to be clear here, I am NOT trying to say that these presence features should be carried over word-for-word; that would be silly and almost certainly broken (whether good or bad, I cannot say). But the fact that you could make a Warlord who valued any (one or two) of the mental stats was awesome in my book. It meant having a martial combatant could be both mechanically and thematically encouraged to seek any (one) of those characteristics as a defining trait--which I think is a good thing. Just like I think it's a good thing (though not without its share of issues, either) that a pure-Dex Fighter--or really any class, now--is supremely viable from level 1.
With the current BM, you don't lose anything by putting your second-highest or third-highest score in CHA or INT or WIS if you want. There's no incentive to do so, but if you want to play a character with high mental ability scores, nothing stops you.
I think if we're looking for an "inspirational leader," that makes sense as a character who can get some mileage out of a good CHA. I imagine the PDK will do that, if it's following in the vein I expect.
