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

[I'm A Banana]

I think all the "It's almost there, but..." responses pretty much make my case - all the warlord I'd be happy to accept isn't enough warlord for some players.

It should have the option to surrender your own attack at will

An at-will action-grant shouldn't be out of the question, it should just be limited on the sorts of actions granted.

I'm not a big fan of this because it basically ensures that the warlord's damage output is always equal to the damage-dealing-est character's damage output, without the tradeoffs that that character needed to go through to get that high damage spike. Warlord doesn't have to dump INT to take advantage of a high STR, forex, they just give their attack to the barbarian. Additionally, I played a princess warlord in late 4e for a few (~8) levels, and choosing who to give the attacks to was basically a calculation more than an interesting decision. I'm cool with granting attacks in fights, but when that moves to "I don't take actions, I give actions," you're not playing your character anymore, you're playing the rest of the party. If you wanna do that, go play games where you control a party rather than a character.

The 4e warlord didn't have this problem - any at-will attack-granting power was less powerful than another character's at-will attack-granting power because basic attacks were usually less powerful than at-wills.

Y'know, thinking about it, maybe I could be sold on at-will attack-granting if it was something like "Your ally makes an attack with a melee or ranged weapon, and on a hit deals 1d6 damage, plus damage equal to your Intelligence bonus, instead of the damage they normally do," or something else clearly worse than "hit it with your own damn sword, if you can."

Actually, this would be pretty good except I'd want actual hp restoration to be consistent with the official definition of hp in the game, with maybe an alt explanation for people who see hp=meat (which I believe you are, yes?)

Restoring hps need to be an option. (just like a Cleric might never cast Cure Wounds, a Warlord might never use Inspiring Word)

A class option shouldn't have to determine your game's HP narration, so any warlord option should be compatible with the idea of wound-hp (or at least the RAW "sub-50% wound hp"). This means either it doesn't heal others' hp, or it has a bard/paladin/barbarianesque "I'm a bit supernatural at the edges" thing going on, maybe a little similar to what Aragorn had, or what the spell-less ranger has. If it must be both purely mundane and hp-healing, then it dictates that HP cannot be wounds, and that's not kosher.

There's nothing wrong with a campaign-wide decision to treat hp as 99% inspirational (or, heck, purely inspirational), either, but it shouldn't be a precondition of accepting a class or a class option.

Inspiring Leader is on possible Warlord concept, though it's a solid one - a Warlord could instead (or also) be tactically focused for instance, or could be a source of inspiration, but not a leader.

The choice of an archetype needs to be, in the spirit of 5e, something that say something about your place in the world. "I also focus a bit on tactics" vs. "I am maybe a bit reckless" is not a character archetype like "I harness wild magic" or "I harness the power of dragons." Rather than fine nuance, the archetypes need to be dramatic and significant statements of who you are as a character. Lets not fall into the same trap the fighter did and get defined primarily by your mechanical fobs.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Weapon and a free hand just seems a little more intuitive or familiar a style than shield and a free hand.

Part of the problem I'm seeing is with the multiple attack mechanic. Bonuses make them snowball, and magic weapons in 5e can have some crazy damage bonuses, just for one instance, so your ignore-DPR-for-this-other-option build can suddenly have his optimal choice become DPR again. At the same time, they don't deliver much damage when you can't use them - with an OA, for instance - so the 'threat' of an OA doesn't scale like it should.

'Cool' is very subjective, of course. Not that opinions about genre are a lot less so.

Yes, Cool is very subjective, which is kind of the point. At this point it may be helpful to clarify why I'm capitalizing Cool by actually quoting the thing I'm referring to, which is Steve Brust's Cool Stuff Theory of Literature.

The Cool Stuff Theory of Literature is as follows: All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool. And that works all the way from the external trappings to the level of metaphor, subtext, and the way one uses words. In other words, I happen not to think that full-plate armor and great big honking greatswords are cool. I don't like 'em. I like cloaks and rapiers. So I write stories with a lot of cloaks and rapiers in 'em, 'cause that's cool. Guys who like military hardware, who think advanced military hardware is cool, are not gonna jump all over my books, because they have other ideas about what's cool.

The novel should be understood as a structure built to accommodate the greatest possible amount of cool stuff.

A D&D game or other RPG is exactly the same way. As long as everybody has similar tastes in what's cool, you'll have a good time.

And on that note, there's nothing uncool to me about having "your ignore-DPR-for-this-other-option build [acquire a magic weapon and] suddenly have his optimal choice become DPR again." It's an additional capability, it's useful in some circumstances. The fighter hasn't lost any capabilities, and the magic weapon will only be "optimal" under some circumstances anyway, so it's all good. (And "optimal" with respect to what, anyway?) That's because I'm into versatility. No matter how good your weapon is, even if it's Blackrazor, there will still be circumstances under which unsheathing it will be a bad idea.

If someone else finds it cool to have characters be pigeonholed by builds, and he doesn't like a magic item that lets him out of his pigeonhole, he might find the possibility of such magic items rather less cool.

 

[mellored]

Just have to go that liiil' extra bit OP on principle, huh?

The warlord using Inspiring Word to allow characters to spend HD in combat (or extra HD out of combat) is PRECISELY what I designed my warlord to do.

But the fact that there is no other way in the game to use an HD in combat isn't "enough?" The fact that this would be something completely unique to the warlord? They should throw in that "+ Cha" too and figure out how to make it scale?!

+cha isn't inherently OP.

i mean, if you could use it twice per short rest at level 11 then you would only be handing out 18 extra HP. less then bards song of rest. hardly OP.
it could even be at-will at high levels (it would be OP at-will at low levels).

also, presumably that's the healer (life cleric) sub-class. not every bardlord..

 

[mellored]

I'm not a big fan of this because it basically ensures that the warlord's damage output is always equal to the damage-dealing-est character's damage output, without the tradeoffs that that character needed to go through to get that high damage spike. Warlord doesn't have to dump INT to take advantage of a high STR, forex, they just give their attack to the barbarian. Additionally, I played a princess warlord in late 4e for a few (~8) levels, and choosing who to give the attacks to was basically a calculation more than an interesting decision. I'm cool with granting attacks in fights, but when that moves to "I don't take actions, I give actions," you're not playing your character anymore, you're playing the rest of the party. If you wanna do that, go play games where you control a party rather than a character.

The 4e warlord didn't have this problem - any at-will attack-granting power was less powerful than another character's at-will attack-granting power because basic attacks were usually less powerful than at-wills.

Y'know, thinking about it, maybe I could be sold on at-will attack-granting if it was something like "Your ally makes an attack with a melee or ranged weapon, and on a hit deals 1d6 damage, plus damage equal to your Intelligence bonus, instead of the damage they normally do," or something else clearly worse than "hit it with your own damn sword, if you can."

multi-attack takes care of thism at least past level 5.

fighter hits with his sword twice.
bardlord hits with the fighter's sword once.
so he innatle does 1/2 the damage of a fighter, while requiring the fighter to be in the right position.
heck, you could add a bonus (+int?) to damage and still be low. 1d8+str+int vs 2d8+str+str. still less, though not much.

works with the other classes as well.
except the rogue... not sure what the best approach would be for that. half sneak attack? let it be a good combo?
clerics command and bards dissonant whispers can make an enemy provoke an OA, with other bonuses. though they are spells.

maybe make the enemy makes a saving throw, and if he fails he provokes an OA?
might take some of the "command" issue away as well, since your influencing a NPC.

 

[I'm A Banana]

multi-attack takes care of thism at least past level 5.

fighter hits with his sword twice.
bardlord hits with the fighter's sword once.
so he innatle does 1/2 the damage of a fighter, while requiring the fighter to be in the right position.

The warlord in this case can still decide to always use the strongest party member's attack, which is part of the root of the problem. In the spirit of 4e's at-will attack granting, a granted attack should be weaker than what the warlord could do with their own at-will ability. In 4e, giving up your at-will power to use an ally's basic attack was trading your damage + effect for an ally's simple damage. In 5e, this could look like the warlord's granted attack dealing less damage than the attack would normally deal, since at-will weapon attacks are simply damage-dealers.

Another possibility might be "give your attack to an ally, but they don't add their ability score modifier to the damage."

 

[pemerton]

I like the idea of granting use of hit dice as an inspirational healing mechanic

<snip>

An Inspiring Word power would then allow a character to spend a die, with say +CHA bonus. The only flaw with it is how do you get it to scale.

It seems a bit underpowered to me. (Which I guess is really just restating the scaling issue.)

Compared to magical healing, it's not actually additional hit points - just messing around with the timing of use of existing hp recovery resources.

 

[Aenghus]

The warlord in this case can still decide to always use the strongest party member's attack, which is part of the root of the problem. In the spirit of 4e's at-will attack granting, a granted attack should be weaker than what the warlord could do with their own at-will ability. In 4e, giving up your at-will power to use an ally's basic attack was trading your damage + effect for an ally's simple damage. In 5e, this could look like the warlord's granted attack dealing less damage than the attack would normally deal, since at-will weapon attacks are simply damage-dealers.

Another possibility might be "give your attack to an ally, but they don't add their ability score modifier to the damage."

I disagree completely with your thesis, that the granted attack has to be weaker than their own. Especially when one of the signature 4e Warlock builds was the Princess build who relied completely on other PC at will attacks, and dumped their own basic attack stat, and a lot of players liked that concept.

Any power requiring cooperation from other players requires an element of active cooperation and teamwork and the reward for doing so successfully was team synergy which could be leveraged (if you saw this as a positive) or exploited (if you say it as a negative).

Any situational power needs to have a higher payout when relevant to justify the opportunity cost of getting it in the first place ,when it's only useful some fraction of the time. The payoff needs to be bigger to justify the teamwork and coordination it calls for. Basically, the Grant a basic attack power was best used when the warlord player ensured during PC creation that there was at least hard hitting basic attack in the group, preferably multiples for redundancy and to take into account casualties.

This does assume the party is more or less united and cooperative, the mechanic doesn't suit groups which encourage PC self sufficiency and infighting .

 

[Minigiant]

Personally I think there is too much focus on healing and attack granting.

It think the warlord should focus on the warlords' other feature: Commanding Presence.

Essentially, it would work like Bardic inspiration or the MM's Leadership action.
It would be the warlord's signature thing.

By default it would give him and each nonhostile creature a d4 to add to a attack roll or saving through. Then the power increases by level and application and bonuses incleases based on style and subclass

• Warlord Presence
  • Bravura: You can add die + warlord's Cha to a melee attack as well before an attack. If you miss, all attack rolls against you have advantage
  • Insightful: You add the warlord's Wis mod to your AC until the end of your next turn.
  • Inspiring: You gains THP equal to the warlord's level + Cha mod.
  • Resourceful: If you fail the saving throw or miss the attack, you get the die back.
• Subclass Presence
  • Arcane: Add the die to a Concentration check or spell DC
  • Beacon of Hope: Add die to death saves and double result to saving throw if alive.
  • Divine: Add the die + Wis to any HP healed
  • Prince of Thieves: Add die to "thiefy ability checks" or "damage to flanking attacks"
  • Veteran: Add die to damage or 5 times roll to speed.

​

 

[CapnZapp]

While I'm open to new classes and aren't bothered by "martial healing" and non-magical fantastical buffs, I do wish that Mmearls & Co gets their act together on Rangers and Sorcerers *first*

 

[mellored]

The warlord in this case can still decide to always use the strongest party member's attack, which is part of the root of the problem. In the spirit of 4e's at-will attack granting, a granted attack should be weaker than what the warlord could do with their own at-will ability. In 4e, giving up your at-will power to use an ally's basic attack was trading your damage + effect for an ally's simple damage. In 5e, this could look like the warlord's granted attack dealing less damage than the attack would normally deal, since at-will weapon attacks are simply damage-dealers.

Granting 1 attack (or cantrip) is less damage then the attack would normally deal at level 5+.
(it would be OP at 1-4)
Example Maths....

barbarian (raging): 4d6+8+4 = 26
battlebard granting 1 attack: 2d6+4+2 = 13.

Sword & board fighter/paladin/ranger: 2d8+6 = 15
battlebard granting 1 attack: 1d8+3 = 7.5

firebolt = 11

So yes, i think that's a reasonably balanced ability at level 5.
Then at level 11, you can add +int.


Or it would be if not the rogue. Or warlock if you grant cantrips.

rogue = 4d6+4 = 18
battlebard with rogue = 18
battlebard with rogue (1/2 sneak attack) = 2d6+4 = 11


Not sure if adding "rogues only get 1/2 their sneak attack dice (rounded down), and warlocks cannot add any invocations." is worth the chunkiness of it.