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

[mellored]

So... Prestige class warlord. Discuss.

So...

battlemaster 5/mastermind rogue 5/warlord prestige 5..... (with healer and inspiring leader feats).


Closer, but still needs more, and it's still pretty clunky. To bad bard 5 has magic spells.

 

[Yunru]

Why Rogue 5 over 3? Throw in Spell-less Ranger so you actually have enough Manuever dice (ideally 6-9).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's not a corner case, it's the vast majority of the game. "Hit", "Damage", "Cure Wounds", "Potion of Healing", etc, these aren't ambiguous terms. Interpreting HP as anything but health causes pretty much the whole game to become nonsense as all of the words used to describe the game stop meaning what they actually mean. That's the problem with the Warlord, I roll "To Hit" or "Attack", I succeed, then I deal "Damage", if the next step in the series is "Warlord talks to you and you regain all HP" then some portion of this series becomes nonsense. Either I didn't actually succeed in my attack and I didn't actually deal damage, or I didn't actually regain all of my HP, one of those two things must be true. Both of those things cannot be true. It's a contradiction.

I also have to point out, as I've seen it a few times in this thread, there are two points in D&D where the numbers of precisely represented one fixed thing. In Third Edition there are a number of references in the Core that explicitly define HP as health, IIRC even in the appendix. In Fourth Edition HP can only be fatigue, as there's no other way to explain the events in the game unless HP's are fatigue.

I'm sorry, but this view is just outright preposterous. If hit points are all wounds then how come they can be restored using a short rest? How come a fighter can cure his wounds in the middle of battle with a single action? How come a Heal check can cure wounds with a single action? How come you recover all your hit points after 8 hours of rest? How is it that 'psychic damage' or other similar effects cause hit point loss?

And finally, what about all the other verbiage in D&D which calls out luck, skill, etc as being modelled by hit points? What exactly WOULD you call things like 'healing potions' or 'cure light wounds' spells? They've got easy memorable names, that doesn't mean that all they do is knit flesh back together.

Even back in the dim dark beginnings of the game nobody really thought hit points were just 'meat'. I don't recall a discussion of it in OD&D (there really wasn't any sort of discussion of anything like that in OD&D, it was quite terse), but we KNOW Gary didn't think hit points were meat, and he stated it outright in 1978 in no uncertain terms.

And just because we narrate our fights in a way where we focus on the physical effects of combat (assuming we all do that, which IME isn't true) that doesn't mean we think that is the whole story. Certainly IME players routinely acknowledge the other factors that play into the state of their characters. Perhaps most often in the part of the narrative that talks about recovering hit points vs losing them, but its always there.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

So... Prestige class warlord. Discuss.

prerequ 5th level, Int 13+ Cha 13+ and the inspire feat

level
1 gain 2d6 manuvier dice that come back on long rest (or if already battle master add +2dice)
2 upgrade to 3d8 and short or long rest
3
4 upgrade to 4d8 and if at 0 can spend an action to regain 1
5

manuivers are commander strike, feint, imspire (as per bard), and heal

when you heal spend a bonus action to roll 1 die and add cha mod to ally within 30

 

[mellored]

Why Rogue 5 over 3? Throw in Spell-less Ranger so you actually have enough Manuever dice (ideally 6-9).

Could work.

Maybe if they made enough prestige classes..
Tactician, inspiring, medic...

Still clunky to need 4 classes to get a warlord though.

Though i kinda like the mix and match method.

 

[Tony Vargas]

They also supoprt the model of hp's as wounds just fine.

In fact, the "standard" description of damage includes both wounds and inspiration (though the rules don't take a hard side on it).

The actual hp system allows for a lot of things, yes, it's very, very abstract. Re-imaginings of it, like you have going here, may allow less...

I went into this above, but Second Wind has a few key limitations. The most directly relevant is that an unconscious character can't activate Second Wind.

Obviously, you can't use a bonus action when you're unconscious, yes, and it is meant to be a voluntary choice to call on that extra stamina, not an involuntary reaction.

That has no bearing on the issue your model has with Inspiring Word, however. Second Wind does not require the fighter apply any healing supplies, have a hand free to so much as apply pressure to the wound, make a heal check, nor in any way treat it. Your model maintains that hps cannot be re-gained without either both treatment and time, or supernatural agency. How do you resolve that in the case of Second Wind, which restores hps, includes neither treatment nor time, and is not in any way described as supernatural?

Because, again, "healed enough to not affect you" is not he same as "completely healed."

If you can have /barely healed/ and completely unaffected, it's only a minor matter of degree to get not healed at all and unaffected. You model allows all hps to be restored, without all the wounds that caused those hps to be lost being healed, that opens the door to having hps restored without any wound-healing, at all.

I have to conclude that the Warlord's form of hp restoration /is/ compatible with the very cinematic 'narrative wounds,' model as you've articulated it, to the same level of rigor that HD and Second Wind are. Which is not to say it fits it as neatly as the Healer feat, just that it doesn't demolish the model.

There is healing going on even if the wound hasn't vanished - specifically, some small amount that makes the wound not lethal anymore.

There can be healing going on within moments of a wound being inflicted - clotting, for instance.

A potentially lethal wound does need to be turned into NOT potentially lethal. Doing that without something supernatural requires time (rolling a 20 on a death save is "mystical," for instance)

You can make 3 successful death saves inside of 18 seconds. That's not much time, at all. And, yes, you can roll that 20. There's nothing mystical about it, either, it can function just fine in an anti-magic-shell, for instance, it's a possibility for anyone making death saves, no matter how little mystical ability they may have.

Either your model allows for that, or it is already un-supported by the standard rules, and there's no need (under another of your premises, that, BTW, I also question) for the Warlord to be excluded or conceptually ruined to accommodate it.

If you are willing to arbitrarily make a completely mundane event 'mystical,' in your campaign, to make your model work, than you can do so for the warlord, no matter how clearly it is spelled out as not being supernatural, you can just rule that it is, for your model, to make your model work.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So... Prestige class warlord. Discuss.

It would be almost trivially easy to add a prestige class to 3.x/PF that could do a great job of modeling some specific Warlord concept, possibly tied to the campaign world. Paragon Paths would be a good source of inspiration for that - Battle Captain, Knight-Commander - as would the campaign world, itself.

 

[Remathilis]

It would be almost trivially easy to add a prestige class to 3.x/PF that could do a great job of modeling some specific Warlord concept, possibly tied to the campaign world. Paragon Paths would be a good source of inspiration for that - Battle Captain, Knight-Commander - as would the campaign world, itself.

I meant 5e, check the UA today.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Let s just make a class who can heal same as cleric, but non-magical, do damage same as fighter, have inspirations and skills like bard, Help as a free action with 300 yards range and have battlemasters maneuvers with 9 superior dice regenerating per round where every maneuver cast time is "one attack", making it able to use 3 maneuvers per round at level 11.
Only way to stop these threads where people want everything the best on one class 24/7 cause why not.

Part of the 'compromise' being sought could be a requirement that the class be as well-balanced as existing classes already are.

One might think that'd go without saying, but one would be reckoning with internet forums in thinking that.

But, yes, in seeking a compromise, the extremes that need to meet in the middle are, on one hand, a wildly overpowered class that would dominate the game, and, on the other, a strictly inferior class so bad that no one would ever play it (ie functionally identical to no class at all).

 

[Tony Vargas]

I meant 5e, check the UA today.

Cool.

Same answer: There's a number of Warlord Paragon Paths that could make interesting PrCs.

Given 5e's tighter level range, Epic Destinies might not be out of the question as PrCs, either, depending on the tone the DM chooses for the higher levels of play.