All I was replying to was the idea that the holy healing throws assumptions into the game just like warlord healing. The holy healing assumptions are built in,
Oh, you were objecting not to the hypothetical case, but to using a hypothetical case at all. Sorry it bothered you, but I find hypothetical like that useful in thinking through the validity of some of the arguments that get voiced around here. It's easy to be taken aback by something new because of an issue, even when the issue is something that is present to a greater degree in something you're accustomed to. Thinking about how you might react to the familiar instance were it, hypothetically, not so familiar can be helpful.
If you play a monk, I can play a paladin, and we play in a steampunk campaign, these things are compatible, despite implying different genres. If everyone at the table doesn't want to play in or run a wuxia game, one person can play a monk and it doesn't mean we have to play a wuxia game, and similarly, we can play a non-wuxia game and we don't have to ban the monk.
If you play someone with inspirational healing, I can't narrate hp damage as wounds, which thus enforces one permissible narrative on the game.
First of all, that is a very narrow, specific, thing to focus on. It doesn't prevent you from running in any particular genre. You could have a character who inspires his allies in wuxia, steampunk, knights-in-shining-armor, a Harry Potter weird wizard show, or any other fantasy genre - any heroic or action genre, really.
Secondly, we haven't demonstrated that you can't. I know I could: Just narrate inspiration as allowing you to ignore the wounds that correspond to the hp loss restored. Not make them disappear, not heal them, not bandage them right then, just ignore them and finish the fight. Then narrate bandaging them later if it helps add a sense of verisimilitude.
Finally, I don't buy that a Monk or Psion or Paladin or Warlock has such an easily-ignored impact on the narrative. Choosing to play a GOO Warlock, makes Lovecraftian entities a mandatory part of the campaign world. And, the Warlock is there using all that freaky Charles Dexter Ward stuff right in front of you - he even crawls into your mind to whisper horrid secrets to you telepathically!
we have to ban this entire class because of this one narrow mechanic.
If you really feel the need to, you could. Even if it were in the PH, you could. If you just decided you didn't like the class, and didn't have a reason you could articulate, you could still ban it, there's no need for baroque 'proof' to back up the preference. That's one of the great strength of 5e, it's gotten away from all those RAW shenanigans - no more "I bought the book, you have to let me play this broken/campaign-inappropriate class from it!"
Death Saves are semi-mystical, much as bardic inspiration or a paladin's lay on hands or a dragon's flight (or possibly psionics) is semi-mystical. It is not a general feature of the world that people get up from life-threatening injuries, but heroic characters may occasionally gain deific intervention that heals the wound or the aid of fate that knits the wound closed just enough or through sheer force of will they'll regenerate 1 hp by some fluke of that one time you got troll's blood on you.
DMs can choose to worry about Death Saves or not for monsters or NPCs, but I didn't notice any requirement that he grant them semi-mystical powers or deific intervention or anything, he's just choosing to roll their death-saves rather than hand-wave them. And all PCs, no matter how non-magical their sub-class or character concept, get Death Saves.
I'd be cool with a warlord that operated in that sphere, but that would mean waffling on the "not supernatural" bit of the class.
Even though nothing in a 4e-style Inspiring Word would say or imply that it is anything other than Inspiration restoring hps, you could decide that there is some semi-mystical force behind it, just as you did for Death Saves. Perhaps provided by a deity or force of war, perhaps by the unconscious channeling of life-force through the warlord via his words, to the subject. You're free to come up with a subtle interpretation like that if you want, even as a player.
Second Wind doesn't need to be mystical, it's just a trained warrior doing something quick to staunch the worst of her wounds.
The ability says the fighter calls upon a limited well of stamina. It does not say he treats his wounds, however quickly. It's a bonus action, that the fighter can use without a free hand, while attacking or even action-surging, it requires no healing kit or other supplies. It's not plausible as first aid, no matter how rushed and desperate. And, if it were first-aid, the 1/short rest limitation would make no sense, while the 'limited well of stamina' works fine for it.
I honestly think there's already two easy ways to make it work:
You can allow that hps can be restored, without any healing or treating of the corresponding wound, and without magic. Which have the added bonus of working to make Inspiring Word acceptable, as well.
You can imagine, as you did with Death Saves, that there is some subtle, semi-mystical force at work (that 'well of stamina' is not perfectly mundane). And, as an added bonus, you can assume the same for Inspiring Word, even if, as with Second Wind, there is nothing at all in it's mechanics or fluff nor that of the class, to imply that it's 'magic' or supernatural.
Any reason either of those couldn't work for your model?
You clearly don't understand my actual assertions if you need to keep inventing these strawmen to assail.
They don't seem that difficult to understand. They just fail to take into account a couple of Standard Game Mechanics - without making narrative leaps that could as easily be used to let them account for Inspiring Word, as well.
I'm not making up straw men to demolish your model, I'm suggesting ways it could handle Death Saves, Second Wind, and, helpfully, Inspiring Word. Which'd be awesome, really. I mean, your goal is not to forbid the Warlord to everyone, but to find a compromise that would allow you to use a Warlord in your campaign, without wrecking your narrative-wound model of hps. Right? It looks like you can.
We've addressed the concern you brought up earlier that no compromise was possible. Clearly, it is. 5e gives us more than enough flexibility to include a faithful version of the Warlord concept that includes standing fallen allies by restoring hps, without impinging on any reasonable model of hps damage that's already compatible with the hp-related mechanics in the Standard Game.
And, honestly, you surprised me: I find I'm rapidly being persuaded to use a 'narrative-wounds' model like the one you've articulated (to the degree that I've grokked it, anyway), in 5e - possibly in the one 4e campaign I'm still running, where I normally don't narrate hp loss, at all, leaving it to the players' imaginations for the most part. At first I though it was just going to be another absolutist, all-meat marvel in defiance of 5e hp mechanics and the history of the game back to 1e. Instead, it's a very well-developed, carefully thought out, visualization, and actually deserves the 'narrative' label. Even if you never quite see a way to handle the warlord under it, I will be, and I thank you for the idea.
Good things /do/ come of discussion like this, even if not often the intended good things....
