D&D 5E Open Interpretation Inspirational Healing Compromise.

[Remathilis]

yes I'm seriously saying no magic needed (except for the magic that makes the dragon possible to begin with) needed... and I look forward to your thread...

Question: why does a dragon have a fear aura and not another large monster like a tyrannosaurus or the tarrasque?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Question: why does a dragon have a fear aura and not another large monster like a tyrannosaurus or the tarrasque?

to be honest I'ld go with I don't know... but my gut says because they are the title card fo the game dungeons and DRAGONS

 

[Guest 6801328]

The idea is, you inspire someone and that allows them to fight on. It's affecting their state of mind in a positive way that is modeled with restored hps. There's a number of magical, technically non-magical, and entirely non-magical mechanics that already function by 'Inspiration' and thus change your character's state of mind in a positive way: Aid (explicitly magical) imposes 'resolve' upon your character (even he's a Paladin of Bahamut, and a Cleric of Tiamat casts it on him), Bardic Inspiration (not technically magical, even though Bards are casters) obviously makes you all inspired to the tune of getting a larger bonus to a future roll than Bless, and, of course Inspiring Leader (not magical at all) makes you all inspired between combats (no matter how much your lone-wolf resents said 'leadership').

Do you really not see the difference? All those 'magical' changes of mind are explained by the magic: they work because of the magic, not because of the recipient's relationship with or opinion of the caster. It doesn't matter how I feel about the cleric, whether I look up to him or admire him or what...it's just magic. But the way the abilities of this 'Warlord' are described all suggest something about that relationship: the healing works because the recipient feels inspired, or admires the W's leadership, or feels his morale strengthened. Hello? Did I say my morale or resolve was weak and needed bolstering? Why does my 15th level Half-orc Barbarian need to have weak resolve in order for your 1st level gnome Warlord to shine?

So, while no one's going to explain to you how something can be inspiring without making people feel inspired, it's also no basis for rejecting an ability for modeling inspiration, as there's already precedent for doing so.

There's no precedent for a character class whose rationale for existence is based on the social dynamic between him and other player characters.

Potential intra-party RP conflict is also nothing new, and nothing the game needs to go out of its way to avoid. Noble and Soldier background grant status and military rank, respectively, Inspiring Leader has 'Leader' right in the name, multiple classes bring religious baggage that could conflict (and an extreme example of differing alignments isn't the only way), warlocks could be the object of superstition and suspicion or prejudice, and, as always, personalities can simply conflict - heck, the kind of 'lone wolf' who summarily rejects inspiration and leadership probably has axes to grind with everyone (and it's not like that trope is unknown in genre, though such a character usually develops, eventually).

So, while you're bringing up something that could happen, it's not a unique problem that needs to be solved before the class can even go into development.

It's just a truism that player conflicts can happen.

To be clear, my objection isn't based on a concern about intra-party conflict. It's simply that if my character is going to look up to or be inspired by another character in the party that should be entirely a roleplaying decision on my part, not an assumption of the mechanics that result from your character class choice. Yes, the backgrounds include "Noble" and soldiers who may have been "Officers", but those backgrounds don't come with any mechanics that suggest, by their very existence, that other members care one way or another. There's nothing that says, "Because you were an officer, the other characters trust your judgment and therefore get a +2 on Initiative rolls." I would object to that; it would be mechanics dictating roleplaying. (I'm not crazy about the Leadership Feat, but at least any class can take it; it's not something you get just by choosing a class.)

I get it, you begrudge people that kind of character concept, you don't want to let them play the character they want to play, you feel it gets in the way of the kind of character you want to play.

You're entitled to feel that way, but it's not a valid reason to say the class can't exist.

I get it, you fantasize about giving other people orders, and want others to look up to you as a leader without having to actually earn that respect, you feel it's the only way you can play the kind of character you want to play. Wait, I have a better idea: I won't express my unflattering assumptions about your motivations as if they were fact if you show me the same courtesy. Deal?

I don't see why one specific concept needs to be an official default: the class has potential to cover a lot, and a good representative sampling should certainly be given. When it comes to names of specific maneuvers, those that imply an active role and competence are probably /mostly/ preferable. Mostly.

I completely agree. And yet descriptions of the 'Warlord' (starting with the name) almost always fall back on the archetype of the 'superior officer who others naturally look up to'. Why is that?

My Hero![/i]
Your part is easy: scream and look helpless.
When an enemy moves adjacent to or attacks you, you can use this tactic as a Reaction to nominate an ally who could reach you in a single move action to come to your rescue. The ally can spend his Reaction to move up to his speed and attack the triggering enemy. If he does, your ally gains temp hps (insert calculus for how many, taking into account your level & CHA, ally's level, and the enemies level, because math is fun). If the attack hits, that enemy has disadvantage on its attacks that turn, unless he attacks the ally.
Inspiration:The ally you nominate must either have Inspiration available, or make a CON save (DC= see 'Inspiration' feature that I haven't written up, assume it's perfect) to summon up the surge of heroic effort to come to your rescue.
Tactic:Enemies have a chance to see through your ploy. On a successful INT save (DC = see 'Tactics' feature that I haven't written up, assume it's perfect), the triggering enemy can change his movement or attack someone else, you lose your reaction, and the tactic fails - even if he chooses to go through with his action, your ally's attack is at disadvantage, and the enemy doesn't suffer disadvantage if it hits.

Awesome. If the proposed class looked more like this I would drop my objections.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Do you really not see the difference? All those 'magical' changes of mind are explained by the magic

Of course I see the difference. I also provided examples of not-necessarily-magical and non-magical things that involved inspiration.

Bardic Inspiration (not technically magical, even though Bards are casters) obviously makes you all inspired to the tune of getting a larger bonus to a future roll than Bless, and, of course Inspiring Leader (not magical at all) makes you all inspired between combats (no matter how much your lone-wolf resents said 'leadership')

So the precedent is already there, Inspiration is a thing, and it's a thing another character can just do. With the Warlord as it was hammered out in 4e, at least the mechanics mostly made it very much your choice whether you took the benefit or not (free actions to take granted actions, option of spending a healing surge, &c). 5e wording tends not to be so precise, but it still shouldn't be a major sticking point.

the healing works because the recipient feels inspired, or admires the W's leadership, or feels his morale strengthened. Hello? Did I say my morale or resolve was weak and needed bolstering?

If you're down to 1hp? Maybe your resolve is pure steel, but at 1 hp, some encouragement could still help. Maybe it's not respect and admiration but rivalry, or resentment and a need to prove you /don't/ need the encouragement.

Why does my 15th level Half-orc Barbarian need to have weak resolve in order for your 1st level gnome Warlord to shine?

Even with bounded accuracy, that's a wildly improbable party composition there. But, y'know, I actually see a lot of logic to the level of both the ally and the warlord coming into the way the abilities work.

More than that, I see an opportunity with 5e's much more open design to make the Warlord's abilities more ally-centric. It's not that the Warlord has some x/rest weirdness that helps once and is mysteriously gone for no reason (OK, the reason's abstraction, not important), it's that exhorting allies to do greater things requires something heroic from them, and there are limits. Like in the hypothetical 'My Hero' tactic, your ally can't come dashing to your rescue if he's already pushed himself too far beyond his limits (fails that CON save).

There's no precedent for a character class whose rationale for existence is based on the social dynamic between him and other player characters.

Does there need to be? If you take any one class out of the game, it's rationale might be hypothetically 'unprecedented.' No other class makes infernal pacts for power, for instance, but the Warlock was added to the game. All casters were Vancian until the Sorcerer.

Besides, there's precedent for inspiration as a mechanic.

It seems like the issue is the same: the Noble Battlemaster with Inspiring Leader is claiming a superior social position, getting you to 'rally' and 'Inspiring' you with his 'Leadership' all the time. How is that not the same issue? Why does it being a class make it an RP problem?

To be clear, my objection isn't based on a concern about intra-party conflict.

To be clear, I said 'player conflict.'

It's simply that if my character is going to look up to or be inspired by another character in the party that should be entirely a roleplaying decision on my part, not an assumption of the mechanics that result from your character class choice.

That is a player conflict, yes. Two players have character concepts. One player thinks the other's will conflict with how he plans to RP his character. The players need to resolve that. Maybe you favor 'lone wolf' or 'alpha' concepts that you feel 'Inspiration' mechanics would risk consistently undermining? I'm sure there's ways around that which you could hammer out with any player who brought in such a character. Presumably, in more detail the longer the campaign's expected to go.

I've given a number of examples of how varied the Warlord side of the RP equation could be. Can you think of no way a character you were playing might interact with an Inspiring Character of whatever stripe, in a way that supported both concepts?

(I'm not crazy about the Leadership Feat, but at least any class can take it; it's not something you get just by choosing a class.)

Why is 'just by choosing a feat' better than 'just by choosing a class?' The latter is a more momentous choice, and it can't be sprung on you in the middle of a campaign.

I completely agree. And yet descriptions of the 'Warlord' (starting with the name) almost always fall back on the archetype of the 'superior officer who others naturally look up to'. Why is that?

Because they sound cooler? Like I said 'mostly.' It also had a lot of CHA based builds, and high CHA gets you that sort of thing - whatever it is you evoke in others, you're going to evoke more of it with high CHA. Anyway, you can say "yes, let's have a Warlord, and make sure it can be used for lots of cool and varied concepts" (I think, now that I type it, it's actually kinda hard to picture your avatar saying that) hard to object to something like that.

Awesome. If the proposed class looked more like this I would drop my objections.

It's appropriate to the more outre 'Princess' or lazylord builds, it was tricky to do one 100% warlord over many levels, because there just weren't that many maneuvers that supported it. I'd hope that the 5e Warlord is given a more flexible design that could let you take that sort of build to it's logical conclusion. Even then, you'd have to expect most of the support to be the more traditional heroic warrior leading from the front, followed by tactician, followed by the really amusing stuff.

 

[Shasarak]

And I'll do so if you can explain to everyone's satisfaction how someone who has suffered a whole series of physical injuries so serious that they need magical healing to cure can still fight, move, and perform the whole range of physical tasks presented to them with the same competence they could before any of those serious physical injuries were inflicted.

I did not think that there were any serious physical injuries in 5e that "needed" magical healing to cure?

Well, that you can not just sleep off anyway.

 

[JediGamemaster]

to be honest I'ld go with I don't know... but my gut says because they are the title card fo the game dungeons and DRAGONS

is this a joke... of course it's magic.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I guess I don't get why it's okay for some rules to dictate your roleplay to you, but not others. If you object to being told how your character feels or thinks--not their behavior, their mental state--I don't understand why it's okay for "magic" to do that.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I guess I don't get why it's okay for some rules to dictate your roleplay to you, but not others. If you object to being told how your character feels or thinks--not their behavior, their mental state--I don't understand why it's okay for "magic" to do that.

I think it might have to do with the implied relationship - magic doesn't imply a relationship. If some NPC charms you with a spell, it doesn't mean you ACTUALLY like them, it means magic MADE you like them. If some NPC charms you just because he's really friendly and his friends will do anything for him, that doesn't take into account whether you actually want to be his friend or not. The DM can't really just say, "He's friendly, so he's friends with you now and now you're charmed by him." It's not up to the DM who you decide your character is friends with. Similarly, it's not up to other players to determine who your character admires, looks up to, and is inspired by. A magical narrative gets away from that - your character doesn't HAVE TO think highly of the character, they just magically make you fight harder anyway.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think it might have to do with the implied relationship - magic doesn't imply a relationship. If some NPC charms you with a spell, it doesn't mean you ACTUALLY like them, it means magic MADE you like them. If some NPC charms you just because he's really friendly and his friends will do anything for him, that doesn't take into account whether you actually want to be his friend or not. The DM can't really just say, "He's friendly, so he's friends with you now and now you're charmed by him." It's not up to the DM who you decide your character is friends with. Similarly, it's not up to other players to determine who your character admires, looks up to, and is inspired by. A magical narrative gets away from that - your character doesn't HAVE TO think highly of the character, they just magically make you fight harder anyway.

Okay, I can see how the "no implied relationship" thing makes it a little different, but I don't see how that changes the fundamental complaint. If "I decide how my character feels and thinks, not the game or anyone else playing it" is what is being said, then the criticism applies equally to both. If that's not what's being said--if it's actually "I decide how my character feels and thinks, unless I'm okay with the game doing that," then it's a far weaker complaint completely solved by, "Don't let people use it in games you run, and have an adult conversation with someone if they want to play it in a game you're joining." Which, as I had understood it, was supposed to be a HUGE selling point of 5e: every table does it differently, so nothing needs to be specially made, nothing HAS to work at absolutely every table always--the DM is specifically and intentionally there FOR that.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I think it might have to do with the implied relationship - magic doesn't imply a relationship. If some NPC charms you with a spell, it doesn't mean you ACTUALLY like them, it means magic MADE you like them. If some NPC charms you just because he's really friendly and his friends will do anything for him, that doesn't take into account whether you actually want to be his friend or not. The DM can't really just say, "He's friendly, so he's friends with you now and now you're charmed by him." It's not up to the DM who you decide your character is friends with. Similarly, it's not up to other players to determine who your character admires, looks up to, and is inspired by. A magical narrative gets away from that - your character doesn't HAVE TO think highly of the character, they just magically make you fight harder anyway.

Bingo. Thanks.