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I've tried to be more diplomatic in my approach, but....yeah. This.
D&D 5E What is a Warlord [No, really, I don't know.]
- Thread starter Tinker-TDC
- Start date
I've tried to be more diplomatic in my approach, but....yeah. This.
Wik
First Post
Agreed. I don't really follow the warlord threads because it just seems like two groups of people yelling at each other in an echo chamber. Pass.
I'd LOVE to see a 5e warlord - I enjoyed it in 4e, when I saw it. If I were going to write it up, my draft would suggest something like:
Hit die: d8
Proficiencies: Medium and Simple Armour, Shields, Martial Weapons.
Skills: Two from a list.
Saves: Con and Cha.
Main abilities would include one that allowed the warlord to heal non-bloodied allies a number of times per short rest equal to maybe proficiency modifier? The healing would advance at the same rate as a rogue's sneak attack.
It would also have 'tactics', gained in the same way as a warlock's invocations. These would cost an action, and would grant all allies within a 30 foot radius the ability to spend an action or bonus action for the required effect. Many of these would last multiple rounds, and require concentration. They wouldn't affect combat rolls, but could be things that grant advantage versus certain types of saving throws (ie, advantage on saves versus paralysis) - things that require a bit of forethought (hence, tactics!)
It would get a combat style, an extra attack at 5th.
And it'd be cool if had tactical effects that let it seize zones. Or create shield walls. Or have rider effects if certain things happen. Etc.
And the three subclasses would be Inspiring Leader (heals more! Buffs with heals!), Tactical Leader (More zones! Move Allies!) and Bravura (Take chances! Either win the day, or get screwed! The wild mage of leaders!)
"Ribbons" for the class would involve terrain seeking, geographical knowledge, languages, and the ability to grant a character temporary proficiency in something the warlord knows (or half proficiency).
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Guest 6801328
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In my sincere attempts to find a design that would satisfy everybody I proposed a Shield Wall. The way it would work is that the Warlord would use his Action to initiate it, and his bonus action to use it himself. Then any ally within 5' of him could use their bonus action to activate it for themselves. And any allies within 5' of them....etc. On subsequent rounds it can be maintained with just bonus action. Anybody attacking somebody in the Shield Wall would have Disadvantage on their attack rolls.
I'm sure it could be tweaked, but something like that. Even if it's fluffed that the Warlord* is "calling out orders and encouragement" by making it an opt-in, for a cost, participation is voluntary. I.e., you don't have to listen to the bossypants warlord if you don't want to.
*And if we just used the "Warden" name I'd be sooooooo much happier with the entire concept.
Wik
First Post
That was sort of what I was thinking with it too. Plus, the game is an action economy, and by having limit-less buffs, it seems balanced to require the recipients to spend an action to actually utilize them.
As for the name "Warlord", I wasn't a huge fan either. I personally liked the 3e "Marshall", but it has weird connotations in North America. Personally, I'd go with "Officer". But that's just me.
[MENTION=6802653]Tinker-TDC[/MENTION]
I think the best way to think about the warlord, as a class, is to start with the flavour.
The warlord is what Tolkien calls a battle captain. Faramir is an example. His or her presence inspires friends and allies to a degree of effort and resilience they couldn't achieve on their own. A warlord calms, comforts, reassures and leads by example.
If your preferred way in is comics, the warlord is like Captain America. A warlord inspires, advises, and is the anchor of the team.
It's worth recalling that even heavier hitters like Iron Man and Thor can be inspired and led by Captain America. The warlord is, generally, a warrior (there are some exceptions, but they're not typical). But the warlord is not necessarily the most powerful warrior. Achilles is more powerful than Odysseus, but only the latter is a warlord.
When it comes to D&D, the warlord's uniqueness is defined by its mechanics. It has fewer attacks than a fighter, for less damage. But it has more ability to buff allies and restore their hit points. In this respect, the warlord's niche is fairly similar to a straightforward cleric: reasonable armour, reasonable weapons, reasonable hit points, but a bit weaker than a fighter in each of those categories; and then buffing/healing and perhaps de-buffing abilities.
Because the warlord is not a magic-user, those abilities would have to be expressed via an ability other than spell slots and spell preparation.
The reason why a warlord can't be built in the current state of 5e is because, at the moment, there is no way for getting a non-magical ability that is like a fighter's second wind, but that targets friends and allies; the closest thing is the battlemaster fighter, but the battlemaster has the wrong balance between fighting (excellent) and support (mediocre).
I think the best way to think about the warlord, as a class, is to start with the flavour.
The warlord is what Tolkien calls a battle captain. Faramir is an example. His or her presence inspires friends and allies to a degree of effort and resilience they couldn't achieve on their own. A warlord calms, comforts, reassures and leads by example.
If your preferred way in is comics, the warlord is like Captain America. A warlord inspires, advises, and is the anchor of the team.
It's worth recalling that even heavier hitters like Iron Man and Thor can be inspired and led by Captain America. The warlord is, generally, a warrior (there are some exceptions, but they're not typical). But the warlord is not necessarily the most powerful warrior. Achilles is more powerful than Odysseus, but only the latter is a warlord.
When it comes to D&D, the warlord's uniqueness is defined by its mechanics. It has fewer attacks than a fighter, for less damage. But it has more ability to buff allies and restore their hit points. In this respect, the warlord's niche is fairly similar to a straightforward cleric: reasonable armour, reasonable weapons, reasonable hit points, but a bit weaker than a fighter in each of those categories; and then buffing/healing and perhaps de-buffing abilities.
Because the warlord is not a magic-user, those abilities would have to be expressed via an ability other than spell slots and spell preparation.
The reason why a warlord can't be built in the current state of 5e is because, at the moment, there is no way for getting a non-magical ability that is like a fighter's second wind, but that targets friends and allies; the closest thing is the battlemaster fighter, but the battlemaster has the wrong balance between fighting (excellent) and support (mediocre).
Someone is making a 5e sci-fi setting here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?459300-Fifth-Age-A-hard-science-fiction-5e-conversion
I think it's really rad in a lot of ways. But the reason I'm linking it is there is an Officer class that seems pretty fantastic at making a warlord type class I am totally down with.
All the classes are only 10 levels though, by design, so their power acquisition is a bit accelerated.
I think it's really rad in a lot of ways. But the reason I'm linking it is there is an Officer class that seems pretty fantastic at making a warlord type class I am totally down with.
All the classes are only 10 levels though, by design, so their power acquisition is a bit accelerated.
Andor
First Post
Warlord as an HP proxy war. 
Allow me to see if I can sum up the issue without acrimony.
First, I should clarify that HP debates predate 4e. In point of fact they pre-date the Internet, and ARPA-net. Gary Gygax wrote a "clarification" of the concept way back in AD&D that muddied up the waters and people have been arguing about it ever since. 4e simply dragged the issue out in the open and made a declarative stance, which pissed off every one on the other side of the debate.
So. There are (roughly) two schools of thought on HP. One is crudely expressed as "meat points", where someone with a lot of HP simply is impossibly tough. The other side views HP as nebulous in form, combining morale, luck, fatigue and plot armour. In the second view "hits" which deal damage may not involve injury, or even contact, but still drain the character of a resource labled HP for convenience, it's only the final hit that drops a character that actually hurts. Maybe.
Part of the problem is that HP are not, and never have been a wound or injury tracking mechanism. When you get hit by a sword for 5 points of damage, you don't know where you were hit. You don't know if it was a cut or a bruise (strike failed to penetrate armour or you were struck with the flat of the blade.) And it doesn't matter. A hit in the leg doesn't slow down your movement. A hit in the arm doesn't reduce your manual skills. So for most of the history of D&D GMs have been free to narrate whatever special effects they wanted for combat, which copious stabbings, cuttings, and brutal bludgeonings. Other systems try to model wounds more directly, but in practice this leads to something called a death spiral where each injury dealt impairs the injured fighter so that he becomes less and less effective, until you are as useless as a screen door on a submarine, but have to keep playing because it's technically not over yet. So in practice HP are the worst mechanism for tracking damage in an RPG, except for all the other systems that have been tried from time to time. <- Apologies to Winston Churchill
So, the exact meaning of HP has never actually been exact, but in spite of this there are always corner cases where it must be acknowledged that actual, possibly horrific damage has been incurred but that the character is still functional. (E.G. Lava. Long falls onto sharp rocks. Weapons with venom.)
Now this was always kind of okay, because up until 4e healing was almost always magical in nature. So yes, Rognar may have just been chewed up and spat out by a dragon, but the Gods fixed him so we don't have to really think about it.
However in 4e, when a character has dropped due to damage, and is in fact dying (making death saves in 4e terms), the narration becomes tricky. If the character is brought back to his feet by a clerics healing spell, or a magic potion, then he could have been stabbed through the lung and brought back and it breaks no ones suspension of disbelief, however if he gets revived by a Warlord with non-magical healing then he must not have been that badly wounded after all, because improved morale does very little to help with sucking chest wounds.
This led to two possible narrative styles: One is often called Schrodinger's hit points, where the actual nature of the injury is resolved not at the time the injury is dealt but only when the character actually dies or receives healing at which point the DM narrates the action flash back style. Or the GM narrates whatever combat description he feels like, and then retcons it if it turns out not to match later outcomes, many people loathe retconning in all forms. Either way it breaks up the flow of combat descriptions that was an ingrained habit of many GMs leading into 4e.
There are other RPG systems where the details of a combat are not known until after it ends, at which point you can assign narrative to mechanical events that occurred within the conflict. At the extreme end you have the Heroquest system where you may not even know if the conflict was resolved with steel or words until after the fact, and less radically in Savage Worlds minor characters survival is determined after the fact like an archer scrounging arrows. But D&D prior to 4e never employed that sort of mechanical-narrative disconnect.
Now 4e not only took a firm stand against "meat points" (Although, ironically, with the bloodied mechanic it became the first version of D&D that actually specified levels of injury in any way), and in addition opened up a narrative-mechanical divide that was new to D&D, but the promotional materials leading into 4e were... needlessly antagonistic to prior editions, and prior ways of playing D&D. So older players were presented not only with a radical change in the way the game was played, but many felt like they were being deliberately insulted for having enjoyed the game the way they had been playing it. It was not a brilliant marketing success.
I'm hoping I managed to sum this up without offending either side (especially considering that presenting it as a merely two-sided debate is a considerable over simplification.)
Allow me to see if I can sum up the issue without acrimony.
First, I should clarify that HP debates predate 4e. In point of fact they pre-date the Internet, and ARPA-net. Gary Gygax wrote a "clarification" of the concept way back in AD&D that muddied up the waters and people have been arguing about it ever since. 4e simply dragged the issue out in the open and made a declarative stance, which pissed off every one on the other side of the debate.
So. There are (roughly) two schools of thought on HP. One is crudely expressed as "meat points", where someone with a lot of HP simply is impossibly tough. The other side views HP as nebulous in form, combining morale, luck, fatigue and plot armour. In the second view "hits" which deal damage may not involve injury, or even contact, but still drain the character of a resource labled HP for convenience, it's only the final hit that drops a character that actually hurts. Maybe.
Part of the problem is that HP are not, and never have been a wound or injury tracking mechanism. When you get hit by a sword for 5 points of damage, you don't know where you were hit. You don't know if it was a cut or a bruise (strike failed to penetrate armour or you were struck with the flat of the blade.) And it doesn't matter. A hit in the leg doesn't slow down your movement. A hit in the arm doesn't reduce your manual skills. So for most of the history of D&D GMs have been free to narrate whatever special effects they wanted for combat, which copious stabbings, cuttings, and brutal bludgeonings. Other systems try to model wounds more directly, but in practice this leads to something called a death spiral where each injury dealt impairs the injured fighter so that he becomes less and less effective, until you are as useless as a screen door on a submarine, but have to keep playing because it's technically not over yet. So in practice HP are the worst mechanism for tracking damage in an RPG, except for all the other systems that have been tried from time to time. <- Apologies to Winston Churchill
So, the exact meaning of HP has never actually been exact, but in spite of this there are always corner cases where it must be acknowledged that actual, possibly horrific damage has been incurred but that the character is still functional. (E.G. Lava. Long falls onto sharp rocks. Weapons with venom.)
Now this was always kind of okay, because up until 4e healing was almost always magical in nature. So yes, Rognar may have just been chewed up and spat out by a dragon, but the Gods fixed him so we don't have to really think about it.
However in 4e, when a character has dropped due to damage, and is in fact dying (making death saves in 4e terms), the narration becomes tricky. If the character is brought back to his feet by a clerics healing spell, or a magic potion, then he could have been stabbed through the lung and brought back and it breaks no ones suspension of disbelief, however if he gets revived by a Warlord with non-magical healing then he must not have been that badly wounded after all, because improved morale does very little to help with sucking chest wounds.
This led to two possible narrative styles: One is often called Schrodinger's hit points, where the actual nature of the injury is resolved not at the time the injury is dealt but only when the character actually dies or receives healing at which point the DM narrates the action flash back style. Or the GM narrates whatever combat description he feels like, and then retcons it if it turns out not to match later outcomes, many people loathe retconning in all forms. Either way it breaks up the flow of combat descriptions that was an ingrained habit of many GMs leading into 4e.
There are other RPG systems where the details of a combat are not known until after it ends, at which point you can assign narrative to mechanical events that occurred within the conflict. At the extreme end you have the Heroquest system where you may not even know if the conflict was resolved with steel or words until after the fact, and less radically in Savage Worlds minor characters survival is determined after the fact like an archer scrounging arrows. But D&D prior to 4e never employed that sort of mechanical-narrative disconnect.
Now 4e not only took a firm stand against "meat points" (Although, ironically, with the bloodied mechanic it became the first version of D&D that actually specified levels of injury in any way), and in addition opened up a narrative-mechanical divide that was new to D&D, but the promotional materials leading into 4e were... needlessly antagonistic to prior editions, and prior ways of playing D&D. So older players were presented not only with a radical change in the way the game was played, but many felt like they were being deliberately insulted for having enjoyed the game the way they had been playing it. It was not a brilliant marketing success.
I'm hoping I managed to sum this up without offending either side (especially considering that presenting it as a merely two-sided debate is a considerable over simplification.)
Tony Vargas
Legend
You misconstrued what I said. The other classes that filled the healer/support 'leader' role in 4e have greatly expanded abilities, both in terms of daily resources and in terms of flexibility. The range of things the class can do is still similar, but the number of times, relative power, and choice of which of those things a PC does on a give day or round is greatly expanded. If the Warlord were just ported over with the very limited AEDU resource mix, and the narrow confines of formal role, it would be under-powered and under-flexible, and a non-viable choice.
I think it's both too soon, and, even at this point, not entirely fair, to say that 5e has completely failed to enable the same styles of play that 4e did. It has done a better job capturing classic playstyles (a wonderful job!), and, with optional rules and modules, manages 3e styles, as well, if some perhaps, a trifle muted, while having much less support for styles enabled by 4e. But, things like overnight healing and the marking module do hint at a willingness to eventually support more of the styles of play that 4e did so well.
It's also a very weighty accusation, as 5e was conceived with the idea of supporting more styles than past editions, not fewer. Failure to cover styles that any past edition did would be a failure to meet it's most basic, existential goal.
Considering what the AD&D -> 3.0 conversion documents were like, I'm not holding out much hope. The best way to convert among games or editions is generally just to start with the same character concept, and see what you can come up with.
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El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
A Warlord is first and foremost, a Leader.
The concept of Leadership, for most, is an ambiguous, poorly understood thing - but the effects of Leadership are anything but ambiguous or intangible. Its presence is proven through success, its absence obvious in failure.
Leadership is a skill and an art. It's the ability to understand people - what makes them tick, what inspires and motivates them, and what their capabilities and potential are. It's also the ability to enable both individuals and groups to be better than they would by themselves - sometimes even knowing people better than they know themselves. They are facilitators and efficiency experts. They are coaches, mentors, and counselors.
And before anyone reading this gets their I-don't-like-to-be-told-what-to-do underwear in a twist, Leaders aren't necessarily one In-Charge; and even the ones that are don't necessarily tell others what to do. In fact, good leaders rarely need to tell people what to do - or at least it never feels like they are. (More about Warlords being In-Charge here)
Mechanically, Leadership is best modeled by providing the group with a Synergistic effect - an efficiency/morale/inspiration bonus that the mere presence of a good leader generates. So far, with the Warlord we've been working on in the Warlording the Fighter thread, we're using a wild-card advantage application the group collectively chooses when to use.
Neither the Battle Master or the Valor Bard present a mechanic that effectively represent the advantage to the group of having a Leader. The Inspiring Leader Feat does not either. It only mirrors the Rally maneuver from the Battle Master.
After Leadership-generated Synergy, the next biggest thing a Leader provides is Inspiration...
A Warlord is a source of Inspiration and Perseverance
As said before, a Leader knows people. A Warlord takes that to the next step and becomes an Expert at knowing their people - their Group. This ability to Inspire others presents itself in aiding others with tasks and rising above their temporary discomforts. They influence people to a state of mind-over-matter - allowing them to ignore, and even sometimes erase mental and physical conditions.
Mechanically, this means recovering Hit Points, erasing levels of exhaustion, and overcoming fear or other mental conditions - and yes, even rousing people from trauma induced unconsciousness.
Current inspirational hit point recovery mechanics in 5E only provide Temporary Hit Points. By the rules, Temporary Hit Points cannot restore a character at 0 HP - not to mention that the concept of inspirational recovery is to provide real, physical, Hit Points. (for more read here, here, here, and here)
And lastly...
A Warlord is a Master Tactician and Strategist
Warlords are not the best Fighter, same as a Coach is most often not one of the best players. What they are however, are chess players par excellence. Fighters are masters of individual combat, Warlords are masters of group combat and strategic warfare - sometimes even Machiavellian manipulators. Their big-picture view of combat provides them the ability to expand the tactical options of their group.
Mechanically, this is modeled by the Warlord employing maneuvers that impart a tactical or strategic effect on a confrontation - and even extend their actions to another character to employ those tactical maneuvers instead.
I've seen it said this way: "A Warlord doesn't just hit an Orc; a Warlord hits the Orc with the Fighter."
For more specifics about what I've posted above, read here and here in the Warlording the fighter thread.
If one wishes to limit a broad overview to merely mechanics and mechanical roles... But even then, this overview isn't correct (and as you pointed out, also not comprehensive). Warlord's are not tanks, bruisers, or necessarily damage dealers. DPR (damage per round) is not a defining aspect of the Warlord. Caster also is not part of the Warlord - in fact it has absolutely nothing to do with a Warlord. Healer is a bit of a misconception also. Warlords don't "Heal", they generate Hit Point recovery through means other than Healing.
Also, arguably far more important than a list of mechanics and mechanical roles, are the narrative and roleplaying aspects you overlooked.
And Lastly, as concerns this:
I believe this stems mostly from the desire by some to not just express their opinion as concerns a Warlord class, but to take it to the level that it should not exist because they don't like it.
In response to that I'll quote one of ENWorld's more wiser members, @Mouseferatu ... (far more wise than me, anyways...)
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G
Guest 6801328
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I'll just point out that you pretty much dismissed the first viewpoint by describing how it relates to somebody being "impossibly" tough, so I imagine those on that side of the debate would take a bit of offense. You could have at least balanced it by describing some of the paradoxes introduced by martial healing of non-meat HP.
But beyond that, it's only one facet of the Warlord dispute. I only ever see a few people bringing that debate into it. Personally I don't have a horse in the HP-as-meat race; I guess I come down on the side of "it's probably a mix of both, if I ever stopped to care". Yet I truly loathe the Warlord concept.
El Mahdi (above) expresses the core of the reason I detest the concept, far more eloquently than I have managed. Ironically, I think his intent was to defend it.
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