Zardnaar
Legend
Personally I find it funny about some of the arguments going around the boards. With the influx of the WoTC refugees get prepared for literally years of poo posting about things like Warlords and martial healing. Right now I could play in 3 different groups of 5E games and I am in a Friday night game and a SUnday afternoon game. Yesterdays session went for 8 hours.
Most gamers locally do not even know what a warlord is. The current groups is mostly Pathfinder and AD&D players. You see I have a confession to make. The WotC release schedule is not really doing it for me. I bought the ToD AP books and avoided PotA and OotA although I suspect I will buy the latter once the SCAG lands. Most of my adventures have been a mixture of homebrew and the Quests of Doom books from Frog God Games. I have also recently signed up for EN5ider. Quests of Doom reminds me a lot of pre 3E Dungeon magazine and some of the adventures have been great, others not so much.
I have never played D&D in organized play (no FLGS) and likely never well even if I had that option based on hygiene reasons if nothing else based on previous experiences in game stores. Also I do not really want to play with a pack of kids. THis means I do not actually care about official release content and I am quite happy to resort to OGL and 3PP material. This was a lesson I learned during the dark times (2008-2012) where blind loyalty to the D&D brand ended and I started to buy things like PDFs, Paizo's Pathfinder books and even ordering retroclones off Ebay/Amazon. Just because it doesn't come from WoTC doesn't automatically make it bad. Based on ToD even official D&D stuff can be quite sub par.
I generally do not allow 3PP feats into the game (on a case by case basis) but most of the EN5ider class options are fine. In the event I ever come across someone wanting to play a Warlord I can direct them to the Noble/Valor Bard/Battlemaster as the power level of 5E monsters is lower and healing word is now a daily spell instead of an encounter power. I let the Tempest Ranger from EN5ider into my game the other day and the player loved his PC, another one tried the Heart Noble (Lazylord) but she didn't like it due to party composition rather than the class itself.
So these internet debates really do not effect me at all. I have the option of playing around 18 hours of D&D 5E a week if I want to on top of a 42.5-46.5 hour working week. Last year we hit 5 sessions a week on some weeks with an average of 2-3 sessions via 2 DMs and now I have the choice of 3 campaigns.
IRL no one is complaining about the lack of a warlord assuming they even know it exists. There is probably a 10-15 year old gap between the youngest and older players with returning AD&D players outnumbering 4E players easily. One of the players had not played since D&D was owned by TSR. The other group had 2 players who had not played since TSR era D&D, No one is complaining that vancian spells do not work the way they used to or new mechanics such as concentration although it is a little annoying on some spells such as dancing lights. Even in 4E Warlords were not as good as clerics with healing anyway so any hypothetical warlord doesn't need to be as good as a healer as the cleric. A Battle master Fighter with maybe a level of cleric for healing word and take the healing feat and you more or less have a Warlord in concept.
The beast master may suck (the Hunter is fine) but I have 2 other subclasses (Tempest, Nightstalker) of ranger to play and the Ranger as a beast master was really only in one edition(3.5). Its not even unique in being a bad class as we also have the Master of Elements Monk. I am throwing together an adaptation of 2E Darksun and half the archetypes, classes, races and subraces are going to be banned anyway. Hell I might even run AD&D 2E alignment restrictions.
Most gamers locally do not even know what a warlord is. The current groups is mostly Pathfinder and AD&D players. You see I have a confession to make. The WotC release schedule is not really doing it for me. I bought the ToD AP books and avoided PotA and OotA although I suspect I will buy the latter once the SCAG lands. Most of my adventures have been a mixture of homebrew and the Quests of Doom books from Frog God Games. I have also recently signed up for EN5ider. Quests of Doom reminds me a lot of pre 3E Dungeon magazine and some of the adventures have been great, others not so much.
I have never played D&D in organized play (no FLGS) and likely never well even if I had that option based on hygiene reasons if nothing else based on previous experiences in game stores. Also I do not really want to play with a pack of kids. THis means I do not actually care about official release content and I am quite happy to resort to OGL and 3PP material. This was a lesson I learned during the dark times (2008-2012) where blind loyalty to the D&D brand ended and I started to buy things like PDFs, Paizo's Pathfinder books and even ordering retroclones off Ebay/Amazon. Just because it doesn't come from WoTC doesn't automatically make it bad. Based on ToD even official D&D stuff can be quite sub par.
I generally do not allow 3PP feats into the game (on a case by case basis) but most of the EN5ider class options are fine. In the event I ever come across someone wanting to play a Warlord I can direct them to the Noble/Valor Bard/Battlemaster as the power level of 5E monsters is lower and healing word is now a daily spell instead of an encounter power. I let the Tempest Ranger from EN5ider into my game the other day and the player loved his PC, another one tried the Heart Noble (Lazylord) but she didn't like it due to party composition rather than the class itself.
So these internet debates really do not effect me at all. I have the option of playing around 18 hours of D&D 5E a week if I want to on top of a 42.5-46.5 hour working week. Last year we hit 5 sessions a week on some weeks with an average of 2-3 sessions via 2 DMs and now I have the choice of 3 campaigns.
IRL no one is complaining about the lack of a warlord assuming they even know it exists. There is probably a 10-15 year old gap between the youngest and older players with returning AD&D players outnumbering 4E players easily. One of the players had not played since D&D was owned by TSR. The other group had 2 players who had not played since TSR era D&D, No one is complaining that vancian spells do not work the way they used to or new mechanics such as concentration although it is a little annoying on some spells such as dancing lights. Even in 4E Warlords were not as good as clerics with healing anyway so any hypothetical warlord doesn't need to be as good as a healer as the cleric. A Battle master Fighter with maybe a level of cleric for healing word and take the healing feat and you more or less have a Warlord in concept.
The beast master may suck (the Hunter is fine) but I have 2 other subclasses (Tempest, Nightstalker) of ranger to play and the Ranger as a beast master was really only in one edition(3.5). Its not even unique in being a bad class as we also have the Master of Elements Monk. I am throwing together an adaptation of 2E Darksun and half the archetypes, classes, races and subraces are going to be banned anyway. Hell I might even run AD&D 2E alignment restrictions.
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