Well, Tony takes credit for it, but its a common thread among many ardent proponents. A warlord can't merely heal, he must have healing as powerful and prevalent as a cleric. He must have support abilities equal to spells like Bless. In short, while it might not have a 1:1 ratio of spells to powers, it must be able to replace a cleric (like a druid or bard can) in the realm of healing and support.
That's an approximation of the need for it to be viable in it's primary role, yes. The alternative is a Warlord that is un-playable. No exact equality is required, the Warlord's hp-restoration will probably stack up adequately compared to that of Druid or Bard rather than Life Cleric, for instance, while, OTOH, it's buffing would probably be better, and action-granting more prevalent.
There are already 5 or 6 spell-casting support classes, and they're adequate replacements for eachother, without being identical, even if they do re-use many of eachothers spells.
The Warlord won't be re-using spells, since it's concept is not supernatural, at all, so it should be trivially easy to differentiate it.
A 4e dragonborn gets his breath weapon for EVERY fight he's in; a 5e dragonborn may go 2-3 fights before short resting. The 4e encounter powers says "you get your toys every time you roll initiative"
Not true. 4e and 5e both require short rests. 4e short rests were just, well, short, at 5 minutes. I've run 4e scenarios where there was such intense time pressure the party had to face two or even three combats without a short rest.
They were simply spells that owe their life to 4e because they didn't exist prior to it. Much like the warlord class didn't really exist before 4e.
It does highlight something that people do forget when discussing the warlord; we might get a class with that name and general concept, but it might not match the 4e depiction.
5e is a good enough system to do a worthy version of a Warlord. It should cleave closer to the concept than the mechanics, because that's the 5e philosphy. No AEDU, for instance, no minimizing concept-appropriate abilities for fear of stepping on a 'Controllers' toes.
They opted for the path of least resistance on several classes: assassin, illusionist, wild mage, etc. by going with a subclass.
What resistance?
They double-diluted the warlord by making him a subclass (battlemaster) and removing his direct healing. It might not be the warlord you WANTED, nor necessarily the best version, but they did try something. In the end, they opted for an options which made few (but ardent opponents) happy.
And created the unfortunate appearance of catering to those opponents of 4e & the Warlord, and trying to exclude fans of 4e from the new edition. All the more reason a /good/ Warlord needs to make it into 5e. One that's worth the wait and delights those fans who have waited longer and endured more meaningful sleights than those that started the edition war had as provocation.
Personally, my ideal warlord is probably a little closer to "paladin" than "cleric" levels in terms of healing per day. Giving them some pool of hp replenishment is acceptable, but I'm not looking at something akin to "mass heal" in the warlord's list.
Those should certainly both be within the range of how an individual Warlord might be built, sure. The Warlord needs a certain amount of flexibility just to be viable in 5e, and that can be used as customizability. If the Warlord has Stand the Fallen (and it should), that triggers HD for ever ally in his Command Radius, available he should have several alternatives, so a given warlord could focus more on offensive buffing, defensive damage mitigation, or personal combat prowess, instead of hp restoration, if he wanted to.
Moreover, the warlord's primary design goal should always be "how does he fit in a world of magic" rather than "how does he allow me to remove magic".
Both need to be secondary to concept, but both need to be considered, and, incidentally, both lead to very much the same conclusions. A Warlord that is viable in a world with Bards, Clerics, &c, is also one that keeps D&D viable in the absence of such classes.
I want a class who I can drop into my bog-standard D&D game next session. How the DM wants to use it for his specific playstyle is irrelevant to the discussion.
Actually, it's /very/ relevant, because one of 5e's many seemingly-impossible goals was to expand the range of playstyles supported by D&D.
The warlord's job is NOT to be a nonmagical variant class; its job is to be a viable class in a game surrounded by magic.
It's both. A non-magical class that must be viable, even in a high-magic game.
It takes a LOT more than a warlord class to make nonmagical viable in 5e, an entire supplement full of variant rules would probably be needed.
The only critical thing missing from 5e to make an all-non-magical party or low-/non-magical campaign viable is a class like the Warlord, that can take on those all-important support duties, and maybe cover a little control into the bargain. In a non-magic game, the magical threats that might need a little magic (a protection scroll here, an NPC to remove a curse there) to keep from derailing the game are gone, anyway.
Moreover, I want a warlord who can bring something unique to my table when I HAVE wizards, clerics, and other casters. Being a "nonmagical cleric" is the least interesting thing a warlord class should be.
Non-magical primary support is hardly 'non-magical cleric' the Warlord won't be praying to a non-magical god to non-magically turn non-magical undead or casting non-magical spells from non-magical slots.
That's a silly, pointless exaggeration. The Warlord would be non-magical alternative to the existing all-magical support classes - Cleric, Druid, Bard, Paladin, Ranger - but not a non-magical 'version' of any of them. It has it's own range of character concepts, strongly present in genre (more broadly present than any of the existing support classes, in fact).
It would most certainly be unique since there's no viable non-magical support class in the PH.
"I don't want a warlord whose abilities are supernatural" is equally as trivial. It really sounds less like "I want a warlord" and more like "I want a variant of D&D that isn't magic-heavy". Which is fine, but you do understand the two things are separate issues, right?
They're linked. Before the Warlord, it was a major undertaking to re-tool the game even just to function without the Cleric, let alone without magic, at all. In 4e, running such a campaign was seamless, you flicked the 'inherent bonuses' switch, had all 4 martial classes in your party, and it worked fine. Adding a 5e Warlord - if it's good enough, and not restricted to a 4e-style 'Leader' role, but, like other support classes in 5e, can have the flexibility to make other strong contributions, as well - could get 5e to that same place. Maybe other options and module to season to taste would be nice to have, but they wouldn't be vital.
It can be ignored as much as "words of creation" or "primal spirits" can be for bards and barbarians.
That's pretty tough to ignore.
I can easily argue barbarians have some "magical" element to them; the PHB outright suggests one origin of Rage is "from a communion with fierce animal spirits."
The Totem Barbarian is explicitly magical, that passage is speaking of the source of his rage, the Berserker is not, the PHB also addresses rage that is more literal, and doesn't imply magic.
There's always room to believe what you want, of course. A character could conclude, after fighting a Berserker, that the crazy barbarian /must/ have been possessed by some sort of demon, for instance, and remain unshakable in that belief, regardless of any other evidence. A skeptic seeing a Totem Barbarian 'calling on the spirits' to 'communicate with animals' could conclude he's just eccentric and any information claimed to be from the conversation is actually based on other sources, like intimate knowledge of the wilderness, or just a lucky guess.
Obviously, rationalizing fireballs and the like is a little harder. ;P
Warlords, which often times skirt the difference between magical and mundane, need at the bare minimum the same consideration.
Warlords do no such thing, their concept has always been non-magical. Fantastic, Extraordinary (in the 3.5 'EX' sense) even super-human, but not supernatural.
if your talking a "Default D&D" warlord, it has to mesh with the "Default D&D" universe.
Nothing about the Default D&D universe suggests that anything the Warlord has ever done is magical. Sure, edition warriors in the past, fans still obsessing over the implications of hps, so-called caster-supremacists, and other of our fellow over-invested-in-our-hobby fans might have theoretical issues with with some Warlord mechanics. But the system in general and even the Standard Game as it stands would have no problems with the addition of one.
If we're all willing to be reasonable, though, there's no need to make Warlord maneuvers into spells, actually give them any sort of supernatural ability, or place the same kinds of limiting factors on their already-less-versatile-than-magic range of abilities that magic faces (ie, like not working in an anti-magic shell or 'world where there is no magic' or whatever). Rather, just as people IRL will attribute a success, sports team victory, close escape, or extraordinary accomplishment to divine favor, a lucky piece, a psychic, guardian angel, or other supernatural agency, there can be a genuine belief out there in the setting that some exceptional martial characters, like Warlords, are tapping into some sort of subtle, un-provable/un-disprovable source of supernatural power.
Yeah, get that out of the sidebar and put it in the main box and I'm there with bells on.
Say, right towards the end of the intro...
Warlord
...blah blah blah... colorful descriptions of possible warlords... blah blah blah....
Some attribute the extraordinary abilities of famous Warlords to a divine heritage or blessing, or some supernatural connection to primal forces of conflict, or even simply to luck or fate. Some say that there must be more than just charismatic leadership or tactical brilliance - perhaps the mystic secrets of some militant cabal left over from some forgotten empire, or a subtle magic of word & deed that doesn't follow the same laws as the mighty magic of wizards and their ilk - behind a Warlord's string of improbable victories. Most Warlords would agree. There is something greater than themselves that deserves the credit for those victories: their allies.
Whatever the source of their extraordinary accomplishments, Warlords are an asset to any party seeking victory in battle... blah, blah, blah...
....and *insert an awesome 5e class here*
