D&D 5E What is a Warlord [No, really, I don't know.]

[Andor]

I'm gonna make a prediction. The Warlord is going to steal the Rangers role.

Oh not the wildernessy, archery, Aragorny role.

The Warlord will be the new class no one is ever quite happy with. The one that spawns endless debates, rewrites, homebrews, and theory crafting. The one with variants from light-casting to psionics, to divine, to magicless and still no one will ever quite be happy.

Somewhere a Ranger is patting a Warlord on the back and saying "Good luck pal."

 

[Hussar]

All I know is that if I'm playing a Half-orc Barbarian with a Great Axe and there's a Diviner Wizard with Hold person in the group, a Warlord with the ability to grant a full Action is my best friend. Holy moly!

No one is saying that though. We're talking about granting a single attack, not a full action. You're right, granting a full action would be too powerful. So, why would you assume that?

But that isn't at all how anything works, the rogue deals more damage with a singular attack than anyone else. If the warlord can hand out two attacks they handed one to the rogue and one to the paladin who uses a smite the warlord has now dealt more damage than anyone else can in one turn.

The rogue can only sneak once per turn, so, granting him extra attacks doesn't actually do anything since it's not a turn it would simply be an attack as a free action. I suppose if the rogue wiffed that round, it might make a difference, but, generally, no, it's not going to matter. And the paladin is simply blowing through his daily powers. Sure, he smites three times in this fight rather than twice, for example, but, now he has one less smite for the day. It balances out.

Do people rule that attacks made with a Battlemaster also allow sneak attack? Do you get sneak attack on opportunity attacks as well? Opportunity attacks are reactions, not turns - they are called out differently on page 189-190 in the PHB. I simply ruled that once per turn meant the rogue's turn, not any turn. If, for some reason, the rogue gained a second turn in the round, then he would gain two sneak attacks.

 

[Guest 6801328]

No one is saying that though. We're talking about granting a single attack, not a full action. You're right, granting a full action would be too powerful. So, why would you assume that?

Well, I'm glad to hear that.

But, uh, only EVERY Warlord thread EVER talks about "granting actions". Maybe not a single person saying that actually means a full action, but it's not really mentioned. So my confusion shouldn't be all that surprising.

 

[Hussar]

Well, I'm glad to hear that.

But, uh, only EVERY Warlord thread EVER talks about "granting actions". Maybe not a single person saying that actually means a full action, but it's not really mentioned. So my confusion shouldn't be all that surprising.

Well, I suppose if you presume that every warlord poster wants some OP combat monster, then sure, that makes sense. I prefer to go with interpretations that would make a fair bit more logical sense in context. Particularly considering even in 4e, a warlord never granted a full actual turn. So, no, granting an action in context, simply means a single attack, single move, etc. It might help if you look at the 4e warlord, which people are basing the discussion on, grants actions, which are defined slightly differently than in 5e.

But, I do suggest that when you read "warlords granting actions" they are talking in the 4e sense of a single act - single melee attack, single move, single whatever.

Would that change your issues with the warlord? That people are asking for something similar to a Battlemaster, but, simply extended to include more options?

 

[Tony Vargas]

No one is saying that though.

Oh, someone's always saying something.

We're talking about granting a single attack, not a full action. You're right, granting a full action would be too powerful.

For the most part, yes.

Action-granting of attacks was mostly basic attack (in 5e, a single attack with some limitations), and always basic attacks for at-will grants, but a daily (and, remember, this isn't like a 5e spell, where you have 3 at first level, and tons at high level and can prep them but cast them spontaneous, this was at most 4 dailies even at 30th level, and each daily exactly /once/) could grant a full action. So a full action, like a full attack routine or casting a spell of whatever level isn't out of the question, it just needs to be distinctly less available.

Other action grants were little things, shift a square, take a move action, stuff like that - nothing to freak out over. But 'action grant' is very general, and mostly simply balanced by giving up the corresponding action.

The rogue can only sneak once per turn, so, granting him extra attacks doesn't actually do anything since it's not a turn it would simply be an attack as a free action. I suppose if the rogue wiffed that round, it might make a difference, but, generally, no, it's not going to matter.

It's not a 'new turn' because it's your turn?

I simply ruled that once per turn meant the rogue's turn, not any turn.

Ah, I can't say I don't like that ruling. It makes granting the rogue an attack a more interesting tactical decision, like when SA was 1/round in early 4e, before they retconned it to match the Essentials Thief's 1-per-anyone's-turn.

 

[Guest 6801328]

But that would make it rather complicated. If the W only grants the rogue an extra attack on the rogue's turn, but the rogue was higher in the initiative order, does that mean the W can no longer grant the rogue an action? All of the sudden Initiative becomes super valuable to the W (which I guess makes sense...)

My hunch is that "sometimes it's a full action, sometimes it's a partial action, sometimes it's only a little bit of an action, and/or it will occur later in the round on the recipient's turn" is more complex than the 5e designers would go for.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Managing initiative could be part of the tactical depth of playing one, sure. You might delay to go right before or after an ally or enemy to be able to react in a certain way. There were even utilities that affected initiative.

The bit about the rogue's turn or not wasn't the Warlord's ability, but the Rogue's SA. It's usable 1/turn, Hussar ruled that, in his game, to be once per /the rogue's turn/ (so, really, 1/round, but re-setting when the rogues turn starts, rather than the top or bottom of the round), which makes things... interesting.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

Delay? Is it just me, or are the number of houserules needed to bring this class to life growing at a phenomenal rate?

 

[Guest 6801328]

The bit about the rogue's turn or not wasn't the Warlord's ability, but the Rogue's SA. It's usable 1/turn, Hussar ruled that, in his game, to be once per /the rogue's turn/ (so, really, 1/round, but re-setting when the rogues turn starts, rather than the top or bottom of the round), which makes things... interesting.

Yeah, I got that. Just saying that it's problematic giving the rogue an extra attack on a turn other than his own. Multiple warlords in a group could push a rogue off the DPR charts. Imagine that on a paralyzed target....

(All you WoW players will appreciate this: in Burning Crusade my rogue had dual warglaives, so our raid leader stacked shaman on me who would chain bloodlust. My attack speed would get down to 0.7 mh, 0.35 oh. Totally sick.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

Some potential problems with attack granting were never issues, presumably caught in development, others, like chaining reactive action-granting and free attacks, which got even crazier, were addressed with errata, still others became issues again in Essentials. I think of them as 'solved' because they had been solved once, but if the design isn't careful, they could repeat a mistake, sure, just like Essentials did.

Then again, the DM in 5e has a lot more leeway to just rule the less broken way, so maybe they don't have to be all that careful.