D&D 5E What's a Warlord? Never heard of this class before.

[Tony Vargas]

Its a 4E class. IN 2E terms it is a type of warrior I suppose that could buff the allies etc.

Here's my take on what a Warlord might have been in 2e terms.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...y-The-Warlord-in-prior-editions&daysprune=365

Understanding a 4e class in 2e terms requires considering what 2e Class Groups represented, and how 3e changed certain of the classes...

2E had Warrior, Mage, Priest and Rogue tags I suppose

Groups, and no supposition about it. 2e sorted classes into groups based on the nature of their abilities, both primarily how they did things, martial prowess, cunning & skills, divine intervention, or arcane magic, and what they accomplished - general toughness, healing & support, sneaky trapfinding, or fireballs & wish-fulfillment. ;P So you had:

Warriors: Primarily hit things with weapons to do lots of damage.
Priests: Primarily used the power of the gods to heal their allies.
Wizards: Primarily cast spells to solve problems of any sort.
Rogues: Primarily used skills opportunistically, including stabbing enemies in the back with weapons, but were generally 'weaker' than other classes and advanced more rapidly in experience because of that.

3e changed that, some.

First of all, it tried to get everyone on the same power level, so every class advanced at the same rate with the same exp.

To that end, Rogues became their own class (no more 'Thief' sub class), and a more broadly-usable, deadlier 'Sneak Attack' replaced the lowly backstab. Fighters got 'feats' that they (or anyone, fighters got a lot /more/ of them) could choose to make them better with different weapons & maneuvers (like specialization, but much more varied). Ranger, Paladin, & Bards got more spells and got them at lower levels.

In addition to setting up Rogues as high-damage sneak-attackers, 3e still expected Clerics to heal (and made them better at it, by giving them spontaneous casting of 'cure' spells), Fighters to 'tank' in the front line (and made them better at it with 'attacks of opportunity,' reach, and special attacks like tripping that all together could make it harder to just run right past them, while dialing down sheer damage via specialization & TWFing), and Wizards to do anything/everything else with magic.

4e de-coupled how you did things (Source) from what you accomplished on behalf of your party (Role).

What you could accomplish was a 'Role':

Striker: Do lots of damage to enemies one at a time.
Defender: Protect allies, mainly by blocking enemies and attracting their attacks
Leader: Enhancing allies - granting extra hps, actions, bonuses, &c
Controller: Degrading the enemy's ability to act, including imposing conditions and changing the battlefield.

How you did it was your 'Source':

Martial: Prowess with weapons, skill/determination/heroism far beyond the ordinary
Divine: Power direct from the Gods
Arcane: Mysterious eldritch magic & occultism
Primal: Power of nature via 'primal spirits.'
Psionic: Power of the mind,

4E had clear roles

And clear Sources. And, they were independent of 2e's class groupings.

and classes were shoehorned into them so fighters became defenders

Before they were de-coupled, doing things a certain way (divine magic, say) generally implied accomplishing specific things (like healing). You had classes like the Paladin that were primarily one pair (dealing damage with weapons) with some of another (divine magic to heal by laying on hands, later a few spells). And, of course, you had multiclassing. But, a Cleric, for instance, had always been a Divine Leader and remained one in 4e, it's just that there were other kinds of Leaders and other Divine classes with different roles, as well. In 3e, the Rogue gained much deadly Sneak Attacking to contribute damage in combat (while prior to that it was just 'weak in combat'), while the fighter stayed shifted from insane damage (as TWFing & double-specialization were nerfed) to tanking, and 4e stuck with those keeping them both clearly Martial, and better-supporting the Rogue's Striker and Fighter's Defender roles mechanically.

So in addition to retaining the traditional Cleric as Divine Leader & Wizard as Arcane Controller and the 3e-re-designed Fighter as Martial Defender & 3.5-re-focused Rogue as Martial Striker, 4e shuffled things around a bit, making the 3.5 at-will-caster (yes, 3.5 really went there) the Warlock into an Arcane Striker, the hybrid fighter/cleric Paladin into a Divine Defender, and creating a Martial Leader, the Warlord.

4e went on to cover most Role/Source combos. The Bard became more focused as an Arcane Leader, the Druid as a Primal Controller, the Swordmage became an Arcane Defender, and so forth. It also doubled up on some Source/Roles - there was a second Arcane Striker, the Sorcerer, for instance.

4E had striker, leader, defender and control which were hard coded into the game. A fighter for example was always a defender and had no ranged option support (or at least minimal options).

Here Zard badly misrepresents the effect of de-coupling source & role. Each class got strong support for it's traditional role (if it was focused enough to have a traditional role), which made it better at that role. Most also had some support for one or two 'secondary' roles, so there was support, not 'hard coding.' The Fighter was a primary Defender, but it could be quite effective as a Striker, as well or instead. While it was STR and melee-focused, the Ranger, which was no longer a spell caster, was a Martial Striker and did very well focused on DEX and ranged combat. So you could play a tough fighter or a deadly archer, they just used different classes. The range of concepts you could play, especially when it came to martial characters, expanded substantially.

The Warlord was a significant contributor to that expansion. While the Fighter let you play a much more effective 'Tank' (Defender) than ever before, with special abilities that made it harder to avoid or escape melee with him, and harder to attack allies, and the Ranger let you make a deadly, woodsy archer, or the Rogue a deadly sneaky backstabber with a variety of thiefly skills, those were all traditional enough concepts. The Warlord as a martial leader opened up a role that had previously been held almost exclusively by the Cleric, and a range of concepts that ranged from aggressive lead-from-the-front 'bravuras,' to tactical geniuses, to sources of inspiration, to resourceful opportunists, even with some outre choices effectively-contributing virtual non-combatants.

But, as the game evolved, there were even more. The party no longer 'needed a Cleric,' any leader could handle the job. So if you didn't want to play a divine character, you could play an Artificer or Bard or Warlord or Shaman or even Ardent and your party got what they needed, while you got to play a concept closer to what you wanted.

All leaders had some for of non magical healing

All leaders had some way of giving allies back hps. Warlords did it through Inspiration, Clerics through Divine Power, Artificers (a second Divine Leader class) through a magical healing infusion, and so forth. Most healing triggered a resource of the character being healed, however...

in 4E you had a reserve of hit points known as healing surges and each one gave you 25% of your hit points back.

A character could spend one surge via a 1/encounter Second Wind option, or any number of surges when resting. Leaders could all trigger surges, and most added to the points restored to varying degrees (the Cleric, in general, added the most).


5e has also tried to take some of the healing burden off the traditional Cleric/Druid and Bard, by expanding HD to act a bit like surges - you can re-roll each of your HD once/day when you rest, regaining that many hps. But, it is back to using spells for magical healing, so Clerics, Druids, Bards, & Rangers who know a Cure Wounds spell need to give up casting some other spell to do so. There's no Warlord in 5e and no way to trigger HD other than resting, so the game is less dependent on spells for healing than 2e and earlier, but still dependent on them, while in 4e it wasn't. Restoring the Warlord to 5e would open back up the kinds of characters, parties, and play styles that independence from Clerical healing enabled.

 

[Jester David]

Priests: Primarily used the power of the gods to heal their allies.

Nitpick: the 2e PHB defines priests as the classes that draw their power from the gods but does not limit them to healing allies. Priests were limited in the spells they can cast to a few select spheres (plus spells of the All sphere). The druid gained access to the Healing sphere but not all clerics gained access with some having Major, some having Minor, and some not having access at all.

While I haven't checked 1e and Basic in some time, the first edition to grant healing to all clerics might have been 3e, and even then only through spell lists as evil (and some neutral) clerics might opt to spontaneously cast inflict spells. The only edition where all clerics could always heal was 4e.

Here Zard badly misrepresents the effect of de-coupling source & role. Each class got strong support for it's traditional role (if it was focused enough to have a traditional role), which made it better at that role. Most also had some support for one or two 'secondary' roles, so there was support, not 'hard coding.' The Fighter was a primary Defender, but it could be quite effective as a Striker, as well or instead. While it was STR and melee-focused, the Ranger, which was no longer a spell caster, was a Martial Striker and did very well focused on DEX and ranged combat. So you could play a tough fighter or a deadly archer, they just used different classes. The range of concepts you could play, especially when it came to martial characters, expanded substantially.

Secondary roles were a part of the edition but were really a later addition that evolved with later class design and as more subclasses/builds were created. I'd say secondary roles really don't gel until the PHB2. And many PHB1 builds had a subrole that really seemed to augment on the primary role.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Nitpick: the 2e PHB defines priests as the classes that draw their power from the gods but does not limit them to healing allies.

Sure. The de-facto role was always 'healer' for the Cleric (and anyone else who could heal, prettymuch), but there was a lot more they could do in theory or even, if there was a surfeit of healing in the party from other sources, in practice. In 3e that 'in practice' became CoDzilla. In 2e, the healer role was still very much front and center as a matter of practicality.

While I haven't checked 1e and Basic in some time, the first edition to grant healing to all clerics might have been 3e, and even then only through spell lists as evil (and some neutral) clerics might opt to spontaneously cast inflict spells.

All clerics could heal in all early editions, all they had to do was memorize one or more cure..wound spells, even evil clerics could take the cure version (you just couldn't memorize both cure & inflict). Specialty priests in 2e might not have gotten the right sphere to heal, but the Cleric & Druid in the 2e PH both could as a matter of course, and it was expected. Ironically, when 3.0 gave clerics the ability to cast cure spells spontaneously, they actually ended up healing less than in prior editions, resulting in CoDzillas, and, in 4e/5e where healing word was/is a minor/bonus action along side at-wills/cantrips, clerics rarely have to confine themselves to /just/ healing.

As the game evolved over the decades Clerics got more flexibility and greater availability of healing, which in practice, made them /less/ exclusively tied to the healer/band-aid function. In 3.x, there was too much additional healing available and the Cleric had too many/too powerful alternate uses for healing resources (spells) making the class notoriously broken in that edition. 4e put a higher priority on balance, reigning in caster power a great deal and silo'd healing resources so they couldn't just be traded in for greater spell power. 5e lies between the two, with some silo'd healing resources but spell slots also a major healing resource.

Secondary roles were a part of the edition but were really a later addition that evolved with later class design

At release, the PH1 included and showcased secondary roles. The most dramatic examples were the fighter, which, was very clearly a secondary striker, the WIS Cleric, a very obvious and quite effective secondary controller (and the STR Cleric a secondary defender, illustrating that secondary roles could be different within the same class), and the Paladin, a secondary leader, but all the classes had some secondary role.

 

[Jester David]

Ironically, when 3.0 gave clerics the ability to cast cure spells spontaneously, they actually ended up healing less than in prior editions, resulting in CoDzillas,

That and the abundance of CLW wands, which kept people healed between encounters. 3e was the first edition to really have characters walking into each combat fully healed. That was a big difference from 1e/2e where attrition was a very useful DM tactic.

and, in 4e/5e where healing word was/is a minor/bonus action along side at-wills/cantrips, clerics rarely have to confine themselves to /just/ healing.

Prior to 4e, healing combat was pretty situation. It was easier to use spells to buff or nuke in combat and break out the wand after.

As the game evolved over the decades Clerics got more flexibility and greater availability of healing, which in practice, made them /less/ exclusively tied to the healer/band-aid function. In 3.x, there was too much additional healing available and the Cleric had too many/too powerful alternate uses for healing resources (spells) making the class notoriously broken in that edition.

The cleric was broken due to its buff spells, that it automatically knew every divine spell from every splatbook, and also had decent armour, good weapons, reasonable hp, and two good saves.
The healing was incidental to the CoDzilla.

At release, the PH1 included and showcased secondary roles. The most dramatic examples were the fighter, which, was very clearly a secondary striker, the WIS Cleric, a very obvious and quite effective secondary controller (and the STR Cleric a secondary defender, illustrating that secondary roles could be different within the same class), and the Paladin, a secondary leader, but all the classes had some secondary role.

Kinda. Some classes had secondary roles, but others did not. Many like the warlord, shield fighter, orb wizard, rogue, and ranger really just focused on their primary role.
Later builds really expanded on this and made secondary roles a firmer part of the design. It's a neat way 4e evolved and improved over time.

This might have grown out of the original design for the druid, with was conceived as having two roles.

 

[Tony Vargas]

3e was the first edition to really have characters walking into each combat fully healed. That was a big difference from 1e/2e where attrition was a very useful DM tactic.

That's really more a matter of play style. You could always insist on going into each new challenge fully ready - there was just a tension built in between the amount of 'resting' you'd need to do that and the plausibility of doing so. A 3.x WoCLW/LV could require spending a few minutes between combats getting healed up, longer than casting a higher level cure spell to heal the same amount, but much, much faster than recovering a new slate of cure spells overnight to do so.

It was easier to use spells to buff or nuke in combat and break out the wand after.

That was one dynamic that developed in 3e that had not been the case before or since. You could heal in combat, but you wanted it to be a big, useful heal, and that was situational, and cost a very powerful/limited resource (one of your higher level slots) - but you also had a much cheaper resource more plentiful resource that was readily useable out of combat but wouldn't do much in combat. Prior to 3e, that spell resource was about the only practical way to heal, so you might as well do it in combat when it'd do some good. After 3e, there are more-limited, player resources (surges/HD) available for a short rest, but they're not trivial the way the WoCLW/LV quickly became as you leveled.

The cleric was broken due to its buff spells, that it automatically knew every divine spell from every splatbook, and also had decent armour, good weapons, reasonable hp, and two good saves.
The healing was incidental to the CoDzilla.

/Not/ healing (with spells) was central to CoDzilla. In the past, Cleric had been an unpopular class in large part because of the 'heal-bot' rut it'd tend to get into. 3e tried to address that by making healing a lot more plentiful, and it worked: too well, you got CoDzilla. Instead of sometimes being able to pop off with spellcasting to rival the wizard or occasionally self-buff to rival the fighter, CoDzilla could devote all it's spells to doing either or both systematically.

Some classes had secondary roles, but others did not

All classes had secondary roles, from the beginning. Some builds emphasized them more dramatically than others, or emphasized one or another of two possible secondary roles, but they were a clear part of the design philosophy, and give the lie to the idea that classes were 'shoehorned' into a role 'box' or grid-filling source/role. Source and Role had always been in the game, just informally, and closely linked to eachother along with 'niche protection' to give each class a very specific contribution to the party.

This might have grown out of the original design for the druid, with was conceived as having two roles.

Maybe, if that design was early in development. More likely it was picked back up with Essentials which actually did give different sub-classes different primary roles - including the Druid, which was a controller in 4e, but also became a Leader in Essentials.

 

[Jester David]

Maybe, if that design was early in development. More likely it was picked back up with Essentials which actually did give different sub-classes different primary roles - including the Druid, which was a controller in 4e, but also became a Leader in Essentials.

I was referring to Rich Baker's blog teasing the druid prior to PHB2, where he suggested the druid would swap roles. Which was dropped upon release as too confusing.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I was referring to Rich Baker's blog teasing the druid prior to PHB2, where he suggested the druid would swap roles. Which was dropped upon release as too confusing.

Not a candidate for inspiring the idea of secondary roles, then. Still a good candidate to have inspired what followed in Essentials, though - or the HotFW Berserker. FWIW.

 

[Evenglare]

The warlord is a support class that functions similar to cleric and bard but with out magic. The class was fully realized in 4th edition, basically a martial healer/support role. It's also a class that a faction of 5e players don't want the other faction of 5e players to have because it destroyed their objective concept of HP, even though they can ignore it completely. Sort of a "STOP LIKING WHAT I DONT LIKE!" mentality.

 

[Uchawi]

The line that is drawn is the non-warlord supporters will accept the class with magic, while the pro-warlord supporters will accept the class without magic. The default state for the class (magic/non-magic) is something neither is willing to concede. And then you have the half-baked attempt by WOTC to try to implement both by splitting up the class between the fighter and bard. Then both sides are left scratching their head because they all get something they do not like.

Then you get into really silly arguments, in my opinion, over the class name.

But the true benefit of the class, versus the history, is enabling a player to roleplay a leader with mechanics to support it. Technically anyone can be a leader from a real life comparison, and therefore it applies to the game as well, but the warlord concept in game provides a glimpse on how it is played out.

 

[Miladoon]

Hey man, nice shot.

Not sure what fan faction has to do with answering the OP. The warlord class has already been described well enough on this thread and was omitted from the core PHB by the DESIGNERS on the basis of whatever information they had and through significant playtesting. At some point they decided to split it up into two subclasses. The base class has not been duplicated yet, and the addition of warlord type subclasses does not look good for a base warlord class in the future. It would be a long stretch to find an active anti-warlord faction that is directly lobbying WotC designers to keep another pro-warlord faction from having fun. Maybe there is a great old one cult out there secretly forming and coordinating all their feedback by use of telepathy. Maybe its the machine.

There is already a thread discussing the fan rage over the warlord HERE.

But you probably already knew that.