Several of us, apposed to a full-blown warlord, have requested many times:
Propose/provide an example of a warlord class that avoids requiring the other PCs to be lead by the class. Commanded. Even inspired (another troublesome issue because it involves forcing other PCs to roleplay or think a certain way regardless of circumstances).
We are still waiting.
Here is the thing. It already exists in the game. It is already a massive component of the Bard. There is this character class who has been around since 2nd edition and a major component of it is that when everyone else in the group is fighting for their lives, this foppish idiot you have along with you pulled out his flute and start playing it and doing a jig or reciting bad beat poetry instead of actual trying to hit or shoot anything. And it is essentially written that this so endearing and inspirational to the rest of the group rather than being irksome, bothersome or annoying, that mechanically if they have 4-5 other people they are making the best contribution they can by doing this. If such a system is going to exist in the game at all, how much more sense does it make for role to be filled by someone whose attention it at least partially focused on what everyone is doing and informing everyone of possible shots that might blindside them or when there is a nice opening or just let you know when you are breaking formation or blocking someone else's line-of-sight (something someone fully engaged in the battle is likely not to be aware of in the fog of war).
Now, I will grant you... there is an issue with the terminology. Why "leader". That implies an individual is necessary "the boss", which-- sure rubs people the wrong way whether it be because you are the "I am the unique special snowflake lone wolf who the rest of the party should be on their knees thanking for my even sticking around to save them, no one is my boss!" or "I's da biggest 'n strongest! I is the boss!!" But really, it is sad that they decided to use that terminology. Better terms would be "support" or "coordination". It really doesn't much matter if it is the lowest ranking trashy punk kid in the squad who is doing it, any squad can use the person whose job is to watch their backs, keep an eye out for tricks or traps, keep everyone generally informed about how things are going and when someone else needs help and when they need to strengthen their resolve or put everything into the final push.
Now, can anyone fill that role?... I suppose, BUT... that ought to make us fundamentally question some other classes.
Let's start with the easy one-- the Cleric. Anyone can worship a god. In fact, within the setting if the gods have made themselves as undeniably clear and regularly perform demonstrable magical feats right in front of everyone's eyes, then... what makes the Cleric so special? It really seems like the deity could choose just about anyone to be their champion regardless of class and could just as well answer anyone's prayers. What exactly should one's class have anything to do with it? Surely one ought to be able to be a Fighter or Rogue or Wizard and wear a god's symbol and pray to them and probably many gods would prefer such a champion.
Or... why exactly is the Fighter (and similar classes) alone able to use all sorts of armor and all weapons? I mean, surely anyone can strap on armor of any sort and benefit from it. It can't be about strength scores, because it isn't tied to that. And, really, while it might be somewhat cumbersome during the first day or so to be wielding heavier armor or using different weapon, it shouldn't take more than a week for one to figure out how to use it fairly effectively. And it can't be about being super specialized with it because we have other mechanics to relate that. Most people who went onto battlefields for most of history didn't receive any more than a weeks training. So why can't all classes just be able to inherently use all mundane items in the world?
And what is so special about Paladins having some sort of code. The existence of this class is to imply... no one else of any other class lives by a code or that anyone else just doesn't take it seriously? And how exactly does living by some code make them fearless and immune to disease or allow them to remove diseases from others, nevermind their ability to do super-powerful strikes or compel people to duel with them on command.
And then you have the Rogue. Why exactly is dressed in leather, stabbing people in the back and being super agile the requisites for being really good at skills? Surely anyone can be really good at lots of things without being limited to leather armor and light weapons being necessitated by it. Chances are that most locksmiths just aren't the kind of people who are good at hiding in shadows and sneaking up on people anyway. But in D&D, to get that special double proficiency bonus you either need to be a Rogue or a Bard. Why? It is artificially limiting.
Moreover, the Rogue gets all sorts of special abilities about being more mobile and more agile than every other class, even if the actual character doesn't have a higher Dexterity bonus. The same could be said about the special benefits the Monk, Barbarian and Fighter get that effectively make their Constitution super-human even if they don't have the highest Constitution in the group. A similar argument could be made for the "Mystics" abilities that are apparently an extension of their mind-- something that all sentient creatures have. Surely these abilities should be derived from merely having a super high score in the stat rather than granted by class... right?
Or... maybe you just don't critically examine anything you have grown used to.
But, I have to imagine that at least part of the objection comes from a certain playstyle that has always been accepted in the game, a playstyle that if anyone were going to be honest.... is cheating. At least in the system as it is presented.
You see, the way many people have chosen to traditionally play the game, it is a dumbfounding joke that we have the 6 attributes we have or that they have been treated as equal. Because with many players, both newbies and old school grongards... they aren't. Not even remotely.
You see, in terms of physical attributes, you define this clearly as what your character can do. If you decide to use your strength score against another player at the table, it does not matter if that person could bench-press you, if your Strength score says 20 and theirs says 10, you expect-- nay, feel utterly entitled to that +4 bonus against them on all contested rolls. Moreover, you expect that other player to acknowledge you as the biggest and strongest and if anything in the game comes up where Strength is expected to play a role, you see that as your time to shine. You as a player need not stand up and lift any weights or punch a meter to show your physical punching power, that is utterly immaterial to the result. The die is god and determines everything. This follows true with Dexterity and Constitution.
And.... then there are the other 3 stats and how such people tend to use them.
Intelligence is said to be the stat that demonstrates a character's applicable knowledge of the world they live in. But we all know that it never plays out that way. ESPECIALLY in published settings. If you have a newbie at the table who is playing a character with an Intelligence 18 and a veteran who knows the world inside and yet who has, because they know they mechanically don't need the score for literally anything their character is ever expected to do, have reduced their character's Intelligence stat as much as possible in order to use those build points in the attributes they know they are reliably going to use all the time.... Guess which character is going to be identifying every monster and their weakness, telling everyone where every town is located on the map, reciting the history of the world and identifying every spell and explaining the full organization of every god upon hearing the name or seeing the symbol and, of course, making the most perfectly sound ideal mechanical choice with their character at every given moment.... That's right, it will be the hardcore fan veteran who is SUPPOSED to be playing an ignorant, sheltered character but instead readily goes ahead and abuses their player knowledge in a way no one would ever accept someone abusing their Strength or Dexterity as a player to negate another PC's role in the game.
In fact, since basically the only skills governed by Intelligence are ones that you use to ask the DM for more information-- something that is invariably a crapshoot at best as the DM will be guarded about giving up too much and spoiling any potential mysteries regardless of how good the roll might be, is just something that the more familiar you are with the game the less and less you have any potential to do.
The same goes with the Wisdom score. If the DM offers a riddle or puzzle to the characters, it is the players who figure out the answer and that PC's character who gets credit for the discovery even if the numbers on the sheet indicate that this really should have been another player's chance to shine.
And... then there is charisma. This one is the particularly thorny one because even more so than the above two, this is the one that this certain sort of cheating player is keen on utterly ignoring. They often insist on throwing out all Deception, Intimidation or Persuasion rolls all together just so they can utterly dump the stat unless using it solely because it is the assigned magic-casting stat for the class they are playing. Otherwise the stat is simply not ever brought up. Rather, most certainly, their ability to bully, cajole, lie to, negotiate with or seduce the other players and the DM is said thus their character's ability and they will talk over and shut down any other player attempting to have any input into the game other than themselves and use player leverage to get special favors for their PCs.
To such people, that is what roleplaying is. The physical and magical aspects written on the page are holy gospel, but beyond that they expect that players should be using their player knowledge, player mental facilities and player social abilities as their characters', damned be what the numbers on the page say. And when I see someone throw a tantrum over the idea that there might be a class concept that would generally gravitate towards nobility and leadership (and the Cleric and Paladin have already beaten the "Warlord" to that anyway), it is almost certainly because the person feels that this model is "role"play.
Now, there could be a system crafted where that would be completely valid. You would get rid of mental and social attributes and skills off the sheet all together, replace that attribute slot with a single "soul" stat that would govern casting power and resistance to magic and go forward from there. And if you were playing that game, it would be a totally fair model to work off of.
Problem is that this is a "role"playing game. And so even though you were just being a min/maxing twink when you wrote up your character, when you decided to tank those mental and social attributes, you decided that those were aspects of the character you are supposed to be playing. If you are supposed to be playing Quasimodo, but since you are so much more handsome and worldly than him you decide to insert those aspects of yourself-- you are acting out that role wrong, ruining the play and I think everyone can acknowledge that when put into those terms. I am writing this post to speak out against it, but I am CERTAIN that I too fall into the trap of cheating in this way.
But most definitely we should be able to support a player who wants to play a character far more clever, knowledgeable or charming than they could ever be just as much as we should support someone wanting to play a character far stronger, graceful or tougher than they could ever be. And in order to afford that those of us not playing such a role at the particularly given time need to step back and let them have that spotlight or we are cheating.
Now, how exactly do we do this while allowing for people to speak in the first-person and not break character instead of reducing the game to third-person commands and dice roll? I don't know that anyone has come up with a good solution for that. Perhaps having your character sometimes come to conclusions you are pretty certain are erroneous but nonetheless have a certain line of rational thinking to them or if you realize that a player doesn't know something that their character should know or something occurs to you that they would be more likely to think of, perhaps you should clue them in via verbal or written note and then let them accept or reject it and then act it out on their own before making their roll.
Point that I am trying to get at is that when there is a class concept that is "I am trained to coordinate groups, cheer everyone up and deal with hierarchical power structures", then I see no reason not to treat them as such-- just as it is perfectly acceptable for someone's character concept to be "This world has very real gods with very demonstrable powers and I really love one and they love me back and will do whatever I ask a certain number of times a day, but won't for you even if you worship him too" or "I have a super strict code of honor and ethics which allows me to hit things harder and force people to duel me and I am fearless and if you stand by me, you will be fearless too because you believe in me!" or "I play music and recite poetry all the time that is so fantastical that rather than finding it irksome, it fills you with energy and pride and makes you fight harder." or "I meditate a lot and so my punches and kicks are deadlier than sword strikes, my skin is harder than armor and I am immune to poison and disease" or well... any other class concept. They all have a number of goofy aspects that we could pull out.
Sure, with any of them I could well question "wait, why should it affect me that way" or "why does something so mundane that might be true of my character true give you these sorts of fantastical edges"?
And maybe you are willing to accept that for half of them "well, its... magic!", in which case... I suppose the "Warlord" class would also be "magic" in a sense whether it is about how they can affect the divine spark in living, sentient things some sort of 'spiritual/adrenaline' energy akin to that which the Barbarian taps into or it being some sort of low-level psychic energy effect. But then... the only classes 100% expected to have no explicable magic aspects about them are Rogue and Fighter and even they seem to have abilities that just don't seem physically possible.
