D&D 5E Warlord - Is 5E SRD/DMsGuild a Solution? Is AL a Problem?

[Tony Vargas]

Ok, I'm going to defend my friend here because he was a bigger 4e fan than I was for a time. I don't know exactly what abilities or spells he was speaking of, nor why he viewed them as "4e-ish" so I cannot elaborate further on this. I DO know he loved the 4e Swordmage though, and it was his favorite 4e class, so he did have an emotional connection that was disappointed with THAT version of the class. He wasn't speaking from the "H8rs gonna H8" club.

All the more reason to avoid that appearance in the way you related his observations.

It's not a betrayal to have (hypothetically) a warlord healing ability that doesn't resemble Inspiring Word, or that a warlord isn't a warlord without Wolf Pack Tactics as an ability. The class cannot be beholden to everything the 4e version did, doing it like the 4e version does it.

Nod. I tend to see it more as a 5e Warlord design can't afford to be limited to what it did in 4e, since 5e has eschewed formal 'roles,' and 5e classes tend to have much greater flexibility & variety of contributions, as well as far more resources. Between that and wide-open design space there's room for everything the Warlord did, and more, once it's adapted to 5e. Wolf Pack Tactics is a good example. In 5e some monsters have a similar-themed ability that grants Advantage very easily, for instance. And, similarly, if you look at what could be accomplished on a more abstract level with WPT, you could home in on setting up Advantage and allowing allies to Disengage as it's primary functions. Quite workable and potentially pretty cool.

 

[Remathilis]

All the more reason to avoid that appearance in the way you related his observations.

No, you twisted my words with your sick obsession with proving any non-positive reference to fourth edition is "edition warring".

I said "He also said several of the new spells and abilities felt like straight 4e ports, and didn't blend well with 5e design aesthetics." That means that some concept leapt out at him as reading like someone tried to take a 4e power and convert it "as is" to 5e, ignoring how 5e already handles similar abilities. This was not an attack on 4e except to say not everything in 4e can convert over to 5e perfectly, and whatever element he was referencing, it seemed glaringly obvious to him.

Personally, this passive-aggressive crap is old and tired. Give it a rest.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This was not an attack on 4e except to say not everything in 4e can convert over to 5e perfectly, and whatever element he was referencing, it seemed glaringly obvious to him..

I don't think 'perfect' should be a requirement - let's not let perfect be the enemy of awesome - and it's not really fair to either 4e or 5e to say that you can't convert from the former to the latter. 4e was a neatly balanced game and it did have a lot of jargon but it was still D&D. The notion that something was from 4e, therefore it has no place in 5e really has nothing backing it but whatever prejudice is still lingering from the edition war. 5e has a very open design aesthetic, parsecs of 'design space' compared to any prior edition, it can incorporate cool stuff from prior editions, it's not as limited or fragile as it's sometimes made out to be.

 

[Remathilis]

I don't think 'perfect' should be a requirement - let's not let perfect be the enemy of awesome - and it's not really fair to either 4e or 5e to say that you can't convert from the former to the latter. 4e was a neatly balanced game and it did have a lot of jargon but it was still D&D. The notion that something was from 4e, therefore it has no place in 5e really has nothing backing it but whatever prejudice is still lingering from the edition war. 5e has a very open design aesthetic, parsecs of 'design space' compared to any prior edition, it can incorporate cool stuff from prior editions, it's not as limited or fragile as it's sometimes made out to be.

Nope, still not getting it. Not worth my time.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't think 'perfect' should be a requirement - let's not let perfect be the enemy of awesome - and it's not really fair to either 4e or 5e to say that you can't convert from the former to the latter. 4e was a neatly balanced game and it did have a lot of jargon but it was still D&D. The notion that something was from 4e, therefore it has no place in 5e really has nothing backing it but whatever prejudice is still lingering from the edition war. 5e has a very open design aesthetic, parsecs of 'design space' compared to any prior edition, it can incorporate cool stuff from prior editions, it's not as limited or fragile as it's sometimes made out to be.

Sometimes things from 4E do not convert well just like 1d6/level fireballs.

 

[mellored]

Sometimes things from 4E do not convert well just like 1d6/level fireballs.

yes.
But you can make a 5E version of fireball, even if the details change.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fireball's a funny example. Every edition of D&D had magic-users/wizards able to cast fireball by 5th level. Every edition had that fireball doing d6s, for full or 1/2 damage. 4e's fireball rolled fewer of those d6's at 5th level than any other edition - and 5e, more of 'em. Aside from that, it's an AE that does fire damage, not hard to translate at all. Going from level scaling to capped scaling, to caster-level scaling, to treadmill scaling, to slot scaling has hardly been a big stumbling block at any point along the way.

 

[Remathilis]

Sometimes things from 4E do not convert well just like 1d6/level fireballs.

yes.
But you can make a 5E version of fireball, even if the details change.

Which was what I was trying to say; the conceptual elements were ok, but they used some the same mechanical expressions as the 4e powers, which in some instances didn't mesh with the 5e style of doing things.

 

[Zardnaar]

Which was what I was trying to say; the conceptual elements were ok, but they used some the same mechanical expressions as the 4e powers, which in some instances didn't mesh with the 5e style of doing things.

I understood you. The warlord has better support in the 5E PHB than the Bard, Barbarian, Druid, Monk, Sorcerer, had in the 4E PHB.

Granted attacks these days use spells, superiority dice. At will granting would not work very well as it could easily break the game. At will is to powerful just like autoscaling spells in 5E a'la BECMI,1E,2E,3E. Some autoscaling damage spells probably would not break the game come to think of it just at the old 1d6/level rate.

Not that damage dealing spells have been broken since 1E/BECMI anyway and only at level 11+.

 

[mellored]

Which was what I was trying to say; the conceptual elements were ok, but they used some the same mechanical expressions as the 4e powers, which in some instances didn't mesh with the 5e style of doing things.

you can't grant a "basic attack" in 5e, no. Nor can you let someone spend a "healing surge". But there are some pretty close analogs "attack action" and "hit dice".

Of course, there's plenty of room to go beyond 4e. Like including some 3.5 Marshal auras as well. Or covering some missing fighter architypes if you leave the class modular enough.
*mournful for the playtest fighter*

I also don't see any reason to keep daily powers. That just doesn't make sense.