D&D 5E What the warlord needs in 5e and how to make it happen.

[mellored]

It's probably more accurate to say that 4e Warlords where OP, but only in an optimized party. Generic warlord in a random party wasn't all that strong, and possibly weak.

And the 3.5 warlord (Marshal) was very weak.

 

[Hussar]

Warlord's were OP in 4e. The weren't obviously OP as in being able to sit down and list one thing they just blew everyone else out of the water at. It was the combination of things they could do that was so powerful.

Obviously, I disagree.

1. They could heal almost as good as a pacifist cleric.
(They had feats and utility powers that were very impressive when it came to healing).

Yup, they were a primary healer, same as a cleric or any other "Leader" in the game.

2. Once they had their encounter powers set up they could cause almost as much damage as a striker over the first 1-2 turns of combat.
(In 4e number of attacks was what put you atop the DPR and Nova charts. 4e Warlords enabled about as many attacks as some of the better strikers could in the first turn)

Meh, I'm not convinced that design with Optimizers in mind is a good way to go. It certainly wouldn't be possible with the much more restricted palette of abilities that 5e characters have.

3. They almost ensured the party went first.
(Huge Bonus to initiative for the party)

Umm, a Cha bonus to initiative? That "ensured" the party went first? Only an issue for die rolling groups that ignored the point buy system and generally, even then, not an issue. Going first doesn't really matter that much.

4. They got to position allies at the start of the fight so they could pwn the enemies.
(You do 0 damage if you are out of range and it's almost always better to focus fire. Warlord's helped make sure both happened with precombat party movement)

Yes. 4e Warlords were OP.

Well, sure. Battlefield control is exactly what you want. But, again, nowhere near the game changer that you seem to think it is. I don't know what you saw in your games, but, I certainly never saw anything as big of a deal as this.

And the funny thing is, in the 4 years of 4e, no one who actually took the time to analyze the game ever made this argument either. All the actual 4e analysis of warlords placed them pretty solidly in the pack for power.

 

[Hussar]

Ultimately I'm sure WotC could make something that worked... but the real question is whether there is enough demand among those who play 5e for WotC to devote the resources to a warlord as opposed to other things for the game... Personally I am very meh on the warlord... I wouldn't object to one but it doesn't even rank in my top 10 things for 5e I want. But I guess there could be demand enough to justify the resources... and I just haven't seen it. Or maybe the addition of a Warlord is suddenly going to make all those who stayed with 4e convert to 5e... but I honestly doubt it.

Well, considering it's been what, three years now since 5e has come out and we've seen consistent calls for a Warlord, I'd say that there is a fair bit of demand. The fact that someone posted some five or six different Warlords from the DMsGuild, some of which have gone best seller - silver and copper, I'd say that there is some demand.

 

[Jester David]

Well, warlords did receive some of the most support of classes in 4e. Option creep = power creep.
With that many options at every level, there's always a better option, making it OP or really close...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sorry, no. They were quite competitive leaders, but not OP. Sure, there was synergy, there, but synergy exists on both sides of the combo.

Attack-granting, for instance, is powerful if you have someone who does a lot of damage with the right kind of attack. So is just having a second guy who can hit that hard all by himself.

Right. More damage will be achieved by adding a well made Ranger. The warlord will just also heal a bit. And if you want the warlord to heal like a pacifist cleric, he won't be adding as much damage.

Warlords were competitive. Bards, Clerics, and even Shamans eventually were also very good.

The only OP classes in 4e were the Ranger. I put that in plural because the Ranger was that OP.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And the funny thing is, in the 4 years of 4e, no one who actually took the time to analyze the game ever made this argument either. All the actual 4e analysis of warlords placed them pretty solidly in the pack for power.

And there, we are talking about people who spent all their free time analyzing 4e CharOp, with pretty much unassailable System Mastery. In some cases, people so into CharOp they had trouble seeing the game in any other terms, and talked about middle of the pack options as worthless trap options because they didn't multi-attack hard enough in round one.

And not one of them, ever, claimed that Warlords were too powerful. Even when someone claimed that Warlords were the strongest Leader, they got pages of arguments against the notion.

 

[CapnZapp]

What's needed is an unrestricted ability, but one that is restricted by its own subsystem (such as spell slots, superiority dice or sorcery points)

Remember that the action economy degradation doesn't need to be only paid by the Warlord. I think the canonical example of this is the Battlemaster's Commander's Strike.

Battlemaster uses on attack (which may be only 1/2 or 1/3 of an action) to grant someone else an attack (which might be a full action for them and/or benefit from being on a different turn like the rogue). It also gives a boost to damage. The costs are the reaction from the receiver, which means that 4 warlords couldn't trigger the same rogue one after another, and it's using a limited-but-not-too-limited resource from the Battlemaster, a superiority die.

Now, from a design consideration, "pay now for someone to get something later" might also be considered a degradation. An example of that would be granting the equivalent of the Haste action. I think that's a valid concept to explore as well.

And the Commander's Strike isn't good enough for a proper Warlord. It's restrected, because it's given to an honest-to-gawd fully kitted Fighter.

As in, it has its place in any Warlord-y character's toolbox, sure, but for the "real" Warlord, we expect more - we expect at least a few unrestricted action trades per rest.

For a fighter, it's much less desirable since, well, you're a Fighter - take you goddam swing yourself The biggest cost is the opportunity cost of not doing what a Fighter does - that is murderizing BBEGs like no other character can.

Meaning, one of the core design parameters of the Warlord needs to be that its allies should be better at doing stuff than the Warlord itself - that's why you would want to give away your actions in the first place!

As a corollary of this - you can't base the Warlord on a best-in-class class chassi (like fighter, rogue, cleric or wizard). You want the Warlord to be its own, decidedly mediocre, beast (except for its ability to "be" those other classes and "borrow" their top-notch abilities.

The closest you get, is probably Cleric. Assuming there was a completely non-religious, unmagical, Cleric, that is...

 

[Imaro]

Well, considering it's been what, three years now since 5e has come out and we've seen consistent calls for a Warlord, I'd say that there is a fair bit of demand. The fact that someone posted some five or six different Warlords from the DMsGuild, some of which have gone best seller - silver and copper, I'd say that there is some demand.

Could you link some of these, I just went on DM's Guild and I can't seem to find any warlord class documents that have gone silver or copper. These and their authors could be a good place to start for this discussion.

EDIT: Ah nevermind I found the list in this thread... So there are 5 levels of sales and copper and silver are good but actually the lowest of the five...

So we have a copper product for 50 cents that includes 27 BM maneuvers and the warlord archetype as a bonus to that... I might actually scoop this one up to take a peek at the maneuvers, though I have no need for a warlord. So this is actually a BM/Fighter product, not a warlord product

We have another copper product that is a true warlord product so I'll grant you that... though it is PWYW so that could be skewing it's popularity... I regularly download free stuff off RpgNow just to peruse it.

We have a silver product where the Warlord is a FIghter archetype (Funnily enough exactly what the hardcore warlord fans claim it shouldn't be yet the most popular out the bunch).

I'm not sure if these can really be an indicator of an overwhelming demand. Some demand, sure... WotC level of demand, not so sure.

As for continuous calls... I've seen a pretty small minority of 5e players doing this and some 4e fans who have already sworn off 5e... for this to be worthwhile to WotC it would have to be on a much larger scale than a few dozen forum posters....

 

[Imaro]

And there, we are talking about people who spent all their free time analyzing 4e CharOp, with pretty much unassailable System Mastery. In some cases, people so into CharOp they had trouble seeing the game in any other terms, and talked about middle of the pack options as worthless trap options because they didn't multi-attack hard enough in round one.

And not one of them, ever, claimed that Warlords were too powerful. Even when someone claimed that Warlords were the strongest Leader, they got pages of arguments against the notion.

Just on a side note... I have seen claims that the warlord is OP'd when combined with (some of the...???) essentials class... Though I'm not sure how accurate that is since no one in my group ever played a Warlord

 

[Blue]

As in, it has its place in any Warlord-y character's toolbox, sure, but for the "real" Warlord, we expect more - we expect at least a few unrestricted action trades per rest.

And that's where the issue comes in. Sure, you expect that from a Warlord. But you shouldn't expect that from anything 5e. Hence, if that is your requirement, there is no place in 5e for the warlord.

Now, I happen to think there is a place in 5e for the warlord. But I'm willing to work within 5e's design philosophy to get there.

Anyway, what's so wrong with charging a character their reaction in order to get an attack? Everything else does something like that, and it stops multiple triggering of the same character. With four warlords and a rogue, do you really think the rogue can be "inspired" to act five times as fast as they normally do?