Jester David
Hero
I think the number of actual anti-warlord individuals probably actually numbers in the dozens.Personally, I think it's option 4 - they won't do it because the midden will hit the windmill as a very vocal group of players will have a massive hissy fit if an actual warlord ever graced the pages of the game.
Yeah, a hundred people on ENWorld really want the warlord.But, again, you can't simply dismiss a poll because you don't like the results. I mean a bit of Googling turns up the following polls:
I'd say there is a pretty darn consistent trend there.
And that number seems to have gone down.
The thing is, 160-odd people voted on this thread, and currently 46 want the warlord. 30%. Cool.The purpose of this thread was to provide evidence that the reason we don't have a warlord is that only a small minority of gamers actually want one. Well, I'd say that the opposite, if anything, was shown. When somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1/4 to 1/3 of gamers would like to see a warlord, I'd say there is pretty darn strong desire for one.
But... it's 30% of people who are interested.
There's generally 1,500 users logged into ENWorld each day. Currently <1000 and I've seen it close to 2,000. So of those 1,500 users, 1340-odd went "meh" and couldn't even work up enough interest in the warlord to even vote.
Okay, even if we arbitrarily say that 3/4 of people logged into ENWorld don't hit the forums (or the D&D forums). That's still 375 people. And 215 of them went "zero craps given" and hit a different topic.
So the actual number might not be 30%, and might be closer to 15%.
Oh, and ENWorld skews old. Especially compared to the D&D communities on Facebook and Reddit. Reddit in general skews younger. We saw that when Morrus posted his demographics information. The bellcurve here is slightly to the old one step. And there are more former 4e fans here, who came after the WotC site went down.
Even RPG.net the tone is different.
See this thread: https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?788342-Warlords-in-5e
Or here on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/2h5vqj/what_happened_to_warlords/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3pfegi/warlord_in_5e/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/5lmftx/i_miss_being_a_true_warlord/
Very different tone to the discussion.
What this means is, that ENWorld is the place where you're going to find the most ardent warlord fans and people most willing to vote warlord. And the class still only gets a potential 30% (and probable 15%).
But polls aren't the only metric.
There's the DMsGuild. Lots of warlords on there. Lots of homebrew classes in general. And that's an opportunity for people to vote with their wallets.
What do we have so far:
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/178203/Weapon-Master-Complex-Fighter--Full-Class
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/179902/The-Warlord
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/171718/Fighter-Archetype--Warlord
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/180...-Archetypes-for-Harnessing-Martial-Prowess-5e
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/181162/Warlord--3-Archetypes
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/170957/Warlord--Martial-Archetype
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/189381/The-Warlord
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/193163/The-Warlord
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/182127/Fighter--Tactician-Martial-Archetype
Plus my own subclass here:
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/174898/5MWD-Presents-Maneuvers--Commander
Of those ten, we have 3 Copper sellers (50 sales), 1 Silver (100 sales), and 6 lacking a medal. Electrum is 250 sales, so if we assume each is halfway to the next medal that's (25x6 + 75x3 + 175). Or 550 combined sales. Which is Gold.
Compare that with the number of actual Gold sellers on the DMsGuild: http://www.dmsguild.com/metal.php
The combined sales of every warlord option on the DMs Guild compares to the sales of the spellbinder class or the eidolist or the pugilist or the dragon knight. And is half that of the shaman class.
And that assumes there's no overlap in sales between warlord purchases. And we're assuming most have actually had quite a few sales, when they could have had 0. The actual number of purchases could be <400.
So if there are a lot of warlord fans out there, they seem unwilling to actually pay for a class they really, really want.
Or there are just that many more people who want a shaman or pugilist.