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

[Alexemplar]

But I believe plenty of warlord enthusiasts would be calling for your head if that ended up being it. I think a fair portion of avid warlord fans are in it for "reasons". So the good news is, the number of warlord fans would drop even more into complete non-relevance. Which makes the whole problem sorta go away. So at least your tongue-in-cheek idea would have that going for it.

I know I never played a Warlord to be in charge of the party.

I usually used it to build characters that could be described as less combat capable without the aid of a group: your courtiers, venture merchants, explorers and the like.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm talking about access to the completely no-strings-attached ability. You know, the one that you wouldn't described as "in a limited form"

Its very very broken in 5E.

 

[Eubani]

Its very very broken in 5E.

You forgot IMO

 

[Zardnaar]

You forgot IMO

I have tested it with the noble class. Its a bad idea just like removing concentration off certain spells.
If you want specifics.
The way it interacts with rogue sneak attack.
Interaction with the -5/+10 feats.
The way it interacts with warlocks eldritch blast.
The way it interacts with spells in general.

 

[CapnZapp]

I have tested it with the noble class. Its a bad idea just like removing concentration off certain spells.
If you want specifics.
The way it interacts with rogue sneak attack.
Interaction with the -5/+10 feats.
The way it interacts with warlocks eldritch blast.
The way it interacts with spells in general.

I don't disagree.

Problem is finding an ability that is weak enough to be balanced, yet powerful enough to not suck.

So far, every single attempt from WotC has landed squarely in the Suck Camp, so I wanted to showcase what definitely doesn't.

I thought it more constructive to begin with an ability that definitely works (players will use it, it makes its class desirable, etc) and then discuss ways to perhaps limit it for general use.

Mind you, I think a Warlord class could gain the ability as stated, if it does so at high level. At levels 15+ and, say, your Charisma number of uses per rest it definitely isn't out of place.

But let's focus on scaled-down efforts that a Warlord can get to use throughout his career, beginning already at low levels.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Corwin]

I know I never played a Warlord to be in charge of the party.

I usually used it to build characters that could be described as less combat capable without the aid of a group: your courtiers, venture merchants, explorers and the like.

Cool. Me too. Did you somehow get the impression I was referring to you in my post you quoted?

 

[Corwin]

You forgot IMO

Actually, that would be, ItDO*.

[*"In the Devs' Opinion", evidently, since they chose to include that ability in only limited form in 5e.]

 

[Barolo]

I am not sure this is the correct warlord thread to comment this, but I have to pick one or start another, and the second option really seems a bad idea.

The warlord seems to me a risky class to invest into developing because it causes so much controversy. And I am not saying it because of the people that show up around expressing strong feelings against warlords in general, they may even be a non-significant issue. The bigger difficulty seems to be able to produce something that actually pleases the fans of the class, all of them (or most at least), simultaneously, with the same single class.

 

[tuxgeo]

< snip > . . . The bigger difficulty seems to be able to produce something that actually pleases the fans of the class, all of them (or most at least), simultaneously, with the same single class.

+1.
That's the real trick, isn't it? There would have to be enough flexibility built into the class to allow many different variations. I get the impression that the "Noble" class by Moonsong (available in EN5ider) goes a lot of the way there, and it does so by starting with a stripped-down base chassis for the class, with most of the variation appearing in the different subclasses. That seems to be the best approach, at least as far as the challenge of appealing to many different desires goes.

 

[Aldarc]

The bigger difficulty seems to be able to produce something that actually pleases the fans of the class, all of them (or most at least), simultaneously, with the same single class.

You may be overstating the severity of this problem a bit. I doubt anyone would earnestly dispute that fans of the warlord archetype have differing visions for a possible 5E class, especially in terms of the fine points of mechanics. That is only natural. But one can also see a tremendous degree of conceptual overlap.

It's much easier, IMHO, to have a class in front of you and say, "Yeah, this works good enough for my purposes" than it is to "design by committee" as often becomes the case in these discussions. Let's remove ourselves from discussing the warlord directly. We can actually see a similar problem in terms of the 5E Artificer. The 3E and 4E Artificer had its ardent fans. Though one is not required to play an Artificer in Eberron, the existence of the Artificer is kinda built into the setting assumptions.

But when you see people discussing the Artificer in 5E, prior to the UA articles, we saw a variety of differing visions for what a single-classed Artificer should be. There are lots of different homebrew versions you can find across the internet. Then WotC introduced the updated Artificer first in UA as a wizard subclass. But there was a lot of voiced discontentment and pushback. (So I guess Artificer fans are never satisfied if they can't appreciate getting a subclass.) The second iteration came recently, and this one was closer to its 3E incarnation, albeit with conceptually novel gun-smith and alchemist subclasses, "novel" at least in terms of their connections to the D&D Artificer. That was a mixed bag of reactions, but many regarded this version as a step in the right direction. The next iteration of the Artificer will likely also be improved from the most recent version. I suspect that we would also see similar patterns in a hypothetical UA warlord. You throw something out there, and WotC can see what people rally behind, tweaking in different iterations with some radically different ideas to test the waters.