Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour: The Warlord

[Zardnaar]

Just noting that adding a Rally Fighting Style to grant Second Wind to others, seems to meet the need for a level 1 healer. (Without looking too closely at the cleric healing options.)

More or less what I am doing except it's a d8.

 

[Yaarel]

More or less what I am doing except it's a d8.

I would go with either d10 (fighter) or whatever the hit dice of the one being healed is. So, wizard gets a d6 Second Wind, cleric gets d8, barbarian d12.

Plus, the option to take a nonrandom value, so 4 ≈ d6, 5 ≈ d8.

If necessary to increase the healing, maybe Ralley allows the warlord (level 1 warlord wannabe) to add the warlords Charisma on top of the Second Will.

 

[Zardnaar]

I would go with either d10 (fighter) or whatever the hit dice of the one being healed is. So, wizard gets a d6 Second Wind, cleric gets d8, barbarian d12.

Plus, the option to take a nonrandom value, so 4 ≈ d6, 5 ≈ d8.

If necessary to increase the healing, maybe Ralley allows the warlord (level 1 warlord wannabe) to add the warlords Charisma on top of the Second Will.

My inspiring warlord does charisma to healing. D8 also makes it easier to compare to healing spells and in effect the warlord is granting his own healing surge.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

1) In a low magic setting, it does not make sense for healing to be easily available from any source, and in-combat healing should be non existent. As in real life, any combat should be nasty and deadly, no-one should go into it with the expectation that no one will die, unless there is a vast difference in power. The focus should be on the Medicine skill. Without it even minor wounds should frequently lead to infection and death.

2) Consider Game of Thrones. A low magic setting, but you still need a magic using cleric to bring someone back from the dead.

3) If you are going for low-magic-but-fantastical you are in an Indiana Jones type setting. In which case healing usually comes from calling on inner reserves, rather than an external factor. I would suggest you give everyone an ability like "Second Wind" or "Dwarven Fortitude" rather than having a specialist healer.

4) There is no place for such a character in a medium/high magic setting. If you could achieve equally effective results without years of study/devotion to a god/being a mutant who would put the effort into acquiring magic? You need to think about setting-specific classes - i.e. replacing clerics and bards, not just banning them. Then overlap doesn't matter because your "Warlord" doesn't exist in medium or high magic settings.

5)
Divine Domain: Warlord.

If the gods exist in your world, they do not involve themselves in the affairs of mortals.The warlord may have faith in a god, or they may just have faith in themselves, but wherever their power comes from the can achieve similar results that clerics do in other worlds.

Non-magical
At first level your skills, training and force of will enable you to achieve the same results as casting a cleric spell but without using any magic.

 

[Zardnaar]

My theory is in a low magic setting in regards to healing, you go without. This is how we did it in 2E, you just change the way you design the encounters/campaign.

You don't need to replace the cleric (or whatever).

I would be more inclined to play 2E for a low magic game.

 

[Remathilis]

Then recuse yourself from threads on the topic.

I shall, since apparently not being in lockstep means my ideas are not valued. I'm also recusing myself from any further communication with you, since your main method of handling contrary opinions is to label them with childish nicknames, accuse them of edition warring, and telling them they cannot speak of 4e since they weren't Kool-aid drinkers.

Good bye. We'll not meet again.

 

[smbakeresq]

3. If you are melee and they are ranged sometime regardless of damage you just need the enemy caster to stop concentrating on something like right now.

6. There are many classes that lack a good reaction, and unless you are two weapon fighting what is your bonus action going to be used for as a fighter?

If you give up your reaction the DM knows this and can move with impunity. In addition, anyone you would give an attack to will also have the same attack as a reaction, essentially you are burning their reaction this now instead of later, its really an OPP ATT on command for the cost of your bonus action and your attack. Their attack better be pretty good and in the right situation for you to give that up.

The Warlord on the other hand as a class feature should be able to do this things as part and parcel of his class, he should get their attacks in with a rider in addition to or in place of yours. That's the idea.

 

[smbakeresq]

And we've come full circle back to gamist mechanics devoid of any meaning in the game world. You're one step away from "1[W]+Str and target is pulled 3 squares".



"Martial", as I was defining it, was classes that are generally good at combat. Defined as "proficient in martial weapons, most if not all armors, d10 or greater HD, and two attacks at 5th level". This category covers the Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, and Paladin, as those classes can more or less swap for one another in the role of combat while bringing different secondary abilities to the table.

Nonmagical, as you are describing, is somewhat limited: The fighter is decisively nonmagical, as is the rogue (barring certain subclasses).The Barbarian is fairly nonmagical, though you can argue rage can be viewed as a supernatural ability beyond mere anger issues, and the monk has ki as a source of supernatural exploits. Rangers and Paladins have spells and divine powers.

Unfortunately, that is a rather small box. The best place to look for outside the box in 5e is Battlemaster (as they can grant extra attacks, temp hp, and a variety of tactical attack). My concept is to expand the battlemaster into a full class and use it as a guide to develop more powerful effects. But effects that, at most, would be on par with 5th level magic tops (and far more narrowly defined than anything a current caster can use). I think there is design space there that won't cause outright rejection by the D&D community at large.




This to me doesn't say "I want a class that is good at tactics and support" and says "I want a class that I can use to re-write D&D to be low/no magic." That to me is effectively a non-issue. The warlord should work not as a cleric replacement for no-magic games, but as a unique element on the D&D Multiverse.

I'm sorry, but the concerns of "low/no magic D&D" rank right up there with the lack of modern technology like cell-phones and cars in the list of Things I Don't Think Should Matter When Designing for Dungeons & Dragons.



Only because you refuse to compromise. The designers, starting from the Battlemaster up to today's Warlord HFH, view the Warlord as basically worth a fighter subclass. A good compromise is a full class that is a hybrid of a fighter and a support class who isn't required to check all the boxes of a support caster nor is he bound by the constraints of a fighter subclass.

Put another way, would a paladin-like official warlord be better than the no-warlord you have right now?



Many of the effects that the "band-aid" support classes are there for are unfortunately magical, and have magical solutions. I'd say this is because D&D is a highly magical game, as evidence by in every edition magical/caster-classes outnumber non-caster classes by a large margin. To me, a martial "support class" changes many assumptions about the game at the fundemental level. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I feel its beyond the scope of D&D and what the designers have laid out for it. It really sounds like a warlord is a better fit for a non-magical game like The One Ring d20 than D&D.



As stated above, the ranger in 5e is a lot closer to fighter than rogue these days.



In 5e, a paladin is a warrior who can support his allies with healing (lay on hands), defensive buffs (auras), and spells (bless). A warlord could easily fill the same role as a warrior who gets healing (inspiring word), defensive buffs (command zones) and spells (gambits).



The issue with the "warlord as contrroller" gets into the nasty mess of disassociated mechanics and "martial mind control" that was a huge sticking point of 4e. I'd rather avoid those issues and work in the design space hollowed out by 5e to try to ease those concepts in rather than throttle the gas and bring back Come and Get it.



4e made the low/no magic game possible by beating magic to death with a stick. 4e magic and 5e magic are light-years apart, and I'm afraid there isn't enough ways to make up that distance without grinding magic back down to "attack + riders" and rituals again.



No, its a HUGE thing to ask.

4e is still viewed as the poster-child of everything people hated about 4e; disassociated mechanics, powers, source/role grid-filling, encounter/daily martial powers, etc. WotC has to understand that any warlord that brings those elements back to 5e in a large, unchecked way is going to cause huge amounts of grief. A martial character tossing "nonmagical" equivalents to Foresight is going to grind more gears than it doesn't. Simply put, there isn't a big enough market to warrant its design and development, esp since WotC has been slow and cautious on introducing new classes (the artificer and mystic are still in development hell). Even my paladin-looking warlord, while probably less problematic than a "casterless caster" is still a large amound of design and development to satisfy a rather small minority of the fanbase.

Moral the story: the wilder the design goals of a warlord, the less likely it will ever see creation. I tried to shoot for a compromise by making him partially a warrior, based around an existing mechanic (superiority dice), and adding in as much of the 4e class as I could given 5e's definitions of magic and mundane power.

A nonmagical cleric has literally no chance in hell. A battlemaster+ as a full 20 level class, though just might.

Yes, we are on the same page. This could all be accomplished with a form of BM class.

This discussion actually highlights why Paladins are considered very good. Compare the Fighter chassis to the Paladin Chassis(without spells and subclasses) up to level 10, they are close but the fighter is little ahead. After 11 the fighter gets his extra attack, which stacks with action surge, so it pulls further ahead. The base Paladin chassis gets those saving throws and immunities, which is pretty good of course but sometimes you wont get much mileage out of them. The Fighter though gets its base features and they will be used all the time. But then the Paladin gets those spells, which if used only for smiting will be 25d8 of extra radiant damage at level 10, refreshable on a long rest. The base fighter gets nothing like that, but could get close or ahead with a BM and action surge getting thrown in depending on your short rests. With frequent short rests the fighter chassis keeps recharging its abilities get better. If yo don't get those rests or get more long rests the Paladin is better.

However, if you add a Warlord on top of the fighter chassis its the same situation as the BM fighter, if you get to keep going in with all your superiority dice to blow its great, if not the power wanes. I get the fighter chassis gets more attacks, but that doesn't balance out what other classes get earlier.


Anyway, we are better off with the BM+ than nothing. I just don't think that a high level Warlord who blows all his abilities should be able to keep up with all high level fighter who blew all his, the high level fighter should still be on his own with more attacks and such.

That's why I think Warlord should be built around granting CHR and/or INT bonuses as riders to other attacks, THP granting, bonus movements, etc. Like the BM can with certain maneuvers but more general and more action efficient.

 

[smbakeresq]

I shall, since apparently not being in lockstep means my ideas are not valued. I'm also recusing myself from any further communication with you, since your main method of handling contrary opinions is to label them with childish nicknames, accuse them of edition warring, and telling them they cannot speak of 4e since they weren't Kool-aid drinkers.

Good bye. We'll not meet again.

Please stay.

 

[outsider]

You're one step away from "1[W]+Str and target is pulled 3 squares".

I miss Come and Get It!

Note: That's not me asking for Come and Get It! in 5e. I accept they coudln't get enough of the D&D audience on board with that type of thing. There just has to be a middle ground between Come and Get It! and "I attack it with my sword!" over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.