The ones that need to increase in power increase in power. And the short-rest abilities stack. So you can use all of them.
This is not about scaling. I get they can increase in power. I get they
When you say the short rest abilities stack I'm not seeing it. Maybe you can elaborate but to me it just sounds like you get a bunch of short rest options with an independent fixed amount of times you can use that pool of abilities. Is there something else going on here? If that's all it is then adding short rest abilities as opposed to picking one of the stacking and scaling at-will options is almost always going to be a trap.
If anything, it's the guy who takes all the reaction options that will be behind. Since your limited on the number of reactions you have. But, that's no worse of a "trap" than a wizard who takes only concentration spells.
Maybe I've misunderstood your at will abilities as well. You are saying they don't actually stack with each other but instead that you can only use one a turn?
Ehh... maybe. Though, another problem with reactions is they restart at the beginning of your turn. You could go though an entire round never getting a trigger.
One way around the not getting something to trigger is is to give a lot of abilities with various triggers so that one is almost always bound to occur and it's just part of life when it doesn't (similar to rogues sneak attack sometimes not being able to occur)
So maybe a reaction-like pool that recharge at the end of your turn? Thus if you have any left over, you can use them to boost damage. Hmm... actually, that might be better. Since points can be more divisible than reactions.
But still, most of the features should be reaction-like bonuses.
That's another potential way to do it. End of turn to end of turn timeframe with a once a turn limit. That could work.
Level 1:
Points: You gain a pool of points equal to your Int modifier + half your warlord level. This pool recharges at the end of your turn. Unless a feature says otherwise, spending points does not require an action. You spend points before you see the roll.
Default Useage of Points: When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can spend points to deal 1 extra damage per point spent.
I still don't get the fascination with trying this to int mod. We are making a warlord not a solely tactical warlord. My basic abilities (especially the more inspirational ones) shouldn't require INT to function best and this int mod on uses basically forces that.
Invocations.
- Skill Boost: When a creature within 5' makes a skill check, you can spend points to give them a bonus to their roll equal to the points spent.
- Defense Boost: When a creature within 30' is hit by an attack, you can spend points to reduce the damage taken by the number of points spent. If this reduces the damage to 0, the attack is a miss.
- First Aid: As a bonus action, you can let someone spend a number of hit dice equal to the number of points you spend. Their dice roll is maximized.
- Inititive Boost: When a creature other than yourself rolls initiative, you can spend points to increase their roll by 1 for each point spent. (Note that you will not have these points on your first turn, since your pool reacharges at the end of your turn).
- Save Penalty (prerequisite level 4): When a creature makes a saving throw, you can give it a penalty equal to that save equal to half the number of point spent.
Okay, so these are at will style abilities. This solves a lot of my concerns as these abilities scale but don't stack. Every point you spend ends up being an either/or option.
However, there are still a few things. My first major concern is that you are level gating some of these abilities when it's a single resource pool you get to spend on them which makes it feel like the higher level gated abilities should be stronger when they should actually be equal (or else why worry about the lower tier abilities).
Healing, even gated by hit dice should not be at will. At level 6 you would be able to instandly fully heal 2 party members from 0 hp in the same turn. It's not just a problem with your particular implementation of at-will healing. Healing simply must have a per rest limitation on it.
The skill boost one concerns me if it's not left to a combat only use (not many skills get used in combat so I don't see any particular issue with it at this time)
Defense Boost actually works fine and scaled about how we would expect a damage reduction ability to scale.
Initiative boost works if you give the warlord a set of points when initiative is rolled that can be used before his first turn. I'm not sure we want to do that but it's an option
Save Penalty - no just no.
Level 11: Precision Command: You can decide to use points after you see the die roll, letting you spend only as much as you need.
*All of that needs better names.
Precision Command is interesting
What are some of the encounter or long rest style save abilities?