Lets design a Warlord for 5th edition

[FrogReaver]

I think we all agree that rogue sneak attack is best left out of attack granting abilities? Can we at least mark that down as a point of agreement?

 

[Zardnaar]

That's the place a look for it at. Around level 5. Warlord will do around cantrip level damage with his 1 attack and can grant an attack. (sneak attack won't work as the best implementation is to have him grant attacks on the allies turn instead of off their turn).

All that said, it may be better to implement it early as a per rest power and just scale it to the point that it's essentially at-will.

Thatis more or less what my tactician does anyway. I am not happy with some things for it and I need to tweak some of the invocations anyway I think two of them allow attack granting and one of them is action granting.

5E has a lot of hidden interaction in it as well, the combos are not readily apparent. I have seen several BM in action built in various ways and often if someone picks a BM fightrer or a Rogue another player may decide to play the other one to enable that combo (I have seen it twice).

Granting attacks to Rogues is a lot of fun and it is tactical/strategic as the BM fighter has to weigh up if its worth using one of their dice to do it. If its unlimited that actually removes part of the tactic its always the best move/play.

The two BM were sword and board types on was dex based with sentinel and the other was shield master. You can layer the combos together as well which is tactical. For example IIRC the shield master one could bonus action shield bash an opponent flat, action surge at level 5+ take 3 attacks with advantage and grant the 4th attack to the Rogue to sneak attack again with advantage.

The dex based one had a short sword of speed and in a ranged encounter they can put enable a Rogue/Ranger to have an attack, put there weapon away and pull out a bow the following round and action surge and grant another attack to the Ranger archer. A normal melee fighter misses a turn to switch weapons. They can also alternate the attack granting between PCs, ranged attack archer, it qualifies for a sneak attack give it to the Rogue, need a melee attack give it to the greatsword Paladin etc. Haste can't do that.


Hell there is a lot you can do with shield bashing in 5E, its fun to knock over a huge giant enable a melee sneak attack,

 

[Zardnaar]

LOL. There's a joke somewhere in there about paying $2 for stuff....

Me wubs you long time?

 

[Zardnaar]

I think we all agree that rogue sneak attack is best left out of attack granting abilities? Can we at least mark that down as a point of agreement?

Its so much fun enabling it though.

 

[FrogReaver]

Its so much fun enabling it though.

That's cause you like broke stuff

 

[Zardnaar]

That's cause you like broke stuff

Its not broke when its limited.

We mostly stress test this years ago. These days we're stepping away from the power builds and testing out 3pp stuff and some of the weaker archetypes we skipped the 1st time around. Its been a while since we have seen a -5/+10 build for example. They're effective enough but so boring.
"So you';re a level 6 variant human fighter with 20 dex and sharpshooter tell me more"

Or as I have seen

You're a level 1 barbarians (goliath) with 20 strength and 19 con+ dex and roiled it naturally where the DM did not see it".

Most of the nutty stuff we played/tested late 2014. Current group is a paladin using a spear and a halfling with a dagger.

 

[Kinematics]

I have to ask here. @Zardnaar is the only one here who thinks that at will action granting is too powerful. No one else seems to have a problem with it.

I just haven't bothered getting into the argument about it (because everything about Warlord is an argument, and I'm already sick of it). I think it's potentially problematic, but since I'm inclined to go a different route anyway, I haven't bothered trying to analyze the details.

 

[FrogReaver]

Its not broke when its limited.

We mostly stress test this years ago. These days we're stepping away from the power builds and testing out 3pp stuff and some of the weaker archetypes we skipped the 1st time around. Its been a while since we have seen a -5/+10 build for example. They're effective enough but so boring.
"So you';re a level 6 variant human fighter with 20 dex and sharpshooter tell me more"

Or as I have seen

You're a level 1 barbarians (goliath) with 20 strength and 19 con+ dex and roiled it naturally where the DM did not see it".

Most of the nutty stuff we played/tested late 2014. Current group is a paladin using a spear and a halfling with a dagger.

I will say this, in lower levels the off-turn attack granting stuff isn't terribly OP, especially commander's strike as you are giving up your attack and a guaranteed 1d8 damage on an attack that hit buy using commander's strike to try and get the rouge to maybe land sneak attack. Haste is a bit more problematic in that it just enables the rogue extra sneak attacks, however, it's tradeoff is that you aren't debuffing enemies or using fireball etc. So even it might not be that bad especially at lower and maybe mid levels. Higher levels it probably starts being a little too much as sneak attack starts really outpacing regular attacks by level 11+

 

[mellored]

That's the place a look for it at. Around level 5. Warlord will do around cantrip level damage with his 1 attack and can grant an attack. (sneak attack won't work as the best implementation is to have him grant attacks on the allies turn instead of off their turn).

All that said, it may be better to implement it early as a per rest power and just scale it to the point that it's essentially at-will.

Perhaps a few times per short rest at 1.
Then at-will at level 5.

Its so much fun enabling it though.

Limited off-turn would be fine to add. Perhaps by forcing an enemy to provoke an OA, like command (flee) or cause fear does.

Merls also had a good point that spamming the same ability get's... spammy.


So maybe...
Level 1: Novice Gamits: You can do a novice gambit once per battle.
Level 5: Adept Gambit: You can do adept gambits once per battles. In addition, you can do novice gambits at-will
Level 11: Advance Gambitst: You can do advanced gambits once per battles. In addition, you can do adept gambits at-will
Level 17: Master Gambit: You can do master gambits once per battles. In addition, you can do master gambits at-will


Or better yet.
Level 1: You gain 1 point at the start your turn, up to a maximum of Int + half your warlord level. You start each battle with 50% max points.
Level 5: You gain 2 points per turn.
Level 11: You gain 3 points per turn.
Level 17: You gain 4 points per turn.

On-turn attack granting (2 points). At-will at level 5.
Force an enemy to provoke an OA (5 points). Close to at-will at level 17.
+other stuff like movement, saves, THP, ect...


This way, you have to watch how the battle unfolds before you can spring your big tricks.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

People! Please!
If you're going to have an argument, kindly make sure that you're actually talking about the same thing. Saying "Attack granting is fine!" doesn't do anything to address the points of someone pointing out "At-will action granting is OP!" and vice versa.

Now could someone please give a quick run-down, for the benefit of someone who can't recall much about how the 4e warlord played, just what sort of attack the warlord could grant a character compared to the sort of attack power that the character could use on their actual turn.

Now, regarding the issue of Rogue being excessively advantageous in attack granting, I addressed that with a rider to the lower-tier maneuver: The granted attack is carried out as if on the character's last turn. With all modifiers and considerations thereof.
Thus it can't be used to give the Rogue multiple sneak attacks per round, but it can be used in a more tactical manner to allow a rogue that wasn't in position on their turn or just missed with their attacks to get their sneak attack off.

Actual action granting did not have this restriction, but at that point you're letting fighters make full attacks and casters throw extra spells around, so Rogues getting an extra sneak attack off isn't the broken outlier. At the level at which action granting became possible (15+ IIRC), things get pretty nuts for most classes.