D&D 5E The Warlord shouldn't be a class... change my mind!

[generic]

If by cancer, you mean two of the best parts of 5e dnd, sure!

And here I though you were a man of culture... Such heresy cannot be tolerated!

raises inquisitor's banner

"Ding dong, your opinion is wrong!"

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I swear @LuisCarlos17f you can take any topic and tie it to some video-game or new toy release.

....and Arcanum Soulmeld and Chronomancer in a time-traveling Dragonlance adventure within Ravenloft as a crossover with Transformer made by Disney.

On a positive note, most of those goofy wishful theories had me discover a bunch of obscure stuff I never heard of.

 

[generic]

....and Arcanum Soulmeld and Chronomancer in a time-traveling Dragonlance adventure within Ravenloft as a crossover with Transformer made by Disney.

On a positive note, most of those goofy wishful theories had me discover a bunch of obscure stuff I never heard of.

Heck, I didn't know about even half of the obscure d20 games that I now know of until @LuisCarlos17f introduced them to me!

 

[Tony Vargas]

. If anything I might now think there should be less classes (I may finally be against the paladin).

Sure, that's fair: if you find any of the rationalizations for excluding the warlord remotely persuasive, then, on the same grounds, the paladin, ranger, and barbarian are outright indefensible as anything more than fighter archertypes, possibly just backgrounds.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Smug is the path to the Paladin.
Smug leads to smite. Smite leads to smirk. Smirk leads to smarminess.

Once you start down the smug path of the Paladin, forever will it dominate your destiny

Freyja Ahlia Aefelsdottr, my new Paladin character, disagrees. She hasn’t a smug inclination in her entire psyche!

She’s also a 4 foot tall Norwegian Forest Cat person who fights with twin bearded axes and serves The Lady.

 

[Xeviat]

Thank you for the answers of the fictional characters that feel like warlords to you. It does help.

I'm now firmly on the fence of "The Warlord could be a class". I haven't fully tipped over the fence, though, and here's my reasoning:

I think the classes should all be able to be multiple roles.

Ideally (and I don't think 5E hits this ideal, and that's why I'm still waffling on doing my 4E rewrite), each of the base classes would be able to be multiple roles, depending on their subclass choice. 5E doesn't strictly use roles, but they're there still.

Warlords would be support characters. Now, yes, Bards are primarily support characters, or at least all Bards get support features. But that brings me to my second issue:

I think the Bard and Warlord occupy the same game space, if you made a slight tweak to the Bard. More and more, I've been thinking that the Bard's intrinsic tie to music limits its applicability to more things. The bard, to me, could be expanded and kind of be the JRPG protagonist "Hero" class, who brings people together and enhances them. The only speed-bump in this is that the Warlord is intrinsically non-magical, and the Bard is magical.

But, for me, that falls into the same realm of Paladins and Rangers having spells. If someone wants to play a spell-less Paladin or Ranger, I'd do those with Fighter or Rogue subclasses. And that brings us to why I'm slightly more comfortable with Warlords being Fighter or Rogue subclasses.

But, this doesn't entirely work either. Rogue has some baggage that might feel weird for a leader subclass. We have the mastermind, and it's great, but that's not really a "Noble" or a "Lazylord". If the Fighter has baggage (like the 2nd and 3rd Extra Attack), then perhaps that's something that could be adjusted with a Warlord subclass.

Now, I have been convinced that there are enough kinds of Warlords to make a class out of. And I'm going to be buying the EN World suppliment with their Noble class, to think about it more.

 

[Garthanos]

To a degree. But I think it's about consistency too. In an old school game I wouldn't want a Warlord class. But if I had a fighter that actually rolled Intelligence as their best attribute and didn't want to be a Wizard or who had a good charisma I would definitely allow them to leverage that to do Warlordy type of things. I just wouldn't want a special mechanic for that. It could be covered by "rulings not rules"

I remember that era and its limits. It would be covered by high charisma players really really being the only ones whose characters actually got to have charismatic impact particularly on other players (but never on the battle only whether you got into a battle), and highly intelligent players being the only ones whose character actually got to have a tactical impact as the character didnt get to contribute to that and only Wizards had the resources for strategic choices. You were testing the player in 1e days the only impact mental attributes had were what a charismatic player could convince the dm to let them have plus mild bonuses for spell casters. (It's all about that playah that playah... boom boom playah playah - skilled playing was gygaxian "judge" dm nervana)

 

[Garthanos]

Sure, that's fair: if you find any of the rationalizations for excluding the warlord remotely persuasive, then, on the same grounds, the paladin, ranger, and barbarian are outright indefensible as anything more than fighter archertypes, possibly just backgrounds.

I could build a "better" oath bound paladin alah 1e by using the boons and blessings mechanics and a fighter or any other martial class actually in 4e too. so I definitely get the inclination.

 

[Don Durito]

Ignore