D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[James Gasik]

There are like, 7 or so distinct 'regular' warlords, among the 6 commanding presence options, and the alt features Battlefront Leader and Archer.

I played with an Archer once, Race the Arrow was a fun and flavorful power!

 

[Pedantic]

It's telling that the 3.x developers were somehow terrified of a class that got multiple attacks per round and could actually hit with them on a regular basis, then they turned right around and gave monsters multiple attacks at their highest base attack, lol.

I never had a chance to hear a developer explain it, but my personal theory had to do with the Medium BAB classes, most of whom were intended to use weapons from time to time. If you make enemies purely with the attack bonuses of say, Fighters in mind, then pretty quickly Clerics, Bards, Rogues, and Monks aren't going to hit anything without massive buffs.

OTOH, if everything's AC is set to where they think a Rogue should be, you got Fighters just using Power Attack and Combat Expertise on every attack for "free"...or just pretty much always hitting.

Descending attack bonuses in theory prevent that sort of thing, I suppose. It's still clunky and inelegant and turning the game into "everyone stands still and full attacks, and monsters do more damage with their full attack than most players" is something I can never forgive them, as much as I liked the "build a character out of LEGOS" aspect of 3.x.

Then Paizo decided not only to not fix it, but give Fighters more built-in bonuses to hit so that you had level 5 characters with +12 to hit running around, lol.

I appreciated the consistency and clear derivation of all the numbers, but I don't think anyone really understood the Tyranny of Accuracy until after 3.x ran its course. Modern design has a much better understanding of how to value chance to hit vs. damage vs. action economy than we did at the time.

 

[Neonchameleon]

non-magical inspiring leaders - Bard is fine, since it's a full caster.

Being able to bring allies back into the fight is a critical support function in any version of D&D. Because of how hit points work &c.

A class meant to be capable of support that can't do that is a trap. If the party depends on it, instead of a fully capable class, the party is at a greater risk of outright TPK.

Absolutely agreed.

Unfortunately for anyone trying to add a Warlord to 5e, the support-capable classes are, well, the Paladin (as a support character, most notable for its aura), and multiple full-casters (Bard, Cleric, Druid, the odd sub-class of other full casters). The Paladin is also, in 4e terms, a striker and as close as 5e comes to a defender, in addition to a leader. The full casters are Controllers powerful beyond the dreams of 4e controllers, non-combat problem-solvers, and so forth.

The ironic thing here is that by 5e standards the 4e warlord is a pretty good defender.

And, we're back in the crab-bucket. A faithful 'port of the 4e Warlord would be a lethal trap for any party that relied on it as their only support character, far too weak and limited to take the place of a Bard, Cleric or Druid. At the same time, it would leave every other martial character in the dust (except, if done right, in terms of DPR). It falls right into the wide & bottomless abyss of the martial/caster gap.

One of the more offensively minded warlords (a bravura warlord or tactical warlord for example) might fit pretty well.

And for the record as @FrogReaver is apparently largely ignorant of the types of warlord, a bravura warlord granted attacks without being a remotely lazy warlord. Instead they lead from the front and offered the enemy chances to hit them - but if the enemy took them then the warlord's allies also got free attacks on the distracted enemies. Lazy didn't refer to granting attacks - it referred to the character themselves never making attacks. And Bravura Warlords were normally far more dangerous than Lazy Warlords - at the cost of themselves going down much more often.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Fair. That’s a warlord. No need to call it a cheerlord since it’s doing exactly what a normal warlord does.

They are all warlords!

They are all different warlord builds. This is like seeing someone made an Evoker wizard and insisting that is just a normal wizard.

 

[Clint_L]

And now this thread is just re-litigating 4e. That ship has sailed.

 

[Umbran]

Inspiring leaders shouldn't exist in fantasy. Got it.

I think it is a reasonable question as to whether Inspiring people is a strong fictional trope as a moment-by-moment thing in a fantasy small unit tactical scenario.

In the fictions, inspiring is done occasionally, at key moments - before a battle, or in a lull when everything looks bleak. It isn't like there's a lot of inspiration and giving of orders every six seconds.

Just last week in a session one player, who isn't great with interpersonal interactions at the best of time, tried to start ordering people around on the battlefield. That went over like a lead balloon. Having one character bossing folks around is great when that character is a lead protagonist, but not when they are sharing spotlight.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

And now this thread is just re-litigating 4e. That ship has sailed.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I think it is a reasonable question as to whether Inspiring people is a strong fictional trope as a moment-by-moment thing in a small unit tactical scenario.

Enough to justify advocating taking that away form those who enjoy it and had it previously?

Especially when 5e actually does have a feat called Inspiring Leader, regardless of how lackluster it is?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think it is a reasonable question as to whether Inspiring people is a strong fictional trope as a moment-by-moment thing in a small unit tactical scenario.

In the fictions, inspiring is done occasionally, at key moments - before a battle, or in a lull when everything looks bleak. It isn't like there's a lot of inspiration and giving of orders every six seconds.

Just last week in a session one player, who isn't great with interpersonal interactions at the best of time, tried to start ordering people around on the battlefield. That went over like a lead balloon. Having one character bossing folks around is great when that character is a lead protagonist, but not when they are sharing spotlight.

This is a narrative problem. In high stress situations, groups of people work better when someone tells them what to do. Refuse to accept instruction and you're going to be uncoordinated.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is a narrative problem. In high stress situations, groups of people work better when someone tells them what to do. Refuse to accept instruction and you're going to be uncoordinated.

In high stress situations if you have to tell someone what to do as opposed to training with them so they just instinctively do it then you probably already screwed.