Undrave
Legend
Sounds like a nightmare to adjudicate if the system isn't built from the ground up to accommodate it, and it doesn't take into account non-PC allies being a thing. Not all class powers are equal.who says doing that has to be anti-warlord? or that they're specifically replicating abilities to buff themselves? imagine being able to replicate a paladin's aura, or maintain concentration on a second wizard's haste?
but a warlord is also about tactics, and who's to say the most tactical thing right now for the benefit of everyone isn't to buff yourself have a second person raging on the field right now, or to drop a moon druid's bear wildshape on yourself.
But I think it would be cool to have a Warlord ability that lets you roll the Concentration Check for an adjacent spell caster! That's a cool touch.
Attack granting is kinda iconic but even in 4e it wasn't all they did. You could easily build a Warlord that never granted basic melee attack. And even in 4e you had classes that were better targets than other for granted attacks. I actually think granted attacks scale poorly in 5e because weapon attacks scale by adding more attacks, where as in 4e they added more [W]. And you had powers you could use as basic attacks. Without a rogue the ability kinda falls off. I don't think it's as big an issue as you think it is, considering the Warlord player could just be playing the same class as their teammates and probably get better damage output.One of the biggest issues with a 5e warlord isn’t the concept itself but the insistence of the specific mechanic of attack granting or at will attack granting.
In 4e attack grants theoretically worked because basic attacks were theoretically designed to be about the same effectiveness (in practice things like frost cheese could change that a bit).
In 5e though there is no basic attack and attacks are all over the place in terms of power. Anything from like d8+3 to 3d6+5 to 4d6+5 and that’s just with single pc self buff spells and no magic items or rogues.
Usually I see warlord discussions end on this question - how to handle and balance attack granting.
Oooh! We could recycle the 4e Save Ends mechanic but for positive effect! Even have higher level exploits be multiple effects that can fail independently. The Haste-Alike could be three different effect: Extra Attack, Bonus to AC and Bonus to Speed. You could even have the character take some HP damage when one of those effect fail if you want to really crank up the risky downsides.Shorter or unpredictable duration. Haste always lasts ten turns, unless the caster fails a Concentration check. Perhaps Exploits could have a check each round to determine if they persist or not, so there's always a chance that the effect fails after only a single turn, which would be a pretty significant downside compared to magic, I should hope.
This is why I think it's easier to fit the selfish stuff in a Warlord's subclass instead of fitting the Warlord stuff in a selfish class' subclass. My idea for a Warlord is that you can choose the subclass that fits your party the best, or you can just choose a more generic one that makes you better on your own. What did you think of the subclass concepts I talked about?Which is, I think, why a lot of people point at the Fighter as a place to put a Warlord (as an archetype). If the Fighter already is a good portion of what the Warlord would be, then it kind of makes sense, and certainly would be more possible to see. But the subclass power budget is low, and possibly not enough for the Warlord, at least without some extra steps, and it wouldn't work especially if we need the warlord to specifically be a full class in order to be satisfying.
And we might need that! There's value in talking about why 5e doesn't accommodate new official classes very easily.
Oh that's another possible drawback: you lose HP every turn you're under the effect. Literally burning up.People don't use Frenzy because they HATED exhaustion. The most popular reason I heard is that they really disliked an ability that killed you as you used it. Nevermind that it was effectively the same thing as saying "you can do this once per day." Virtually everyone I talked to about Frenzy hated the drawback, not the power itself.