Looks like it's time for a Warlord Sub-Forum Again...somehow.

Hussar said:

My vote? One week ban to ANYONE who goes into a warlord thread and questions whether we should have warlords in the game or not.

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I don't have a horse in this race, and really only read these warlord threads to see if some cool ideas happen, but I've got to participate just long enough to ask one question:

How is banning someone for expressing an opinion about warlords which you do not yourself share different from someone "derailing" (quote marks because it's your choice of term, not my own) the thread on purpose; aren't both examples of one opinion being treated as an opinion, and the inverse opinion being treated as misconduct?

AaronOfBarbaria said:

I don't have a horse in this race, and really only read these warlord threads to see if some cool ideas happen, but I've got to participate just long enough to ask one question:

How is banning someone for expressing an opinion about warlords which you do not yourself share different from someone "derailing" (quote marks because it's your choice of term, not my own) the thread on purpose; aren't both examples of one opinion being treated as an opinion, and the inverse opinion being treated as misconduct?

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Because I'm recognizing the point of these "opinions". It has nothing to do with adding anything to the conversation and everything to do with forcing the conversations into the ground and completely derailing them with ludicrous non sequiturs that are pure 100% trolling.

IOW, it's edition warring pure and simple. The ONLY reason for the vitriol over the warlord is because the warlord is a 4e class. Every single actual mechanical issue - martial healing, adding actions, inspiring feelings, etc - already exist in the game. In the same way that warlord fans lost the argument over having a core warlord class with the publication of the 5e PHB, every warlord hater lost with the very same publication.

So, after realizing that they can't simply point to mechanics not fitting, since, well, the mechanics obviously fit, they simply change tactics and now argue that the "concept" doesn't fit. And because it's such a nebulous and fuzzy issue, they can keep derailing thread after thread with pointless semantic debates and ensure that no forward progress is done.

And it's all done out of some sort of bizarre edition warring sense that we have to "protect" D&D from 4e cooties.

Not all opinions are equal. The only reason that the warlord threads got banished to the forum ghetto in the first place is because people couldn't keep their edition warring out of things. If warlord threads simply discussed mechanics and how we can implement those mechanics, you'd see one, maybe two threads on the forum, instead of ten, 1 thread talking about mechanics (and being massively derailed) and 9 threads questioning whether or not we actually need to talk about this in the first place.

I mean seriously, when we talk about psionics, how many "Psionics Demand Polls" do you see? No one tells artificer fans, "Oh, well, there's just not enough of you to bother with. Why are you being so unreasonable?" It's 100% trolling .

Hussar said:

I mean seriously, when we talk about psionics, how many "Psionics Demand Polls" do you see? No one tells artificer fans, "Oh, well, there's just not enough of you to bother with. Why are you being so unreasonable?" It's 100% trolling .

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We saw some polls about the psion, and some mildly contentious threads - very mild, compared to the edition war. Of course, the Artificer and Mystic are in the pipe-line, so their fans don't have much to complain about, at this point.

IOW, it's edition warring pure and simple. The ONLY reason for the vitriol over the warlord is because the warlord is a 4e class.

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Well, and it was a martial class that could fill in functionally for a critical role that formerly required magic. There's a bit of caster privilege maybe feeling threatened, there, too - though I suppose that was very much part of the edition war, as well. :shrug:

Every single actual mechanical issue - martial healing, adding actions, inspiring feelings, etc - already exist in the game. In the same way that warlord fans lost the argument over having a core warlord class with the publication of the 5e PHB, every warlord hater lost with the very same publication.

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'Compromised' sounds better than both sides lost. No Warlord in the PH, so those who want traditional D&D 'pure' have the standard game that way, but with the system capable of handling one later in some supplement. The reasons for giving Psionics similar treatment were probably different - it was always problematic mechanically, as well as contentious, and it wasn't /technically/ a /class/ in any past PH1, so punting and coming back to it must have seemed fine...

Hussar said:

Not all opinions are equal.

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Some are more equal than others...

Is there a need for a new subform? Don't know. But as of this moment, several on the front page are warlord related

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] when I read your post I sympathize with your frustration. The people who derail warlord threads don't know how to communicate properly. Sometimes I'm that guy. Sometimes I'm guilty of exactly that.

But when I read your post, I feel that you are being guilty of that too. Rather than try to communicate with people, you're suggesting a one-week ban? wtf? If we simply banned everyone we had trouble communicating with, we could all go back to living in caves.

I believe game rules exist to translate the ideas in our heads -- our imaginations -- the "story" -- into consistent agreed-upon game play. So if you have an idea for a character who is a "warlord" there are three ways to model this character:

1. Using existing rules. (E.g., battlemaster fighter + inspiring leader; it's not too far off.)
2. Using a new fighter subclass. (E.g. PDK, except I think PDK is sucky and just plain weak. But certainly you could envision a fighter subclass that was balanced with the battlemaster but more warlordish. Heck, a few more warlordish battlemaster maneuvers might actually do the trick.)
3. Using a whole new class.

When people argue against number 3 (a whole new class) they are really arguing for numbers 1 or 2. Engage them! Figure out what character concept they are trying to model, and why options 1 or 2 work for them.

Maybe they are modelling a character very different than what you have in mind for the warlord? or maybe they've discovered that you can get most of the way there without a whole new class? That could inform your warlord design. Or maybe your warlord suggestion doesn't go far enough? (For my part, I'd only want to see a warlord class if it was radically different than existing 5E classes, not just "more of the same. E.g., if every warlord had troops under their command, that would be an interesting and different gameplay experience. A "martial cleric" like in 4E sounds boring as .)

Class bloat is a real thing -- it's a real problem, at least for some people. Even if you don't mind class bloat (some people LOVE having more more more), it's disrespectful to just dismiss people who feel otherwise. Don't dismiss them, engage them!

77IM said:

But when I read your post, I feel that you are being guilty of that too. Rather than try to communicate with people, you're suggesting a one-week ban? wtf?

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Nod. That's prettymuch what the title of this thread suggests - that a view be suppressed. Not one person's, but a whole topic, and not for one week but for months on end.

When the Warlord discussion ghetto was finally re-integrated, and someone bumped one of the threads - updating about a DMsG addition, I think it was, they were called out for violating that 'ban' and it had to be pointed out that, hey, the Warlord forum was gone. While it existed, though, it was a banned topic, here, and folks were quick to assert that ban.

Start a new thread:

How Much Damage Does a Sneaking/Hiding WarLord Take From Dodging an Opponent's Near Miss and Falling 138 feet?

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Have a moderator fold every related topic into this one thread.

That would save me a lot of scrolling!

Hussar said:

My vote? One week ban to ANYONE who goes into a warlord thread and questions whether we should have warlords in the game or not. Want to talk about new mechanics or how to actually implement concepts in a game? Fantastic. Want to come into yet another thread and tell all and sundry that warlords are an anathema to role play because they tell players how to feel? Welcome to a one week holiday from the forum.

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Can we expand that?

One week ban to anyone who complains about WotCs release schedule in a new product announcement thread.

One week ban to anyone who complains an AP is set in the Forgotten Realms.

One week ban to anyone who complains an AP is just a rehash of [insert famous adventure here.]

That should lighten the load of this board significantly.

Hussar said:

IOW, it's edition warring pure and simple.

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My perception may be a bit cloudy, but it appears that you may be creating the war by assuming others are fighting it.

I mean, I asked how suppression of one opinion was different from suppression of another, and your response has taken the form of a lot of bluster about edition warring and assumed motives of other posters, and ended up being somewhat lacking in answer to the question itself.

Hussar said:

The only reason that the warlord threads got banished to the forum ghetto in the first place is because people couldn't keep their edition warring out of things.

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That doesn't seem right to me. This forum has moderators, and I've seen them moderate, they don't seem the type to let flagrant rules violations like edition warring slide. Nor the type to think that disruptive posters would be slowed down in their disruptions by putting the topic they want to disrupt into a sub-forum. Which is a lot of words to arrive at saying I think there is a different reason for the "banished to the forum ghetto" (again, quotes because that's not my choice of phrase) situation.

Hussar said:

I mean seriously, when we talk about psionics, how many "Psionics Demand Polls" do you see? No one tells artificer fans, "Oh, well, there's just not enough of you to bother with. Why are you being so unreasonable?" It's 100% trolling .

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I don't see many "psionics demand polls," no... I see worse, actually. I see people insisting that psionics isn't even the right genre for D&D, and no-poll-needed-certainty in stating that there aren't enough people that like psionics for it to ever be a justified investment of effort on the part of WotC for them to make psionics rules.

I'd go more in-depth as to exactly how much resistance there is to the incorporation into D&D of things I like, but my food has just arrived and I've probably derailed this thread enough as-is (for non-trolling, non-edition-warring reasons).