D&D (2024) Chance for a warlord?

TorgoTheWhite said:

Drilled nonverbal cues trained into your travel companions Pavlov's dog style. Your advanced ability of singing "make a man out of you" - Mulan style to your party. The ability to train up anyone to follow your cues when you create an opening for them... the magic of battle

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To me that sounds like a bad attempt at justifying the mechanics you want with terrible fluff.

I think the fluff issue is even bigger than the mechanical ones.

FrogReaver said:

To me that sounds like a bad attempt at justifying the mechanics you want with terrible fluff.

I think the fluff issue is even bigger than the mechanical ones.

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Agree to disagree. A good drill sergeant can accomplish some amazing things. Make those -armed weenies do amazing things they never knew they could do. Old-world warlords (small-units) could make a mid-sized band accomplish great and horrible things... no need for magic... Give up a bit of your own juice to get the most out of your band.

TorgoTheWhite said:

Agree to disagree. A good drill sergeant can accomplish some amazing things. Make those -armed weenies do amazing things they never knew they could do. Old-world warlords (small-units) could make a mid-sized band accomplish great and horrible things... no need for magic... Give up a bit of your own juice to get the most out of your band.

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Okay, so maybe I should have elaborated more. The reason it's bad fluff is because
1) it forces other players to go along with a narrative they may not want for their PC
2) it limits other players ability to roleplay their fighter or barbarian as a drill sergeant

EzekielRaiden said:

Well, my idea was that the Warlord starts with medium armor+shield and upgrades to heavy later. Medium armor is perfectly doable at low levels even if you don't have a crazy high dex mod. But I suppose something could be worked out? It's just something where I would want to avoid a "one level dip" temptation, which getting heavy armor proficiency would do (hence why Clerics don't get that anymore, it waits for 3rd now). If a Cleric can survive two levels before getting a domain with heavy armor, I think a Warlord should be able to as well.

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One way to thread this particular needle is to give all warlords medium or light armor and make heavy armor something that particular subclasses get.

FrogReaver said:

To me that sounds like a bad attempt at justifying the mechanics you want with terrible fluff.

I think the fluff issue is even bigger than the mechanical ones.

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I think the overall warlord class has a bit of an issue with identity (in that fighters and bards are both very good narrative substitutes), but it's no worse than the psion or the artificer. You can make a distinction.

There is a bit of a deeper issue with warlord subclasses in that the 4e versions were all "here is how I do my job," and 5e's design methodology is that a subclass is instead a particular narrative archetype within the class's aesthetic. Basically. "I warlord tactically!" vs. "I warlord INSPIRATIONALLY!" is not a very strong distinction. These aren't really different characters. A leader-y martial buff class would do both. It's not like we divide bards up based on if they do stringed instruments or percussion.

But, riffing off of the point above, I do think some thought out subclasses could help that, and you can still use 4e's versions as a base to riff from, you just need to hang a bit more archetypal weight on each variety.

Riffing on that idea for the "initial 4 subclasses," I could imagine something like:

• The herald subclass uses shouts and cries as their bonus action, and is pretty good at empowering allies in the attack. This leader gives buffs pretty directly.
• The tactician subclass has bonus actions related to actively gaining buffs - the tactician uses a bonus action on their turn to let someone do X, if they do X, they get a bonus. This is the leader that hands out attacks and movement.
• The banneret might create auras as a bonus action that buffs creatures within them. Give them heavy armor and a shield so they can protect those in their radius.
• The bravo subclass gets a big ol' weapon and applies conditions on enemies, with stunning and disabling blows.

If you get martial weapons and light armor to start with, then these subclasses might grant armor proficiency, shield proficiency, possibly weapon masteries (like for the bravo and tactician)...

IDK, those are still pretty similar, but maybe we see the start of some differentiation...

I don't think there is too much juice in that squeeze either, especially if you are not talking about adding much for damage dice. OR make them only play a buff roll to other martial abilities and now you really are setting reasonable limitations

I'm A Banana said:

One way to thread this particular needle is to give all warlords medium or light armor and make heavy armor something that particular subclasses get.



I think the overall warlord class has a bit of an issue with identity (in that fighters and bards are both very good narrative substitutes), but it's no worse than the psion or the artificer. You can make a distinction.

There is a bit of a deeper issue with warlord subclasses in that the 4e versions were all "here is how I do my job," and 5e's design methodology is that a subclass is instead a particular narrative archetype within the class's aesthetic. Basically. "I warlord tactically!" vs. "I warlord INSPIRATIONALLY!" is not a very strong distinction. These aren't really different characters. A leader-y martial buff class would do both. It's not like we divide bards up based on if they do stringed instruments or percussion.

But, riffing off of the point above, I do think some thought out subclasses could help that, and you can still use 4e's versions as a base to riff from, you just need to hang a bit more archetypal weight on each variety.

Riffing on that idea for the "initial 4 subclasses," I could imagine something like:

• The herald subclass uses shouts and cries as their bonus action, and is pretty good at empowering allies in the attack. This leader gives buffs pretty directly.
• The tactician subclass has bonus actions related to actively gaining buffs - the tactician uses a bonus action on their turn to let someone do X, if they do X, they get a bonus. This is the leader that hands out attacks and movement.
• The banneret might create auras as a bonus action that buffs creatures within them. Give them heavy armor and a shield so they can protect those in their radius.
• The bravo subclass gets a big ol' weapon and applies conditions on enemies, with stunning and disabling blows.

If you get martial weapons and light armor to start with, then these subclasses might grant armor proficiency, shield proficiency, possibly weapon masteries (like for the bravo and tactician)...

IDK, those are still pretty similar, but maybe we see the start of some differentiation...

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My thinking is more,
Herald - why can't a fighter do shouts/cries, especially if the required fluff is that these are totally mundane shouts/cries.
Tactician - what is happening narratively that lets the tactician allow someone to do X?
Banneret - again, what is happening narratively to justify the creation of an aura?
Bravo - sounds like any 2024 fighter now that we have weapon masteries, and especially like a battlemaster that uses manuevers as well.

FrogReaver said:

Okay, so maybe I should have elaborated more. The reason it's bad fluff is because
1) it forces other players to go along with a narrative they may not want for their PC
2) it limits other players ability to roleplay their fighter or barbarian as a drill sergeant

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I think I'm at a disconnect here (could be the late-night moonshine). Maybe it is archetype pigeon-hole that you dislike?

The fighter would not have to necessarily be the drill sergeant per-se but it is one real life example of a martial support ("warlord") that accomplishes "magic" results through leadership in a "magic 6 second timeline". But I do think a fair limitation going along with the class "warlord" name even, is that, they would be a little more limited along the lines of being more useful for buffing other martial characters.. much as the limited battlemaster ability tends to do.

Anyway someone's gotta tell that filthy layabout wizard to take a shower and shine their shoes

TorgoTheWhite said:

I think I'm at a disconnect here (could be the late-night moonshine). Maybe it is archetype pigeon-hole that you dislike?

The fighter would not have to necessarily be the drill sergeant per-se but it is one real life example of a martial support ("warlord") that accomplishes "magic" results through leadership in a "magic 6 second timeline". But I do think a fair limitation going along with the class "warlord" name even, is that, they would be a little more limited along the lines of being more useful for buffing other martial characters.. much as the limited battlemaster ability tends to do.

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As a really narrow example. Let's make a Drill Sergant class. Fluff is something like "The Drill Sergant is a dedicated trainer of groups of fighting men. They know how to get the most out of them, how to push them past their limits, how to forge your unit into a cohesive whole."

Now I know why the basic Fighter cannot do the things the Drill Sergant class can, because he's not a dedicated trainer of groups of fighting men. You can see how that's also limiting the Fighter's classes narrative ever so slightly (probably fine for the narrow Drill Sergant Class since the Fighter is so broad anyways, just need to be careful not to split too many otherwise mundane things off from the Fighter class IMO.)

But the Warlord fluff most people give never explains why the Warlord can do mundane things a Fighter cannot. And then the 2nd issue is that the broader you make the Warlord, the more narratives you are taking away from Fighters. This is one reason virtually every other martial is a half caster or has some kind of mystical power (rage or ki). It's a built in explanation for why those classes can do things the Fighter cannot.

So taking these ideas let's write up the typical Warlord. The Warlord demonstrates martial prowess while having innate tactical and leadership prowess. That's the most common view of the Warlord that I've came across. The problem there is, Fighters can have innate tactical and leadership abilities as well and so it doesn't make narrative sense for why they cannot do the things the Warlord is doing. Alternatively, if we restrict fighters to not having innate tactical and leadership abilities to explain the difference in Warlord abilities and theirs, then you've eliminated a huge number of fighter narratives.

Thus, IMO the fluff just doesn't gel in the broader context of 5e. And changing the fluff means we aren't getting the 4e Warlord anyways.

Fair. The limiting prerequisite differentiation would probably be: veteran + higher charisma = follow me and we win or at least live (the true narrowing narrative). Not all fighters would be cut out to lead fighting men, hence charisma would not be a dump stat for these guys. To me this is a secular Oath of Glory paladin in some regards, without charisma leaning into magic abilities or radiant dmg boosts. I also think if the support abilities are charisma reliant enough then, there is no need to nerf the fighter base chassis because the "rubber meets the road" on how MAD you are able to make this support fighter similar to the good ole' aforementioned Paladin