D&D 5E 5E Survivor - Subclasses (Part VI: Fighters)

[delph]

I think that battlemaster is king when you play with flanking. There are manouvers which are giving more sense with that. And give him real power on battlefield and tactics.

 

[Ancalagon]

I think that battlemaster is king when you play with flanking. There are manouvers which are giving more sense with that. And give him real power on battlefield and tactics.

The problem with flanking is that the rules as written give advantage - which doesn't stack.

I haven't tested it yet, but I've been debating adding a flanking rule where you get "advantage" on damage - roll damage twice, take the best. I think it makes sense - you get stabbed in the back kinda deal.

 

[DeviousQuail]

The problem with flanking is that the rules as written give advantage - which doesn't stack.

I haven't tested it yet, but I've been debating adding a flanking rule where you get "advantage" on damage - roll damage twice, take the best. I think it makes sense - you get stabbed in the back kinda deal.

My table tried the variant +2 to attack rolls for flank attacks for a while. It worked but also we stopped doing it because it got to be too much of the action. Just a big spinning wheel of moving around each other. Pegasus your table will like it better than mine. Advantage on damage does sound cool though.

 

[delph]

Flanking is weapon with two edges - you can use it against oponents, but they can use it againts you (your party). And some manouvers (don't know which) can get opponents from your companions in danger, and/or get them near to paladin with spell slots for smite get advantage isn't so hard, as get of advantage from your opponents and here is battlemaster king.

 

[delph]

My table tried the variant +2 to attack rolls for flank attacks for a while. It worked but also we stopped doing it because it got to be too much of the action. Just a big spinning wheel of moving around each other. Pegasus your table will like it better than mine. Advantage on damage does sound cool though.

and how it work with smites or sneak attacks? Does it mean that rogue roll each 1d6 separately with advantage?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

For me, at least, the Warlord emphatically is not magical.

It is, without a doubt, at least a little fantastical--because everything in D&D is fantastical. We have Fighters who can--once, until they take an hour nap--decide to attack twice as many times or shrug off injuries. That's clearly not completely mundane, but Action Surge and Second Wind aren't supposed to be magical.

The Warlord is several things. From a Doylist perspective, it is a "full Cleric replacement" (able to cover all the important functions a Cleric could cover in 4e: healing, granting attacks, permitting saves against save-ends effects, buffing allies, debuffing enemies, etc.), a decently-armored and usually melee combatant, and a Martial character and support that's supposed to be exciting to play as support. From a Watsonian perspective, it can inspire or coordinate allies to do their best, to draw on the resources they might not be able to draw on normally; it's a force-multiplier, whether by taking great risks, deploying clever plans, or carefully using resources; and it's a tactician and analyst.

Part of the reason I think you've seen such disagreement is because there are two very vocal camps. You have one camp, which I'm in, which wants a 5e Warlord to be as close as it can be to what the 4e Warlord was, just translated into 5e mechanics. On the opposite side, you have a camp that wants the 5e Warlord to be very little, if anything, like what the 4e Warlord was, and instead trying to fill the concept with totally new mechanics unrelated to the old ones, seeing this as a workable compromise between the "we want our Warlord back" camp and the "there should never, ever be a Warlord in 5e, period" camp (which isn't directly relevant to questions about what the Warlord should be, since they don't want one in the first place.)

As you can probably tell, I find the second "let's make a 5e Warlord that doesn't actually do the kinds of things 4e Warlords could do" camp extremely frustrating. One of their common requests, for example, is that any Warlord should not provide ANY healing whatsoever, and should exclusively work in THP. This is a pretty major sticking point for anyone wanting a reasonably-close 5e translation of 4e mechanics, because it's not a Warlord if it can't actually heal.

I just don’t understand why it matters whether it’s super similar to the 4e version. 5e is a rather different game. I have no issue with non-magical healing, but what little inspiration healing 5e has is a little more limited than magical healing.

Why would you want an official 5e class that deviates dramatically from how 5e works normally? Why are 4e mechanics more important than matching the concepts of the class to 5e?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I haven't seen, and probably never will, see someone Vicious Mockeried to death, so that's a non-issue. There is almost always physical damage of some sort, so wounds will be present.

I have, several times. It also happened early in campaign one of critical role, IIRC.

There are also many purely non-physical spells that deal psychic damage, FWIW.

But I also don’t understand why it matter if the class can heal or not. It’s this weird sticking point that seems to be more about feelings about 4e and the transition to 5e than it is about the concept of a martial leader-of-people in 5e.

It’s like, we can’t just have a captain or marshal, it for some reason has to be The Warlord, and it has to modeled more strongly on the 4e warlord than any other class is modeled on any given edition’s rules.

 

[Aldarc]

For me, at least, the Warlord emphatically is not magical.

Where I would quibble is that I would say that base Warlord is not magical. I see nothing wrong, for example, with having magical subclasses for the Warlord. But as with the Fighter, there should be a non-magical core class with a good range of non-magical subclasses.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I just don’t understand why it matters whether it’s super similar to the 4e version. 5e is a rather different game. I have no issue with non-magical healing, but what little inspiration healing 5e has is a little more limited than magical healing.

Why would you want an official 5e class that deviates dramatically from how 5e works normally? Why are 4e mechanics more important than matching the concepts of the class to 5e?

It does not need to be super similar in a specific narrow execution sense. E.g., my proposed examples of how I'd do it work very differently from how actual Warlord builds worked in 4e.

However, it does need to be very close in spirit to the original. And an absolutely vital part of that spirit is that the 4e Warlord could do all--genuinely ALL--of the in-fight support stuff that a Cleric could do. (I say "in-fight" because Warlords could not resurrect the dead, or other longer-term support stuff, without picking up Ritual Caster, while Clerics got that feat for free. They still had to pay to learn raise dead, but getting the feat for free is a significant benefit.) It isn't, and never will be, a Warlord unless it can actually restore HP. That is genuinely vital to the spirit of the class. It needn't be particularly impressive at actual healing (it wasn't all that impressive at it in 4e). But it has to be present.

Where I would quibble is that I would say that base Warlord is not magical. I see nothing wrong, for example, with having magical subclasses for the Warlord. But as with the Fighter, there should be a non-magical core class with a good range of non-magical subclasses.

You may note that, in another post in this thread, I make mention of the possibility of a "Knight-Enchanter" Warlord subclass... (Same link as above.)

The Fighter is emphatically non-magical. A Fighter player may choose to personally opt into magic, if they wish, via both subclass and feats (like Fey Touched.) The Warlord is emphatically non-magical. I have no problem with a hypothetical 5e Warlord player choosing to personally opt into magic, if they wish.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

However, it does need to be very close in spirit to the original. And an absolutely vital part of that spirit is that the 4e Warlord could do all--genuinely ALL--of the in-fight support stuff that a Cleric could do. (I say "in-fight" because Warlords could not resurrect the dead, or other longer-term support stuff, without picking up Ritual Caster, while Clerics got that feat for free. They still had to pay to learn raise dead, but getting the feat for free is a significant benefit.) It isn't, and never will be, a Warlord unless it can actually restore HP. That is genuinely vital to the spirit of the class. It needn't be particularly impressive at actual healing (it wasn't all that impressive at it in 4e). But it has to be present.

But why?

Why is “can do cleric stuff” vital to the spirit of the class? That is exactly the thing I don’t understand.

It’s not like the warlord was performing miracles of physical healing in the fiction, so why does it matter, as long as they are inspiring their fellows to go beyond what would otherwise be their limits while fighting alongside them?