D&D 5E 5e Warlord Demand Poll

[cbwjm]

I have to admit that I never really saw healing as a major component of the warlord, I tended to treat them as a fighter with some support skills and always built them as front line combatants. Their inspiring word was little more than a requirement of the leader role, unless I've forgotten some, all leaders had a similar ability with only a few variations.

 

[Eubani]

I wonder which part causes so much of a problem is it Martial or Support or is it the combination of the two? Do people really have that much problem with a martial class that does more than reduce hit points and makes an occasional ability check?

 

[Corwin]

I'm glad you two aren't in charge of publishing at WotC, or we wouldn't get anything! - after all, there's always someone who can think of a different way to do it.

IMX, folks who express this kind of attitude are often the same ones who think WotC is crazy for not having already called them, begging for them to take the lead in doing the thing.

Oh, look. The rest of your post goes on to show just how true that seems to be. Check out all the amazing things your warlord definitively needs to be able to do, on a regular basis (you preach the short rest reset): support/buff/heal, control, tactics/deception, good weapons, good armor (because you're already hedging on only medium as a baseline), on par in battle with a war priest, an extra attack (which sets it far *above* the war priest you claim it should equal), battlemaster maneuvers, always on auras (a la paladin), and lets not forget that they are all about "command and inspiration" (your words). Cuz gotta make sure the other players at the table know who's in charge and who they look up to as their hero...

How often is your warlord granting attacks? And how does the mechanics for that look? I'm betting he doesn't need to be a "(sneak attacking) rogue", as you put it. Because he'll have one at his beck and call anyway. Whenever he needs it.

I'll counter your wall o' text with this: You can already play a "warlord" in 5e with varying degrees of the above. My guess remains that most people screaming for "more", want just that: MOAR! They want more than 5e's core system parameters are designed to offer for any one character. They want to feel like they are still playing their 4e warlord, with all its bells and whistles (as evident by your comprehensive list above). There's a great system for giving you *all* that. I enjoy playing it myself when I want to scratch that particular itch. Maybe you should try it, too? Then maybe you wouldn't be so hard pressed to try dragging the previous edition, kicking and screaming, into this one?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm glad you two aren't in charge of publishing at WotC, or we wouldn't get anything! - after all, there's always someone who can think of a different way to do it.

IMX, folks who express this kind of attitude are often the same ones who think WotC is crazy for not having already called them, begging for them to take the lead in doing the thing.

Oh, look. The rest of your post goes on to show just how true that seems to be.

Oh, OK, I'll look:

The details of those is a design question I'm not qualified to answer.

Perhaps because I'm not a very good 5e designer, I can't at this stage quite see how those high level abilities would be "filled in" for a 5e warlord.

IDK. I've had a lot of conversations with pemerton, and he's mostly a pretty reasonable gamer - he does get highfalutin at times, but he did throw in some conscious humility there, at points.

I wonder which part causes so much of a problem is it Martial or Support or is it the combination of the two?

Obviously it's not either one by itself. The Bard, Cleric, and Druid all provide significant support, enough for a whole party to depend upon, and a great deal more, as well.
The Berserker, Champion, Battlemaster, Rogue & Assassin are all 'pure-martial,' with no supernatural abilities, at all (though some might argue against the first being entirely non-supernatural, because of Rage) - and several additional such sub-classes were added in SCAG without the least complaint.
The Paladin and, arguably, the UA Ardentvatar, also already combine martial and support functions, albeit, with the support side being clearly supernatural for the most part.

Hmm... having said that, I suppose it /may/ be that a 'pure-martial' full class is anathema for some reason, just in itself, if only because 5e hasn't gone there yet. ...interesting thought.

But, for now, my guess would be that it's the combination of 'martial' (traditionally simplistic, choice-poor, and overshadowed as the party rises in level) & 'support' (a diverse and critical role traditionally best filled by full casters) /and/ the sole precedent of the Warlord being from 4e, an edition where martial and 'caster' classes were not just theoretically balanced, but shared a rough parity. In order to be a viable support class, capable of stepping into the shoes of the traditional Cleric (or Bard or Druid), it'd have to closely rival the versatility, flexibility, power & resources of a full caster. Between that need, and the precedent of having been balanced neatly with those same three classes in it's only appearance, the Warlord could represent something so unique that people balk at the prospect of its introduction.

Do people really have that much problem with a martial class that does more than reduce hit points and makes an occasional ability check?

Without getting hung up on the technicality of 'ability check,' can you think of any martial classes like that in the history of the game from 1974-2006?

 

[Lanliss]

I wonder which part causes so much of a problem is it Martial or Support or is it the combination of the two? Do people really have that much problem with a martial class that does more than reduce hit points and makes an occasional ability check?

Well, there are two sorts, as far as I can tell, that are against the warlord. There are the unreasonable ones, that seem to light up with rage at the mention of "Warlord". We can discount their opinions, as I usually do with unreasonable things.

Then, there are the reasonable ones, with actual concerns. These people fall into a lot of different camps within the umbrella of "Don't want/would rather not have". Some are concerned about action economy, some feel that martial healing damages their immersion, some want the fans to have a solid idea before anything enters the pipeline, lest the final result be muddy and confused. All of these are reasonable concerns, IMO, just like there are reasonable reasons to add the warlord.

 

[tuxgeo]

Circling back around to something that may have been missed in the ongoing avalanche of posts: cbwjm replied to a post by Manbearcat by saying:

I don't really understand what the hell you're talking about in this post.

Then Tony Vargas replied with this comment:

Manbearcat has that effect, I've noticed.

Wait until he starts going on about Forge stuff, your eyes will glaze over, and you'll be wondering how you ended up getting to the Philosophy of Quantum Physics board by typing in ENWorld. . . .

. . . and in response to that, cbwjm asked:

What's forge stuff?

I don't want to post an actual link to the "forge" subdirectory of indie-rpgs (dot com) (yes, it's spelled with a hyphen in the URL), but I'll offer this little bit of explanation: The Forge, as used there, at least partly refers to GNS theory, which posits that there are three different gaming styles: Gamist, Narrativist, and Simulationist. They go into a lot of detailed theorycrafting. It might be interesting to those who are interested in that kind of thing.

 

[pemerton]

Check out all the amazing things your warlord definitively needs to be able to do, on a regular basis

Did you miss the bit where I said "Not every warlord can be built to be excellent at every one of these things; but every warlord tends to be at least OK at a reasonable chunk of them."

One healing manoeuvre, one inspiration-type buff to attack or initiative, one attack-granting manoeuvre, one manoeuvre that manipulates movement in some fashion - that's four maneouvres.

A cleric, even at fairly low level, can have at-will guidance, a couple of casting per short rest of bless and/or cure, and a Channel Divinity once per short rest. A first level bard is likely to be granting 3 (CHA 16) inspiration dice per short rest, plus spells. By 3rd level there's also self-buffs via JoAT and Expertise.

There's no general prohibition, in 5e, on even fairly low-level support PCs having a reasonably broad and reliable suite of abilities.

on par in battle with a war priest, an extra attack (which sets it far *above* the war priest you claim it should equal)

I didn't assert the contradiction you state here. An extra attack doesn't set a character "far *above*" another until we know what the damage is, what the riders are, etc. Different builds in 5e have different ways of generating damage - extra attacks, smite-type effects, etc.

Given that smite effects tend to be flavoured as divine wrath, and the warlord is a non-caster, smite for a warlord wouldn't make sense. So you build in the requisite damage capability in some other way. The basic idea is not, in my view, that complicated; and I'm not going to bother to work out all the maths in intricate detail. I already stated that I'm not a designer.

But it's simply not true to assert that two unbuffed attacks puts a character "far *above*" another character with a single buffed attack. It all depends on the maths of base to hit and damage vs buffs.

How often is your warlord granting attacks? And how does the mechanics for that look? I'm betting he doesn't need to be a "(sneak attacking) rogue", as you put it. Because he'll have one at his beck and call anyway. Whenever he needs it.

If the Haste spell is (notionally) balanced, then so can this be. It's basically a mathematical problem.

The haste spell has a proviso that, when an extra action is granted, only one attack is allowed. Why is that? In the fiction, who knows - why does haste haste a bumbling mage as much as a brilliant duelist? Because magic. From the point of view of game balance, though, the reason is clear.

A warlord attack-granting ability might be limited to ordinary damage but no sneak attack. The in-fiction rationale could be that, in calling out to one's ally, you alert the victim of a rogue's sneakiness. That said, any such ability would, at least to some extent, only be duplicating something the game already contains - so are you saying battlemasters are already broken in combination with rogues?

I'll counter your wall o' text with this: You can already play a "warlord" in 5e with varying degrees of the above. My guess remains that most people screaming for "more", want just that: MOAR! They want more than 5e's core system parameters are designed to offer for any one character.

This is the bit of your post that strike me as mere nonsense.

The game includes support classes that are not as puissant, in the dealing-damage-via-attacks department, as fighters (no 4 attacks, no fighting styles, etc) or rogues (no sneak attack). In lieu of that they have 9 levels of spells, which in every version of D&D but 4e has always been the key to a treasure chest of flexibility and capability that few if any non-casters can match.

If you are really asserting that any martial build that drops the damage element of fighters and rogues in order to get more support must be broken - ie must be more powerful than full casting - then I want to know what your evidence is. Because, as bare assertion, it looks utterly absurd to me.

 

[pemerton]

They go into a lot of detailed theorycrafting.

It's not just theorycrafting. They designed games. Those designs have been hugely influential in RPGing. Even 5e.

 

[pemerton]

Well, there are two sorts, as far as I can tell, that are against the warlord.

<snip>

there are the reasonable ones, with actual concerns. These people fall into a lot of different camps within the umbrella of "Don't want/would rather not have". Some are concerned about action economy, some feel that martial healing damages their immersion, some want the fans to have a solid idea before anything enters the pipeline, lest the final result be muddy and confused. All of these are reasonable concerns, IMO, just like there are reasonable reasons to add the warlord.

They're reasonable concerns only in the sense that any design of the warlord has to be balanced.

Given that we already have a class, in the game, that has the ability to grant additional attacks via a short rest recovery mechanic, I don't think it's impossible to conceive of a warlord that might do something similar without breaking action economy. Given that we have a class that can move as a bonus action at will, I don't think it's impossible to conceive of a warlord that might grant bonus movement on a short rest cycle without breaking action economy. Given that 18th level wizards get to cast 1st and 2nd level spells at will, I don't think it's impossible to conceive of a warlord that might grant some buffs on a short rest cycle without breaking the game.

Beyond that, it's details and maths. If the warlock can be done, putting full casting onto a short rest cycle, then I don't think the warlord is beyond feasibility.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Again pemerton, you're just stating your opinion. What can be done adequately, what can't, what a warlord should look like, etc are all just your opinions. We have evidence of this because other people have different opinions on all of those things, quite literally ranging the entire gamut of "5e can already do everything I think the warlord should do" to "there's no way you can create a warlord in 5e."

No one's opinion is objective fact, and no one's opinion is more important than anyone else's (except maybe those opinions from the actual people on the design team). The sooner you, and others, realize this, THEN we can have a constructive discussion. Until then, your opinions are not more valid than mine or anyone else's. And they certainly aren't objective fact like some of you are trying to present. There are just as many, if not more, people who think you can replicate the warlord right now in 5e. Why is your opinion more valid than theirs? Were you appointed the gatekeeper of the warlord and no one else knows or something?