D&D 5E (2014) A WOTC 5e Warlord That Would Be Acceptable To Skeptics

[Hussar]

Heh. That's why the fighter in out dragonlance game has the lowest damage output. By a long ways.

Compare a Sorcerer who Fire Bolts for 2d10 every shot. That's more than your maul wielding fighter. And that's the least damaging attack he makes.

 

[Lanefan]

I think you over-estimate a caster's versatility. A 5e cleric does have about 15 spells to choose from at a given level (not much more than your dozen). Wizards only get a guarantee of knowing two spells for every level they gain. Furthermore, a fighter probably IS the highest-damage-output at most levels. Compare a wizard who fire bolts (1d10) to a fighter who longbows (1d8+DEX bonus), or even better a fighter who Mauls (2d6+STR bonus).

5e, in my view, fixed (or tried to) the 3e caster problem the wrong way: they nerfed (or removed) a lot of spells while still leaving them too easy to cast. Better to have made them harder to cast (do away completely with combat casting as a concept*, make spells easy to interrupt, etc.) but leave some power in 'em. I don't at all mind a wizard being able to unleash lots of damage now and then.

* - except in very specific circumstances e.g. a Battle-domain Cleric casting a battle-oriented spell such as Prayer.

In fact, part of the reason a battlemaster is in some ways a sub-par warlord is that the battlemaster still makes a lot of attacks themselves, and gets their power from that, while warlord fans seem to want a class who gets a lot of their damage potential from giving extra actions to their allies. The battlemaster gives actions to allies as a cherry on top of being an engine of destruction themselves, rather than giving actions to allies as a base part of how they contribute to damage/defense.

Of these I far prefer the battlemaster option, where it leads and inspires from the front by showing the party how it's done. With risk comes reward.

Lanefan

 

[Guest 6801328]

Yes, but that's not sufficient description of the sweetmeat. I've watched several arguments between warlord proponents over what is an acceptable warlord, largely based on what "non-magical, non-supernatural" really means.

For example, there's, "Not magical or supernatural, in that things like anti-magic shell or dispel magic don't effect it, but really I'm okay with them being pretty spectacular and unexplainable". Then there's, "not magical or supernatural, in that it is limited to effects that I personally imagine happening in my own *mundane* real world".

And then they end up mentioning that scene in Patton, where Patton yells at that private who said, "It's my nerves, sir," as an example of "inspirational healing" and I think Please lord do not give these people the class they want.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Heh. That's why the fighter in out dragonlance game has the lowest damage output. By a long ways.

Compare a Sorcerer who Fire Bolts for 2d10 every shot. That's more than your maul wielding fighter. And that's the least damaging attack he makes.

If you want to be fair, compare that 2d10 fire bolt to a fighter who is using Extra Attack, which is what they'd get at the same level - a 2d10 fire bolt vs. a 2x(1d8+DEX) for a long bow or a 2x(2d6+STR) for a melee attack. It's pretty obvious which one is better.

If you want to start taking daily spells into consideration, we also need to look at Action Surge. Your flagship damage spell for a 5th level sorcerer is Fireball, which deals roughly 112 damage (8d6 * 4 using the DMG's rules for estimating the number of targets in an area effect and presuming all fail their saves). Compare with Mr. Maul (lets presume a +3 STR bonus, not crazy optimized, and just like the sorc's victims all fail, Mr. Maul always hits), and we see ~ 40 damage every time a fighter action surges, and we can presume about 3 action surges per day, which gives us 120 in the same interval.

I'm hardly doing rocket surgery on this, and there's corner things to take into account (your DL character is a defensive fighter, and the damaging sorcerer is a damage-focused sorcerer), but it is not clear on the face of it that a fighter is any less capable of damage than a mage of equivalent level.

Which brings us back to the idea that in 2e, a fighter was pretty much the undisputed lord of damage for the first 5 levels or so. A lot of people found that inadequate (especially by 6th level!). In fact, the Complete Fighter's Handbook even gets all defensive about it on its back cover: "Who says fighters are the poor cousins of the AD&D game?"

Fighters being inadequate is a narrative with a lot of history behind it, history as old as the D&D game itself. In 5e, it does not seem to be a true narrative in practice, speaking from my experience.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I am sure anyone who cringes every time they hear the word Warlord (as well as Warlord fans who don't like refluffing) might not like this but how about presenting a 5e Warlord as a magical class but with absolutely minimal fluff other than something like "using a lost mythic war magic from a previous epoch," "blessed by the gods of war" or "a chosen one manifesting the spirit of war itself." *snip* Any thoughts? Any objections?

This would mitigate all of my objections to illogical nonmagical abilities. If the warlord can slide you around the battlefield and shout you back into consciousness, using an idiosyncratic form of non-spell-based magic... well, hey, it's magic. Apparently it's a different kind of magic than wizard magic, but so are a bunch of monster-based powers. There's still some mechanical impact because fluff and mechanics are inseparable--it won't work in an anti-magic zone, and Circle of Power will give advantage against--but I am of course fine with that. I'm not sure if the pro-"Martial" camp will be because I think their whole concept is based around doing stuff nonmagically, but eh, we'll see how they respond.

 

[Hussar]

If you want to be fair, compare that 2d10 fire bolt to a fighter who is using Extra Attack, which is what they'd get at the same level - a 2d10 fire bolt vs. a 2x(1d8+DEX) for a long bow or a 2x(2d6+STR) for a melee attack. It's pretty obvious which one is better.

If you want to start taking daily spells into consideration, we also need to look at Action Surge. Your flagship damage spell for a 5th level sorcerer is Fireball, which deals roughly 112 damage (8d6 * 4 using the DMG's rules for estimating the number of targets in an area effect and presuming all fail their saves). Compare with Mr. Maul (lets presume a +3 STR bonus, not crazy optimized, and just like the sorc's victims all fail, Mr. Maul always hits), and we see ~ 40 damage every time a fighter action surges, and we can presume about 3 action surges per day, which gives us 120 in the same interval.

I'm hardly doing rocket surgery on this, and there's corner things to take into account (your DL character is a defensive fighter, and the damaging sorcerer is a damage-focused sorcerer), but it is not clear on the face of it that a fighter is any less capable of damage than a mage of equivalent level.

Which brings us back to the idea that in 2e, a fighter was pretty much the undisputed lord of damage for the first 5 levels or so. A lot of people found that inadequate (especially by 6th level!). In fact, the Complete Fighter's Handbook even gets all defensive about it on its back cover: "Who says fighters are the poor cousins of the AD&D game?"

Fighters being inadequate is a narrative with a lot of history behind it, history as old as the D&D game itself. In 5e, it does not seem to be a true narrative in practice, speaking from my experience.

KM, I'm not talking about comparing my character to the sorcerer. My character does the least damage of any character in the game. The Paladin, which is just as defensive as my fighter, does twice as much damage per round. The idea that fighters in 5e are the damage kings is pretty laughable. Sure, I'll pull ahead a bit at 11th level with the 3rd attack, but, by that time, the campaign will likely be over. Oooh, I get to be the damage king for a level or two. They are probably the most consistent about dealing damage every round. But as far as dealing the most damage? Not even close. Good grief, the 4th level war cleric in the other campaign would put my fighter to shame.

Now, as far as 2e goes, fighters really are the king. They got extra attacks before anyone because they were the ONLY class to get weapon specs. No one got an extra attack until 7th level except the fighter. And when the other fighter types got 3/2, the fighter was attacking 2/1. Never minding the extra bonus to hit and damage that weapon specs got you. No one in the game dealt damage like a fighter at pretty much any level. Build a fighter for actually doing damage - two weapon fighting, long sword specs and short sword proficiency (all doable by 1st level), and you've got a character that's soloing 8HD monsters at 1st level. Potentially. Granted, not too often, cos he'd wind up dead, but, he was still the only class that could do it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

warlord fighting style. Chosable at level 1 fighter. You can use any fighter feature that normally only affects yourself (such as action point or second wind) on an ally. You spend the use of your feature as normal and your ally spends his reaction.
Chose tactical or inspiring:
tactical: your allies get a bonus of half your int bonus (rounded up, minimum 1) on initiative rolls and if you grant an attack that ally may also move 5 times your int mod before taking his reaction.
inspiring: when rolling initiative your alloes gain temporary hp equal to your charisma modifier. If you grant healing to an ally it is increased by your charisma modifier.

This is all you need for a warlord in my opinion. Maybe you can also add: instead of gaining extra attack at level 5, you gain combined attack (like the beast master ranger feature: an ally may attack instead of you)

 

[UngeheuerLich]

A well played fighter is durable and damaging. The paladin may lay down some damage when spending his spells in melee, especially on a crit, but if the fighter actually thinks about using his bow, he should be easily able to hold up to the expectations.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think you over-estimate a caster's versatility. A 5e cleric does have about 15 spells to choose from at a given level (not much more than your dozen). Wizards only get a guarantee of knowing two spells for every level they gain. Furthermore, a fighter probably IS the highest-damage-output at most levels. Compare a wizard who fire bolts (1d10) to a fighter who longbows (1d8+DEX bonus), or even better a fighter who Mauls (2d6+STR bonus).

While I admit that much of my experience with the 5e Fighter is academic (as I have yet to see anything that would make me want to play that class), I have to wonder if the frequently-cited Fighter damage numbers are actually as good as people talk about. Of course, many times, I've tried to actually compare a "pure damage" Fighter with a "pure damage" Paladin (really I should also consider the Barbarian, I just haven't because Pally is so easy to calculate)--and pretty much every time, I received a dismissal for "theorycrafting." The numbers I have crunched, though, don't really reflect the Fighter being a breakaway damage-dealer--more like slightly leading the pack.

In fact, part of the reason a battlemaster is in some ways a sub-par warlord is that the battlemaster still makes a lot of attacks themselves, and gets their power from that, while warlord fans seem to want a class who gets a lot of their damage potential from giving extra actions to their allies. The battlemaster gives actions to allies as a cherry on top of being an engine of destruction themselves, rather than giving actions to allies as a base part of how they contribute to damage/defense.

[sblock=Semi-digression]This I can definitely agree with. People focus a lot on the "Lazy/Princess" build of the Warlord, but the truth is that all of the Warlord builds were pretty keen on one specific thing: Contributing by making others' contributions better. Sometimes, that manifested in the Lazy way: "you, attack this brute, and go for the armpit where the armor's weak!", so the ally gets an extra attack with some damage added on top. Other times--more commonly, I'd argue--it manifested as quite literally leading the attack: "have at you, you foul miscreant--and taste my comrades' steel as well!", so that future attacks made against that target get some kind of benefit. Other manifestations could also work, which were fluffed (while I recognize the ease of refluffing in 4e) as exploiting weaknesses, shoring up defenses, or other forms of Natural Battle Enhancement.

The Warlord could totally heal, but again it was more about being..."facilitative" than about being "reconstructive," if that makes sense. An ally that remains in the fight is extra damage, extra controlled space, additional flanking ability, another body to take some heat off the squishies, etc. Some Warlords are even facilitative by taking risks; Bravura (a Cha-based Warlord) was all about risking or even accepting downsides (like a penalty to an ally's, or your own, defenses) in order to do something dramatic and rewarding IF you pull it off. Others (e.g. Tactical) were facilitative primarily by accelerating the pace of combat, particularly by improving Initiative, or by making the party highly maneuverable (a less-useful thing in 5e, since everyone can move-attack-move-attack etc., but that doesn't mean it couldn't be worked with).

But the big thing Warlords really weren't was being particularly powerful on their own. Being a "Striker" in 4e was essentially the one thing a Warlord definitely couldn't do both well and consistently. Which is something of a problem, because the base chassis of the 5e Fighter IS definitely a damage machine--being the only class that gets four attacks (though, in practice, most people will only see 2-3) kinda forces the Fighter to be at the very least competent at personal damage-dealing.

For a 5e rendition of the Warlord vis-a-vis the Battlemaster, the baked-in Extra Attack of the Fighter, plus all the personal damage-improvement (or personal hit-improvement) from nearly all Maneuvers, is somewhat an issue. (Of the four maneuvers which don't improve your own damage or hit, two are personal defense boosters--Parry and Evasive Footwork--so only Commander's Strike and Rally are "facilitative" in the way a 4e Warlord was.) It's essentially unavoidable that the Battlemaster will be a major damage machine; the mechanics really don't contribute to a player focusing on how to leverage their allies' strengths on the battlefield, which the 4e Warlord had to do in order to meaningfully contribute to combat. Healing--leveraging their allies' HP pools effectively--was a part of that, but could be made optional. Making the whole thing, the whole "facilitative" structure, optional...that's not so doable, IMO, without making the class something fundamentally other than a Warlord.[/sblock]

Long story short: I completely agree that the naturally good-to-great offensive (and to a lesser extent, defensive) capabilities of the Fighter chassis, and particularly the Battlemaster archetype, conflict with the desired execution of a "ported" Warlord.

 

[Hussar]

A well played fighter is durable and damaging. The paladin may lay down some damage when spending his spells in melee, especially on a crit, but if the fighter actually thinks about using his bow, he should be easily able to hold up to the expectations.

So, in order to be competitive with the paladin, the fighter shouldn't be a front line combatant anymore? Don't you think that's a problem for the class that's supposed to be the combat king?