Are we overthinking the warlord?

[SmokeyCriminal]

I was going to make a thread with an idea for a warlord that I had, but since you already have I figured I should just stick it here.

Ally Surge
Beginning on 3rd level, you can push your allies beyond their normal limits for a moment. An ally that can see and hear you on their turn can take one additional action when you spend your reaction.
Once you use this feature you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again.

Ally Second Wind
Beginning at 3rd level, your allies have a limited well of stamina you can draw out to protect the from harm. As a free reaction a friendly creature that can see and hear you regains hit points equal to 1d10+your fighter level.
Once you use this feature you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again.

Tactical Start
At 7th level, when initiative is rolled choose up to six friendly creatures (which can include yourself) that can see and hear you, their movement is doubled for the first round of combat.

At 7th level, you can treat Action Surge as if it were Ally Surge.

At 7th level, you can treat Second Wind as if it were Ally Second Wind.

Ally Indomitable
Beginning at 10th level, as a free reaction, if your ally can see and hear you they can reroll a Saving Throw that they failed, you must use the new roll and you must finish a long rest to regain this feature.

At 10th level you can treat Indomitable as if it were Ally Inodmitable

Relentless Leader
Starting at 15th level, when you roll for intiative and have no; Ally Surge remaining, you regain 1. Ally Second wind remaining, you regain 1. Ally Indomitable remaining, you regain 1.

Full Surge
Starting at 18th level, you bring out the full untapped potential from everyone around you. When you use Ally Surge it expands to include taking one additional reaction, and also if possible one additional Bonus Action on top of your regular ones.

I wanted to leverage actions surges huge flexibility to simulate buffs without it looking like the buffs you get from other characters.

Action, Cast a Spell = DPS
Dodge, Disengage, Hide = Defense buff
Dash = Extra movement
Grapple, Push, Trip, Grapple Escape, Object Interaction, Help = Utility/Tactics

So I'm shifting the tactic so that your no longer nickle and diming a hit here and a few steps there on your turn to shift the tide of battle in your favour. Now the tactic is to predict what your team mate needs when they are taking their turn and you empower them to achieve their goals. Stuff like;

Did the Rogue get grappled and now he has to decide between freeing himself or sneak attack? No! Ally Surge.

Did the Wizard drop a fireball on the baddies and you know all the archers will probably focus fire on him next round? Ally Surge to Dodge, Dash for cover, or Hide

Did the Barbarian wait two round to get his hands on the flying creature and now he has an opening but probably only for one round before he flying ut of reach again? Ally Surge and enjoy those extra swings Barb, you deserve them.

The only issue I have with it is that it doesn't synergies with Sneak Attack. But I think it's worth the sacrifice for the flexibility it can potentially offer, and the new way it encourages you to play tactics. Plus Action Surge is always a show stopper so it would be fun to hand them out like you were Oprah.

Ally Second Wind is interesting because your sorta sacrificing "Healing Power" for "Healing Flexibility." It's worded in a way that you can use it during your turn, your allies turn, or during enemies turn. Technically you could heal your wizard after the Owl bear gets into melee with him but before he attacks, or even in between attacks. I thought it would be an interesting trade-off and more tactical feeling then just healing on your turn a little bit. I was considering calling it "Brace Yourself" which is definitely something a leader would say right before they get wrecked.

Tactical Start was to give the warlord that tactical positioning vibe. but it trades the little strategic nudges in between turns for essentially 5 super dashes right at the start so that every one can be in their ideal positions. So your Paladin doesn't have to walk into the middle of the field and chuck a javelin and just wait there untill the enemies turn to reach him. And your Rogue is pretty much guaranteed to always reach that hiding spot without using his Dash. I don't know if it's better to have ideal positioning at the start of a fight versus in the middle of the fight, but this guarantees the first at least.

Turning your Surge and Wind into the Ally versions gives it that sacrificial leader vibe, and it doubles them. Plus it makes it so that when they increase it automatically increases the Ally versions. I thought it was a simple way to do it.

Ally Indomitable is straight forward but ill mention here that I deliberately didn't put a "within 30ft/60ft" restrictions on any of the features on purpose. I figured that the seeing and hearing would be enough, and I wanted the Warlord to be able to help the front line and back line without much issue.

Relentless Leader seemed like a nice safety net for high level play.

Full Surge is just me going over the top a little but I don't think its crazy. Battle Master has six d12 Superiority Dice and you have three Surges, and most characters have 2 attacks, so it evens out I think. Battle Master can get 6 Sneak attacks + 6d12. Warlord gets 6 attacks, or 3 spells, or 3 everything else. You lose in raw DPS but your flexibility is unequal. seems fair enough.

By level 10 you have

2 Ally Surges
2 Ally Second Wind
2 Indomitable

and 3 ASI to round out your Warlord however you see fit with Feats like Inspiring Leader, Skills, Healer, Martial Adept.

And if you want to sacrifice DPS for Warlord-y Stuff then don't do it with Extra Attack, do it with your ability scores. keep your STR at 14 and up ur CHA. Sacrificing +1 to Hit, and +1 to Damage, for +1 in Persuasion, Intimidate, Deception, and Performance. Seems like a Warlord thing to do. And instead of getting a tempting Combat Feat like GWM or SS remember your not a mere Fighter, your a Warlord.

I think between these Features and all the ASI/Feats and flexibility/Generic-ness of the Fighter you could get a decent Warlord.

It's just too bad that Sneak Attack doesn't work with him

 

[TwoSix]

That kind of should give you a clue about how much damage attack granting should be doing. A lazy lord that should be around 1d6+4+2d8, a more militant one perhaps a Bravura 2d6+4+2d8 or so. In both cases I assumed roughly a 18 in strength (unlikely a cleric has that at 14).

That is how much damage by level 14 an attack granting support PC should be doing IMHO.

Unequal argument. The warlord having equivalent healing to the cleric is only part of the equation, because the cleric can do a lot of other things with their spell slots besides heal. What is the warlord going to get that's equivalent to spirit guardians, or flame strike, or conjure celestial?

If the warlord got features that allow it to heal equivalently to a cleric, and did damage via the combination of its own attacks and action grants that was equivalent to a cleric attack, that class would be woefully underpowered compared to a cleric.

Honestly, unless you're giving this class a ton of long rest resources, which I don't think anyone wants to do, the cleric is a terrible point of comparison. "Healer" is only a small part of the overall cleric package.

 

[Jester David]

Doesn't *need* one but it's been a long time since I've seen a table with no one to fill that role. Cleric is one of the core 4 for more than just legacy reasons.

I've seen it, and it works just fine. The adventuring day is just a little slower and a wand of healing is nice.

By no means the only, but it's certainly the baseline. You can just look at the multitude of threads here on enworld about people being repeatedly brought back by healing word to know that it's frequently one of the most discussed aspects of leader archetypes.

Yeah, the healing character is useful. But so is a good tank. Or more damage. A party of all damage can work fairly well, killing everything before they get near death.
Healing is useful when it is there but it is far from essential and a must-have at the table.

See above. 5e doesn't really require anything by design but healing, even in combat, is hugely impactful.

And you can play a fighter and never swing a sword, doesn't mean that it's advisable or that most groups do it. Just about every player I've inducted to the hobby that has played one of the aforementioned characters or types of characters has taken healing options, even if it was only for their own selfish use.

The point is that the war cleric isn't a healer. The trickster cleric isn't a healer. The tempest cleric isn't a healer.

The cleric isn't always a healer. It can be the tank, it can be the face, it can be the sneak, or it could be the blaster.
So why does the walord have to be the healer when even the cleric—the class synonymous with the healer role—might not serve as the healer? Shouldn't that be more of an option in a subclass of the warlord? Why is healing so essential to the class?

Agreed, which is why ideally a warlord would be able to do these competently as well.

How exactly does a warlord bring someone back from the dead? Back from stone?

There is nothing to support this statement whatsoever. Nothing stops Wizards or homebrew design from making a warlord that is every bit as good of a healer mechanically speaking, and if you're referring to that being narratively unpalatable then that's your own hangup to deal with and can (and should) be disregarded when designing said class.

As I say above, in the 5e design a big role of the "healer" character is casting spells like lesser restoration or raise dead. Which the warlord cannot do without actually casting spells or having magical abilities. Thus it cannot fill the role.

It cannot entirely "replace" the cleric as the healer. And it really doesn't have to, as its role as "cleric replacement" was a 4e design goal.
That's like looking at the psion/ mystic and saying "step one, it's a controller." Or trying to design an artificer and saying "it's a 3/4 Base Attack Bonus class with good Fort and Will". No. Those are design elements from dead editions. They have no bearing

Meanwhile, classes have a finite number of abilities. 16 or so class features spread over 20 levels.
Each time you add a healing one to the warlord, it takes away a warlordy feature from the class. Something unique to being a tactical leader and commander that no other class could do.

Especially at low levels. Because, if the warlord is the healer and all warlords despite build have to heal, then that's their first level feature. It's making restoring hp a more iconic part of the classs than granting actions or movement or increasing initiative or buffing ally attacks.
The design of the warlord should focus on the cool things of the class, not the expected things of its 4e role.

 

[Ratskinner]

Why not just play multi class Fighter/Bards and be done with it?

Far too simple and straightforward.

More importantly, that would not be forcing everyone to publicly acknowledge that Warlord is a wholly entirely complete CLASS of its own and that WOTC was not horribly wrong and for not including a version of this VERY IMPORTANT CLASS in the core of 5e. The Warlordian People have a long and storied history, and for anyone (WOTC INCLUDED!) to suggest that those traits could be duplicated with combinations of feats and other abilities smacks of CLASSICAL APPROPRIATION and outright CLASSISM.

The previous sarcasm brought to you by a guy who doesn't quite understand why its so important to fans of many "edge" classes to actually be classes, rather than subclasses or builds.

 

[Ratskinner]

Why not just remove the paladin, because you can MC Fighter Cleric?

Good suggestion!

Although we have the subclass thing lying around and a long (sad) history of Paladins in the game. I'd suggest that Fighter should have had five subclasses: Champion(meh), Battlemaster, Paladin, Eldritch Knight, Ranger, and Warlord.

But then again, lately I've been of a mind that WOTC D&D is over-specified and that maybe it should back up and abstract things a bit more. Must be grumpiness and old age.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Far too simple and straightforward.

More importantly, that would not be forcing everyone to publicly acknowledge that Warlord is a wholly entirely complete CLASS of its own and that WOTC was not horribly wrong and for not including a version of this VERY IMPORTANT CLASS in the core of 5e. The Warlordian People have a long and storied history, and for anyone (WOTC INCLUDED!) to suggest that those traits could be duplicated with combinations of feats and other abilities smacks of CLASSICAL APPROPRIATION and outright CLASSISM.

The previous sarcasm brought to you by a guy who doesn't quite understand why its so important to fans of many "edge" classes to actually be classes, rather than subclasses or builds.

Some certainly. However the main issue with the Fighter/Bard (or just the Bard) as Warlord is that the class will be completely conceptually ruined if any of their abilities go "Ping!" under a Detect Magic spell.

 

[Ratskinner]

Some certainly. However the main issue with the Fighter/Bard (or just the Bard) as Warlord is that the class will be completely conceptually ruined if any of their abilities go "Ping!" under a Detect Magic spell.

Meh. I just kinda let that go. As in. "Fine, you're a non-magical valor bard, just don't try to read a scroll or use a wand or whatever."

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'd suggest that Fighter should have had five subclasses: Champion(meh), Battlemaster, Paladin, Eldritch Knight, Ranger, and Warlord

Don't forget Barbarian, Rogue(Swashbuckler) & Monk.

But, it'd be a sadly cut-down Pally, Ranger, Warlord, &c to fit in the same class with the meh(Champion).

It's really the 'Simple Fighter' imperative that necessitates breaking every other martial type (even the comparably big, dumb, hard-hitting, & simplistic Barbarian) out of the fighter chassis. Were it not for the demand that the Fighter be simple - or, as a compromise, have a blindingly simple sub-class - to the degree that it couldn't be balanced with any other class, there wouldn't be a need to break out so many martial archetypes. Rogue included (and, for that matter, Thief, in the first place).

Somehow, D&D over the decades painted itself into a corner in which the 'Fighter' had to be both simplistic to the point of strict inferiority, and the 'best' at one thing - 'fighting.' The 5e fighter is surprisingly successful at delivering that idiot-specialist paradox, but it can't be expected to pull that off, /and/ fit Paladin, Ranger, Warlord, Barbarian, Rogue, Monk, and old-school Elf (among others) in that same class.

When designers thought they had a freer hand they took the dysfunctional fighter concept and cut it up into 4 separate classes. Even then, they couldn't quite bring themselves to make them /quite/ the equal of others, nor to cover the full range of contributions for an ideal party.

Theoretically, in a context that allowed good design for it's own sake, preternatural skill and/or superhuman ability might be in one class that could be freely combined (if desired) with other classes featuring supernatural powers of various types, and thus allow players to model every possible character in the broader genre from a combination of only a handful of relatively simple & balanced classes.
Theoretically.
But never if the system is to have 'D&D' on the cover.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Meh. I just kinda let that go. As in. "Fine, you're a non-magical valor bard, just don't try to read a scroll or use a wand or whatever."

That's pretty much the approach I took. I reckoned that being able to cast in non-magic areas, and being undispellable/uncounterable did not make them any more powerful since it also limited them to non-flashy spells, and required the target to be able to hear you.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

The previous sarcasm brought to you by a guy who doesn't quite understand why its so important to fans of many "edge" classes to actually be classes, rather than subclasses or builds.

Why is it so important to you that they aren't?