D&D 5E (2014) Boop

[Sacrosanct]

But they are a warrior. They’re not a front line damage dealer, but they’re still a warrior. They’re like the ranger, except hopefully designed well. If you don’t take damage spells, and find a support/exploration focused subclass, you aren’t going to be in the top half of damage in the party, but you can still fight competently when called upon.
The warlord just gets support features instead of exploration features, and more support abilities than non support abilities.

Using extra attack with options to replace attacks with support manuevers allows the class to choose at each attack whether to focus on support, or to lead the attack.
And leading the attack should not be a secondary archetype siloed into a subclass. It should be one of the primary ways to build nearly any member of the class.

whether it’s a vanguard, an outlaw, a rabble rouser, or yes, tactician, everybroad type of warlord should be capable of leading from the front.
The idea of leading the attack being a tertiary thing that only 1 or two subclasses get is just...absolutely bonkers!

You seem to be making the mistake that you need an extra attack in order to lead from the front. During the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, I was playing a tempest cleric. And I very much was the front line tank. That was true even in a party with a barbarian and a fighter/warlock.

Also, while the warlord might technically be a warrior, they are focused more on leadership and tactics, and less time with the other fighters training with weapons. More of an officer (ugh, that word), than an enlisted grunt.

This is the big problem with the warlord, and why it hasn't been created. You want it to be as good as a fighter and also do all these other things to support the party. You can't do that in 5e. You gotta pick and choose. Be a fighter with a few support options, or be a support class with a lot of options, but don't do as much dpr.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Hey, Ranger is my favorite class.
And at my table, they’re great. Because we take the UA replacement features, and add them to the features they’re meant to replace.

 

[Tony Vargas]

*Edit And I"m not sure why you keep saying this "non attacking" class. Every class attacks. Just in different ways....

Nod. While you were out, 3e (BoED) did introduce a Pacifist option, mainly for the Cleric, that pretty dramatically avoided much attacking. The Pacifist Cleric was brought back (at some point) in 4e, and the Tactical Warlord had, initially, a few maneuvers that gave it's attack action to an ally, making it 'not attacking' (really, attacking in different way), and, fairly quickly, a variety of such powers were put out that allowed a fairly complete build that eschewed attacking on its own for action-granting and the like, 4e also introduced a Shaman build that was able to focus on action-granting, and attack- and action-granting was a minor feature of other leaders, too.

So, while there's never been a non-attacking class, there have been a number of non-attacking options, since 3e.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You want it to be as good as a fighter and also do all these other things to support the party. You can't do that in 5e. You gotta pick and choose. Be a fighter with a few support options, or be a support class with a lot of options, but don't do as much dpr.

Nobody is arguing for that. Stop making up arguments and attributing them to me.
Having the Extra Attack feature doesn’t make a class as good as the fighter at anything. If you take the monk or Paladin, and replace all it’s actual damage boosting features (ie, the ones beyond extra attack) with support features that mostly key off making attacks, you have a front line martial support class.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Nobody is arguing for that. Stop making up arguments and attributing them to me.

I'm not doing that. I'm directly responding to your statements like this:

"..it just seems bafflingly weird for the class to fall behind the absolute baseline warrior class damage ..."

You literally just said it makes no sense for the warlord to be not as good as the baseline fighter in damage. So if you want that, you have to be limited in support options (just like all fighter subclasses are limited in how many things they can do, none of which satisfy the pro warlord crowd. Same with monk and paladin. How many damage boosting things do they have (you also have to give the warlord more armor and weapon prof than a monk, so there's a trade off for that that needs to be done as well)? Those two classes only have a few options, and it seems like people want the warlord to have many options (which I agree with).

Everything is a trade off needed for balance. Looking at all of these warlord design threads over the years, people want the warlord to have many options geared towards support. The cost of that is to not be as good as a baseline fighter, because baseline fighters don't have nearly enough other options to replace for what people want out of the warlord.

So choose. Either have a warlord that is as good as a baseline fighter but with few support options, or one that has many options, but doesn't have the marital dpr output of a fighter.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'm not doing that. I'm directly responding to your statements like this:

"..it just seems bafflingly weird for the class to fall behind the absolute baseline warrior class damage ..."

You literally just said it makes no sense for the warlord to be not as good as the baseline fighter in damage. So if you want that, you have to be limited in support options (just like all fighter subclasses are limited in how many things they can do, none of which satisfy the pro warlord crowd. Same with monk and paladin. How many damage boosting things do they have (you also have to give the warlord more armor and weapon prof than a monk, so there's a trade off for that that needs to be done as well)? Those two classes only have a few options, and it seems like people want the warlord to have many options (which I agree with).

Everything is a trade off needed for balance. Looking at all of these warlord design threads over the years, people want the warlord to have many options geared towards support. The cost of that is to not be as good as a baseline fighter, because baseline fighters don't have nearly enough other options to replace for what people want out of the warlord.

So choose. Either have a warlord that is as good as a baseline fighter but with few support options, or one that has many options, but doesn't have the marital dpr output of a fighter.

Baseline warrior damage =\= fighter damage. If i has meant fighter, I’d have said fighter.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Baseline warrior damage =\= fighter damage. If i has meant fighter, I’d have said fighter.

My point still stands. If you give the warlord the same martial DPR as a fighter, ranger, or paladin, do those classes have enough other abilities to be able to be traded off equitably (to ensure balance) and do everything warlord fans want out of the warlord? I don't think so. Based on what I'm seeing over the past few years, warlords fans want a warlord to:

• be able to do something warlordy every round if needed, like a cantrip
• have decent options of scalable bigger powers (like granting inspiration, healing, modifying initiative, etc)
• have specialized subclasses like INT based, and CHA based. A tactician vs a brawler, etc.

And looking at how the ranger and paladin are set up, there aren't enough of those ranger or paladin abilities to be swapped out to give the warlord those features. Rangers and paladins don't even have cantrips, so they don't even have the first bullet point achievable. You gotta give something up to get what you want. And IMO, that extra attack lies better with a subclass warlord that doesn't get as many and/or as powerful support features.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Look at it like this. Let's say the base warlord is on par with the base paladin, and also gets the extra attck at 5th level. Let's look at what the warlord would look like by the paladin giving up it's class features to be replaced by warlord features, as similar in power as I can think of

Give up divine sense, and warlord gets advantage on intimidation/persuasion checks a number of times = CHA modifier
Lay on hands replaced by inspiring word. . Pool = 5x your level of healing
Fighting style stays the same (warlords should have this)
Divine smite replaced by precision attack (use one of your warlord abilities to increase the damage of an attack by 2d8 for level 1, +1d8 for higher levels)
Divine health replaced by battlefield instruction, which allows you to send your precision attack to an ally within 30ft, up to a number of times per short rest = to INT modifier
Then you've got whatever subclass feature you want.
Replace spellcasting with maneuvers. You can learn a number of maneuvers = your INT modifier + half your level, rounded down.

So a 5th level warlord with an 18 INT (assuming they do this instead of CHA) would have 6 maneuvers, which could be used 6 times per long rest (4 at lower power, 2 at enhanced power) assuming you never used your precision attack. If you use precision attack a lot, then you don't have any warlord maneuvers you can use.

No warlordy things at will. And only 6 maneuvers learned maximum (probably less). And choose between using precision attack or said maneuvers; not both. is this what warlord fans would be happy with? I highly doubt that. Not from what I've read over the past few years.

That's the give and take I'm talking about. If it's a support class, then treat it like every other support class. We have plenty of examples of how that could be done. Git rid of extra attack for the ability to have a pool of at will warlord abilities that scale with level, or broaden the number of total maneuvers they can learn and utilize per long rest, something. But you can't do both. Not without having major balance issues. All the other warrior classes (fighter, ranger, paladin, barbarian) don't have enough other things to trade out and still get the extra attacks

 

[Tony Vargas]

This is the big problem with the warlord, and why it hasn't been created. You want it to be as good as a fighter and also do all these other things to support the party.

I don't think we can make any informed speculation about why the Warlord has been excluded (even if we have seen the whole of 4e, prior editions, the tongue-in-cheek 'devestation' of the edition war, and stayed on top of the two year public playtest, it's hard to say what they were thinking... heck, it always is). There's no precedent of the Warlord being the equal of the fighter (or any defender) in that role, though, and I don't think dbw is actually trying assert that it should be, just feels that the first extra attack, since so many classes (& sub-classes) have it isn't out of line for, well, anyone, really.

As in 5e, now, in 4e, it was not hard for any PC to be front-line capable in the basic sense of surviving on the front line for a bit and making a meaningful damage contribution... you could choose not be, but could do it with any class.

IMHO, the Warlord needs to be quite distinct from the Fighter, moreso than the Warlock is distinct from the Wizard or the Cleric from the Druid, because it has had such a long wait, and it is going to be held to more exacting standards than any other class in 5e. Skipping Extra Attack seems an obvious design choice. It scrubs the class of sustained single-target DPR (the highest-valued feature in the 5e 6-8 encounter-day balance scheme, really), leaving it design space for Support resources.

You can't do that in 5e. You gotta pick and choose.

You had even less latitude to poach on other 'roles' in 4e, where they were formalized. A 4e Cleric, for instance, did not have nearly the Controller capability of the Wizard, a whole 'nuther 'Divine Controller' Class, the Invoker, was created for that. In 5e, through spell choice, a Cleric can be very good at control or support, prettymuch from one day to the next, or even just good at both, emphasizing one or the other round by round since casting is spontaneous.

That's the give and take I'm talking about. If it's a support class, then treat i like every other support class. We have plenty of examples of how that could be done. Git rid of extra attack for the ability to have a pool of at will warlord abilities that scale with level, or broaden the number of total maneuvers they can learn and utilize per long rest, something. All the other warrior classes (fighter, ranger, paladin, barbarian) don't have enough other things to trade out and still get the extra attacks.

The Warlord was designed in the more tightly Role-defined environment of 4e, the danger of making a true-to-the-original Warlord is making it too limited, underpowered, or not versatile enough to stand as a viable choice in the same game with the 5e versions of it's fellow 'Leader' (Support) classes, like the Cleric & Bard.

The Warlord concept - and 5e is notionally concept-first in design, among other maxims - touched on all the usual support functions, restoring hps, granting temps, buffing & enabling allies, plus the fairly novel action-granting; shaded into controller functions like creating situational advantages, de-buffing, restricting, influencing (tricking) the enemy; and could make basic personal contributions in melee as fighters/clerics/rogues (most non-MUs, really) have always done. 4e, like 5e, made everyone pretty decent at basic combat, so that was (and is) no big deal. 5e, though, is much freer with support characters taking up controller functions, so that's some design space opened up, for the 'Hector' style of Warlord particularly.


Really, as upset as it's easy to get at the notion of a potential 5e Warlord not being as good as the 4e, it'd not be hard at all for it to be better.