D&D (2024) Chance for a warlord?

I think this was a solution to an issue Mearls identified with the Valor bard: you can become a valor bard at level 3 at which point you get Medium armor and access to all martial weapons, which means you can rely more on Strength. But the core bard incentivizes you to prioritize Dexterity over Strength, with its light armor proficiency and with rapier being its best melee weapon. So they learned that it's bad design to switch stat priorities after character creation. That's why clerics and druids get the option for martial weapons + heavy armor at level 1 instead of as part of their level 3 subclass.

Ironically, even though the lesson came from the bard, the bard didn't benefit from it.
To me, they missed the forest for the trees. Changing stat priorities after character creation is but a fraction of the problem, which is, you shouldn't delay character defining choices. (And they sure didn't learn that lesson)
 

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In theory a player can certainly role-play a pure fighter as a leader and strategist, sure.
In practice, in my 40+ years of gaming, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen a player lean into that archetype. Why?

1. Survivability trumps role-play -- players would rather boost Dex or Con than Int, Wis or Cha for a fighter. In 3e I saw a smattering of Int 12 or Int 14 fighters who wanted skill points but that didn't really change their narrative.
2. Players usually choose fighters to experience the joy of running a PC that is personally effective at combat. If they want to play a support role they turn elsewhere.

The narrative choice of 'how do I want to play my fighter' usually comes well after the character is built, and is both informed by and constrained by the above.

I have played battlemaster fighters -- one of my favorite classes -- but they are still fighters and not intrinsicially leaders because the class abilities don't support that narrative well. The only martial PC in recent memory that I chose to play as a leader / strategist was a 3e Knight.

So my own feeling, based on personal experience summarized above, is that carving out the leader/strategist narrative from the figher and giving it to a new class, is not taking anything at all away from the fighter in practice.

It's like giving away that drum set in the garage that you never play, but hold onto because you might want to join a band, someday, after you learn to play the drums.
Similar to how it is technically possible to just roleplay what we call now a sorcerer on pre-2e d&d ediitions, but nobody really does (or ever did) It is possible to ignore mechanics, fluff and survivability and struggle to do it. Because "what is a witch but a female magic user?" am I right?

And despite the futility of the exercise, today after a quarter century we still have people tearing their clothes and enraged in indignation because "how dare they to take away being born with a gift of magic from the wizard!"

Basically the same thing.
 


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