D&D 5E D&D Next Q&A: Martial Healing, Fighter Utility, and Ranger Challenges

[Animal]

I'm actually looking forward to see how they'll handle Ranger's FE! Always liked the idea behind the feature, but not the implementation (flat bonus against single subrace).
My dream is to see FE as a kind of combat style modules.
For example to be a dragon hunter you could pick energy resistance + combat bonuses vs. larger opponents. Or energy resistance + resistances to mind affecting as a mage slayer. Or ways to overcame DR + increased saves vs. supernatural attacks as a golem destruction specialist.
All in all, as a mage slayer you'll be very effective against mages, but also somewhat buffed against dragons or certain types of undead and outsiders. Although these bonuses would be useless against giants or gnolls. But if you went the dragonslayer route, you'd actually have some bonuses against giants too, but not undeads. And so on.
Hope this all made sense.

 

[LightPhoenix]

The abstraction of Hit Points has been a weakness D&D has had since the beginning. There are ways to do it better (as other systems have shown), but it would require changing HP. Why bother rocking the boat after this many editions? Besides, it wouldn't fit into the design goals for making the game feel more old-school. As such, the dichotomy between non-magical healing (rest, Warlords, what have you) and magical healing is not something that the team really needs to spend a lot of time on, in my opinion.

As for the Warlord itself, I thought it was a decent enough concept. However, mechanically the class really felt like a consequence of 4E's dependance on the grid (moving allies, etc). Thematically, the class seems to butt heads with the Bard and Fighter too much for my liking. For example, inspiration-based healing practically screams "Bard-flavored healing." I think the Warlord falls into the same bucket that the Paladin and Ranger fall into; the pseudo-multi-class warriors. The only difference is that the Paladin and Ranger have had numerous editions to settle into their concepts, whereas the Warlord hasn't. I say bring on the Warlord for 5E's launch, but realistically it will probably be held back for a tactical module (if that happens).

I'm interested to see what they want to do with Favored Enemies to make it somewhat broadly applicable. I'm hoping it is something along the lines of a string of feats/abilities versus static bonuses. Hard to say anything without seeing it.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Favoured Enemies was not something I liked about the ranger, so I was pretty happy to see it gone in 4e. I think it should be a feat or optional class feature; if you want it, take it, but don't clutter up the basic class with that junk. In previous editions, if you picked wrong or mis-guessed what your DM would throw at you it could range from barely useful once in a blue moon to downright useless.

I'm actually looking forward to see how they'll handle Ranger's FE! Always liked the idea behind the feature, but not the implementation (flat bonus against single subrace).
My dream is to see FE as a kind of combat style modules.
For example to be a dragon hunter you could pick energy resistance + combat bonuses vs. larger opponents. Or energy resistance + resistances to mind affecting as a mage slayer. Or ways to overcame DR + increased saves vs. supernatural attacks as a golem destruction specialist.
All in all, as a mage slayer you'll be very effective against mages, but also somewhat buffed against dragons or certain types of undead and outsiders. Although these bonuses would be useless against giants or gnolls. But if you went the dragonslayer route, you'd actually have some bonuses against giants too, but not undeads. And so on.
Hope this all made sense.

There was a thread on the WotC boards where a guy had a great idea for Favored Enemy. The FE feature gives you a few abilities that aren't directly tied to the enemy choice. For example, FE:Reptile lets you do bonus damage when outnumbered, gives you bonuses against traps, and lets you hold your breath longer. The next 15 pages of the thread consisted of everyone saying "this is a great idea, they should do this." Rumor has it the guy is on EN World under a different name.

Maybe the designers finally read that thread.

 

[DonAdam]

Favored enemy sounds like a specialty rather than a class feature to me. I'd rather see the ranger have terrain options.

 

[airwalkrr]

Martial healing, second wind, healing surges and the like was one of the things that really turned me off about 4e. Pretty much everyone has the means to the heal themselves with all the splatbooks available in 4e now. I didn't mind them giving classes like the cleric the ability to attack and still heal without using an action (being a healbot gets a little boring, and I understand that). But it was a bit of a niche marginalization (especially with the ritual system). I felt like the Leader role was less important to the game as the traditional role that clerics, druids, and their ilk used to enjoy.

4e disappointment aside, I am not a big fan of martial-style healing, regardless of the source. I think spells like aid or greater heroism from 3e are good ways to go about this. They can grant bonus hit points which revive unconscious allies, but the niche of the healer is still important to the party. I think instead of giving out martial healing abilities they need to focus on niche protection for classes like the fighter by improving their utility to the party outside of combat, which high-level spellcasters have traditionally been better at anyway (in combat in 3e and before spells like disintegrate, imprisonment, and so on were the most effective ways to end combats at high levels). Give fighters et al the ability to stun enemies with a clobbering blow for several rounds. Give them abilities to leap tall buildings and climb surfaces exceptionally well (and help others do so very effectively) to match spells like fly. Give them abilities to break down walls (similar to passwall). And so on. It doesn't have to be extensively a suite of abilities as a spellcaster. But they should have at least a handful of utility abilities that work outside of combat. And they should be very resistant to magic (like they used to be in 1e). And they should be able to deal the most damage in combat (pure DPR) or soak damage while keeping the enemy focused on them (tank) depending on the preferences and build of the player.

So martial healing is a negatory for me. Abilities to shrug off damage with armor or shields or something would be fine. Otherwise, give fighters and such more flavorful and utility abilities and make them kings of combat.

 

[Visanideth]

I'm not sure why there is such a push for the Warlord to even be a class in 5E. Admittedly, my 4E play was limited to about 10 sessions, and nobody played a Warlord, but wasn't the Warlord class more of an extrapolation of possible tactics using the 4E rules rather than a full-fledged, historical or fictionally backed class? I guess I always assumed that the Warlord became a class just so that the movement/tactics in 4E could be used more efficiently. In 1E, wouldn't a Warlord just be a fighter with a high charisma?

No, it wasn't.

The Warlord was the mechanical representation of a battle leader rather than a combat expert. 4E enabled its existence because the introduction of Power Sources allowed to split up the "Fighting Man" archetype or parent class into various different declinations, but if we take the Fighter as the weapon expert/first line warrior kind of character, then the Warlord is as different from him conceptually as the Ranger is.

The Warlord is a combat leader; he's a proficent combatant but he's not as focused on personal prowess as the Fighter is, specializing instead in leadership and enabling other characters through superior expertise and combat wisdom.

If you need fictional examples of how such difference can be justified well beyond "Fighter with high Charisma" vs "Fighter with high Dexterity", I can give you:

- Game of Thrones: once you rationalize that it's not Heroic Fantasy (so the power dial is turned very low), Bronn or the Hound are Fighters, the Imp or Eddard are Warlord.
- Berserk: Guts is a Fighter, Griffith is a Warlord.
- Greek Myth: Ercules is a barbarian, Achilles is a fighter, Odysseus or Jason are warlords.


And so on.

Incidentally, one of the positive benefits of the introduction of the Warlord (at least in an environment where classes weren't meant to represent super-broad archetypes) is that it divorced the Fighter from the role of generic, "doesn't do anything special and has no magic so he's the Dude With Swords" everyman and put him into the "ultimate weaponmaster of badassdom" position. In many ways I feel the Fighter needs the Warlord (and the Martial Power Source in general, with all the classes that got absorbed by it) because it allows him to stop being That One Guy Who's Nothing Special and gives him a greater purpose.
One of the reasons the Fighter has struggled for most of D&D's life is that it lacked identity: in a game where every class is pretty damn specific and meant to represent a fairly specific archetype, he was meant to represent pretty much anything that didn't have any magic capability (aside from the Thief/Rogue).

 

[Li Shenron]

I am mostly against giving the Fighter some out-of-combat abilities. He doesn't need any, because he already has, either from the Background or individually picked skills. There is no reason why the Fighter should have additional out-of-combat abilities, otherwise why not giving additional out-of-combat abilities to other classes too? They all have skills already.

And for the 10% or less gaming groups which won't use skills at all, they'll have ability checks for doing any out-of-combat stuff they can think about.

 

[Bluenose]

I am mostly against giving the Fighter some out-of-combat abilities. He doesn't need any, because he already has, either from the Background or individually picked skills. There is no reason why the Fighter should have additional out-of-combat abilities, otherwise why not giving additional out-of-combat abilities to other classes too? They all have skills already.

And for the 10% or less gaming groups which won't use skills at all, they'll have ability checks for doing any out-of-combat stuff they can think about.

Other classes already get some additional skills just from being part of *Class*; Rogues get four extra. The Fighter is the one that misses out entirely.

 

[Li Shenron]

Other classes already get some additional skills just from being part of *Class*; Rogues get four extra. The Fighter is the one that misses out entirely.

I would like those bonus skills removed from those other classes as well.

 

[Nikosandros]

I am mostly against giving the Fighter some out-of-combat abilities. He doesn't need any, because he already has, either from the Background or individually picked skills. There is no reason why the Fighter should have additional out-of-combat abilities, otherwise why not giving additional out-of-combat abilities to other classes too? They all have skills already.

And for the 10% or less gaming groups which won't use skills at all, they'll have ability checks for doing any out-of-combat stuff they can think about.

The issue, IMO, is that basically all other classes do have non-combat abilities that go beyond simply having skills.