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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6100630" data-attributes="member: 42582">Of course in the novel I can't tell who's a PC. But presumalby in my Tolkienesque game I want the players, via their PCs, to have Tolkienesque experiences, including being roused and revivified by the well-spoken words of a captain like Faramir or Aragorn.As to it not being magic, I'm inferring that from a combined analysis of the literary text and D&D magic. D&D magic involves components (V, S, M), discrete effects, and fails in an anti-magic shell. Gandalf's various tricks with light and fire are fairly clearly magic in this sense. But the book very strongly implies that Aragorn and other captains rouse and revive via ordinary human emotions. If I was going to involve magic in this, it would be self-buffing magic: ie Aragorn can buff his own CHA to enable him to better speak well-chosen words. In an anti-magic shell, then, he would be less charismatic (which narratively could be him falling into a magically-induced despair) and thus less able to rouse and revive. But for this treatment to work, you still need the basic mechancis of recovery via CHA check, inspirational healing or something similar.I don't agree. A former class that is now being supported by integration into an existing class, in circumstances where other equally-integrable classes are not being integrated, is likely to have fewer of its former abilities replicable, less ongoing support (both at the mechanical and the story level), etc.Well, quite. That's the real reason why I think the 4e-style warlord won't figure in D&Dnext.In my case, I'm meaning mechanics which have at least one of three features, and often (maybe always? - I haven't thought it through) all of them:(1) The mechanic operates in the first instance upon the game mechanics rather than the imaginary space; (2) The mechanic does not itself model any causal process in the gameworld; (3) The use of the mechanic is a player decision that does not correlate to any decision by the PC.To illustrate, contrast the classic Haste spell with a warlord's granting of an extra attack:Haste (1) The Haste spell operates clearly upon an object in the imginary space - the target of the spell starts acting faster, like Quicksilver or The Flash; (2) The mechanical resolution of the Haste spell models a process in the gameworld, namely, the PC caster using magic to make the target of the spell become faster; (3) Casting the Haste spell is a decision taken by the PC wizard. Warlord extra attack (1) The use of the ability operates primarily upon the game mechanics, and especially the action economy - we don't know, for instance, whether the extra attack roll is due to fighting harder, or smarter, or more quickly, or more luckily (for a Princess build); (2) The mechanical resolution of the ability may model some process in the gameworld (the warlord yells out to an ally, drawing his/her attention to an opportunity which the ally takes) but it need not - perhaps the warlord is always yelling out in that way, urging his/her allies on, but only when the ability is used does this cash out in mechanical terms; and in a Princess build, the use of the ability may correspond to a yelling out ("Help me, you dolt!"), but the yelling out is not the cause of the targetted PC's making an extra attack; (3) Depending on how exactly you went at point (2), using the ability may well be simply a player decision, but not a PC decision - the PC is likely calling out advice or instructions more often than once per encounter, but ony when the player chooses to use the ability does this have mechanical weight.You can tighten up the warlord's abilities to make them less-metagamey: for instance you could say that the extra attack is always due to alerting an ally to an opportunity (some will still say that's too metagame-y, because it's a player occupying director stance), so that use of the ability corresponds to a PC choice and an ingame causal process. But it will follow from that that the ability must be at-will. And hence must be limited in power. And hence probably won't recover the full scope of the existing warlord's operations. And that's before we get to healing!I've tried to explain above why I think the warlord brings metagame mechanics along with it. Also see posts 202 and 203 above (my post, [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]'s reply).I didn't know that Mearls had talked about fate points. I agree that integrating that sort of stuff into classes is pretty key to 4e, so a generic fate point system is likely to play fairly differently.</blockquote>

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