Design & Development: Warlord Article UP!

[WhatGravitas]

Based on what we have from ScaleGloom Hall, it sure seems to be involuntary. However, making it voluntary would probably be an early house rule for many DMs.

What I find interesting about this is that I suspect that either one of two things will happen in some games:

1) The game stops as everyone sits and discusses exactly which ally should be moved and where s/he should be moved to.

2) Some DMs will not want those types of slowups, so they will institute special "table talk" rules concerning the push/pull/shift decisions, either none at all, or limited time, or each player gets to say one thing, or some such.

But this boils down to the group itself, i.e. "are you playing with idiots, or not?" I mean, if you don't want your PC to be moved, tell it the warlord player and the DM. It's not even house-rule level, it's common sense: It's not forced movement, otherwise you could move enemies as well, right? Hence it requires consent. Rules as intended, RAI.

And for the "once per day" thing... why have most great scientist only one really big breakthrough? Because you can only do that much brilliance in a lifetime.

Why do pupils and students usually write only one exam on a day and not more?

Same for tactical acumen - you cannot be in a hyperaware focused state all the time, where you see every opening - you can only pull that off once or twice, then you lose focus, get tired (mentally), run out of luck, set yourself under pressure...

Cheers, LT.

 

[tomtill]

military hierarchy

No, that's railroading, and completely antithetical to the design philosophies of 4e.

"Touching my pawn" is NOT FREAKING COOL.

Seriously.

What if my character hates the Warlord but adventures with him out of need? I might like to refuse to use his "tactics". Later on I might see the benefits and accept them, cementing a relationship building of trust.

Yeah, that's roleplaying. "YOU MUST TRUST ME IT SAYS WARLORD ON MY SHEET, I AM A LEADER YOU MUST LISTEN TO MEEEEEEEEE!" not so much.

Well, I'm no military genius, but I'm pretty sure that just about every military power in the world acknowledges the tactical benefits of having a group leader of some sort who has the authority to issue military commands that all the soldiers under his rank MUST obey (with certain exceptions in extreme cases). To me, that's why it's strange that some people have trouble with the "powers" of the warlord. They are mundane. They happen every day in wars around the world. Sure, not those exact powers, but remembering that D&D battle is an abstraction, very very similar powers. Watch a few war movies. Watch how the leader leads. That is the warlord. Making military judgements, coming up with strategies, issuing orders with words, gestures, and leadership.

A party with a warlord is like a squad with an extremely competent group leader. They excel because of his direction, his insight, his tactical genius, his intuition and their willingness to follow him.

That being said, I understand that players playing a game do not like the idea of other players touching their stuff. So I doubt that forced movement of allies is RAW. BUT, if it is, I can see why the default response is to allow the warlord to do his thing. That is role playing. You are adventuring with him, so you do respect his abilities, by default. There is no time for democracy in the midst of a battle. The military superiority of disciplined troops versus a bunch of fighters is well established. If you want to role play an exception to this rule, I'm sure your DM can accommodate you with an exceptions based approach.

This is, after all, the HUGE advantage of pen and paper D&D to any computer game, and why, all comparisons aside, D&D, even 4th edition, is in no way a computer game. The rules are guidelines, not hard-coded railroading. Follow the rules, and the designers promise it will be balanced and fun. Feel free to break them as need be. Absorb the consequences.

The most recent podcast explicitly points out that one design goal of 4th edition is to remove the extra player—the rule book—and reinstate the DM as the ultimate arbitrator of the game. The 4e DMG is supposed to have tables that give us the expected game effects if we want to arbitrate alternate rules, assisting the DM in balancing house rules with the rest of the game. Sounds great. Can't wait to see it.

 

[KarinsDad]

There's a big difference between imagination, which all RPGs require, and complete suspension of disbelief, which only more contrived rules require. Everyone who plays an RPG is using their imagination, whether it's imagining your character, the castle he's exploring, or the orcs he's fighting. Labeling anyone who is opposed to a rule in 4th edition as lacking or being opposed to imagination is not only condescending and rude, it's simply not true.

The previous poster nailed it. Some games start with imagination, fluff, story, drama and then translate those things into mechanics. The result are rules which are usually pretty well-founded in their universe. Since what characters can do is based upon drama and imagination, the resulting rules tend to be believable. Others always takes mechanics first, and often don't even bother to try to translate that into drama. The result is that what the characters do often makes little to no sense from a dramatic point of view. It's not about imagining it, it's about simply accepting that outcome whether or not it's believable. 4th edition, unfortunately, seems to have been born of the latter approach to game design.

And to those who say "magic isn't realistic, so nothing else has to be realistic either", this really is entirely missing the point. No, magic is not realistic, neither are orcs or elves. But those things can be believable, whether or not they are realistic. Realism and believability are two very different things. Many games go to great lengths to explain how and why magic works in their setting. It's often believable, even though it is obviously not real. And those are the magic systems I tend enjoy the most. In D&D, with the old vancian style magic, it was mechanics first, fluff last. The result was a magic system that left many who saw it thinking to themselves "I can't imagine that if magic were real it would work this way."

And the various explanations that they came up with over the life of the game were quite contrived. From 2nd edition's memorize and forget system to 3rd editions "partially cast in advance", stockpiled spells explanation, the whole system really felt artificial and, dare I say, lame. I think the lack of believability around vancian magic is perhaps the main reason it was so unpopular. From a mechanics standpoint, it worked great. It helped balance magic and provide alot of strategic elements to playing a spellcaster. But it just didn't make much sense. Ironically, 4th edition has largely eliminated vancian-style magic, but lost alot of believability in other areas.

Well said (I hate when posters just say "well said" to another poster, but you pretty much nailed it here).

I would not focus too much on 'nonmagical'. Martial is a power source. On epic levels, we will probably see fighters auto-ressurecting from death. I would rather see martial as para-magic thing (not affected by antimagic/wild magic fields/whatever) - bit supernatural.

I think I'm going to have to take this advice.

The Martial Power source is supernatural. Not magical per se, but supernatural.

This paradigm shift will allow me to blow off verisimilitude in this case. It's unfortunate that I have to take such a step, but I think I will need to do so for my game. Otherwise, these types of issues will continue to plague me.

 

[eleran]

But this boils down to the group itself, i.e. "are you playing with idiots, or not?" I mean, if you don't want your PC to be moved, tell it the warlord player and the DM. It's not even house-rule level, it's common sense: It's not forced movement, otherwise you could move enemies as well, right? Hence it requires consent. Rules as intended, RAI.

And for the "once per day" thing... why have most great scientist only one really big breakthrough? Because you can only do that much brilliance in a lifetime.

Why do pupils and students usually write only one exam on a day and not more?

Same for tactical acumen - you cannot be in a hyperaware focused state all the time, where you see every opening - you can only pull that off once or twice, then you lose focus, get tired (mentally), run out of luck, set yourself under pressure...

Cheers, LT.

Don't waste your breath man. H4ters will hate no matter what.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

A good example for a Warlord-like character can be found...and I don't mean this as snarky towards the new edition at all...in the anime "Rental Magica". The leader of a group of magicians of different traditions has the ability to predict an opponent's moves and tactics, and direct his group so that their attacks' effect is maximized.

Granted, he gets that ability from a magical talent called "Glam Sight" in the anime, and it's not really healthy for him to use it too often, but the effect is what you get with the warlord, too.

For an example scene, go youtube...it's at 3:00 of the clip.
And yeah, it is a mix of Tenchi Muyo and Ghost Hunt.

 

[Rel]

Folks,

If you think it's worth your time to render explanations to Derren about his problems with per-encounter or per-day abilities for martial characters, please do so without snark. If you don't then just move on with the discussion.

Thank you.

 

[KarinsDad]

But this boils down to the group itself, i.e. "are you playing with idiots, or not?" I mean, if you don't want your PC to be moved, tell it the warlord player and the DM. It's not even house-rule level, it's common sense: It's not forced movement, otherwise you could move enemies as well, right? Hence it requires consent. Rules as intended, RAI.

RAW are for the most part RAI. If the rules were not RAI, then why does the designer not write it the way he intends?

As to it being forced or not, so far Forced is RAW and RAI (to our knowledge).

And yes, player 1 could ask Warlord playing player 2 to not force his PC to move and that is reasonable. However, under certain dire circumstances, the Warlord player might just force PC 1 to move and the DM should enforce that decision (if Forced is the rule).

At that point, player 1 can react in any way he sees fit (from blowing it off, to quitting the game and anywhere in between).

But if Forced is the rule, then that rule should be enforced unless the DM house rules otherwise. And, this has nothing to do with "playing with idiots or not". It has to do with the DM being consistent with rules adjudicating and following both RAW and RAI.

 

[FourthBear]

The Martial Power source is supernatural. Not magical per se, but supernatural.

This paradigm shift will allow me to blow off verisimilitude in this case. It's unfortunate that I have to take such a step, but I think I will need to do so for my game. Otherwise, these types of issues will continue to plague me.

I think this is, indeed, the best route for people who dislike the idea of per day, per encounter martial abilities that are "too magical" As I said before, it seems to restrict non-magical characters and abilities to a pretty narrow class of concepts. It's too bad that powers that affect combat and tactics in this way are seen as perfectly fine for a Battle Mage with spells, but not a Warlord with tactical genius. If non-magical abilities are going to compete with magical ones in D&D I think that they're going to need much broader definitions and scope, especially at higher levels.

 

[Derren]

I think this is, indeed, the best route for people who dislike the idea of per day, per encounter martial abilities that are "too magical" As I said before, it seems to restrict non-magical characters and abilities to a pretty narrow class of concepts. It's too bad that powers that affect combat and tactics in this way are seen as perfectly fine for a Battle Mage with spells, but not a Warlord with tactical genius. If non-magical abilities are going to compete with magical ones in D&D I think that they're going to need much broader definitions and scope, especially at higher levels.

Yes, this is imo the best solution because it not only solves the daily martial etc. problems but also problems like "why are PCs different than NPCs". The PCs are magical, the NPCs aren't.

If that explanation is viable depends on how many NPCs have /encounter powers and how much WOtC pronounces that martial powers are nonmagical (which is demanded from quite a lot of people). As long as it is just fluff its easy to change, but when there will be abilities which only affect magical ones which does not include martial powers (antimagic field or things like this) this solution becomes harder to implement.

 

[KarinsDad]

As long as it is just fluff its easy to change, but when there will be abilities which only affect magical ones which does not include martial powers (antimagic field or things like this) this solution becomes harder to implement.

For me, I think that if I rule that Martial Powers are supernatural and there are things like Dispel Magic or Antimagic Fields in the game, then I will probably also rule that those effects will affect Martial Power sources just like they do Arcane and Divine Power sources.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Course, this is totally dependent on how the rest of the rules are written and subject to change once we get the rest of the rules.