Design & Development: Warlord Article UP!

[rounser]

... or you could just use the warlord class.

Or you could just shake your head and hope for better design than that come 5E, and fold the abilities into existing classes where they thematically already belong, as opposed to some contrived nothing-class D&Dism which dilutes D&D's relevance to fantasy in general.

 

[hong]

Or you could just shake your head and hope for better design than that come 5E, and fold the abilities into existing classes where they thematically already belong, as opposed to some contrived nothing-class D&Dism which dilutes D&D's relevance to fantasy in general.

You could. But unlike you, I will be playing D&D in the meantime!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think this is a furphy, because the warlord's abilities seem to be able to be able to be folded into existing classes.

It would make sense that the mage was a brilliant spell tactician at higher levels, the rogue a brilliant scout and infiltrate tactician, the fighter a brilliant battlefield tactician in general...we don't need the warlord for this play experience. The rogue can realistically offer the fighter good tactical advice on sneaking. The current tropes have it covered. Ideally, warlord should killed and it's stuff taken, but there were probably game balance and marketing reasons why that didn't happen.

Like wanting to have another "leader" class in the matrix. Bad reason for justifying a core class's existence.

Heck, even the warlock is just the wizard through a different lens. There's a false dichotomy at work here - you pay attention to both priorities at once (the "does it fit" and the "is the gameplay fun"), and don't compromise one in favour of the other, as is clearly the case with the so-called "warlord".

You're right. We don't need a Warlord.
But what was the Rogue for? I mean, come on, we could make a Fighter specializing in trap-detection - and sneak attacking is just good roleplaying and laying ambushes, we don't need some artificial, uasi-magical game effect that justs adds some damage dice just because we happen to get in the right position!

Do we really need a Wizard, by the way - okay, nobody can cast fireball, but that's just killing people in a different way. A Fighter can do that too, right? Come to think of it, how many traditional fantasy stories contained wizards throwing 20 ft radius fireballs anyway? Merlin certainly never did throw fireballs, and I doubt Gandalf did. It's obviously an artificial mechanic added just to provide the play experience of someone affecting multiple areas. I could see a place for it in a modern game, when you play an artillery commander, but that's hardly what D&D - traditionally medieval fantasy - is about!

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think this is a furphy, because the warlord's abilities seem to be able to be able to be folded into existing classes.

Sure, you could. But then you are just creating even broader roles for all of the classes.

It would make sense that the mage was a brilliant spell tactician at higher levels, the rogue a brilliant scout and infiltrate tactician, the fighter a brilliant battlefield tactician in general...we don't need the warlord for this play experience. The rogue can realistically offer the fighter good tactical advice on sneaking. The current tropes have it covered. Ideally, warlord should killed and it's stuff taken, but there were probably game balance and marketing reasons why that didn't happen.

The warlord's powers are significantly different from those examples. You seem to be suggesting that ALL of the warlord's powers should be given to the fighter, since they are all battlefield tactician type abilities.

In which case, what negatives do you give the fighter in order to balance his new suite of rather powerful battlefield control and tactic abilities? After all, he is currently the heavily armored one with lots of hitpoints and the ability to do significant damage in melee.

Plus, there's the issue of how to do play a fighter with all the fighter abilities AND all the warlord abilities? I mean you EITHER play him in a leader type role, giving out bonuses and maneuvering your allies into good position OR you play him as a defender, attacking enemies in melee and preventing them from getting to the wizard in the back.

If there are two entirely different gameplay ways of using a class, shouldn't it be 2 classes instead? One for one role and one for the other. The main reason that wizards and clerics are overpowered in 3.5e is BECAUSE their class fits into too many roles at once.

Like wanting to have another "leader" class in the matrix. Bad reason for justifying a core class's existence.

Not if it's fun to play. I don't care if the reason for putting it into the game was the new endorsement deal WOTC signed with Warlords Shoe Company Inc. as long as when I sit down to play the game the group is able to defeat the monsters that they encounter and it is an enjoyable experience fighting them. Which it is.

Heck, even the warlock is just the wizard through a different lens. There's a false dichotomy at work here - you pay attention to both priorities at once (the "does it fit" and the "is the gameplay fun"), and don't compromise one in favour of the other, as is clearly the case with the so-called "warlord".

You can pay attention to both at the same time. However, you will always reach a point where one has to be sacrificed in favor of the other. Sacrificing neither creates a bland, in between game.

For instance, wouldn't it be cool to have a class that was a true illusionist? You could put up illusionary walls and people wouldn't walk through them. You convince the enemies that their allies are their enemies and cause them to attack them. You create illusionary monsters that attack and do damage to people.

However, under the "does it fit" method of game design you have a bunch of problems with this. Illusions aren't real so they can't actually DO damage. Anyone who touched an illusionary wall would go right through it and realize it was an illusion immediately, so it wouldn't hinder anyone. No enemy is going to suddenly believe their ally who was standing next to them suddenly turned into an enemy. All these things just don't "fit".

It does sound, to me at least, to be a cool class to play. Without a way to do damage like everyone else in the group, though, it would be way too weak and lose all the fun it had.

So, in this case, you either bow to "does it fit" and never design the class at all or you try to mix the two concepts and you end up with an illusion using class that still can't deal damage and whose powers are defeated simply by touching them or you bow to the "gameplay" method of game design and simply say "Illusions can do damage and can't be defeated by touch."

The last option creates the most fun class to play, since the results are exactly what you wanted. However, it does raise a bunch of "WHY does it work that way?" questions. There are still answers, so it's not like "does it make sense" is forgotten entirely. Perhaps the mind convinces itself that it's real so it is. Perhaps illusions are partially a charm effect as well that causes the subjects not to want to touch it and doing psionic damage to someone when they get hit. Perhaps illusions are summoned from the Feywild where the matter there can be shaped into semi-real constructs.

It's just that the balance has been tipped in the favor of gameplay over "does it fit".

 

[Primal]

I'm not sure I see the problem with designing the game that people want to play rather than designing a world that might be no fun to play at all.

Designing from a point of view of "realism" first, mechanics after creates situations like we've had in past editions that I hear people complaining about all the time:

-Playing a fighter is boring since all you can do is swing a weapon over and over again. But it makes sense, because someone without magical powers can't do anything more extravagant
-Player a cleric is boring since all you do is heal. But it's realistic since it takes time to chant a prayer and put your hands on someone and there's no way for a non-magical class like a fighter to heal itself
-Save or die is no fun, you spend a year playing the same character and building him up to 15th level only to drop dead on the first round of combat against a random encounter. But it's realistic since creatures that turn you to stone should either work or not, no inbetween.

Designing the other way around creates the exact gameplay experience that people want in exchange for having to explain it in a way that might be a bit of a stretch.

Instead you get a situation where someone sits down and says "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a class where you could coordinate your allies in a way that made them better. To actually be the battlefield commander. You could inspire them to greater heroics, get them into tactical positions and inspire them to keep going after taking damage." And you end up with the Warlord. Which is a fun class to play. Once you roll for initiative and start thinking about how best to use your powers, you realize that there is a gameplay experience that is rather unique, new, and fun to play.

It, however, wouldn't be possible if constrained to the first way of designing. The first way of designing says that just talking to someone can't bring back hitpoints, move people into a position faster than they could get there themselves, or give allies abilities they didn't have before. That just doesn't make any sense. Only magic can do that.

And that's a shame to miss out on fun simply because fun isn't allowed to happen if it doesn't "make sense".

First of all, what's "fun" for me isn't necessarily "fun" for you and vice versa. A lot of people seem to defend these design choices by claiming that the game is "more fun for everyone", while that's not actually true. What I've seen of 4E so far isn't more fun for my group than 3E, even though you'd think so.

It's pretty easy to perceive this from a metagaming perspective and claim that now everyone has a lot of cool tactical options, but to me that just encourages and emphasizes the role of metagaming. While D&D is, indeed, a game, so is Chess. And playing Chess can be just as fun, as a game, but that's not the same kind of entertainment I'm looking for when I want to play D&D.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

First of all, what's "fun" for me isn't necessarily "fun" for you and vice versa. A lot of people seem to defend these design choices by claiming that the game is "more fun for everyone", while that's not actually true. What I've seen of 4E so far isn't more fun for my group than 3E, even though you'd think so.

Tell me for whom it is not fun to say "I can help us in this combat so that we can all move into better tactical position". "I can give you a further bonus if you choose to attack target X". These aren't unfun abilities. For no one. They give you an option, you get an in-game benefit. That is fun. At least for anyone who is even interested at all in running a combat encounter. The "fun" of a mechanic is judged by the fun of using it. Not the fun of analyzing it.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Good point.

If there was a rule that say "the warlord had to see the target in action at least for 1 round before to use this power" which it isn't.

Or not.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with a *tactical genius* being able to seize the initiative (different initiative, of course!) and establish a clear advantage right at the outset of combat. Commanders throughout history have accomplished this with cunning stratagems in battles both large and small.

In the context in which the warlord uses the power right off the bat, it's narrated as a snap decision; he wades in and in a flash realizes *just what he needs to do to throw the dragon off balance.* Melee is a complicated and simultaneous process, after all, which is what all the folks going after the Iron Dragon Charge ability seem to be conveniently forgetting.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

It's pretty easy to perceive this from a metagaming perspective and claim that now everyone has a lot of cool tactical options, but to me that just encourages and emphasizes the role of metagaming. While D&D is, indeed, a game, so is Chess. And playing Chess can be just as fun, as a game, but that's not the same kind of entertainment I'm looking for when I want to play D&D.

I look for different sort of entertainment from different areas of D&D. If I'm talking with NPCs, I'm looking for entertaining dialog and a chance to test my wit against theirs. If I'm trying to fight a battle, I expect a fun, interesting, dynamic battle game.

D&D pretty much always has been a storyline that is interrupted periodically in order to play a board game in order to determine the results of a combat. During combat, I don't consider anything to be metagaming. It is purely a set of rules used to determine the outcome of an unknown situation.

Besides, I'm rather missing the point where anything about this is metagaming. As I said in another thread, 95% of all metagaming COULD have been roleplaying. It's all in how you phrase it:

"Quickly, when I hit it, circle around behind it. It can't hit us both if we're on opposite sides."
vs
"I activate my power, I hit for 15 damage. I can shift you one square. I'll move you towards the flank. On your turn, you can shift into flanking before attacking."

Just cause the rules let you do something that is described in a game mechanical way doesn't mean it is metagaming to use them. In fact, it's often clearer to describe something in terms of game mechanics instead of in role playing speech. Which is why those who showed up at DDXP might have noticed all DMs telling the players "The creature is now bloodied" instead of "It looks hurt" and "It is stunned" vs "It took a hard blow to the head". It doesn't do the players a service to give the players incomplete or ambiguous information when they might have abilities that can only be used on stunned or bloodied creatures.

The game mechanics are supposed to wrap all the complexities of the couple hundred different movements, feints, shifts, facial expressions, near missed, and the like of combat into simple, easy to understand packages for us humans to understand and play a fun game with in less than 2 days. It is easier for them to do their job if they are described as "Shift an ally 2 squares" than it is if it said "One creature, designated by you can move an extra 10 feet of movement during its next turn. This movement doesn't provoke AOO, however, any move after the 10 feet does." Plus, moving a creature on its turn is a whole lot less tactically useful than being able to react in the middle of battle to changing tactics.

 

[catsclaw]

THe warlord can enter in combat, win initiative, hit the moster before it even move and gain the bonus.

"hey guys, this monster that I never seen before have a obvious weakness of which I have no reason to know about, just exploit it and it is better make it worth it because if the monster escape and we had to combat it another time before tomorrow we would not be able to use this weakness again."

The next day, the five of them travel down the road to the next town, where a dealer in previously-owned dragon treasure had promised to make them a good deal on gold statues and jewel-encrusted goblets. It is just past midmorning, when a shriek comes from the sky. Something large dives out of the sun at them, a mass of feathers and talons, but with the head of a serpent and the tail of a jackrabbit. It is like nothing they have ever seen.

Before anyone can react, Drogo the Warlord steps forward and raises his spear. "Allagash White, Yarick! Across and down!" he yells, and jabs his spear at the wing of the beast.

Yarick nods--they had discussed this just the other day--and rushes the creature's flank. Sure enough, there are the blood feathers Yarick promised, and with the thing rearing back from Drogo it's a simple matter to bring the axe around with a satisfying crack.

The beast is soon finished off, hobbled by the adventurers. "How did you know?" Yarick asks Drogo, "I barely saw the shadow before it was on us." Drogo chuckles, "I caught a glimpse of its silhouette. I only know a couple kinds of wings, and if it was flying in this season it probably started moulting a couple weeks ago. Beyond that?"

Drogo grins broadly. "I guessed."

 

[Kishin]

Or you could just shake your head and hope for better design than that come 5E, and fold the abilities into existing classes where they thematically already belong, as opposed to some contrived nothing-class D&Dism which dilutes D&D's relevance to fantasy in general.

D&D hasn't had relevance to mainstream fantasy (at least, the kind you see appearing in novels) for a very long time. Its practically its own genre.