Design & Development: Warlord Article UP!

[Fifth Element]

And why can the warlord use this command only once a day?

Its easy to make examples when you ignore what really happens.

It's easy to make more examples when you ignore the rest of the thread. And all the other ones. This has been discussed to death. You're taking it far too literally.

We understand you hate 4E with a passion. All of us. We get it.

 

[small pumpkin man]

As the months have passed I've just come to the conclusion that if you look at 4E as a board game it all makes sense.

More specifically a competitive board game to be played at organised play events with organised play having a lot of similarities to an MMO at the table.

Everything makes sense then. This isn't a snark, it's just the way I've come to view it and it all falls into place...for me, anyway.

While I would agree that unlike many other RPG's, you could play it like Descent or Heroquest, and unlike say, Cthulu or Cyberpunk, it would still be fun, although it is quite complicated compared to such games. The reason it's doing that is because D&D has always been based primarily around doing the types of things that those games do, with the major important difference being the assumption that the rules represent something beyond just "rules" that they're actually abstractions representing what's really going on. The fact that what many D&D players spend much of their time doing (delving dungeons) is being made more interesting and playable can only be a good thing from my PoV.

What I see as a lot of the disconnect being here, is the difference between people who think D&D rules should/do represent a world which is like our world, but with magic and elves, and PCs go adventuring, and another group of people who think D&D rules should/do represent a Heroic Fantasy story, with appropriate tropes and memes.

If I'm reading a book or a comic (or even watching a movie), the action is already abstracted and scripted, if a character is spurring another character on, or putting an opponent off their balance, most of the time I don't really care about the details, they just do it. The Warlord is the "tactical guy" he has the ability to spur other characters on or penalise opponents because the narrative says that the power of "tactics" lets him do that. If it's interesting and fun to plot the details out blow by blow I will, if it's not, I'm happy to just say it happens and move on with the story, whereas there appear to be a bunch of people who can't deal with that.

Then you have problems when you have two warlords (or other martial class) in the party. Why can warlord 1 use the opportunity and warlord 2 can't (because he used his daily already)? Because he can't see this opportunity? But what when he has a higher level than the other warlord (maybe even much higher level)? Why can the low level warlord see an opportunity that the high level one can't?

Why can one Warlord manage to hit the Dragon when the other one fails, even if the second one is higher level and has a higher attack bonus?

 

[Fifth Element]

Then you have problems when you have two warlords (or other martial class) in the party. Why can warlord 1 use the opportunity and warlord 2 can't (because he used his daily already)? Because he can't see this opportunity? But what when he has a higher level than the other warlord (maybe even much higher level)? Why can the low level warlord see an opportunity that the high level one can't?

Not that he can't see it, but he didn't see it, or he was not in a position to take advantage of it. You're being far too literal again. I don't know why using your imagination to explain these things is presenting such a problem to D&D players, who presumably use their imaginations all the time.

 

[Vomax]

Then you have problems when you have two warlords (or other martial class) in the party. Why can warlord 1 use the opportunity and warlord 2 can't (because he used his daily already)? Because he can't see this opportunity? But what when he has a higher level than the other warlord (maybe even much higher level)? Why can the low level warlord see an opportunity that the high level one can't?

Warlord 1 is in the right position to see the opportunity the opponent presents and warlord 2 isn't. Maybe warlord 2 is picking his nose.

4E's abilities dictate parts of the story to you. Your warlord can spot these opportunities all the time but in practice he only spots them once per extended rest because that's what the power says. As the player, you get to decide when the stars align and the enemy lets you pull off these maneuvers.

 

[FourthBear]

Then you have problems when you have two warlords (or other martial class) in the party. Why can warlord 1 use the opportunity and warlord 2 can't (because he used his daily already)? Because he can't see this opportunity? But what when he has a higher level than the other warlord (maybe even much higher level)? Why can the low level warlord see an opportunity that the high level one can't?

Because this explanation has the opportunity arising and being spotted by Warlord 1 because the player has chosen to use his ability at that time. If you are accepting that such opportunities arise and are spotted when a martial character chooses his per encounter or daily power than this shouldn't be a problem. If you object in principle to such narrative methods of explaining opportunities, than this is merely another way that such explanations will be unsatisfying to you. Mere level is not sufficient to disallow this, since there is nothing to say that higher level characters are always and at all times superior to lower level ones.

Frankly, I believe the addition of per encounter and daily martial exploits to such character's abilities is worth any initial discomfort. Otherwise, we will be restricting all martial characters to at will abilities that will, of necessity, need to be balanced as at will. This would mean not having the ability to pull out the Big Move during battles, surely a signature of many forms of fantasy action. You could create a method to constantly be determining opportunities for such special moves, but every system I have seen for doing so complicates the game considerably to the same rough end result: they end up using the power per encounter or per day.

I expect that house-rulers who like the other aspects of 4e, but dislike per day and per encounter martial exploits will create systems that will attempt to simulate opportunities in more complicated ways that try to model the relationships between opponents, timing and combat advantages. I also suspect that such systems in play will considerably slow down play to little gain overall.

 

[catsclaw]

And why can the warlord use this command only once a day?

Did people have complaints about "Stunning Fist" in 3.5? Or the Rogue's "Defensive Roll"? Do people still?

That's the biggest problem I have with people complaining about 1/day or 1/encounter abilities. The 3.5 rules have always had them, and I've never seen people complain about that.

 

[KarinsDad]

My worry here is that I am not sure that the ally can choose not to move, which would make it involuntary and allies bossing each other around. Without having seen further contexts of "slide" powers, I am not sure.

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.

 

[Voss]

Did people have complaints about "Stunning Fist" in 3.5? Or the Rogue's "Defensive Roll"? Do people still?

That's the biggest problem I have with people complaining about 1/day or 1/encounter abilities. The 3.5 rules have always had them, and I've never seen people complain about that.

Really? Never? It was one of my biggest problems with 3.5 and Monte's Arcana Unearthed. If all you had was /day abilities, once you used them, you were essentially playing an NPC class

But to yes, to answer your question. People did and do complain about them. They aren't quite as limiting in 4e design as they were in Monte's hands, but some of decisions on what should be dailies and what shouldn't are... aggravating. Though not in this particular case, for me, anyway.

 

[small pumpkin man]

Really? Never? It was one of my biggest problems with 3.5 and Monte's Arcana Unearthed. If all you had was /day abilities, once you used them, you were essentially playing an NPC class

But to yes, to answer your question. People did and do complain about them. They aren't quite as limiting in 4e design as they were in Monte's hands, but some of decisions on what should be dailies and what shouldn't are... aggravating. Though not in this particular case, for me, anyway.

Yeah, the Champion really put me off Arcana Unearthed, but the things that annoyed me weren't the things that annoy people about the 4e Daily powers, so it's kind of off topic.

 

[KarinsDad]

I don't completely disagree, as some of the powers don't appear to have much basis in reality, but isn't fluff->mechanics really what led to spellcasters being so overpowered in the previous edition? Of course the guy who can shoot lightning from his fingertips and fly around the room is going to beat the guy who waddles around and hits people with his sword, but it's not really fair for the sword waddler.

Ideally going the other way will result in a much more balanced game, though that will apparently come at the cost of easily understood or "realistic" abilities. I suppose, in the end, it's one of those things that's not going to have an answer that will satisfy everyone. People looking to play a game will want numbers that work whereas people looking to experience a story will want things to make sense (assuming a reasonable suspension of disbelief). Not that you can't have both, but it ain't easy.

This is a bit of a copout. The designers should be able to go from the descriptive idea to the mechanics, and then say 'Is this balanced?". If it's not, then don't add it to the game or look for a different similar or less potent mechanic which works.

There is no real need to go from mechanics to description, but it looks like that has been done in some cases.