D&D 5E Evaluating the warlord-y Fighter

[DEFCON 1]

Specifically, I want healing on par with perhaps bard or druid healing (if not life Cleric levels of uber healing!), but this needs to work perfectly fine in an antimagic field. Same with Warlord buffing. I'm just saying this, so nobody expects otherwise.

My guess would be that the anti-magic field argument would not be enough of a difference to WotC to warrant them deciding to make a whole new class. Not when a DM could easily just say to their bard/cleric player who wants to refluff their class as a warlord "Okay, your abilities still work in an anti-magic field". Those fields tend to be rare enough occurrences that needing a whole new class just to cover for them could be seen as overkill for a much smaller problem.

 

[TwoSix]

Like I said, there may be situations where it's useful. In this case, your "legendary" opponent was over-confident and somewhat short-sighted. I have no idea how it survived to the point of becoming a legend without overcoming such behavior.

In general, legendary opponents are smart enough to not fall for such trickery. They have sufficient experience to always expect the worst, so the ability of the Battlemaster to force saving throws is not a substantial benefit there.

That seems somewhat of an overgeneralization to me. The legendary rules are a great way to make a monster tougher, but there's no particular reason they have to indicate the monster plays a particular role in the campaign narrative.

So yes, I am saying a dragon could be a "legendary" hatchling.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

OP left out one aspect of 4e warlords that is missing: any use for the Intelligence stat. Rally and Inspiring Leader make use of Charisma, but apparently you don't need to be clever to be a master tactician.

 

[Sacrosanct]

My guess would be that the anti-magic field argument would not be enough of a difference to WotC to warrant them deciding to make a whole new class. Not when a DM could easily just say to their bard/cleric player who wants to refluff their class as a warlord "Okay, your abilities still work in an anti-magic field". Those fields tend to be rare enough occurrences that needing a whole new class just to cover for them could be seen as overkill for a much smaller problem.

I think I agree with you. If you (general you) want a warlord to be on par healing wise with a life cleric, that means they won't be on par with a fighter in martial combat (for balance reasons obviously), so why not just take the life cleric and get with your DM and say, "I want this, but martial, no divine praying involved."

Seems easy enough to come up with a solution rather than make a whole new class, since all you're really doing is changing the source of where the power comes from, and that's just fluff most of the time.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

OP left out one aspect of 4e warlords that is missing: any use for the Intelligence stat. Rally and Inspiring Leader make use of Charisma, but apparently you don't need to be clever to be a master tactician.

That is a big deal to us in my group...

right now the closest we have to a warlord is a refluffed bard mixed with fighter with a feat... and that means 3 levels of one class and 4 of another... so to play the concept that at 1st level was fine in 4e I have to be 7th in 5e then to make things worse I still have to deal with spell caster baggage in 5e that I didn't in 4e...

if by the end of this year WotC doesn't rectfy this I think they will alienate a lot of 4e players

 

[peterka99]

Battle master is already a canon archetype. I think we should has Warlord-inspired new maneuvers to the list and not tinker more...

I created some features for a scout archetype using INTELLIGENCE - they can be adapted has maneuvers...
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?398399-Scout-Meta-archetype&p=6475410#post6475410

 

[CapnZapp]

My guess would be that the anti-magic field argument would not be enough of a difference to WotC to warrant them deciding to make a whole new class. Not when a DM could easily just say to their bard/cleric player who wants to refluff their class as a warlord "Okay, your abilities still work in an anti-magic field". Those fields tend to be rare enough occurrences that needing a whole new class just to cover for them could be seen as overkill for a much smaller problem.

It doesn't sound like you have actually played a 4e Warlord if you are serious about the "just refluff a bard/cleric as non-magical" suggestion.

 

[TwoSix]

It doesn't sound like you have actually played a 4e Warlord if you are serious about the "just refluff a bard/cleric as non-magical" suggestion.

If you can't play a Strength dumping princess lazylord, then it isn't really a 4e warlord at all.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It doesn't sound like you have actually played a 4e Warlord if you are serious about the "just refluff a bard/cleric as non-magical" suggestion.

Actually, I played a Warlord in 4E quite a bit. But I also recognize that the AEDU power structure gave almost all classes (especially within the same role) the same sorts of mechanical functionality (as I mentioned in my first post.) Cleric grants a divine blessing and gives an ally a bonus to hit the enemy. Warlord shouts a combat tactic and gives an ally the same bonus to hit the enemy. The game mechanic is the same, it's only the italicized fluff that is making them different.

Likewise, in terms of healing... there's virtually no difference mechanically between Inspiring Word and Healing Word. It's merely the fluff that makes one a magical wound-closure ability and the other a rallying "Rub some dirt in it and get back in there!" cry. And this kind of mechanical mirroring occurs across all the classes. A Fighter pushes a foe away a couple squares via a shield bash, a Wizard pushes a foe away via a spell. The miniature's movement on the grid is exactly same, it's just the description of how and why it moved that is different.

We accept in 4E that martial and casting classes have the same power format of at-wills, encounters, and dailies acquired at the same times and in the same quantities (with just the fluff being different)... so why is the idea of a 5E "Warlord" using the same power format of the cleric or bard (IE the spell slot pyramid) harder to accept? I realize that for some people it is... but I'm just not one of those people. I can just handwave the fluff off of a 5E War Cleric and just use the mechanics if I need a Warlord with more options than what I would get with the Battlemaster that badly. But that's just me.

I would venture a guess that WotC feels that an actual class isn't necessary at this point in time (although who knows in another three years if they need something new to put in a book)... and thus they're accepting that those who want more will either scrub the fluff off of a bard or cleric, or they'll create their own sub-classes that will give them what they want (as we can find many already created over in the Houserules forum.)

Personally... I'm fine either way. If they had made a Warlord class in 5E I would have been fine with it, and I'm fine that they didn't. Because anything I don't have that I feel I need I can just adapt or create myself.

 

[TwoSix]

We accept in 4E that martial and casting classes have the same power format of at-wills, encounters, and dailies acquired at the same times and in the same quantities (with just the fluff being different)... so why is the idea of a 5E "Warlord" using the same power format of the cleric or bard (IE the spell slot pyramid) harder to accept? I realize that for some people it is... but I'm just not one of those people. I can just handwave the fluff off of a 5E War Cleric and just use the mechanics if I need a Warlord with more options than what I would get with the Battlemaster that badly. But that's just me.

You'd probably need to ask the people who didn't like Book of 9 Swords why it's a problem.

I personally don't see a huge difference between "spell slots" and an AEDU structure, as long as you can fill the slots with abilities that have variable recharges and/or nonmagical fluff.