Excerpt: The Warlord

[Protagonist]

warforged warlock/warlord wearing warplate wielding warhammers warring with wicked whispering witches.

wow.

 

[hong]

Two adventurers. A dual-wielding Warforged Warlord in Warplate with a Warhammer and a Warpick,

Jet Li

and a Warforged Warlock with the Staff of the Warmage.

Jackie Chan

 

[Sir Brennen]

Two adventurers. A dual-wielding Warforged Warlord in Warplate with a Warhammer and a Warpick, and a Warforged Warlock with the Staff of the Warmage...

They Fight Crime.

 

[BradfordFerguson]

Warlord looks nice, but his low level powers require a STR vs AC to "hit"/"land" which is OK at lower levels but won't scale well. So the class requires high STR to land the special abilities, leaving you with a tough decision of what to do with your other ability scores (and definitely forcing you to focus on either the CHA or INT tree).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Warlord looks nice, but his low level powers require a STR vs AC to "hit"/"land" which is OK at lower levels but won't scale well. So the class requires high STR to land the special abilities, leaving you with a tough decision of what to do with your other ability scores (and definitely forcing you to focus on either the CHA or INT tree).

Why won't it scale well?

 

[Fifth Element]

Why won't it scale well?

Presumably he doesn't realize that ability modifiers increase with level.

 

[BradfordFerguson]

I'm guessing, maybe wrongly, that monster AC will scale up much faster than the STR modifier will.

 

[Lacyon]

I'm guessing, maybe wrongly, that monster AC will scale up much faster than the STR modifier will.

The warlord makes Strength attacks versus AC with his weapon. This, presumably, means that he gets to add his attack bonus (1/2 level) and his magic weapon bonus to such rolls.

That seems like decent scaling to me.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I'm guessing, maybe wrongly, that monster AC will scale up much faster than the STR modifier will.

All modifiers (and thus all kind of attacks and defenses, including AC) will scale with level.
The most visible scaling is the +1 per 2 levels, but there is additional one due to magical item bonus to attacks/defenses/ac, and due to ability score increases. (Monsters will probably rely more on ability increases then on magical increases).

 

[ThirdWizard]

Here are some sample monsters and their ACs.

We'll assume a starting Str of 16 and with increases we'll say at 11th and 14th level (the first two were for Cha/Int), and a weapon with an enhancement bonus of +1 ever four levels (being conservative I believe).

Boneshard Skeleton (level 5): AC 17 / Warlord +6 (11+)
Gnoll Huntmaster (level 5): AC 19 / Warlord +6 (13+)
Gnoll Clawfighter (level 6): AC 20 / Warlord +7 (13+)
Bugbear Headreaver (level 7): AC 20 / Warlord +7 (13+)
Gnoll Demonic Scourge (level 8): AC 20 / Warlord +9 (11+)
Gargoyle (level 9): AC 24 / Warlord +9 (15+)
Chuul (level 10): AC 27 / Warlord +10 (17+)
Boneclaw (level 14): AC 30 / Warlord +14 (16+)
Bodak Reaver (level 18): AC 31 / Warlord +16 (15+)
War Devil (level 22): AC 35 / Warlord +20 (15+)

Looks like our Warlord might really want to invest in Weapon Focus or something.