Favorite Warlord Moments?

[JoeGKushner]

In the game I'm playing in, we have way too many defenders and not enough leaders. I'm thinking about retiring my fighter and running a warlord.

What is the cool of the warlord? What favorite moments have you had with it? Anything in particular to try to avoid?

 

[Wik]

There's a 1st level warlord daily that lets you run across the battlefield to heal a fallen ally - and the more OAs you provoke, the more you heal. That one is fun. Also, taking the feat that lets you grant a save instead of additional healing is a necessity. Warlords should not be built on enabling healing, but instead on granting tactical advantages.

As for my favourite warlord moment, it amounts to being on horseback in a city, jumping through buildings and harrassing enemies, while the rest of my group stayed on foot and fought in narrow alleyways.

 

[unan oranis]

Be sure to have at least one other front line melee character, two is even better, because a lot of your powers won't be very handy otherwise.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Be sure to have at least one other front line melee character, two is even better, because a lot of your powers won't be very handy otherwise.

I'm currently playing a fighter with fullblade.

We also have a swordmage.

and a paladin.

and another fighter with sword and shield.

It's one of the reasons I thought... hmmm.... warlord.

 

[Aurick]

Kind of surprised your DM let that party come together.

 

[Votan]

I am experimenting with a warlord right now. Feeling fairly unimpressed so far as the class needs to close to point blank range to be effective and that's not been an amusing experience. I like some of the powers but I seem to really underperfom the fighter and the wizard.

Maybe this will get better with experience?

 

[nicholasgeorg]

I think warlords are awesome, and make a huge difference in terms of party effectiveness. However, they aren't a whole lot of fun to play, as you don't actually do much yourself. Commander's Strike Is awesome for taking down big guys, and the inspiring words keep the team alive, but the player driving the warlord might not feel like he's actually doing very much, just letting everyone else do more.

 

[Hawkeye]

My only problem with playing a warlord is having abilities that require you to actually hit your opponent to be fully effective. I'm currently involved in a play by post game. In the current fight, I have hit our opponents only once, which has pretty much burned through my encounter and daily powers against a pair of really tough foes that needed to be hit as often as possible by everyone. It's just frustrating. I don't care about doing the most damage, just some. Commander's strike is nice...until you run out of inspiring words to keep the party members on their feet and suddenly you are the front line. It's also tough to play the warlord, trying to move your party members into optimal position and the party members ignore that to do their own thing. That happened in this fight too and we lost combat advantage on our target to the detriment of the entire party. I don't think that will be a problem in the future. It does take a special person to play a warlord.

Hawkeye

 

[JoeGKushner]

It kinda reminds me of the old Marshal from the Miniatures Handbook. I had one as a NPC under a player who was a Noble (from Green Ronin's excellent line of books) and it worked well. Never saw a player take it up. I think the Warlord has some of the same potential problems in that you allow others to bring the cool but don't necessarily do it yourself.

As a long time player though, and I'm not trying to be the 'bigger man', I've played so much that the last few years I've been pretty happy to be the 'healer' or fill the gap type of player. It makes the whole party's surviability levels much higher and the other party members tend to want such a character around.

 

[cmbarona]

I haven't compared warlords to other leaders, so this may be more leader-ubiquitous. But my experience has been that Warlords excel at handing out awesome. Mid-paragon, I was handing out some sort of hit and/or damage buff almost every round, frequently to the whole party. I focused my powers on buffing and triggering basic attacks. The Battlelord of Kord gets some awesome stuff in that regard, including an Inspiring Word buff. My favorite moment? My new "wife" was traveling with the group. Flexing my muscles at the new bride, I shout, "Hey Nala, watch this!" [Inspiring Word on myself]. I then used Tempest of Triumph, which resulted in three downed enemies in one turn.