D&D 5E (2014) For the Record: Mearls on Warlords (ca. 2013)

[Li Shenron]

Uh...that's not how I remember it. Specialties were originally something everyone got, at level 1, which had various effects.

I still have the playtest docs although not here right now, but I googled for them and found the "Specialties and Feats" chapter, although I am not sure from playtest packet it belonged to.

Here Specialties were just sets of 4 pre-selected feats, and nothing else in addition.

Three options were given: (a) pick a specialty as-is, (b) customize a specialty (i.e. take other feats in place of those mentioned by the specialty), (c) ignore specialties and choose feats a'la carte.

Admittedly, option (c) is mentioned to be "at your DM's permission". However option (b) apparently doesn't require DM's permission, but is de facto equivalent to (c) since it doesn't have any restriction except the feats prerequsities (which applies to all 3 cases anyway).

IMO specialties were removed when WotC decided to drop the idea that all classes should get the same number of feats (or stats increases). At some point, they decided it was fine for Fighters to get more feats than Wizards and so on. They could have strived for keeping the same rate for all classes, but dropped the idea [and to be honest... IMHO the true underlying reason was that it was just too much of an effort to design the same amount of level-based class features for all 12 classes; not wanting to have any 'blank levels', they filled the blanks with feats / stat boosts]

Once the number of feats was not going to be the same for all characters, then specialties became more difficult to present. Because originally you just chose one specialty, but now many classes were going to have more than 4 feats, so everybody would end up with one-and-a-half specialty, or equivalently one specialty + some loose feats.

Also notice, that strict specialties weren't directly compatible with the (promoted to very important) idea that feats are optional, and you can always take stat boosts instead.

At this point, you would have to write a lot of text about alternatives to taking specialties as-is, so it was just easier to default to option (c) i.e. say everybody picks feats one by one.

"Were specialties ever considered as a means of implementing multiclassing during the development process?

Yes this was and is still (at least partially) true. That's why we have feats which grant spellcasting. I wish they had kept those feats which granted higher-level spellcasting, but they removed them apparently. Maybe this is only because they will resurface later in the development of 5e, when it will be clearer how to balance them.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There's really no point in shouting down any game mechanic of the hit point system as "unrealistic", because every single person looks at the abstraction of the system differently.

I mean heck... if we're talking "unrealistic", the very first thing I'd throw out there as being completely unrealistic and stupid to me is the idea of 0 HP being ACTUAL "unconsciousness" due to the number of times and the speed at which it can actually happen to a person. That someone can and will get knocked unconscious (when they drop to 0 HP)... wake up on their own six seconds later (via a game mechanic roll of 20), get knocked unconscious again immediately... and then once this fight is over, this exact same scenario can happen again 10 minutes later in the next fight.

Basically, we are expected to believe characters can get nailed in the skull so hard that they actually black out not only several times per fight, but in potentially 3 to 5 fights per day. Each day. Repeatedly. And all of this with no residual brain trauma to the characters. Hell, just look to the NFL for what brain trauma is causing, and realize those players aren't actually even getting knocked out. They're just getting concussed! But our D&D characters are actually going unconscious dozens of times (if not more), and showing no real effects. THAT'S what I find more ridiculous than someone waking up from unconsciousness because someone was yelling in their face.

But then... why do I play the game as it is anyway? Because I don't care. Trying to match narrative *to* game mechanics is inherently ridiculous, producing hundreds of thousands of little things that make no gosh-darn sense, that all we can do is handwave all of it away. Just accept that trying to make a story into a game means some things don't work "realistically" and not get so hung up on only certain rules while being completely okay with others.

If you can handwave away some realism... then just relax and handwave the rest as a necessary byproduct of this being a game.

 

[Umbran]

There's no need to go on when you're clearly rushing out the door to pat yourself on the back for an imagined argumentative victory.

Don't make it personal. Address the content of the post, not the person of the poster.

It is a stupendously simple principle that avoids a great many issues. Please embrace it. Thank you.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I think you're straying from the theme quite a bit, to something that might be tangentially related. Is it the person of the faith healer they are responding to, or their own predisposition to believe? (Personally I think you're describing Clerics.)

But more importantly, is this a trope of fiction/myth/literature/history? I fully agree that close friends using their bond to incite weary/weak/injured/dead to revive themselves is a frequently used narrative device. But without arguing about the truth or falsehood of the faith healer story, is it something that storytellers use as a powerful narrative technique? Which is what I thought we were talking about.

But all that aside, I think you've hit upon a great class name for a non-magical healer. Emphasis added:

Faith healers.

Whatever you may think of them, they can, through charisma, awe, and the willingness of the recipient, evoke intense feelings of euphoria and spike adrenaline.

People used to faint at Beatles concerts and candidate Obama's speeches. They likewise rose from their wheelchairs to walk a bit under big tents after hands were laid on them.

It seems to me to be a similar psychological effect. The relationship can be basically 1 way, even strangers, so long as the practitioner can affect the recipient.

Heck, hypnotists bring subjects in and out of consciousness routinely. On stage and in therapy.

Yes - there's a weird psychosomatic thing going on with all of that. But it's still not unheard of.

EDIT: It's also pretty well established that real-world hypnotists (not the new base class!) can only work with people who are willing to be hypnotized. Suggesting that the subject has to actively participate.

 

[Dausuul]

I'd easily describe him as a bard. In 5th edition, I'd say he's a College of Valor bard, specifically. Charismatic, great leadership, effective in combat, etc..

...Full-time spellcaster?

That's the thing about 5E bards: Whatever else they are, they're casters first and foremost. Even a College of Valor bard is going to be more effective casting than swinging a sword. If you want to play the version of William Wallace that shoots fireballs out of his eyes and lightning from his a***, okay, but if you want to play the one from the movie, the bard is not a good representation of that.

 

[procproc]

That's the thing about 5E bards: Whatever else they are, they're casters first and foremost.

That's... not true? You can't get away from the bard being a caster, for sure, but the bards I've seen in actual play worked much more as as fighter type with a dash of magical knowledge/ability than "caster first and foremost."

On the topic of inspiring words bringing people back to consciousness, what really strains credibility for me isn't that it happens, but that it can happen reliably and consistently. When we see it in movies, it generally happens for dramatic effect, and the dramatic tension is created precisely because it's not reliable. Trying to use that to justify a non-magical healing effect just doesn't work at all for me.

Reliable magical healing makes sense -- the real world doesn't have magic, but it's entirely plausible for magic to be able to reliably heal physical damage harmed by living things. The real world *does* have inspiring people -- and I'm pretty sure none of them can consistently rouse people from unconsciousness by saying inspiring things at them. So for me, at least, trying to use movie scenes to justify a non-magical means of reliably healing up from unconsciousness just breaks suspension of disbelief too much.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

...Full-time spellcaster?

That's the thing about 5E bards: Whatever else they are, they're casters first and foremost. Even a College of Valor bard is going to be more effective casting than swinging a sword. If you want to play the version of William Wallace that shoots fireballs out of his eyes and lightning from his a***, okay, but if you want to play the one from the movie, the bard is not a good representation of that.

Depends on how you build 'em, but yeah, the full, 0-9 spellcaster is deeply embedded in the 5e Bard's DNA. The Lore Bard is more of a caster, while the Valor Bard is more of a fighter, but both of them are fundamentally full-casters. Who can steal other casters' spells, to boot.

But yeah. My Dragonborn Valor Bard is, at 1st level, just as good (offensively) as a high-Dex, shield-wearing Fighter or Paladin. Defensively my guy's worse off, sure, but my Bard and the party Paladin have exactly the same attack bonus and damage value (+6 to hit, 1d8+3 damage), the same HP (I have a +1 Con, he has a -1), and our AC is only like 2 or 3 points apart.*

*I have +2 Dex, Studded Leather, and a houseruled "buckler" (+1 AC, hand counts as free but cannot hold a weapon). 12+3 = 15.
He has +3 Dex, Studded Leather, and a regular shield. 12+5 = 17.

 

[Guest 6801328]

On the topic of inspiring words bringing people back to consciousness, what really strains credibility for me isn't that it happens, but that it can happen reliably and consistently. When we see it in movies, it generally happens for dramatic effect, and the dramatic tension is created precisely because it's not reliable. Trying to use that to justify a non-magical healing effect just doesn't work at all for me.

Spot on.

That's what I was trying to get at with my (ironic) suggestions for Lover and Betrayer classes. Just because a dramatic narrative advice is frequently used does not make it the basis for a fictional archetype.

I would say that in all the examples Bawylie cited earlier (not the faith healer post) it wasn't anything intrinsic to the individual that carried the power, it was the bond between the characters.

 

[Guest 6801328]

And I have to add...

If a mechanical way to implement this sort of "healing" is introduced to the game, especially if the argument is the fictional precedent, then it seems crazy that my character can't do it for his best friend with whom he's been facing death for the last dozen adventures, but any random Warlord who just joined the party or even just wandered by can. That's not really representing the trope.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

My biggest hurdle with spurring a "downed" PC back to his feet with some rousing words is that it always requires the DM to narratively retcon the severe/mortal wound (e.g. "I guess I wasn't hurt as badly as I had thought.")

Then it's the DM's fault for narrating such a wound in the first place. Dont describe 0Hp as anything that a few seconds with some gauze and smelling salts can't fix (healer's kit).