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

[I'm A Banana]

The One Ring has a mechanic called "Fellowship Focus"; you designate somebody in the group as your FF (some LMs won't let you pick somebody unless you've completed at least one adventure together). If you spend Hope (precious commodity) to "directly" protect your FF, you get the Hope refunded. At the conclusion to the adventure, if your FF is "unharmed" you get another point of Hope; otherwise you get one point of Shadow.

So risk/reward mechanic built from defining those bonds. (And, yes, there are many long discussion about the interpretations of "directly" and "unharmed".)

TOR has some frickin' awesome ideas in it....

 

[Ristamar]

For the record, although I'm in the demographic you're describing I don't think of it as my disbelief being suspended. I think "suspension of disbelief" is in the hands of the individual; the game is already so divorced from reality that to claim "this detail makes it unbelievable" is, imho, B.S..

Rather than suspension of disbelief or breaking of immersion, what bothers me is the crossing of the boundary between that which belongeth to mechanics and that which belongeth to storytelling.

You know yourself, and I'm just a stranger on the internet, so I won't even attempt to dispute your own personal feelings on rules and mechanics.

That being said, even in D&D, everybody has a line. Everybody has that one thing. The irritable thing that just makes them want to scream "BULLS**T!!" (while scrambling to make a house rule), no matter what other strange, fantastic, or even irrational bits they're able to swallow along the way without mental reflexive gagging.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Interesting... PHB pg.197 "Describing the Effects of Damage"

Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways. When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When you drop below half of your hit point maximum, you show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious.

It seems like the advice in the PHB doesn't align with what you are stating here.

Yep, bleeding, not deadly. And if you think even being stabilized in 6 seconds the way D&D portrays it makes sense for someone, I dunno, stabbed in the heart, you don't know enough about first aid. FWIW, falling off a 50 foot cliff would slow you down a lot more than half your movement the next round.

D&D is a poor game for those with an obsessive focus on literal simulation with, well, pretty much anything, but in particular wounds. There are plenty of other games with various shock/trauma/wound systems that actually treat damage more realistically. Therefore if you have that level of fixation on what you somehow interpret as being "realistic" AND were running in a group with a warlord (the class that doesnt even exist), my advice is to describe being dropped to 0HP in a way consistent with how the rules actually present the world, and not how fluff text in the PHB (incorrectly) suggests they function. The rules suggest that someone at 0HP who receives 6 second care from a trained person (healer feat), is back on their feet and suffering no penalties to, say, run a marathon, climb a mountain or binge drink all night. That isn't how anatomy works for someone who was about to die.

But hey, let's say that they got some magical healing. Some guy with 15 HP max gets hit for a 26 damage attack that you described as eviscerating them. Then they get a puny 4HP popup from healing word. What do they look like? Do they still have at least 11 HP of "evisceration" left in them, as they arent healed up to where they were before the attack. Do you describe the wound as all gone? Damn! So 4 HP stuffs your intestines back in? So when that a 200HP guy is hit for that same 26 damage attack and you describe it as cuts and bruises, why cant that healing word get him back to full HP? If 4 HP can stuff someone's guts back in, surely they can heal a bruise right?

This is the big stupid rabbit hole you start going down when you try and address hit points from an sim mindset.

 

[Imaro]

Yep, bleeding, not deadly. And if you think even being stabilized in 6 seconds the way D&D portrays it makes sense for someone, I dunno, stabbed in the heart, you don't know enough about first aid. FWIW, falling off a 50 foot cliff would slow you down a lot more than half your movement the next round.

D&D is a poor game for those with an obsessive focus on literal simulation with, well, pretty much anything, but in particular wounds. There are plenty of other games with various shock/trauma/wound systems that actually treat damage more realistically. Therefore if you have that level of fixation on what you somehow interpret as being "realistic" AND were running in a group with a warlord (the class that doesnt even exist), my advice is to describe being dropped to 0HP in a way consistent with how the rules actually present the world, and not how fluff text in the PHB (incorrectly) suggests they function. The rules suggest that someone at 0HP who receives 6 second care from a trained person (healer feat), is back on their feet and suffering no penalties to, say, run a marathon, climb a mountain or binge drink all night. That isn't how anatomy works for someone who was about to die.

But hey, let's say that they got some magical healing. Some guy with 15 HP max gets hit for a 26 damage attack that you described as eviscerating them. Then they get a puny 4HP popup from healing word. What do they look like? Do they still have at least 11 HP of "evisceration" left in them, as they arent healed up to where they were before the attack. Do you describe the wound as all gone? Damn! So 4 HP stuffs your intestines back in? So when that a 200HP guy is hit for that same 26 damage attack and you describe it as cuts and bruises, why cant that healing word get him back to full HP? If 4 HP can stuff someone's guts back in, surely they can heal a bruise right?

This is the big stupid rabbit hole you start going down when you try and address hit points from an sim mindset.

Where does the book address descriptions of healing again??

 

[Bawylie]

For the record, although I'm in the demographic you're describing I don't think of it as my disbelief being suspended. I think "suspension of disbelief" is in the hands of the individual; the game is already so divorced from reality that to claim "this detail makes it unbelievable" is, imho, B.S..

Rather than suspension of disbelief or breaking of immersion, what bothers me is the crossing of the boundary between that which belongeth to mechanics and that which belongeth to storytelling.

Yeah, this is probably one of the better "anti" warlord arguments.

Conceptually, 4E design had roles and power sources underpinning it. So yes, the Martial Leader looked first at mechanics, whereas 5th looks first to find a class' place in the universe, and builds mechanics to fit that feel.

If you STILL see warlord as a Martial Leader, then you're right, it's a bad fit with 5th.

That said, D&D is still a class-based game on the PC end. And I don't have a problem with a class delivering a particular type of experience. A class, after all, is mostly just a pre-package of "crap you can do." So are subsystems like spell casting.

So to me, it's useful to look back and see what a warlord was capable of when we're considering what it ought to feel like now. But that's not the only consideration. We also have to see whether "Martial Leader" still makes sense. IMO it doesn't. Martial works, Leader doesn't.

So it ends up that a warlord, to me, is a guy that makes the fighting unit better overall. He doesn't have to be "the leader," but he's got to offer some boons and some mitigation. He's not the Fighter, but he's at least as capable as a valor bard, a cleric, etc.

That's the niche I see. Now the mitigation doesn't HAVE TO BE "Inspiring Word." That was traditional, but it could be open to temp hp, reducing incoming damage, target denial, etc.

Worth a thought at least. We don't have to pigeon hole this into Martial Leader Faith Healer.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Yeah, this is probably one of the better "anti" warlord arguments.

Conceptually, 4E design had roles and power sources underpinning it. So yes, the Martial Leader looked first at mechanics, whereas 5th looks first to find a class' place in the universe, and builds mechanics to fit that feel.

If you STILL see warlord as a Martial Leader, then you're right, it's a bad fit with 5th.

That said, D&D is still a class-based game on the PC end. And I don't have a problem with a class delivering a particular type of experience. A class, after all, is mostly just a pre-package of "crap you can do." So are subsystems like spell casting.

So to me, it's useful to look back and see what a warlord was capable of when we're considering what it ought to feel like now. But that's not the only consideration. We also have to see whether "Martial Leader" still makes sense. IMO it doesn't. Martial works, Leader doesn't.

So it ends up that a warlord, to me, is a guy that makes the fighting unit better overall. He doesn't have to be "the leader," but he's got to offer some boons and some mitigation. He's not the Fighter, but he's at least as capable as a valor bard, a cleric, etc.

That's the niche I see. Now the mitigation doesn't HAVE TO BE "Inspiring Word." That was traditional, but it could be open to temp hp, reducing incoming damage, target denial, etc.

Worth a thought at least. We don't have to pigeon hole this into Martial Leader Faith Healer.

This is pretty much exactly what I've been trying to solve for. Can we incorporate non-magical healing, the distribution of tasty tactical treats*, influence over NPCs, and whatever else Warlord fans want mechanically, without any suggestion in the language (including the name of the class) that the other PCs must look up to and admire this figure?

That's why I keep asking why the healing must be non-magical. Not because I have any intrinsic opposition to it, but because the constraint of making it so always seems to end up at, "Because you're sooooo inspired by him."

*Bonus XP to whomever photoshops the most convincing box of Tasty Tactical Treats.

 

[Bawylie]

This is pretty much exactly what I've been trying to solve for. Can we incorporate non-magical healing, the distribution of tasty tactical treats*, influence over NPCs, and whatever else Warlord fans want mechanically, without any suggestion in the language (including the name of the class) that the other PCs must look up to and admire this figure?

That's why I keep asking why the healing must be non-magical. Not because I have any intrinsic opposition to it, but because the constraint of making it so always seems to end up at, "Because you're sooooo inspired by him."

*Bonus XP to whomever photoshops the most convincing box of Tasty Tactical Treats.

Sure.

Damage mitigation doesn't have to be healing.

But if it IS healing, it must be non-magical. (Otherwise we'd have accepted valor bard and moved on). Temp HP is perfectly acceptable (see Rally maneuver).

Likewise, inspiration was the traditional rationale. It doesn't have to be now.

If we leave "Inspiring Word" out, is there a way to mitigate damage that doesn't also say "I'm in charge!"? Of course there is. Mitigation is more than just HP up: HP down.

Heck, give him a reaction that lets him redirect an attack against an adjacent ally to himself.

Or one that lets him add his INT bonus to an ally's AC when that ally is surrounded. He's not giving orders, just helping the surrounded guy anticipate attacks on the flank.

This all mitigates damage.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Sure.

Damage mitigation doesn't have to be healing.

But if it IS healing, it must be non-magical. (Otherwise we'd have accepted valor bard and moved on). Temp HP is perfectly acceptable (see Rally maneuver).

Likewise, inspiration was the traditional rationale. It doesn't have to be now.

If we leave "Inspiring Word" out, is there a way to mitigate damage that doesn't also say "I'm in charge!"? Of course there is. Mitigation is more than just HP up: HP down.

Heck, give him a reaction that lets him redirect an attack against an adjacent ally to himself.

Or one that lets him add his INT bonus to an ally's AC when that ally is surrounded. He's not giving orders, just helping the surrounded guy anticipate attacks on the flank.

This all mitigates damage.

I love all those solutions. Not only because they seem to meet the requirement of "non-magical damage mitigation" but because it adds new mechanics into the game, in contrast to "use an action to heal as much as Cure Wounds...but it's not magical."

I fear, though, that anybody who isn't satisfied with temp HP will also be dissatisfied with mitigation rather than actual healing.

But I'm totally on board.

I know the "Warden" has carryover meaning from 4e, but I think it's a great name for a class (or sub-class) and I could see it incorporating damage mitigation, tactical bonuses, and more. Sort of a non-Divine Paladin.

 

[Mistwell]

Non-magically?!? What am I missing?

How is the receiver of this benefit even hearing the orator when they've been knocked unconscious?

Are we using the same definition of unconscious? Other than the house-ruling lot who are re-imagining that "unconscious" doesn't actually mean "unconscious", but instead just "a bot too tired".

It's just the Comatose Canary TV Trope. Within a fantasy genre, it's an acceptable level of logic for many.

 

[Bawylie]

I love all those solutions. Not only because they seem to meet the requirement of "non-magical damage mitigation" but because it adds new mechanics into the game, in contrast to "use an action to heal as much as Cure Wounds...but it's not magical."

I fear, though, that anybody who isn't satisfied with temp HP will also be dissatisfied with mitigation rather than actual healing.

But I'm totally on board.

I know the "Warden" has carryover meaning from 4e, but I think it's a great name for a class (or sub-class) and I could see it incorporating damage mitigation, tactical bonuses, and more. Sort of a non-Divine Paladin.

What if warlord were a subclass of fighter. And it incorporated damage mitigation, tactical bonuses, etc. But also interacted smoothly with the large-scale battle rules?

As PCs can take control over units and stands and whatever, what if this subclass worked fine on its own, but also really shines in large scale battles? Could still be a warlord. Just not commanding or leading other PCs.