ChrisCarlson
First Post
My own contribution to this lively debate. I re-found this old transcript posted on the WotC site, taken from a podcast featuring Mearls and Thompson, circa sometime early 2013 I believe. I think its an interesting conversation on the topic and shows where their heads were at during the design phase of 5e...
Mike Mearls: What about, now, I'll bring up a character class that might not actually be a class.
Rodney Thompson: Since Jeremy's not here, you're doing this to me to put me on the spot.
Mearls: Yeah, exactly. Because that's my job.
Thompson: Usually, you put Jeremy on the spot.
Mearls: I like Jeremy, but he's sick he has the flu, so--
Thompson: That's true. He has the flu that I gave him, unfortunately.
Mearls: So there are some classes that, you will be able to play a character of that type and not necessarily have the character class name on your character sheet. One of the things we said back in the day was "We want you to be able to play all the -- if it's appeared in a Player's Handbook, it's going to appear in this Player's Handbook."
Thompson: it was a goal, right?
Mearls: But we were always careful not to say it's as a character class, because we knew-- I'm going to use an example off the top of my head. Warlord, right? Which we knew was going to be a contentious subject both internally and externally. But when you look at the warlords... right now we're looking at the warlord as a type of fighter, correct?
Thompson: That's one of the things we're experimenting with, now, yeah, and it's a more complex issue, like you bring up because the warlord class then in Fourth Edition is a dash of fighter in that he is a very martial guy, he wore heavy armor, he used weapons, so there's a dash of fighter. Then there's a hefty sprinkling of healing.
Mearls: Kind of a bard, really. It's inspiring.
Thompson: Very bard-esque there. Then there's the -- I have a catch-all term for all this other leadership abilities. Things like action granting and throwing out bonuses and buffs and things like that. Basically, a heavy support role.
Mearls: It's really tactically, like tactical--
Thompson: Yeah, tactical support, I think, is what I would say.
Mearls: And it's tricky. The class is not-- it's really tricky with classes like the Warlord -- and I think when we look at the system overall, we've run into this a few times, the class really isn't an expression of a character in the world of D&D that we go, "Hey, this guy needs a home." It's more, we have a system, we can make the system do this, so now we're going to do this. It's kind of like the genesis of the sorcerer in Third Edition. It was just, here's a different way to use all the spells in the book. It wasn't really like "Here's a character who has always been in D&D in a prominent place that hasn't been expressed as a class yet."
Thompson: Although, I will say this. Thinking back to the proto-Warlord, the Marshall, from Third Edition. The Marshall was an attempt to do something tactical like that. But also, the leader character, is something that you would say, "Okay, the party's leader is the person who is most charismatic" or something like that. There's always been kind of a vague archetype out there for the leader character. But it wasn't necessarily the guy who is the tactical guy.
Mearls: Or it's not necessarily the guy who is in charge. I think most gaming groups would rebel at the idea of "Oh, this guy is in charge of us." I think that's why you like being an adventurer. No one is the boss of me here. So it's interesting. From what I can gather, we're looking at the warlord. Basically decided, let's focus on the tactical cunning aspect, which would be something that would make sense in the fighter, because then you can also imagine doing fighters with a dash of that without multiclassing.
Thompson: That's the big thing too, that I said. The warlord was kind of an amalgamation of those previous classes. If you look at, say, a typical warlord by itself, it would look a lot like a fighter in the early designs. We have imagined, here's what the class would look like, and here's what the specialty would look like, so we've been all over the place with this. But is you looked at it -- it kind of looked a lot like the fighter. It wanted to do a lot of the things that the fighter does. The warlord in Fourth is a frontline leader unless you take the archer build from Martial Power 2 or whatever. He is a front-line guy. So you want him to do a lot of the things that the front-line fighter did.
We're experimenting with a version of the fighter. Instead of choosing things that necessarily make you more attacks, better-- you're own combat maneuver is better, things that let you let other people do things as the things that they do. That's part of it. There's also the healing aspect of it, which is a whole different image.
Mearls: I guess my big thing is, would you, in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, if you pictured a guy who is a cunning tactical leader, would you expect that guy to heal you?
Thompson: I wouldn't expect him to automatically be able to know how to heal somebody. But, I could see that character who is more of a field medic.
Mearls: He could be a healer.
Thompson: He could be. I'm not saying he was.
Mearls: And that's throughout the system. We have a Specialty that lets you pick up some healing abilities.
Thompson: Yeah. We're going to want to continue to expand that.
Mearls: We don't expect the sergeant of the guard or captain of the guard to heal downed warriors. That's not the default. That's kind of the thing. And then if you say, "Well, he can heal, because he's really this inspiring presence, well then you've just kind of described a bard. Because bards -- the entire schtick of bards -- is that they are really inspiring and they are charismatic. The bard is the guy with panache who -- "Onward!" That's the bard's deal, isn't it?
Thompson: That's a big part of the bard, I would say. I think there's some desire for a, when you're playing that leader character, to be able to say, "Alright, men! Fight on!" and be the guy leading the charge. To be William Wallace from Braveheart. You want to be that guy. I would not describe a William Wallace-type character as a bard.
Mearls: But you also wouldn't say he's a healer. I wouldn't. I wouldn't think, if there's a guy whose been gutted, William Wallace gets the guys to freak out and charge and moon the British--
Thompson: Well...
Mearls: Healing? If the guy has a broken arm, does William Wallace--
Thompson: William Wallace clearly went and inspired the guy who got his hand cut off to keep fighting. There's that--
Mearls: But his hand didn't grow back. (laughter) Now I'm being a little ridiculous.
Thompson: That's literally a cut scene. Anyway, to bring it back to the warlord, there is a focus that we're trying to take about the warlord being in the fighter, being the tactical leader, and then I think that if you want to play very much the Fourth Edition warlord, we should have a way for you to build that character. Take the fighter. Take the tactical leader-y fighter and apply a specialty or--
Mearls: A Healer Specialty. Just like the one piece that's just not there.
Thompson: And again, we are continuing to-- I talked about the three classes we're in [druid, ranger, paladin], we're going to continue with feats and Specialties and stuff like that, until we get the right mix of things. I could see down the road, one of the things we might do is a different take on the healer Specialty. Something that says, okay I've got a fightery leadery guy and a knock on this healer ability and now I'm getting more warlrody
Mearls: The trick is if you could imagine any character can be an inspiring battlefield presence. To some extent, just like we have , you could take a Specialty to get some light arcane ability, take a Specialty and take some divine ability, this is our feat-based bard type ability. I'm charismatic and I can inspire people through my words. I guess that's what it really comes back to. It's a very bardic thing to me. There's a line between inspiration and tactical cunning. I think where it settles for me is that the fighter can be tactically cunning as a fighter. That's what you've chosen to double down on. If you're the inspiring figure, that feels like a bard to me. That's what the bard does.
Thompson: I think that brings in the idea that the fighter is the lord of battle. He is the guy that you want on the battlefield. Than can manifest in a couple of ways. I'm just going to tear through the bad guys with by terrible greataxe. Or it could be we want him here because he leads us. He shows us the right tactical options. I think that's a great expression of the fighter. Seeing that combined with other-- I can see a Specialty that is combined with inspiring like that. I can see being a fighter and taking some of that Specialty as well. So if you really want to be the guy -- I like warlords that gave out a lot of benefits and buffs and action-granting and stuff like that, I can see that being very much the inspiring guy Specialty. I don't really have a name for it yet.
Mearls: That might actually be the Leader Specialty if we don't have a leader Specialty right now.
Thompson: We do not. We kicked that on around before
Mearls: We had talked about taking the roles and just making those Specialties.
Thompson: We have a Defender Specialty right now, which does a lot of very defendery things. I think that's another exciting thing that we're doing with out Specialties is that I can take my cleric and give him the Leader Specialty once we have one. Right now, you can take a cleric and give him the Defender Specialty and he works great. I think that's one of those things where we have disentangled some of the things of what you do in the game from your role. I can see building a action-granting and buff focused warlord with fighter, using the tactical options, plus leader specialty. Or a mix of the two. Fighter with tactical options plus half of the leader specialty plus half of the healer specialty. We want to be flexible here so if you want to focus on healing you can. If you want a focus on leadership you can. If you want to do something totally different, you can. You can be the tactical guy that takes the defender specialty. That's interesting too. I get right in the thick of things and I protect my friends while they follow my tactical order. There's something exciting there about this hybrid approach as well.
