D&D 5E Here it is! Version 5 of my hombrewed Warlord class!

[Undrave]

Here I am back again asking for eyes on my Warlord! Homebrewery link here: The Warlord v5 - The Homebrewery

Note that the homebrewery works best when display on Firefox or Chrome.

So the name of the game this go around was STREAMLINING. I reworked a ton of abilities in small but, hopefully, impactful ways. I've gotten rid of the bonus actions in the main class so that you only really got ONE thing you can do per turn so you don't have to have convoluted plans everytime. I've added more passive abilities and reworked my out of combat loadout. I've also simplified some subclasses and added the 'number of time equal your proficiency bonus' thing they're now very fond of in official products.

I've ditched the Steel Protector because I realized @MattW was right that it didn't fit. I've replaced it with the Steel Vanguard. I've also moved Seasoned Instructor to level 6! In fact, I changed Seasoned Instructor to essentially be a mundane version of Guidance. It might seem like a strong bonus, but considering that a Cleric can grant up to +4 to ANY skill since level 1, the fact that it is limited to skills the Warlord knows means it has to be stronger than Guidance. Making it a consistant bonus felt like a good way to do it.

As @Stalker0 suggested I've mostly standarized distances to 30 feet so it's easier to remember. Only exception is I kept the buff to Warlord Presence distance the White Raven Tactician gets. (I was having a problem coming up with a replacement feature). I also put the note about the improvement to Battlefield Insight as part of its own feature, as recommended, and I made the scaling of the Insight Pool on Initiative part of the basic ability instead by keying it to half your proficiency bonus.

Based on another of Stalker's comment, I reworked the Warlord Presence so that it no longer adds new riders to the Shouts, only lets you basically have two 'good' Shouts regardless of your chosen Secondary score. Despite comments that WIS was no historically part of the Warlord, I feel like the ability in charge of Perception and Insight is a totally defensible pick for a battlefield commander.

I've ditched Continued Education and came up with the Booming Voice feature. I admit that Veteran's Poise and Booming Voice are the two ability I could see just switching spot on the progression, they're mostly ribbons and I'm not sure how 'good' they really are. I could also switch Seasoned Instructor and Booming Voice around so that's a bit complicated.

I think the biggest change tho, is Exposed Weakness where I've now made it linked to the Help action. Again, Stalker comes through with mentioning it as a way to accrue Insight. I decided to go the otherway and make it SPEND insight. I decided not to include a saving throw since 1) it takes up your Action, 2) it relies on your ally hitting and 3) it lowers your party's dmg output further by denying you Insight to spend with their reaction. I'm still wondering if it would be TOO good or, maybe, not even good enough to be worth spending Insight on? I've made it so YOU can trigger those weaknesses too, in case you get Hasted or you get to use your opportunity attack.

I also want to thank @Hawk Diesel for his comment, and @The Annihilargh , @Charlaquin , @Mind of tempest , @Cap'n Kobold , @Mistwell and all the others in the Out of Combat Class Feature thread I made for helping me consider things for this new version!

I'll go over some design decision I made on the subclasses in my next comment!

 

[Undrave]

So here's a few comment about the subclasses. Originally, I had planned to include the Crimsom Phoenix Herald as a sort of 'Diplomat Warlord' but then I realized that 1) it would probably work better of as a type of Bard or even Rogue and 2) it meant I would have ended up with FOUR Charisma centric subclasses! The imbalance was too much so I went agaisnt it.

Ardent Soul : I've lowered the ammount of Temp HP it can grants on the regular, while keeping it able to scale better. I also made the wording of Burning Heart more in line with my intent. I made your Max CHA now be 24, since I did the same for the Chosen One.

Ballistarius : I've reworded a few things, I reworked Eagle Eye to be an active things with a Prof. Bonus number of usage. Maybe it's a little TOO strong as it is, but I didn't want to just copy Reliable Talent all the time either. I'm open to modulate the number. I'Ve reworked the fluff on Squadmaster so it makes a little more sense in universe. Obviously it means the player MUST come up with codenames. Legendary Archer Accuracy is a bit weird but I wanted the feeling of focus fire. I don't know if the Insight Cost is too low, however.

Borderlands Marshall : I kinda wanted to give them a sort of 'Song of Rest' thing based on finding like plants and stuff during a short rest, but I think this would work much better as a Feat (I've actually got a couple ideas I might work into an associated Feat package actually!) even if it also compete with the Healer feat... It's hard to tell. In the end I stuck to changing up Relentless Hunter to be more about mobility than the ability to just track someone forever. I've made Skirmisher Evasion able to trigger on a DEX saving throw, which I think makes sense. I've completely reworked the capstone ability to be all about damage YOU can make instead of just making your Insight dice d10s. I think it work better with the fluff and gives you something else you can do.

Chosen One : This one had a lot of rework going into it. I reworked Fateful Companion to work with the new paradigm of Expose Weakness, I simplified the number of uses of Divine Luck, made Magnetic Personality maybe a little TOO good? Blessed Touch used to grant 3rd level slots but I decided to downgrade to 2nd level, but also add a scaling aspect to the number of slots AND added an extra thematic spell. And I decided to not only simplify Pull of Destiny to the extreme, but also make it really funny. I just think it's a really funny concept to just keep a crit in your back pocket everyday. I can see it being really popular with Paladins. Plus, it's a level 17 capstone, it HAS to be epic!

Rabble Rouser : Still in love with that name hahaha. I actually considered giving it a 'militia trainer' type of ability to temporarily grant weapon proficiency to NPCs but the wording of the rules for it felt like a NGHTMARE. I might revisit the concept as a Feat later on though. There was maybe a few clean up of wordings, but the Rabble Rouser didn't feel like it needed much work done. Only thing I did was extend the reach of Ovrcoming the Odds to be much wider. It makes it easier to trigger now.

Silverblade Captain : Nothing much has changed here, only that Silverblade Riposte is now usuable a number of times based on your Proficiency Bonus. But I'm totally open to it being too strong... but then again you'll be fighting a LOT of magical enemies at that level so I feel like it's worth it. And Capstone features have a bit more leeway to being busted considering how late they come online.

Steel Vanguard : Here we are! The replacement for the Steel Protector! This one, admitedly, has very tenuous fluff and is almost 100% about the mechanic... but I just think those mechanics are cool. It's very much the concept of a close combat controller using the limited moves a martial character gets (grappling and shoving) to greater effects. Like the Steel Protector before them I gave them Heavy Armor and Martial Weapon proficiency, because I think the optimal loadout for the Steel Vanguard is to use a Versatile weapon to be able to grab opponents, meaning they can't use a Shield. I tried to add uses for your INT modifier, to not along add another INT subclass, but to make it so a Steel Protector has an incentive to not be as invested in CON as a Fighter would (though this subclass is still intended to be the 'MC Fighter' subclass). I didn't now what kind of non-combat feature I could give it so I leaned into the 'smarter than they look' trope and basically recycled 'Continued Education' from V4, with some fluff about equipment maintenances and spying on enemies... I think it works well enough. Giant Toppler was originally going to be an ability letting you use grabbed creatures as human shields, but I figured that it would pigeonhole the Steel Vanguard into grappling TOO much and that it would fit better as a feat (again). Master of Steel is another feature from my old Steel Protector and more proof that this subclass is Fighter -like.

White Raven Tactician : I've reworked the class to be more focused on shoutsm, and gave them a sort of 'duel wielding' ability with Shouts. This is the bossy subclass so to speak. I gave them a fighting style that make them good second-row combatants but I was mostly at a lost as to what else to give them at 3rd level (since all subclass get 2 feature at that level). I kinda wanted another non-combat feature but I was drawing a blank at this point. I reworded Analyze Enemy a little to reward good INT and make it clear what happens if you fail the roll. I didn't know what to do with level 13 and kept the boring Presence buff (it has the benefit of being simple I guess), but I cut the part that would let your allies more for free when you roll iniative, just for the sake of simplicity. And for the Capstone I decided to make it so you can just keep luck out of your Insight Pool roll a certain number of times per day. A lot of capstones are just big chunky damage buff, it's true, but at least they all got different flavor, right?

 

[Stalker0]

Alright, lets delve into it!

Battlefield Insight (Improve Damage): Just confirming, as written this does not consume any insight, so the Warlord can just apply the bonus round after round if they aren't spending that bonus on anything else. Just making sure as its the only ability I've seen that does that.

Expose Weakness: So we are now going with the notion of it costs me my action (though I am still getting to use help) but now no saves, it just works. I like that model a lot, I've often thought that martial characters can differentiate themselves by weaker but more consistent abilities over casters.

So we need to remember that the cost here isn't just the 2d6 insight, because I am also not taking the attack action its 1,2, or 3d6 more insight that I am not generating. That's a lot of Improved Damage power I am giving up....not to mention the loss of the attack. So personally I am not sure the 2d6 cost is really needed here, the opportunity cost is already pretty darn high.

Warlord Presence: I've already said my peace about the power of this in the last version, and though you have mixed up the bonuses so that it requires a wider range of stats to get the FULL use of it....it still feels like too much. Again if we are comparing this to the rogue, yes cunning action is good, but you already have a solid ability at 2nd level, and now your piling on an entire extra ability on top. Lastly, I think the shouts are fine as they are at 1st level, I don't think they need a buff to stay relevant.

If you really want to keep this....I would just go nice a simple. Everyone with 30 gains +initiative = your prof mod, and call it a day. that's still a very nice ability (PCs LOVE initiative), but its simple and just does the job.

Your 2nd level....you don't get ALL the toys yet

Advanced Signals: Other than the cost (which we discussed above), all of the abilities seem reasonable except dirt in the eye. I would say that is notably weaker than all of the other ones (even considering the better duration), I can't ever seeing a character using it over the other options.

Booming Voice: Its a fine ribbon ability, and works fine at 7th with the other ability already there.



All the rest looks good to me!

 

[Undrave]

Battlefield Insight (Improve Damage): Just confirming, as written this does not consume any insight, so the Warlord can just apply the bonus round after round if they aren't spending that bonus on anything else. Just making sure as its the only ability I've seen that does that.

Yup. It's modeled off of Sneak Attack, so if all you do is use that you just keep pumping the damage.

So we need to remember that the cost here isn't just the 2d6 insight, because I am also not taking the attack action its 1,2, or 3d6 more insight that I am not generating. That's a lot of Improved Damage power I am giving up....not to mention the loss of the attack. So personally I am not sure the 2d6 cost is really needed here, the opportunity cost is already pretty darn high.

Hmm... that's a good point... What if I keep the Insight cost for the expanded range of the Help acton then? That would be something to consider spending your Insight on.

Warlord Presence: I've already said my peace about the power of this in the last version, and though you have mixed up the bonuses so that it requires a wider range of stats to get the FULL use of it....it still feels like too much. Again if we are comparing this to the rogue, yes cunning action is good, but you already have a solid ability at 2nd level, and now your piling on an entire extra ability on top. Lastly, I think the shouts are fine as they are at 1st level, I don't think they need a buff to stay relevant.

Just to be clear : you do know you only get 1 Presence, not all three, right? It's like a Fighting style, you pick your bonus and that's all you get forever.

Advanced Signals: Other than the cost (which we discussed above), all of the abilities seem reasonable except dirt in the eye. I would say that is notably weaker than all of the other ones (even considering the better duration), I can't ever seeing a character using it over the other options.

I could always just have it grant the 'Blinded' condition?

 

[Quartz]

I think you should simplify Battlefield Insight - just have everyone start at 1d6 with a maximum number of dice equal to your Proficiency Bonus or levels in the class, whichever is lower. You can increase the die size at later levels, e.g 1d8 at 5th level. Improve Damage needs a bigger cost than a Reaction. It’s better than a battlemaster manoeuvre and doesn’t have the -5 of the feats.

Your Shouts are immediately better than the Battlemaster Fighter’s manoeuvres so need some sort of toning down. Perhaps expenditure of BI dice? Do shouts work over telepathic links?

Warlord Presence: perhaps changeable after a Long Rest?

More later.

 

[Undrave]

Your Shouts are immediately better than the Battlemaster Fighter’s manoeuvres so need some sort of toning down.

Well, you do give up your attack to use them, unlike the Battlemaster.

 

[Quartz]

Well, you do give up your attack to use them, unlike the Battlemaster.

Only one of your attacks. And you get them before the BM. And you can spam them ad nausea. And you can use them in conjunction with BI and Increase Damage.

 

[Undrave]

Only one of your attacks. And you get them before the BM. And you can spam them ad nausea. And you can use them in conjunction with BI and Increase Damage.

They're supposed to be better though, because the Battlemaster is essentially a Multiclass subclass. It's Fighter+Warlord the same way Eldtrich Knight is Fighter+Wizard.

 

[Mistwell]

Is there a Pike weapon listed in the game? Did I miss it?

 

[Tinker-TDC]

First time seeing it and the biggest thing that stands out to me is Veteran's Poise at level 11. That's the level where every class gets a big combat boost and this one gets a social boost that only works against against specific people.

Otherwise my only real criticism is how multi-attribute dependent it is. Otherwise it looks pretty cool and I'd like to play one if it wasn't MAD.