D&D 5E How Important is it that Warlords be Healers?

[pemerton]

That is something I really liked about 4e and the multiclass feats for leader classes - many of them granted you a daily use of their minor action heal power. It was certainly no replacement for a full healer, but it certainly helped out if your party healer went down, or if everyone took such resources (i.e. you built around the assumption of no leader), then you could run a game with no dedicated healer with minimal change to the base assumptions.

Up until 6th level or so in my 4e game there was no leader. They had a paladin with 16 WIS, a dwarf (who eventually got a Cloak of the Walking Wounded), and two or three leader MC feats for daily heals.

They sometimes felt the lack of healing, but worked around it.

When the hybrid rules came out the ranger (MC cleric) rebuilt as a hybrid archer-cleric, which (together with some Dwarven Armour for the dwarf) pretty much solved all their healing needs!

 

[pemerton]

Fair enough. We're still talking about large, discrete groups of non-adventurers though.

But the inspiration and basis for a religious warrior was there first.

If clerics are Knights Templar, aren't avengers the Assassins?

I just don't see how crusaders is a broader concept than religous martial artist devotee.

The invoked doesn't add much in terms of story either.

It adds a fair bit of Gandalf, doesn't it?

I guess it could be done as a cleric variant, but that's changing the cleric from what it historically has been, to give it differeing armour proficiencies, weapon proficiencies, spell access etc. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's not tending to show that the traditional D&D cleric is amazingly broad in a way that the invoker isn't. It's showing that if you change the paramaters for class design you might build a "class" (really, a series of sub-classes with some mechanical overlap) that can replicate either of the earlier classes.

Not every distinct identity requires a base class. In fact, most don't, or we'd be drowning in them (even more than we already are).

But who's the arbiter? If a lot of people actually enjoy the avenger or the warlord as a base class, what is the point of running an argument, based on your own aesthetic preconceptions, that they're wrong?

I want to address these two simultaneously because its quite clear that my post (I just reread it) was not thorough enough in conveying what I was attempting to get across. So I'll take a moment to try to extend it.

Like D'Karr I can't XP this, but a terrific post.

Lancelot) Paladin, though flawed. Could perhaps be best modeled as a fighter in contrast with Galahad.
Galahad) Definitely a paladin.

My own take: Lancelot is a STR paladin (PP perhaps Knight Commander on the back of a warlord MC)), Galahad a CHA paladin (PP Questing Knight). I know that a lot of people don't like the V-shaped classes, but I personally think this on its own is justification for the two paladin options!

SPECIFICALLY in 4e the notion is that NPCs are NOT associated with a class, that classes are tools used to create a PLAYER CHARACTER around an archetype. NPCs are supporting cast. ONLY the PCs have classes.

<snip>

Of course there ARE potent NPCs, worthy enemies, and stout allies. They STILL aren't PCs, they're elite or solo 'monsters' with thematic powers. Stat blocks which the DM is free to and encouraged to modify as-needed during play. These characters may be intended to fill the same sorts of world-roles as PCs (IE they maybe rival adventurers, mighty wizards, etc) but they are mechanically nothing like PCs.

<snip>

4e simply doesn't work this way and PC classes ARE NOT and need not be designed to serve as NPC templates.

<snip>

There are no warlords or avengers without a party. In a given setting the PC is unique, each one is a special snowflake that exists nowhere else, a hero with a story and a destiny. NPCs are totally different.

That one's been pretty thoroughly debunked over the years. Some PCs might fit that description. However, it is not definitionally true.

But nor is it definitionally true that a class is first and foremost a world-building or world-representing tool.

AbdulAlhazred isn't asserting a definitional truth. He's pointing out a system feature of 4e and its use of classes as (overwhelmingly) PC building tools. And the broader point is that there are multiple ways of using classes (ie at least the 4e way, and the 3E way), and D&Dnext presumably - given its proclaimed universality - should have regard to these multiple ways.

 

[Balesir]

Look at a character sheet again.
How does your character's name facilitate any of the above? How does their height and weight? Their religion? Their eye colour?

Those seem to me much the same. The creatures in the world don't need to have those things written down (with arbitrary units assigned such as "feet" and "inches" or whatever) on a "character sheet" - they just look at the character! In the final analysis, their only use is for times when another denisen of the game world has a trait such as "hates redheads"; you then need to know who has red hair (and looking at the character themselves is not possible).

Many RPGs do without classes altogether and just have key abilities, allowing you to build a fighter by taking fighter-esque powers. So classes don't really facilitate any of that.

The mechanical resolution in the game is the simplest most bare bones expression of the game. You can get that with any of the Delve games such as Ravenloft or Wrath of Ashardalon. But they are not RPGs.

Classes are not just mechanics. If they were it would be simpler to take the route of many other games and dump them and access the mechanics directly, giving greater freedom to the building of characters.
Classes are a storytelling tool. You'll never face the villiage priest on combat. The DM might never even write his stats. Mechanically he does not exist and is a void in the rules. But one you say he's a "cleric" he exists both mechanically and narratively.

Is it possible to envision a world where game-mechanical conceits have some recognised currency in the game world? Sure. The "Erfworld" webcomic does a neat job of spinning yarns in such a world. But Efrworld's setting is meant to be a fantasy boardgame, not an RPG, and I think that says something. Game facets such as "alignment" and "class" have seldom been actual game world concepts, IME. You end up with some pretty weird societies if they are - most D&D published worlds don't really work under those conditions, for example.

As for getting rid of classes from D&D, of course it's possible. A plethora of fantasy RPGs with no classes should make that obvious. My question is why on earth you would ever want to?? I mean, those plethora of classless fantasy RPGs already exist - but D&D is pretty much the class-based fantasy RPG. Unless you regard D&D as some sort of "prize" and feel a need to convert it to your (single) preferred style of play, I really don't see why you'd want to take the classes out of D&D - classes are part of what differentiates D&D from many other RPGs.

 

[Jester David]

I'm not sure what version or level of D&D you were running this scenario in. In 4e, make the ghost a solo a 4th level solo and that will be fairly tough for 1st level PCs.

Or make it a 5th level elite and let it animate the dead bodies of its victims to round out the encounter.

And against a ghostly haunting in 4e much of the preliminary conflict would presumably be skill-challengey rather than combat, I imagine.

I guess I'm not really seeing how this encounter would play radically different in other versions of D&D (I mean, in AD&D if that haunting was a ghost in the technical sense then the whole village would already have died of old age!).

Most of my experiences with 4e came in the first two years. (In retrospect my campaign probably ran closer to two years of monthly play.) At that point, solos were not particularly inspiring and my attempts at using them were fights that went on far too long but with no one in danger of death. I tried running some higher level elites and they always died exceedingly fast.
I hear they fixed that in MM3 and later books but it was too late for me.

Part of the problem is also the ease of the combat rush. I know a LOT of 3e-4e fans stumbled with this when they started playing Next and the Caves of Chaos. The inability in that story to just charge into a fight. We've had two editions that have taught players that unless your DM is a colossal dick the fight will be fair and balanced. With 3e there was still the chance for some strategic element, where you might be better off holding back the charge until you buffed a few rounds. In 4e, with most buffs being combat buffs there was seldom any reason to delay except to allow the defender and controller to go first to really handle the fight.

This made investigation and alternative-victory combats hard (and still hard in my Pathfinder game).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Most of my experiences with 4e came in the first two years. (In retrospect my campaign probably ran closer to two years of monthly play.) At that point, solos were not particularly inspiring and my attempts at using them were fights that went on far too long but with no one in danger of death. I tried running some higher level elites and they always died exceedingly fast.
I hear they fixed that in MM3 and later books but it was too late for me.

IME a lot of the earlier monsters were fine too, but there were some bad ones, and a lot of higher level ones that were just mediocre. There was definitely a learning curve where it took them a year to really get it down hard once the game was released. Still, I use plenty of MM1 monsters today and they're fine. Sometimes I up their damage a bit or whatever, but mostly if you put them in interesting situations then they're fine. The MM3 and on versions are always EVEN BETTER of course. The same is true for MM1 solos. I actually ran an MM1 adult white dragon fight early on, and it was pretty good. I threw in a bunch of chillborn zombies and stuff like that and had them frozen in ice pillars that would get smashed during the fight, there was glare ice, and pieces of roof that would fall. It would be a lot better with the new White Dragon I'd guess, but the old Solos were workable, at least at low-mid level. You had to add action denial recovery tricks at high levels, but MM2 came out by the time we got there and had some usable designs.

I would say this, the 4e monsters weren't the best ones ever starting out, mostly, but WotC followed through and kept iterating better designs and wasn't afraid to roll out replacements. Contrast with the 1e MM where the monsters were not bad, a mixed bag from great to kinda bad, but they never tweaked any of them based on lessons learned. We didn't get improved versions until 2e (some huge improvements), which was kinda a long time to wait.

Part of the problem is also the ease of the combat rush. I know a LOT of 3e-4e fans stumbled with this when they started playing Next and the Caves of Chaos. The inability in that story to just charge into a fight. We've had two editions that have taught players that unless your DM is a colossal dick the fight will be fair and balanced. With 3e there was still the chance for some strategic element, where you might be better off holding back the charge until you buffed a few rounds. In 4e, with most buffs being combat buffs there was seldom any reason to delay except to allow the defender and controller to go first to really handle the fight.

This made investigation and alternative-victory combats hard (and still hard in my Pathfinder game).

Eh, I dunno, when I did Caves of Chaos we didn't literally just run in, we snuck up, ganked the outdoor kobolds, avoided the orc cave trap, chose a direction that had seemingly less orcs and just went for it. We'd barge a door and just take them. That was the first playtest packet, so maybe it was different later. It wasn't quite totally mindless charging in, but IME that isn't a real winner in 4e either. Triggering 2 encounters at once is bad news. See the famous Iron Tooth encounter in KotS where you get ganked for that right quick.

4e does have daily buffs, which will last 5 minutes, but there aren't a ton of them that you want to use before a fight. That role is played more by potions than anything else in 4e. That and some rituals. You'd also use story means (getting some allies, setting an ambush, etc). I always found the AD&D/3e buffing ritual a bit formulaic once you did it a couple times. I think there could be a shift in balance back in that direction some, because for instance it means weaker monsters can be a bit more challenge, you don't waste your buffs on them, so it can help a bit with quicker skirmish type fights. Its fun too, and 4e did seem to de-emphasize it. You COULD still play that way, it just wasn't the only sane way to go.

 

[D'karr]

The inability in that story to just charge into a fight. We've had two editions that have taught players that unless your DM is a colossal dick the fight will be fair and balanced.

Then I'm a colossal dick, and I gladly admit it. Both 3.x and 4e gave the DM tools to ascertain the difficulty of an encounter based on a metagame assumptions of a "notional party". Both games also gave the DM guidance on encounter level spread from cakewalk to overpowering. In 4e the numbers are quite accurate. So if I use an EL+6 encounter I'm pretty sure it is going to be overpowering.

I've never been afraid of using encounters where one of the options is "running away" or "avoid", and my players know it. I don't surprise them with it. If an encounter is overpowering they know it. Then the chips fall where they may. If someone else has "trained" their players to think that encounters are always balanced, that is not a function of the game system assumptions.

The game gives clear guidance. If DMs choose to ignore it that is not a failure of the system.

 

[Garthanos]

Then I'm a colossal dick, and I gladly admit it. Both 3.x and 4e gave the DM tools to ascertain the difficulty of an encounter based on a metagame assumptions of a "notional party". Both games also gave the DM guidance on encounter level spread from cakewalk to overpowering. In 4e the numbers are quite accurate. So if I use an EL+6 encounter I'm pretty sure it is going to be overpowering.

I've never been afraid of using encounters where one of the options is "running away" or "avoid", and my players know it. I don't surprise them with it. If an encounter is overpowering they know it. Then the chips fall where they may. If someone else has "trained" their players to think that encounters are always balanced, that is not a function of the game system assumptions.

The game gives clear guidance. If DMs choose to ignore it that is not a failure of the system.

I have also allowed preparatory activities like setting traps to turn a situation in dramatic ways...

Skill challenges (explicit or implicit) whose results can be avoiding an other wise untenable degree of challenge which a direct fight would incur, and so on and so forth.

My players have no problems running when something seems of overwhelming odds.

 

[Dausuul]

Then I'm a colossal dick, and I gladly admit it. Both 3.x and 4e gave the DM tools to ascertain the difficulty of an encounter based on a metagame assumptions of a "notional party". Both games also gave the DM guidance on encounter level spread from cakewalk to overpowering. In 4e the numbers are quite accurate. So if I use an EL+6 encounter I'm pretty sure it is going to be overpowering.

Part of the problem here is that while D&D may give the DM tools to ascertain the difficulty of an encounter, it offers no such aid to the players, who ultimately have to decide whether or not to pick a fight with a given group of foes. In my experience, early 4E is especially bad about this. Let's say your 6th-level party encounters a group of eight legion devils. Should you fight them? Well, they might be legion devil grunts, in which case they're 6th-level minions and your party will roll right over them. On the other hand, they might be legion devil legionnaires, in which case they're 21st-level minions and will turn you into mincemeat.

Since players have no way of knowing whether a given encounter is within their capabilities, they often default to the assumption that the DM doesn't put unbeatable challenges in front of them. The DM has to go out of his or her way to signal that a fight is too powerful, and if the DM doesn't do this very often, they're apt to miss the signals. (I recently had an 11th-level 4E party gearing up for the climactic showdown of the campaign, in which they had to bind an archdevil. Their initial plan was to slug it out toe-to-toe. I hinted that the archdevil was out of their league and they needed a better plan. This graduated to having NPCs tell them bluntly that they didn't have a prayer. Finally I had to break character and tell them outright to quit metagaming, it was going to get them slaughtered.)

I'm hoping that D&DN will make monsters a little more consistent, and maybe include a "monster lore" check that would give you a rough idea of a new monster's power level.

 

[Balesir]

Part of the problem here is that while D&D may give the DM tools to ascertain the difficulty of an encounter, it offers no such aid to the players, who ultimately have to decide whether or not to pick a fight with a given group of foes. In my experience, early 4E is especially bad about this.

That reminded me - I think this is a good point and I had a plan to try out to address it. There used to be a (mostly ignored, IME) cleric spell called "Augury" (ask a question for a "good"/"neutral"/"bad" answer); I was going to make a ritual of it and have it able to tell you if a specified encounter zone was "lower level than you", "about the same level as you" or "higher level than you". Casting requires a few minutes and the cost of a cup of tea, or similar...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Part of the problem here is that while D&D may give the DM tools to ascertain the difficulty of an encounter, it offers no such aid to the players, who ultimately have to decide whether or not to pick a fight with a given group of foes. In my experience, early 4E is especially bad about this. Let's say your 6th-level party encounters a group of eight legion devils. Should you fight them? Well, they might be legion devil grunts, in which case they're 6th-level minions and your party will roll right over them. On the other hand, they might be legion devil legionnaires, in which case they're 21st-level minions and will turn you into mincemeat.

Since players have no way of knowing whether a given encounter is within their capabilities, they often default to the assumption that the DM doesn't put unbeatable challenges in front of them. The DM has to go out of his or her way to signal that a fight is too powerful, and if the DM doesn't do this very often, they're apt to miss the signals. (I recently had an 11th-level 4E party gearing up for the climactic showdown of the campaign, in which they had to bind an archdevil. Their initial plan was to slug it out toe-to-toe. I hinted that the archdevil was out of their league and they needed a better plan. This graduated to having NPCs tell them bluntly that they didn't have a prayer. Finally I had to break character and tell them outright to quit metagaming, it was going to get them slaughtered.)

I'm hoping that D&DN will make monsters a little more consistent, and maybe include a "monster lore" check that would give you a rough idea of a new monster's power level.

Eh, 4e has a perfectly good simple answer for that, the Monster Knowledge check, which can be supplemented by more specific lore. I mean, sure, I can see in theory where you can think this is a problem, but was it any different in 3e where every monster could have class levels etc, and CR was super random? The whole IDEA of the game IMHO is the players going into the unknown and figuring it out. Even OD&D had 'dungeon level' to insure that the weaker party wouldn't stumble into a suicidal situation.