D&D 5E How many fans want a 5E Warlord?

[mellored]

what do you think about words like "teamwork", "combo", or "group effort"?

i.e. death from 2 sides.
you and a willing ally assault a foe in unison. attack an enemy, and the ally can use his reaction to attack the same foe. if you both hit, the allies attack is a crit.

 

[Guest 6801328]

what do you think about words like "teamwork", "combo", or "group effort"?

i.e. death from 2 sides.
you and a willing ally assault a foe in unison. attack an enemy, and the ally can use his reaction to attack the same foe. if you both hit, the allies attack is a crit.

Going only on what you just wrote there it sounds great. E.g., "The warlord uses his positioning to force an adversary to turn away from a selected ally. If that ally hits the adversary with a weapon attack before the adversary's next turn, the hit is automatically a critical." (or whatever the situation and bonus are.)

I have no problems with something like that at all. Nobody is commanding anybody else to do anything; the ally has to buy into the plan. It sounds fun.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Actually I understand that completely, but from the other direction.

I hate feeling like a "spell victim" because somebody cast a spell at me, even though it may very well have the same mechanical benefit. I prefer my wits, skills and training, and it's not always emulated well in dnd.

Not sure I understand...are you saying that receiving spells make you feel disempowered, but being inspired/ordered/commanded by a Warlord makes you feel like you're using your own wits/skills/training?

EDIT: Or are you saying that BEING the Warlord and using those abilities makes it feel like it's your own wits/skills/training? That I could understand.

 

[mellored]

I sit at the opposite extreme. What is most important to me is the flavor, and that it is a legitimate alternative for either bard, cleric or druid. I don't really care as much about the mechanically beyond it not being similar to spellcasting.

since people claim it's mind control magic, why not make it mind control magic (i.e. psionic/arent)? you mind control someone to make an extra attack (no save for the willing). you improve their reaction time or boost their will to shake off a spell, or the reverse. you can link minds to share proficency. ect...

actually, i think i like the ardent that better then the warlord or tactician.

 

[mellored]

Going only on what you just wrote there it sounds great. E.g., "The warlord uses his positioning to force an adversary to turn away from a selected ally. If that ally hits the adversary with a weapon attack before the adversary's next turn, the hit is automatically a critical." (or whatever the situation and bonus are.)

I have no problems with something like that at all. Nobody is commanding anybody else to do anything; the ally has to buy into the plan. It sounds fun.

well now we are getting somewhere.

just FYI: death from 2 sides is a 4e power, though i don't remeber the exact flavor sentence (never read them).

Also "ally" in 4e ment "willing target". none (maybe 1) of the warlord "commands" where manditory. you could always say no.

 

[Guest 6801328]

well now we are getting somewhere.

just FYI: death from 2 sides is a 4e power, though i don't remeber the exact flavor sentence (never read them).

Also "ally" in 4e ment "willing target". none (maybe 1) of the warlord "commands" where manditory. you could always say no.

Oh, it was in 4e? Nevermind...I HATE IT.

/jk

 

[sleypy]

since people claim it's mind control magic, why not make it mind control magic (i.e. psionic/arent)? you mind control someone to make an extra attack (no save for the willing). you improve their reaction time or boost their will to shake off a spell, or the reverse. you can link minds to share proficency. ect...

actually, i think i like the ardent that better then the warlord or tactician.

Psionics and magic aren't a whole lot different in this situation because it still removes the martial flavor.

That said, I wouldn't mind having an ardent class as an option as well.

 

[pemerton]

I still have no clue where you're getting 2:1 in favor. Every time I have looked at this poll for the past 18 days...which, let's be honest, has been much more often than it has any right to be...the blue lemon curry line/percentage has been longer than the red line

The poll is multi-choice.

As at 7.29 pm Eastern Australian time, on September 22nd, there were 294 respondents. 188 of them (just short of two-thirds) wanted a warlord. 227 of them (just over three-quarters) wanted "lemmon curry".

Hence the ratio of those who voted that they wanted a warlord, to those who declined to so vote but nevertheless responded to the poll, is in the neighbourhood of 2:1 (to be precise, it's 94:53).

 

[pemerton]

Julius Caesar is not widely-renowned for his leadership in small unit tactics. You don't need any class levels at all, of any kind, to be a good general in 5E or a good politician. High Intelligence and Charisma will help, but only if the player (or DM, if NPC) is capable of roleplaying high intelligence, charisma, and ruthless ambition.

You could build Julius Caesar on top of literally any chassis from wizard to Champion Fighter and the chassis would have almost no impact on his effectiveness as a politican.

It has skills, but they're not the same kind of skills that Julius Caesar displayed. They're D&D-oriented skills like Stealth, Survival, and Athletics. There is no "Literature" skill, or "Political acumen" or "Horse-trading" or "Military Strategy". If such things were mechanically modelled in 5E at all it would be with raw ability checks, which are unaffected by any skills

For politics, I would have thought that skills like Deception, Persuasion and Insight would all be pretty relevant. In the Roman context, also History - which in 5e (Basic PDF, p 61) includes past disputes and recent wars, and so is pretty useful for a politician, and especially a Roman one.

 

[pemerton]

Then there's all the Leaders other than the Warlord, triggering those surges magically, the fact Second Wind is usually an inferior option to letting a healer work some magic on you, the 'efficiency' of using leader powers that add extra hps to what your surge heals, and magical sources of regeneration.

So it really depends on context or the sense it's meant.

What I meant, in the post to which [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] replied, is this: when a 4e cleric speaks a Healing Word, it is not the divine magic of the gods that heals the ally. The ally heals because s/he is inspired by the cleric's benediction (mechanically, this inspiration is expressed by spending a Healing Surge). What divine magic does do, in this case, is infuse the cleric with the grace whereby s/he is able to inspire his/her ally. A warlord doesn't need to be infused with grace in this way - s/he inspires by dint of his/her own charisma.

Tying this to the concerns that [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] has been expressing, if a player takes the view that s/he (or rather, his/her PC) does not find the cleric's divine grace inspiring, s/he is always free not to spend the healing surge! In 4e there is very little mechanical incentive to take that sort of approach in playing one's PC, but in 5e it could be linked into the system for earning Inspiration.