D&D (2024) How should the Warlord be implemented in 1DnD?

[Vaalingrade]

Also, if the Warlord gets abilities like the Battlemaster gets abilities, there's only going to be a handful anyone will want to get and then the rest will be just filler for higher levels.

 

[Incenjucar]

I just compare the existing classes and subclasses. I'm not talking about universal things like the spellcasting system. Outside of legacy abilities like Evasion, or specific Group abilities like Expertise, it's rarely done. How many subclasses have the same abilities?

You're going to need to do the work of finding unique things as examples as otherwise this is going to be chasing goal posts and definitions.

 

[Shardstone]

Warlord should be combined with the Fighter.

Fighters should be able to both fight with their own weapons and help their team fight better with weapons too. This makes the Fighter significantly different from the Barbarian for the first time in history. Fighter can give up its extra attacks to give other allies attacks, or give up its entire action or bonus action to get an ally to use theirs. This is a pretty simple feature to design imo and lets the Fighter dip into tactical combos with teammates. Then you can have subclasses that tie deeper into this stuff, giving allies orders and what not to execute on their turn with bonuses or to create unique effects.

 

[Incenjucar]

Rogue should just be a fighter that uses its extra attacks to fuel sneak attacks and dodging, then.

 

[Shardstone]

Rogue should just be a fighter that uses its extra attacks to fuel sneak attacks and dodging, then.

I wasn't trying to be silly, I was giving an earnest suggestion. I have no idea how to respond to what you just said outside of that.

 

[Incenjucar]

I wasn't trying to be silly, I was giving an earnest suggestion. I have no idea how to respond to what you just said outside of that.

Making the warlord just a fighter theme dramatically narrows what the warlord can be and how it can work.

 

[Shardstone]

Making the warlord just a fighter theme dramatically narrows what the warlord can be and how it can work.

I don't think it should be just a fighter theme, I think it should be part of the core identity of the fighter.

I think the Fighter doesn't make any sense right now. Its just a dude who fights well. Isn't a barbarian a dude who fights well? Yeah yeah, Rage flavor, whatever.

Fighter should have everything it does now + everything a Warlord can do. Then, IMO, that would be a class that's equal to a caster while being a martial.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Why was it arbitrary, given Clerics were known for healing?

The only reason the warlord wasn’t just as good at healing was that, on release, they had to give each class a focus within their role in order to avoid a thousand powers per class per book.

By the end, I’m not even sure that warlords still lagged behind clerics, if built for healing. But they did in the beginning, because it kept power count down and help distinguish classes within a role. The Cleric could have been known for being a high damage leader instead, leaning into group damage boosting and powers that target an enemy and then give the whole team a boost against the target until end of encounter, with a side of healing, and warlord could have given a trickle of healing with damn near every power, and then had big flashy “rally” dailies that healed the whole team with a tactical buff on the side.

But they didn’t, because they had arbitrarily decided to nod to the cleric being a healbot by making them a healbot that can also lay down fire.

 

[Incenjucar]

I don't think it should be just a fighter theme, I think it should be part of the core identity of the fighter.

I think the Fighter doesn't make any sense right now. Its just a dude who fights well. Isn't a barbarian a dude who fights well? Yeah yeah, Rage flavor, whatever.

Fighter should have everything it does now + everything a Warlord can do. Then, IMO, that would be a class that's equal to a caster while being a martial.

There's no need to combine them. They don't automatically overlap. A warlord could be a crummy fighter with good ideas.

Mechanically, fighters are flexible rapid attackers with a gear focus and barbarians are narrow hard attackers without a gear focus.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'm talking about the niche protection of the specific abilities themselves. If a Warlord class gets 40 unique abilities to a main class and subsequent subclasses, the Fighter and Paladin can't get any of them.

Sure they can.