There are certainly pros and cons to both, but the net result is the same as healing: more time adventuring.
Also "impossible" is a curious choice of words, as it takes only a single example to disprove.
Alright. I'll grant you "impossible" may be hyperbolic. But given that my character
literally died tonight, facing what was supposed to be an at-level encounter, and only survived because (a) my fellow-players were very kind and (b) my DM was
extremely, changing-the-game lenient, convinces me that a lack of REAL healing is a (literal) death sentence. Even when most of the people in our party have +1 or +2 Con mods, it takes just two normal hits for
any of us to go down. Are you really suggesting that people are going to be able to hand out enough THP to
double the pools available to their allies? And that they'll be able to do it often enough, regularly enough, that even when the party is at (say) half-to-2/3 resources, a fight can break out and it won't leave most of the party lying on the floor, unable to roll HD because they're at 0 HP and can't get up for 1d4 hours?
After level 4ish, I can see it. Damage dice and number of attacks
generally don't scale fast enough to make it a serious issue at that point--HD being generally as large as, or larger than, weapon dice. But at level 2 or 3, when characters are in the mid-teens for HP
if they're beefy? A single crit can put someone on the ground. (God knows I've seen it happen multiple times already, and I've only played four sessions.) Two or three perfectly normal hits can do it. And when this can happen to multiple people in a single round...what can THP do about that, unless they're so massive that levels 1-3 become a cakewalk
and thus you've made the class overpowered?
There's no hard rule that an unconscious character is taking a short rest.
No, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You
cannot take a short rest while at 0 HP--you can't do anything at all, because you are Incapacitated. Thus, if *any* character is knocked unconscious for any reason, in a party that doesn't have the ability to restore HP, the whole group must wait 1d4 hours before that character can take actions again, and can thus spend HD.
You're lucky everyone in your party can heal. My party only has the one healer (my bard) who often gets knocked down. When he goes down he's not getting back up again easily.
This is exactly what I was talking about, except worse, because at least you have
a person who can get people back, whether in or out of fights. A Warlord that absolutely cannot restore any HP except by Hit Dice is a warlord that cannot do anything about an unconscious ally until they've completed the 1d4 hours of unconsciousness, and then taking
another hour for a short rest.
Curious how you insist that I'm not allowed to say "a lot of people" without data to back it up, but you're allowed to say "every person I speak to" without data? And imply that WotC axed the warlord even if/despite lots of people liked the class and wanted one?
Because you are speaking of a silent majority whom you have had no contact with. I am speaking only and specifically of people
on this forum, who have directly spoken on the subject. The data is the posts available. Conveniently, the vast majority of them have been collected in this temporary subforum for you to peruse at your leisure.
(I would like to see that tweet BTW.)
Mike Mearls: "
The fighter warlord is martial and includes healing - we assume that if you want that in your campaign, you're cool with that." I'll note, as I said earlier, that this was from relatively late in the playtest, August 27, 2013--but the lead developer was 100% okay with providing an option that people could decide if they wanted it in their campaigns or not.
And it very much is at the expense of other options. Even if everyone wants it, there are only so many options a class has, especially at level one. The warlord will only get so many warlordy powers, and if they're a primary healer that's remotely comparable to the cleric, that means they lose a heck of a lot of options that are warlord-specific.
Well, I fundamentally disagree that including
modest healing--I don't think it needs to be even 50% what a baseline Cleric can do, e.g. one who spends a meaningful portion of slots on it--"drives out" the other options.
Some amount of HP restoration is necessary to avert the "waiting [highest 1 of Nd4]+1 hours after every fight, where N is the number of characters knocked unconscious in that fight" problem. THP cannot guarantee that won't happen. I would know. I was on the receiving end of 3 attack rolls per round tonight--from a so-called CR 2 opponent (with, I might add, 65
average HP). This modest healing can be
in addition to all sorts of other things, which could include both baked-in features and flexible/
à la carte options as well.
Warlord can theoretically: grant attacks, grant movement, improve initiative, grant new saving throws, grant attack bonuses, and potentially heal. At first level they get two. If they heal that halves their unique warlord abilities, the stuff that they can do and no other class can, in favour of some generic healing mandated by the design conventions of an irrelevant edition.
I'll give the response so glibly given by others, when I complained about just this problem during the playtest: "The first few levels go by quickly--if you want to have ALL the stuff you like, start at a higher level!"
My concerns at this point have nothing to do with 4e, and everything to do with my experience of 5e combat as being a
complete meatgrinder. We have had exactly one combat thus far that didn't knock at least one person unconscious, in five sessions. What can a Warlord do about that? Can THP
actually solve this problem, without being horribly broken, which people claim to want to
avoid by not allowing healing on Warlords?
My argument is that everyone who likes the warlord is not some gestalt hive mind and there's some variability. And that one of the sticking points regarding the warlord is martial healing. Removing overt healing in combat in favour of damage mitigation and out of combat healing might diminish the warlord hate and bring people on the fence into the pro-warlord camp.
Because it's better for the health of the community if compromises are sought and the most people possible are made happy?
So the non-warlord fans non-martial healers have to suck it up and accept a healing warlord without any compromise. That's where I have the issue. To get anything done in the world there needs to be a compromise a back and forth.
The warlord haters need to accept that there can be a warlord and they can ignore it if they want. But that works best if the warlord supporters budge on martial healing. The warlord fans get a warlord that works just fine with a couple strokes of a black pen in their book removing the word "temporary" and the warlord wary get a class that doesn't affect the rest if the game. Oh, and the people who accepting of the warlord as a concept or are willing to say "yes" if their playes want to play it but don't like martial healing (yo) will actually have a warlord they can use.
That way everyone wins!
The problem you're facing here is that Warlord fans have already made substantial sacrifices. The class will never be core. Never, ever, ever. It cannot ever be included in the PHB--that is an open and shut case. Add to that other very meaningful compromises--the "open interpretation" compromise, the frequent offers of stuff like "put a disclaimer on it advising that it's not for all campaigns and may not be allowed by all official AL DMs"--and this starts to sound more like "give up
everything, again, because the side that already got everything it wanted up to this point still isn't satisfied."
I agree that compromises are a good thing. But the reality of 5e low-level combat is simple: meatgrinder. You face a combat even 1 CR above APL, and you're in for a
world of hurt. You face such a combat when you're already low on resources? You're gonna have people die. (I would know. Again, my Bard
should have, and only extreme DM lenience and group-member kindness changed that.) What can the absolutely, dogmatically, eternally "healing"-free Warlord do about that?
Do I not know that? Sure I do. If I hate the idea of martial healing, if I want hp in my game to not be entirely defined as energy, then the warlord and martial healing change that assumption for the entire game regardless of whether or not they're used.
Martial healing doesn't
make HP be defined that way. That's an oft-repeated sentiment, but it doesn't bear out. It makes
some HP be that way--in other words,
it's actually possible for HP to be inspiration again. Otherwise, ALL HP *cannot* be Inspiration. They can only come from magic or poultices. How is *that* a compromise?
If I ban the warlord for including martial healing I have no way of knowing where martial healing will pop up in the game next. In the same way a couple monsters use something akin to superiority dice and they've added it to the ranger. Mechanics get reused. And healing is much more prevalent than superiority dice.
And each time those things come up, you, as DM, can choose not to use them. You don't need to have absolute omniscience, you don't need to foresee every single appearance decades before they happen. If a thing appears, you--in your preparations before the session, because 5e
requires DM involvement, due to its DM Empowerment! after all--decide whether or not to use it as it is, ignore it, call it a form of magic, or whatever else. Just like what will 100% guaranteed happen with
psionic abilities, even though those are already officially going to exist.
Plus, it's also easier to add things than take away. If you houserule a warlord to heal instead of granting temp hp you seem like an awesome DM (even if temp hp are functionally equal). If you take away healing and replace with temp hp it seems mean (again, despite the rough equivalence).
It may be ever-so-slightly easier on you as the DM. It's vastly--I would argue
infinitely--harder for the player. Because, at least in my experience, convincing a DM to do something that isn't in the book? Almost impossible if they have even the
slightest resistance--which can simply be "why is that necessary?" You, as the DM, already need to vet and review basically all monsters
anyway, because the CR system fundamentally depends on you fixing its wobbles. Players, on the other hand, are at the mercy of their DMs for getting the kinds of changes you advocate--and that mercy, IME, is both rare and thin.
And it works with the design goals of 5e by being modular and customization. A healing warlord messes with modularity, of which the rate of non-magical natural healing is an important dial. It stands out like a proud nail of noncomformity. A non-healing warlord works with the modularity and adapts to DMs who want more healing and those who want slower healing.
An
optional class messes with modularity? What even does "modularity" mean anymore?
A poll on a blog that would likely only be seen by D&D on the seldom used WotC forums might not be the best example of market research, nor the most accuracy representation of the fanbase.
It's official, and it's the best data we've got. It's not perfect, to be sure, but it's
something. Your appeals to a silent majority contain no data
at all, flawed or otherwise.
Especially when it was responded to by 6,799 people (assuming they couldn't vote multiple times). The 5e playtests were downloaded by 200,000 people, which is still a fraction of the audience.
And you have acquired WotC's data about them how, exactly? Less glibly, yes, there were way more people who participated--at one point or another--in the playtest. Some dropped out early, some came in late, some participated intermittently, some merely downloaded and never played, etc. But you have
no ability whatsoever to meaningfully talk about the opinions of that 200,000-person group. We can, however, meaningfully discuss the ~6800 people who voted on that WotC poll. And since someone *else* brought up the "it couldn't even graze 5%" rule, it's not even like I'm the one who entered this data into the discussion in the first place!
