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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6735114" data-attributes="member: 996">There's a whole 'nother thread on the topic.  Temp hps can never do the job of restoring hps, because they can't bring a fallen ally back from 0, and because, like other forms of damage-mitigation, they essentially require 'prescience' to grant to the right ally every time, or they're wasted. There are.   There are times when temp hps or damage mitigation are the better/more-efficient choice, and times when hp-restoration or condition removal are.  Being able to do only one or the other makes you a strictly inferior support character and non-viable as the soul support contribution for a party, even having them in a fixed ratio instead of having flexibility leaves you a less desireable one.They are two very different claims.  The latter, even though only relating an unveriviable anecdote from an anonymous person on the internet, is, ironically, the stronger the two.  Both are far less compelling than, say, a survey result here on ENworld - and those surveys are statistically pretty worthless.I have to strongly disagree.  The cleric's healing comes mostly from his spell list.  That list is expansive and highly varied, from offensive & defensive buffs, healing, damage mitigation, and other suport functions, to utility magic and rituals, to single target control, battlefield, control, and outright blasting. The Warlord does need a wide range of goodies, but not quite as wide as the Cleric already has, there's nothing that would have to be 'given up' for the ability to restore hps.  A much smaller and more specific list than what any full caster could do.  Not a problem. It's not all-or-nothing like that.  You can accommodate everyone who wants to play a Warlord, both those who want to play one that's an effective support character and can handle the 'healing burden' of restoring hps, and those who want to play one as an offensive-buffer or whatever else and eschew actual hp restoration, entirely.  It's just a matter of making the class flexible and customizeable enough to do that - that'd be more flexible than any existing martial class, but less so than any of the full casters, so well with the range of possibilities that's workable for the game.That's really begging the question, though.  The OP was trying to understand the opposition to adding the Warlord, at all, which is an uncompromising position, to say the least.  If you would never use the class, there's little reason to worry about how it's implemented.  If you might use the class, and so might others who wanted different things out of it, a reasonable compromise would be to provide options that let you each build the character you want, rather than 'compromising' by taking away any feature that either of you object to, leaving neither of you with the ability to build the character you want. A warlord that could restore hps, if the player chose the right option, would be a compromise.  You don't have to use it. You can cut any Warlord ability that you feel 'heals' just like you did Second Wind.  And HD.  5e tends to recycle specifics like spells and mechanics, if you ban a spells, chances are that a creature with the same kind of magical ability will use that spell to model it, and there's nothing more you need to do.  The same would likely be true of anything like Second Wind or Inspiring Word - if something in the future does the same thing, it'll probably just use the same mechanic.  Even if it doesn't, it's no great effort to cut it, as well.There are a lot of things already in 5e that people might ban or change or just choose not to use for a specific character, any new class would be no different in that regard, it'd have some things some players like and choose to use, while others don't care for it.  The Warlord's not unique in that.  It's unique in being from 4e, and having a lot of lingering edition-war animosity still focused on it, but aside from that, it's just a class that the game had done well before, that 5e hasn't tried to tackle yet, and that will open up more player, character-concept, and play-style options if it ever is added.The opposite is true.  Striking something from your campaign, be it a class or even a specific mechanic is very easy.  Creating a new class or novel mechanic is the kind of game-design work you pay for when you shell out for a rule book.  It is much, much easier to ban what you don't want than to create from whole cloth things that are missing.A well-structured, option-rich, customizeable design can make that /easier/ though.  Take Second Wind, for instance.  It's not an option, all Fighters get it, so if you want fighters, you get Second Wind, if you don't like it because it's 'martial healing,' then you can ban it, but there's no neat alternative to put in its place.  If, the Fighter had an alternate feature or two it could take instead of Second Wind, it'd be simpler to ban.  The Warlord's primary contribution to the party was always support, that kind of contribution requires flexibility, because it becomes most important when things are going against the party (almost be definition, not as planned), and you can't predict what's going to cause that.  The Warlord will have to be flexible, anyway, and using that flexibility - as a player can let you skip any specific mechanic you don't want to deal with, and, as a DM, lets you cut specific options since there are already alternatives that players can use, instead. I think it's weird that you would be concerned about 'seeming mean' to a hypothetical player who might play in your game someday, but not about /actually/ being mean to /everyone/ who might ever want to play one, or even allow one in the campaign.  Actually, if done well, it wouldn't.  If it's as flexible as other existing support classes, it would be no more of an impediment to modularity than any of them.  True.  A self-selecting poll taken at a time when many fans had been well and truly alienated is hardly representative.  Likewise the playtest polling was anything but ideally constructed.  For instance, there was never a single question about the Warlord in any early playtest survey - I don't think in /any/ of them, but I did miss one or two of 'em.</blockquote>

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