I hope the Warlord class is good! :)

[Belorin]

The npc classes will more than likely still be in the DMG and with the emphasis on helping the new DM there may be others.
Take the sample town and adventure, including rules for running npcs is a must and introducing the npc classes would be perfect.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Forget the Warlord, I hope 4E is good...I don't have high hopes at the moment.

Way to threadcrap, champ.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

I'd certainly target a knight for a "whacking" before I targetted a footsoldier. Those "officers" were the scariest thing on the battlefield.

No, I meant, you do not attack an officer because he is the greatest physical threat. You attack him because he's a damned dangerous lynch pin that makes his unit far more bloody lethal when he's around

He's a "Force amplifier", not a "personally very deadly combatant" (like an NCO would probably be).

30 grunts = 30 grunts, but 30 grunts +1 officer = 30 EFFICIENT grunts (which is more than just a simple multiplier).

That's why Warlords could be cool. 12 goblins = fodder, 12 goblins + 1 warlord = nasty

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Yah, it's certainly nice to have an "officer" type be a force multiplier, rather than a higher level character.

I'm greatly looking forward to more details on the warlord, as I am currently inspired to do a dragonborn warlord. I'm assuming it's going to be a cross between the marshal and a White Raven-using Bo9S character.

Brad

 

[rkanodia]

I hope that the Warlord is a good class because it will finally give me an excuse to ban players from dictating the actions of other players. I've found that often there are one or two players of more tactical inclination than the others and basically end up running the combat for the entire party.* The Warlord class will let me say, "Look, if you want to discuss tactics, you can do it in character, and I'll even be generous and let you talk for fifteen seconds during each six-second round. But if you want to decide what's tactically optimal for someone else to be doing, there are game mechanics for that - take some levels of Warlord, and then give Yon Oafs some free attacks against whoever you want."

*Sometimes this has been me, and I think that muzzling myself in that regard would probably be a good thing.