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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6802979" data-attributes="member: 996">That's the only possible point of an all-martial party?  Not, say, everyone wanting to play a concept that didn't happen to call for spell-casting or other magical abilities?  I've been in games where that just happened, spontaneously.  I don't think anyone does.   It'd nice if they could be de facto competent de facto adventurers, though.  But mis-characterizing any class that has resources to manage as a "de facto caster" is just edition war nonsense.  The 5e Champion & Battlemaster fighter have such abilities (Action Surge, Second Wind), and there are no complaints about them 'casting spells.'  Indeed, the Fighter (EK), actually does cast spells, still with no complaints.   5e is clearly fine with all classes being de-facto, if not literal, casters.Rather, the Warlord's abilities just have to fit within 5e's framework (which is so broad and open that anything could fit in it, really), be no more broken and imbalanced than any existing class (another bar trivially easy to clear), cover at least the range of concepts it has in the past (a little more work), and stack up adequately compared to other classes that make similar party contributions.  That last is the tough one, since it requires making the Warlord significantly more capable and versatile than any class in 4e was.That's the real stumbling block.Like I said, I've been in games that just happened to have everyone choosing a non-caster.  The 4e instances went fine.  Worst thing that happened was we borked a Skill Challenge that needed way too many hard Arcana checks. Of course, before that, the policy was always simple:  first to die rolls up a cleric. ;P    Then we don't need the Paladin with his lay on hands, or those 5 classes with cure wounds and/or healing word in their lists (among many other leaderish spells and features).  *Poof,* they're gone.  Game still OK?  Nope, it's lacking, there are all these concepts you used to be able to realize in past editions that you can't anymore.  "Don't need it" isn't the same as "shouldn't have it."  You don't /need/ most of the classes in D&D.Neither edition was as one-note as you're making them sound.  The most efficient way to use healing in 4e was to use it exclusively on dropped allies.  Allies did drop (in remotely difficult fights), and heal-from-zero made healing them optimal.  5e combats (in order to get to the recommended 6-8/day) can be individually easy almost to the point of triviality, but they aren't all that way, and there's not a big difference between in-combat healing and healing when you don't have a full hour for a short rest, so 'in combat healing' really includes any series of combats spaced less than an hour apart, and, 5e is heal-from-0 by default, making that the most efficient way to do it.  Not so different, at all, in that sense.  Healing resource other than HD in 5e are also a lot more important than non-surge healing was in 4e, because they add directly to the party's viability over the course of the day, they're part of the ed's 'attrition model,' and they're mostly (as spells) very flexible, adding to the whole resource-management mode of play.  A party getting by on just HD is going to fall short in that model - whether that ends up game-breaking depends on the style and the details of the campaign.  A 4e party could get by without a full leader by resting and spending surges after every combat and using Second Wind (including using Heal to trigger a downed ally's second wind) in combat.  It wasn't optimal, but it was more nearly viable than trying to get by with just HD in 5e.Not that healing hasn't always been an important part of D&D PCs living up to some extent to their genre inspiration.  Hps (and saving throws) always vaguely modeled 'plot armor,' and restoring the former was critical to having any sense of jeopardy within a single encounter, as well as being necessary just to keep the adventure going.  But starting with 3e the realities of healing resources shifted from keeping the party going through the day, to keeping it alive within a given combat.  Between-combat healing became trivial through the 3.x WoCLW (& 3.5 WoLV), so spells were used for in-combat healing (when someone dropped) or, more often, general CoDzilla rampages.  Aside from doing away with CoDzilla, that same dynamic was true in 4e, and is not that much less true in 5e.  HD still make between-combat healing fairly plentiful and in-combat healing important, 'in combat' just applies to any series of combats with less than an hour's break.</blockquote>

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