You've acknowledged that all you need to alleviate your concerns is that any Warlord class added by optional. The way 5e is set up, that was already inevitable.
So Lay on Hands and Divine Smite aren't magic either I suppose?
Divine Smite uses spell slots, so that's a pretty strong argument for it being magical. Lay on Hands is not, by the guidelines we have, necessarily magical.
You can play it however you want at your table, but protective auras and healing hands are magic at my table. And I assume most others as well.
You can assume, but you don't know, and, even if you had a solid majority to point to, it would still be a fallacious appeal to popularity.
And I think it has already gone too far in some respects.
You think 5 sub-classes out of 38 covering the range of heroic archetypes that are actually far more common in genre is 'gone to far?' You're wrong.
Besides, 5e is trying to appeal to fans of and cover playstyles supported by each prior edition. There are prior editions that covered a broader ranger of no-casting archetypes, even if you just consider Core material. Conversely, no prior edition has come close to offering the range, number, and mechanical variety of spellcasters in their first PH that 5e has done (which is not a complaint: it's a consequence of including classes from each prior PH1, particularly the Sorcerer & Warlock, which each, like the Warlord, have only appeared in a single prior-edition PH1).
I house rule things to make the game more to my liking, you should probably do the same.
You can't run a good 5e game without making a lot of rulings, but creating whole new classes is beyond the pale. It's much easier to ban a class you don't care for than to design one.
Yes, it did go further. It was to explain why a Warlord should be agreed upon by the entire group.
In the sense you mean, every PC should be acceptable to everyone. There's nothing about the Warlord that makes it any more so than the Paladin, Warlock, Assassin, Mystic or many other existing or potential classes.
As long as all the other players have no problem being inspired by the Warlord it's fine. If someone does not want to have that relationship with the Warlord then it should not be forced upon him.
And, mechanically, it never was. In that sense, it's less of an issue than with most other classes.
And here we go with the judging of my character concepts.
What do you think you've been doing the whole time?
But, for the record, in the bit you quoted, I was pointing out that such concepts were a real thing, that people might actually want to play. Any implementation of the Warlord needs to take that into account - the way the 4e Warlord did, by making it's abilities work on willing allies. Indeed, given the 5e action economy, it'd make a lot of sense for them to mostly work on actively cooperating allies - using a Reaction to take a granted attack, for one obvious instance.
The Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard party seems to work fine without any inspiring of each other.
But not without cooperation and acceptance. If the Wizard was a militant atheist who freaked out every time the Cleric Blessed him or healed anyone, and started Counterspelling the Cleric to prove something, you'd have an issue. That's a bizarre hypothetical, but then, so are the ones you're bringing up, like the Romantic/Stalker class.
They can be friends, respect each other, coordinate attacks and use tactics just fine.
Actually, aside from Focus Fire, the rogue pseudo-flanking to get SA, and any meta-gaming the players want to engage in, they really can't coordinate attacks or use many tactics, at all.
But throw a Bard or Warlord (or certain abilities of a Battle Master Fighter) and all of a sudden they find those characters inspiring. Because mechanics.
You must find the Bard inspiring, sure, because maybe-magic, but the Warlord's mechanics were written such that finding him inspiring was something you could decline if you wanted. Like I pointed out to Hussar, above, that's even a legitimate, if a little extreme, RP consideration.
I'm not saying a Warlord player shows up and says: "I am awesome! Worship me!"
You have been saying exactly that.
But it does require that the other characters have a certain amount of respect, admiration or affection for the Warlord.
No, it still does not require that. You can be inspired by the actions or words of a social inferior or less capable individual, or even be inspired to greater efforts by a need to compete with a bitter rival. Inspiration is a fleeting thing, while opinions and feelings towards an individual can be shaped by prejudice or first impressions and be lasting and durable, in spite of what happens in the heat of combat. So, no, there is no RP requirement you love/respect/admire someone just because they manage to get you rally in a battle. You may even resent them for it later ("You manipulated me! You bastard!").
Nothing! The Thief Rogue and Champion Fighter are two of my favorite class/subclass combinations.
So you do have something against Battlemasters, Warlords, Assassins (a little more understandable), and Berserkers.
But I do believe that certain things require magic to do. You can't fly without magic no matter how awesome you are.
Well, there are races with wings.
Likewise I think other abilities should be limited to magic.
There are certainly things magic can do, and ways that magic can do things, that are very different from other means. I'm afraid you're conflating function with fiction, though. A fireball burns everything in a largish area, it's also very clearly magical. A vat of flaming oil dumped from atop a castle wall is clearly not magical, but it does burn everything in a largish area. A Fly spell is obviously magical, wings aren't (though in a fantasy world they can lift larger creatures than physics would allow IRL), but both can get you to the other side of chasm - and so can some rope and pitons.
I realize there is no Warlord in 5e, but this whole discussion is about including one.
And it shouldn't include mechanics that force actions, or even benefits, or specific RP relationships, on other creatures. We can agree on that. And move on from it. Any time.
So far the experiences described of 4e Warlords is that most never even considered the RP aspects of the mechanics.
You're talking about one anecdote. I can assure that 1) every class anyone ever played in 4e when I was running, playing, or even just watching, got the fluff of it's mechanics considered at times (and also ignored at times, because sometimes you just keep the game moving, or everyone's already aware of why your character can do one of his shticks), and that it was no different from 3.x or 5e in that regard, nor was there any great difference from one class to another. And that, 2) the kinds of hypothetical RP conflicts you're imagining the Warlord would create never actually happened. So there's a couple hundred anecdotes summed up for you.
Of course, to be fair, if you hated 4e on contact, or just had a bad experience and stopped playing it, you wouldn't, by definition, have a lot of experience with it. These things are always self-selecting to a degree. I'm fine with 4e in part because I never had a terrible experience with it. You may have had a bad experience or impression, so you haven't had a chance to accumulate a greater quantity of experiences - afterall, you have reason to believe they'd all be bad.
(I'm just glad the players at my HotDQ Encounters table didn't take that attitude towards 5e.)
If they did think about the RP aspects it sounds like they either accepted the Warlord as an inspiring figure because they had no problem with the fluff or they did have a problem with it but didn't want to make a stink at the table. I think you would find the latter is more common than you think.
I've never seen it happen, so, yes, even one occurrence would be more than I have any reason to expect. I have seen RP conflicts in the past, mostly in 1e days, typically involving Paladins, so I'm not saying it never, ever happens and couldn't ever happen. Even if it might, though, it still wouldn't be a reason to avoid publishing the class.
Sure, the problems you imagine are a remotely plausible hypothetical possibility, and similar problems have happened with other classes in the past, even in my own experience. But they're not worth constraining range of the whole game to avoid.
You want abilities that are not-magic, but have miraculous effects. The need for something like this is not something I understand.
There's nothing miraculous about inspiration or recovering hps. Inspiration just happens when you RP your character traits. That's not a miracle. An hour's rest can restore all your hps, from 0. That's not a miracle. A character just nocked down and making Death saves has 5% chance to pop right back up again, remarkable, but not magical or supernatural. Not a miracle. Using a Reaction to Attack can happen with an AoO. Not a miracle. Granting Advantage can be done with the Help Action. Not a miracle. Nothing a BM does with a maneuver is miraculous, nothing a Warlord ever did in 4e was supernatural or miraculous.
Supernatural is precisely what we don't want, when you say we want the Warlord to do something 'miraculous' you are intentionally mis-representing what the class did in 4e, and what it's been proposed it do in 5e.
Stop it.
And this is the whole disagreement, isn't it? Some say it is possible without magic, some say that it isn't.
Depending on what 'it' is, the latter people are simply wrong. In 5e, for instance, it is entirely possible, without magic to: recover from 0 hps instantly (20 on a death save), to heal hps instantly (Second Wind), to recover all your hps (HD or overnight rest), to gain Advantage (help action), inflict Disadvantage (Protection Style), grant an ally an attack as a Reaction (BM Manuever), grant Temp hps (Inspiring Leader), and prettymuch everything that's supposedly a sticking point.
You mention the old "lawful stupid" paladin and how it was bad for the table when someone brought one into the group. It was so bad apparently that they removed it from 5e. A paladin can be any alignment and their oaths are a lot more lenient.
It was so bad it took 33 years to soften with 4e. And 5e actually swung back a little in that direction, with one of the three paladin choices harkening back to it, and provisions for paladins 'falling.'
But now you want to bring a class back that has a similar problem. And just because you don't see it doesn't me it isn't a problem.
Just because you do see it doesn't mean it is a problem. And, I do very clearly see what you're talking about. It just doesn't happen in practice, and isn't the problem you make it out to be, nor is a unique potential problem. Any class could come into conflict with some particularly stringent, not very accommodating RP requirement conceived for some other character by a fairly inconsiderate player with an agenda, looking to create a problem. I'm sorry, but your hypotheticals are really hypothetical, and do require players who are being real jerks.
I won't say the solution is 'don't play with jerks,' because we all know that's not always an option, but trying to be less of a jerk, yourself, helps as does opening up some honest dialogue. The problems you want to use as a pretext to dictate to everyone how they must play the game are soluble in much simpler ways, on a much more practical and personal scale.
A little respect goes a long way, especially when you're not on-line.
I have been looking for an exit from this thread and I think this is it.[/quote]You had a perfect exit a few pages back: you want the Warlord to be added as an optional class. Classes are optional by their very nature (they are player options), and any non-core material (anything not already in the PH) is opt-in optional for the DM. The way 5e is set up, the Warlord can't be added to the game in any way that could be viewed as anything but entirely optional. You could have declared victory right then.
But to get this straight. Your horribly unhappy if someone says...
"my conviction is so great that my charisma inspires you to dodging fireballs"
But perfectly fine with...
"my conviction is so great that my charisma magically inspires you to dodging fireballs"
?
Can't say i see much difference.
It's a double-standard that's been pervasive with D&Ders, throughout the game's history. You can't be surprised by it.
Good gravy! Do the mechanics enforce a social order on the group! No. The group does that on their own.
And, in my extensive experience as a
cat herder DM, that social 'order' is often more like
chaos. ;P
