Lets design a Warlord for 5th edition

[Zardnaar]

Meh, he's already proven that he will not be convinced that at will attack granting is possible to balance, never minding at will action granting. He hasn't even bothered to show why he believes this, only that he absolutely believes it and cannot be convinced otherwise.

There will always be people like that. They aren't the ones you have to convince because, no matter what you do, unless you 100% accept their ideas, they will never, ever actually engage in anything constructive.

Folks who could care less don't need to be convinced of anything.

I have seen at will action granting in action twice. Both times the player rolled a new character once because the party composition did not support it the second time because it supported it to well and the class used (Noble) was to weak at healing and gave up to much to enable it leading it to have to much variance. Note I do not think the noble is good design.

The basic argument against at will action granting in 5E is that it is twice or 3 times as strong as a major front loaded class feature that is short rest based and it is also a great class feature as well.

Its also basic math for a support class and you can compare how much damage it does v a cleric, Druid or Bards attacks.

I have said it about 50 times people don't want to admit it but its a busted ability in 5E de to the existence of the Rogue if nothing else and its a problem with a few other classes as well.

When people are comparing to daily powers on 5th-10 level PCs that may give you an idea of how silly an idea it is. I eman when you ay "But a sorcer can do it" they can but its magical, daily, limited, interuptable and with a big draw back if it is interrupted.

I mean all you want is a 150% strength level 3 ability made at will that compares to higher level spellcasters using daily resources that is perfectly reasonable (sarcasm BTW).

Go and ask Mearls on twitter point blank about WL as an independent class with at will action granting see what he says.

 

[FrogReaver]

Sorcerer is wasting a lot of spells to cast 3 hastes at level 5, its not a very good play.Haste will likely end a combat in 2-3 rounds as well.

So assuming the player is not a pumpkin (using sorcerer point sub optimally).A Sorcerer at level 5 can cast haste twice and perhaps twin cast it, either way lets call it 3 time. Assuming each round is about 3 times say 9 rounds, but the sorcerers an be interrupted haste has a draw back etc. Assuming the 6-8 rounds a day and 2 short and each encounter lasting about 3 combats that is 9 rounds out of 18-24 expected rounds and the Sorcerer doesn;t do much else.

A battlemaster fighter can do it level 5 4/short rest or around 12 times assuming 2 short rests, can't be interrupted, doesn't get the other benefits of haste. BM fighter can switch betweeen targets as well, haste can't do that. Sorcerer loses a round casting haste the BM gives up an attack.

The main objection is the Sorcerer is expending a lot of resources to do that a warlord hypothetically is just giving up and attack which may be sod all damage anyway (2d6+5 to gain 1d8+3d6+5 level 5 rogue). That is almost all the sorcerer is doing depends if they butrn spell slots to get more sorcerer points or ore level 3 spell slots. The sorcerer is going to tank itself fast anyway running out of almost everything in around 3 rounds and then can spam 2d8 or 2d10 cantirps (yay).

Some people here want roughly triple strength level 3 ability (BM dice) that are a limited resource at will, some 2 levels earlier.

I also assume a warlord would have some other class abilities like heal, an extra ASI (level 6, 10 or 14 pick 1 or 2?), and some other abilities as well (damge scaling and/or multiple attacks).

Basically I think most people advocating for at will attack granting are wasting their breath the game designers are not going to put at will attack granting into the game. They have already done it via BM dice, they are not going to do a double or triple strength version of that ability.

Functionally at will would be something like 6-9 BM dice perhaps replacing a BM dice with some sort of class ability/"invocation" that grants attacks+rider or an action. Tweaking short rests to 5 mins would allow an additional short rest which would probably make it very close to at will.

I think 75% YMMV is a reasonable/upper limit for attack granting it smooths out the Rogue and the warlord can grow into it instead of front loading it in the 1st 3 levels. It should also cost the warlord resources the BM is already front loaded, so assuming the WL gets dice at level 3 (or spells or whatever) they can spend feats, "invocations" or opportunity cost (like hunter rangers pick this or that ability not both).

Action granting should not be at will obviously perhaps that could come online at level 5 as as short rest ability IDK.

You can homebrew anything you like, don't expect the game designers to put at will attack granting into it. Personally I would like attack granting as an option and the WL to be better at it than say a BM.

Generally I think you want to smooth out the power spikes that at will action granting from 4E would present in 5E and some of the other 4E things that would be weak in 5E can be powered up.

Is your argument boiling down to, "there won't be enough space left on the class for nearly any other abilities if we give any form of at will attack granting" Is that why the cut-off point is around 75% of at will with you?

Because the rest of us are looking at 75% of the way to at-will attack granting and 100% of the way as not that large of a conceptual hurdle to climb. So is it more coming from that you believe you have looked at balance and the other abilities a warlord should get and then concluded at-will would be too strong with those other abilities?

If so then you wouldn't be totally against an at-will version that either dropped those abilities or limited their power someway or delayed them maybe till after level 5?

 

[Zardnaar]

It's important to at least be aware what it will do to highly optimized parties and sometimes not even optimized parties but just parties that happen to have a particular character class.

That said you've not got to convince me. I'm in your boat. At-will attack granting can be balanced and it can even be balanced with other interesting class features. It's not such a strong feature that it precludes anything else.

As for implementations, there have been many different implantation attempts over various warlord threads. The earliest warlord threads all centered around at-will attack granting. They usually pushed for no attacks and trading all your attacks for off turn ally attacks. They were pretty OP implementations.

Its probably a level 10 or 11 ability,and all that does is delay the problems you are going to have. That is when the Sorcerer can cast haste every round and not tank themselves 100% to do it. I assume you want some other warlord class features?

All the example people have used of 5E granting attacks none of them are at will. If anything that should reinforce that its a bad idea. The spells that do it are limited, situation, interruptible, and potentially with draw backs.

Other spells like dissonant whispers have a save and are still a daily resource. As I said go and ask Mearls on Twitter, most of the WL haters don't even bother posting or others are satisfied with Mearls Fighter archetype. I'm not a Warlord fan at all but I like the idea of designing a balanced class that is interesting its a good intellectual challenge and probably easier than my Gish idea I want to design (subclass Duskblade, Swordmage, working name Mageknight).

 

[FrogReaver]

I have seen at will action granting in action twice. Both times the player rolled a new character once because the party composition did not support it the second time because it supported it to well and the class used (Noble) was to weak at healing and gave up to much to enable it leading it to have to much variance. Note I do not think the noble is good design.

The basic argument against at will action granting in 5E is that it is twice or 3 times as strong as a major front loaded class feature that is short rest based and it is also a great class feature as well.

Its also basic math for a support class and you can compare how much damage it does v a cleric, Druid or Bards attacks.

I have said it about 50 times people don't want to admit it but its a busted ability in 5E de to the existence of the Rogue if nothing else and its a problem with a few other classes as well.

When people are comparing to daily powers on 5th-10 level PCs that may give you an idea of how silly an idea it is. I eman when you ay "But a sorcer can do it" they can but its magical, daily, limited, interuptable and with a big draw back if it is interrupted.

I mean all you want is a 150% strength level 3 ability made at will that compares to higher level spellcasters using daily resources that is perfectly reasonable (sarcasm BTW).

Go and ask Mearls on twitter point blank about WL as an independent class with at will action granting see what he says.

I'm not super familiar with the Noble. Can you point me to resources on it or what book it is in or something?

 

[mellored]

Sorcerer is wasting a lot of spells to cast 3 hastes at level 5, its not a very good play.Haste will likely end a combat in 2-3 rounds as well.

That doesn't matter. If haste lasted 2-3 rounds, then the warlord also only be able to grant 2-3 attacks.

The main objection is the Sorcerer is expending a lot of resources to do that a warlord hypothetically is just giving up and attack which may be sod all damage anyway (2d6+5 to gain 1d8+3d6+5 level 5 rogue). That is almost all the sorcerer is doing depends if they butrn spell slots to get more sorcerer points or ore level 3 spell slots. The sorcerer is going to tank itself fast anyway running out of almost everything in around 3 rounds and then can spam 2d8 or 2d10 cantirps (yay).

The warlord would also be giving up all his resources.
"Just" giving up your action means 0 damage.

Haste all day + 2d10 firebolt damage > grant attacks all day + 0 gave-up-your-action damage.


That said, at-will attack granting at level 1 is probably too strong. But by level 5 it should be fine.

 

[FrogReaver]

Its probably a level 10 or 11 ability,and all that does is delay the problems you are going to have. That is when the Sorcerer can cast haste every round and not tank themselves 100% to do it. I assume you want some other warlord class features?

All the example people have used of 5E granting attacks none of them are at will. If anything that should reinforce that its a bad idea. The spells that do it are limited, situation, interruptible, and potentially with draw backs.

Other spells like dissonant whispers have a save and are still a daily resource. As I said go and ask Mearls on Twitter, most of the WL haters don't even bother posting or others are satisfied with Mearls Fighter archetype. I'm not a Warlord fan at all but I like the idea of designing a balanced class that is interesting its a good intellectual challenge and probably easier than my Gish idea I want to design (subclass Duskblade, Swordmage, working name Mageknight).

So you admitted a level 5 warlord could grant attacks 75% of the time and be okay. You admit a sorcerer can essentially do it twinned every day at level 11 (48ish attacks granted that way while still being able to cast a 3d10 cantrip attack most combat rounds).

You then presume that granting such an ability means you cannot grant other abilities. Other abilities are fine as long as the compete with whatever resources the attack granting is using. Just like the sorcerer can know a number of other spells and it's still fine even with granting a full compliment of twinned hastes in every encounter in the day. Why is that okay, because if he uses one of those other options then he isn't using the twinned haste. If a warlord had some other action he could use that wasn't an attack grant then there would presumably be times when he would use that ability instead of the attack grant.

I mean seriously, think about it for a moment. You act like the only features a sorcerer gets that wanted to twin cast haste as often as possible is the ability to twin cast haste as often as possible. Instead of a twinned haste he can fireball. Instead of a fireball he could cast cure wounds (divine soul). There's ton of options for a sorcerer to use instead of haste even if that's his #1 preferred course of action. The same can be true of the warlord even without daily resources because it's all about the tradeoffs you are doing x instead of y. Whether that tradeoff is gated by a spellslot resource or a per turn action resource it really doesn't matter.

 

[FrogReaver]

That doesn't matter. If haste lasted 2-3 rounds, then the warlord also only be able to grant 2-3 attacks.

The warlord would also be giving up all his resources.
"Just" giving up your action means 0 damage.

Haste all day + 2d10 firebolt damage > grant attacks all day + 0 gave-up-your-action damage.


That said, at-will attack granting at level 1 is probably too strong. But by level 5 it should be fine.

That's the place a look for it at. Around level 5. Warlord will do around cantrip level damage with his 1 attack and can grant an attack. (sneak attack won't work as the best implementation is to have him grant attacks on the allies turn instead of off their turn).

All that said, it may be better to implement it early as a per rest power and just scale it to the point that it's essentially at-will.

 

[Tony Vargas]

probably easier than my Gish idea I want to design (subclass Duskblade, Swordmage, working name Mageknight).

Go do that. Seriously, it'll be much, much easier to design a class that can draw on the extensive existing designs of spells and spellcasting mechanics that constitute the lions share of developed design space in 5e.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm not super familiar with the Noble. Can you point me to resources on it or what book it is in or something?

Its in EN5ider you can get it for $2 a month or something like that IIRC.

Moonsong in designing that class went down the same rabbit hole a few people here are doing. They are writing bad rules to take care of things like MCing and allowing Rogue at will sneak attacking.

The fact that you have to write these rules and be careful how you word it is basically the guts of it. Some people are keen putting in the warlords "holy word" as very low amounts of healing so the warlord won't be able to replace the cleric. So even if you design it that way well its already been done and the results are not pretty. If Tony is that keen on it he can pay Morrus $2 and have ENsider for a month and get the noble that allows at will attack granting and cantrip casting (one of the subclasses anyway).

 

[FrogReaver]

Its in EN5ider you can get it for $2 a month or something like that IIRC.

Moonsong in designing that class went down the same rabbit hole a few people here are doing. They are writing bad rules to take care of things like MCing and allowing Rogue at will sneak attacking.

The fact that you have to write these rules and be careful how you word it is basically the guts of it. Some people are keen putting in the warlords "holy word" as very low amounts of healing so the warlord won't be able to replace the cleric. So even if you design it that way well its already been done and the results are not pretty. If Tony is that keen on it he can pay Morrus $2 and have ENsider for a month and get the noble that allows at will attack granting and cantrip casting (one of the subclasses anyway).

LOL. There's a joke somewhere in there about paying $2 for stuff....