Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour: The Warlord

[outsider]

If you're going to say 'h4ter,' you might as well own '4venger,' too...

That's completely fair. Should have done that!

Neither side of an edition war is particularly rational. It all boils down to "You're not pretending to be an elf correctly! You should be doing it my way!"

 

[Azzy]

I had to google the power come and get it. It looks like it could be a good manoeuvre that could be included in 5e. It seems like a great narrative feature, a warrior making themselves a target and taunting their enemies. I could see it being used via a skill contest, intimidate vs insight or something. You win and that creature moves towards you.

I'd have no problem with it, either.

 

[Yaarel]

The ‘cantrip’ in the warlord brainstorm can force movement, when allies hit a hostile within the Tactical Focus.

The move is from tactical maneuvering (judo, not jedi).

Yet, an important aspect of 4e Come and Get is a given, and seems noncontroversial.

 

[iserith]

Personally, I want 5e to incorporate the best that each previous edition has to offer. Fortunately for me, that is one of the design goals of 5e.

In my eyes, each edition does something extremely well.

1e - narrative immersion, homebrew imagination, opting into or out from rules
3e - systematization of rules, customizing an individual character
4e - gaming system balance, thematic rules: power types (arcane, primal, psionic, martial)

I appreciate the way 4e conceives types of power. Thinking about what ‘martial’ powers might be able to do, 4e expanded the possibilities for the fighter and the warlord.

Yep, 4e was good at that. I judge the game on what kind of experience it brings to the table. D&D 5e is fun, even without my favorite class from D&D 4e, and that's good enough for me. I don't have any particular care that it incorporates elements from other games, or that it achieves some stated goal of the designers to that end. I can play those other games for what they each do best.

 

[Yaarel]

I had to google the power come and get it. It looks like it could be a good manoeuvre that could be included in 5e. It seems like a great narrative feature, a warrior making themselves a target and taunting their enemies. I could see it being used via a skill contest, intimidate vs insight or something. You win and that creature moves towards you.

I suspect the characterizing of the taunt as a kind of intimidation (a mental attack versus a mental defense) helps make it more palatable.

Perhaps, the 5e version inflicts a saving throw versus Wisdom (or Charisma). Failure means the hostile is provoked to move AND becomes vulnerable to opportunity attacks.

 

[Tony Vargas]

5e already includes all sorts of this sort of stuff (what's the narrative, in game justification for rogues being able to do things as a bonus action? how exactly does a barbarian's rage work, even to the point of resisting fire and lightning (depending on your totem)? how does that battlemaster make my character move farther than I possibly can?) and has from the get go. The greatest feat that 5e managed to pull off is convincing people that all those things they bitched about in 4e didn't exist in 5e.

It was never about those things. It was, I think, ultimately about balance. 4e classes were balanced, that was accomplished by greatly reigning in the versatility & power of spellcasters, and greatly expanding it for martial types. Mind you, the versatility of the arcane & divine classes was still greater than that of the martial, and martial was still the only pre-Essentials source to lack a controller, so it's not like it was ever perfect balance, or like the remaining imbalance wasn't still in favor of the usual suspects.
But it was as intolerable as complaining about it would have been unsympathetic, so we had all these stalking horses. Dumbed-down, too complicated; board game, too narrativist; dissociated mechanics; nerfed wizard; etc, etc...

But, come 5e, the magical classes are all there in partially-restored glory (and fewer limitations than ever) while non-magical sub-classes are few and DPR-focused (in a game tuned for /fast combat/), and the complaints vanish.

(iserth was right, I was sounding too bitter, now I feel I've properly expressed my cynicism, as well)

In my eyes, each edition does something extremely well.

1e - narrative immersion, homebrew imagination, opting into or out from rules
3e - systematization of rules, customizing an individual character
4e - gaming system balance, thematic rules: power types (arcane, primal, psionic, martial)

I appreciate the way 4e conceives types of power. Thinking about what ‘martial’ powers might be able to do, 4e expanded the possibilities for the fighter and the warlord.

There's also been a long pendulum-swing.
1e was extremely DM-Empowering, or, it might be more accurate to say, required the DM to seize that empowerment aggressively to be effective.
2e was more consistent, and gave players more options, but still left the DM tremendous latitude.
3.x is extremely player-empowering (I'll see if I can get away with that, or if someone will insist it was 'player entitlement'), with tremendous customizeability and equally lavish rewards for system mastery, and making DMing quite a chore.
4e was balanced and frequently added to & updated, pulling in system mastery rewards and making DMing surprisingly easy.
5e is extremely DM-Empowering again, calling for DM judgement constantly, and thus conditioning players to accept that judgement and angle for rewards from the DM, rather than from the system.

 

[Zardnaar]

So you guys are happy with the concept of giving the warlord healing surges as a class ability even if the do not funtion life the 4E version?

That's on top of the healing word type ability. Tony was right in some ways about power creeping some things.

 

[Hussar]

So you guys are happy with the concept of giving the warlord healing surges as a class ability even if the do not funtion life the 4E version?

That's on top of the healing word type ability. Tony was right in some ways about power creeping some things.

Not quite sure what you mean. Sorry. Do you mean that because of the fighter baseline, warlords have healing surges?

To be fair, Warlords did have more healing than just healing word. There were a number of healing powers for warlords, although, unlike clerics, most warlord healing was based on surge healing. AFAIC, it's not a big issue.

There has been talk about how action granting wasn't the core element of warlords because only a minority of powers featured action granting. As far as that goes, it's true, but, it ignores a couple of points. Sure, not every power for warlords action granted. But, the iconic ones certainly did. That's what a warlord does. It grants actions. It's not all that it does - there's buffing and healing too. But when you think warlord, you think action granting.

It's like wizards. If you look at the 3e spell list, only a small minority of spells at any given level actually deal direct damage. Most of them don't. But, it's not too much of a stretch to say that magic missile and fireball are iconic wizard spells. If we stripped away direct damage spells from wizards, they wouldn't still be iconic D&D wizards. So, simply looking at percentages doesn't really give you the right picture of what the class is best known for.

 

[Tony Vargas]

To be fair, Warlords did have more healing than just healing word. There were a number of healing powers for warlords, although, unlike clerics, most warlord healing was based on surge healing. AFAIC, it's not a big issue.

It's a clear guideline. Warlords were viable leaders, including restoring hps, but clerics were better at that aspect of the role.

There has been talk about how action granting wasn't the core element of warlords because only a minority of powers featured action granting. As far as that goes, it's true, but, it ignores a couple of points. Sure, not every power for warlords action granted. But, the iconic ones certainly did. That's what a warlord does. It grants actions. It's not all that it does - there's buffing and healing too. But when you think warlord, you think action granting.

It was one of the more controversial features - controversy burned continuously over the "range" of Commander's Strike until it was finally errata'd to comply with the way powers are normally read, for instance.
But, you could very easily build a warlord who never granted an action, and he'd still be a fine leader. Really, most of the more CHA-leaning builds had very few good action-granting choices. And, the best (most-action-granting of all) optimized lazy builds were Warlord|Shaman hybrids.

It's like wizards. If you look at the 3e spell list, only a small minority of spells at any given level actually deal direct damage. Most of them don't. But, it's not too much of a stretch to say that magic missile and fireball are iconic wizard spells. If we stripped away direct damage spells from wizards, they wouldn't still be iconic D&D wizards. So, simply looking at percentages doesn't really give you the right picture of what the class is best known for.

But they're not primarily that. You couldn't strip away sleep and haste and fly and invisibility and teleport and those myriad other non-blasting spells and still have an iconic wizard, either.

There is no /the/ defining or core element of the Warlord (nor of most classes, really), there's multiple such elements that must all be present to paint the complete picture of the class.

 

[Zardnaar]

May have been after my time. While I'd played 1e for 10 years, 2e lost me after about 5, so I missed the 'Player's Option' stuff beyond a quick read at the time. AD&D, though, in 15 years I was actively playing or DMing it, shattered at the least interruption of the source of Band-Aids.

Not quite sure what you mean. Sorry. Do you mean that because of the fighter baseline, warlords have healing surges?

To be fair, Warlords did have more healing than just healing word. There were a number of healing powers for warlords, although, unlike clerics, most warlord healing was based on surge healing. AFAIC, it's not a big issue.

There has been talk about how action granting wasn't the core element of warlords because only a minority of powers featured action granting. As far as that goes, it's true, but, it ignores a couple of points. Sure, not every power for warlords action granted. But, the iconic ones certainly did. That's what a warlord does. It grants actions. It's not all that it does - there's buffing and healing too. But when you think warlord, you think action granting.

It's like wizards. If you look at the 3e spell list, only a small minority of spells at any given level actually deal direct damage. Most of them don't. But, it's not too much of a stretch to say that magic missile and fireball are iconic wizard spells. If we stripped away direct damage spells from wizards, they wouldn't still be iconic D&D wizards. So, simply looking at percentages doesn't really give you the right picture of what the class is best known for.

My warlords have action granting just not unlimited. I'm just tweaking the amount of healing baked in if you want more pick the exploit/Gambit or a different subclasses.