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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 7673959" data-attributes="member: 22779">The warlord has been brought up as an example of a class that should have gotten its own class.  OTOH, there's some pretty good reasons why it didn't.  Healing was never really the main thrust of a warlord.  It got healing because it was a leader, but, that wasn't why you played a warlord.  A warlord was all about tactical positioning and buff/debuff.  Thing is, in 5e, a warlord's focus loses a lot of purpose.  Tactical positioning in 5e is far less important than in 4e.  There's no flanking rules, so, shifting your allies about doesn't actually do anything.  Because everyone can move - attack - move, gaining that extra movement doesn't change the battlefield as much as it did in 4e.  So, one aspect of the warlord doesn't really work in 5e.  The other aspect - buff/debuff is a lot more difficult to add into 5e.  With bounded accuracy, once you've granted advantage, how much of a bonus would be acceptable?  +1-4 seems to be the highest numbers you can get (by and large) in 5e.  And even that is often called out as being too powerful.  Granting bonuses and/or making monsters easier to hit would have to be a lot more limited in 5e.  A very large chunk of the warlords powers simply won't translate over into the math of 5e.  Once you lose tactical positioning and buff/debuff, what's left of a warlord?  The warlord class mechanics are extremely tightly tied to a battle map.  But 5e is a lot less battle map dependent than 4e is.  So, you strip out all that from a warlord and all you really have left is a Battlemaster.  Hey, I understand the disappointment.  Warlords are, by far, my favourite class in 4e, and in point of fact, probably my favourite class ever.  One of my players once remarked that when you play a warlord, you don't just play you character, you play the entire party.  It's fantastic, as far as I'm concerned.  But, that all being said, I understand why it didn't make the cut to 5e.  5e is far too different of a game for a warlord to get translated over.  You can get something that is kind of close - either a valor bard or a battle master - but, at the end of the day, a 4e style warlord just wouldn't really function in a 5e game.That being said, that perhaps explains why I'm not adverse to the idea of a psionic subclass.  I'm also not saying that it can't be a full class.  It might wind up that it makes more sense to add another base class.  I just want to see attempts at both before making a decision.  4e did show that you can use an existing template of classes and create psionic classes.  The 4e classes were not radical departures mechanically.  They used a modified AEDU structure, just like every single other class in the game and worked pretty darn well.  I'm not convinced that psionics must have completely different resolution mechanics in order to be different enough to play.I mean, heck, there isn't that much of a difference between a wizard and a sorcerer (although warlock is pretty far removed) or a druid and a cleric.  Strip any cleric mechanics from a druid and all you have left is wild shape, by and large.  They cast spells in exactly that same manner, use similar weapon proficiencies (although there are differences there), have similar skill packages, that sort of thing.  But, wild shape is more than enough to differentiate druid from cleric.  It's a very big deal.  In 3e, there was, perhaps, an even bigger difference, with a pet, which druids don't get in 5e. But, at the end of the day, all that really differentiates them is wild shape and a variant spell list.  It quite easily could have gone the other way with druids being a cleric subclass.  There have been calls to fold paladin into fighter since 3e.  So, it's not like it's impossible to imagine how it could be done.  Now, they went with full classes, and that's fine.  That works too.  But, I think that's my point:It works too.It should not be carved in stone before even trying that psions MUST be either way - subclass or full class.  Both options should be explored.</blockquote>

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