New D&D Survey: What Do you Want From Older Editions?

WotC has just posted this month's D&D feedback survey. This survey asks about content from older editions of D&D, including settings, classes and races. The results will help determine what appears in future Unearthed Arcana columns.

The new survey is here. The results for the last survey have not yet been compiled. However, WotC is reporting that the Waterborne Adventures article scored well, and that feedback on Dragon+ has been "quite positive".

"We also asked about the new options presented in the Waterborne Adventures installment of Unearthed Arcana. Overall, that material scored very well—on a par with material from the Player’s Handbook. Areas where players experienced trouble were confined to specific mechanics. The minotaur race’s horns created a bit of confusion, for example, and its ability score bonuses caused some unhappiness. On a positive note, people really liked the sample bonds and how they helped bring out the minotaur’s unique culture.

The mariner, the swashbuckler, and the storm sorcerer also scored very well. A few of the specific mechanics for those options needed some attention, but overall, players and DMs liked using them.

Finally, we asked a few questions about the Dragon+ app. We really appreciate the feedback as we tailor the app’s content and chart the course for future issues. The overall feedback has been quite positive, and we’re looking at making sure we continue to build on our initial success."

 

[Lanefan]

I've designed games. An award winning one even (Gasp!).

And for that, of course, you have to tell us what game it is.

Considering that I've often seen people mock 1st edition, and many of the assumptions behind it ...

While mocking parts of 1e is sometimes fair game (says one who has played it for well over 30 years), mocking the assumptions behind it is not. In fact, I rather suspect that abandoning some of those assumptions in later editions caused far more problems than were solved; from this thread, the obvious example is divorcing effects that should take magic to achieve (e.g. a hobbit pushing a dragon around, or warlord-like healing) from actual magic.

In 1e there's a pretty clear deliniation between magic and non-magic (except for the Monk, but did it ever fit into any patterns?) - the spell-like abilities of monsters (e.g. the darkness that demons can generate sometimes) are still obviously magical. This particular assumption is one that 4e largely dropped, but note that others were dropped by different editions and 4e is not solely to blame.

Lan-"the asnwer, though, is not to mock 1e but to redesign it; that process has also been going on for 30+ years"-efan

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Going back to the practical aspects of adding a new Warlord class, there's a few big stumbling blocks.

...

So, I'm not sure what a 5e warlord would actually look like. I understand why they didn't bring it forward. A lot of its raison d'être simply doesn't exist in 5e.

This was helpful. Personally, while I don't like inspirational healing, I had no problem with the warlord, and I wouldn't have had a major problem with it in 5e (as long as any inspiration healing it might provide were in temporary hit points). I mean, while I wasn't a fan of 4e, the very first character I played was a dwarf warlord, because I thought the idea was interesting. (The name of the class on the other hand, I can't tolerate.)

But you helped me figure out why I'm uncomfortable with the ongoing calls for a 5e warlord.

In addition to the things you mentioned, I'm not really seeing anything substantive that is missing from the warlord's schtick in the offerings we currently have. Unless I don't know how to read the 4e PHB, the warlord's main things were healing and buffing allies and granting them actions.

The Rally maneuver heals allies (temp hit points).
The Distracting Strike maneuver buffs an ally's attack, and the Inspiring Leader feat buffs your entire party's hit points.
The Maneuvering Attack maneuver allows you to grant an ally movement, and the Commander's Strike maneuver lets you grant an ally an attack.

Conceptually, I can't see anything else needed to fit the archetype than a Battle Master fighter taking those 4 maneuvers and that feat.

Would the demand for a warlord feel met by a list of new maneuvers to provide additional options? I mean, that could be done, but even then it seems like the current maneuvers more or less have the bases covered. There are only so many things to mechanically do in 5e combat.

Perhaps a new Fighting Style that is only half about fighting and half about warlording somehow (take the Mariner style for precedent).

I mean, really, I think it may be an emotional appeal more than a logical appeal. I get it. I wanted an assassin base class. Why? Because they felt different than just a type of rogue. You know, more assassin-y. But really, what could they have done with an assassin that really justified a base class, given the design philosophy of the edition? Not a whole heck of a lot. A fighter/rogue multiclass really does the job. Did anyone listen to the interview with R.A. Salvatore when he was talking about the directive he got from TSR to kill off the assassin Artemis Entreri because all the assassins died in the fiction of the change from 1e to 2e? After a long discussion the idea finally hit him: Artemis Entreri isn't an assassin. He's a fighter/thief who kills people for money.

The point is that assassin is covered by rogue in the level of detail and abstraction that fits 5e. Warlord seems to be covered by the Battle Master in a similar level of 5e-appropriate detail. I can understand not being happy with a favored class being just a sub-build of a subclass (those 4 maneuvers are the only ones that have anything to do with being a warlord). But I can't really see how a warlord class could be elegantly introduced to the 5e class design space. It has to pretty much either just be a few more maneuver or feat options, or it has to add an entirely new set of systems to 5e, and risk throwing off the way the various elements of the game cohere.

What game designers do is really not that important, and that complex if you ask me. It's pure thought, and rather simplistic if we're being honest.

No, no it's not.

 

[Eric V]

It's a good point, SoS, but I'd be willing to give up many of the fighter's other combat abilities for team-helpful abilities based on Int like some of the better warlord builds from 4e had.

That kind of enabling/buffing class that isn't STR based is a worthwhile one.

 

[Obryn]

Oh, the delicious irony.

By this quote, you admit that any professional game designers who may post here are inherently to be taken more seriously than yours.

Also, LOL @ comparing game design with being a medical doctor. You can be a game designer with a high school diploma. Game design is about as evolved as medicine was, back in the dark age.

What game designers do is really not that important, and that complex if you ask me. It's pure thought, and rather simplistic if we're being honest. The smartest people in games are not game designers anyway.

Uh, taken more seriously and given more weight when it comes to game design questions? Yeah, probably. Experience matters. Automatically right? No way.

And game design isn't hard? It's simple? Professional designers aren't any more informed than any average poster? You're adorable.

 

[Obryn]

In addition to the things you mentioned, I'm not really seeing anything substantive that is missing from the warlord's schtick in the offerings we currently have. Unless I don't know how to read the 4e PHB, the warlord's main things were healing and buffing allies and granting them actions.

The Rally maneuver heals allies (temp hit points).
The Distracting Strike maneuver buffs an ally's attack, and the Inspiring Leader feat buffs your entire party's hit points.
The Maneuvering Attack maneuver allows you to grant an ally movement, and the Commander's Strike maneuver lets you grant an ally an attack.

Conceptually, I can't see anything else needed to fit the archetype than a Battle Master fighter taking those 4 maneuvers and that feat.

No.... Part of the whole Warlord concept is that a party with a Warlord shouldn't necessarily need to rely on a Cleric/Bard for their healing/buffing, and the Battlemaster falls well short of this metric.

One issue is with how watered down and limited these abilities all end up, and it's very much tied in with the miniscule dice pool available. A Battlemaster gets to play at being a weak Warlord for only a handful of actions every few encounters before reverting to a straight Fighter. For example, the basic Commander's Strike takes up dice instead of a more at-will basis.

On the healing front, leaving aside the real vs. temp HP debate, and the ability to bring allies back into a fight, Rally provides just a pittance at the cost of a valuable die and a bonus action. 1d10+5 (at best) at 10th level? It's pretty bad, frankly. The scaling is awful.

Also missing are the more substantial, combat-changing stuff like the impressive Stand the Fallen. Especially absent is any setup for full-party teamwork or buffing as opposed to just helping one buddy.

And this is also where the lack of higher-level maneuvers is problematic. All maneuvers are balanced properly for 3rd level characters. Higher level characters are picking from the same list. There's no better stuff gated behind higher levels.

It's clear where the inspiration for those maneuvers came from, but they're a poor substitute.

Mind you, the Battlemaster still has the Fighter chassis with all of its perks like Action Surge, Second Wind, feats, etc. But that's frankly part of the problem; giving all these perks to a guy who still gets all this stuff seems poorly-balanced. Which is why I'd like a real Warlord as a class all its own.

 

[Sacrosanct]

And for that, of course, you have to tell us what game it is.

I won DieHard Gamefan's best new game of 2011 with Compact Heroes, and I got rave reviews for the prototypes of All Your Mechs, but the high cost of the transparencies (for mech construction) made the game prohibitive to manufacture. Which is too bad, really, because most players who played it really liked being able to mix and match mech parts to form a fully visual mech using those transparencies. You can sort of see it in the pic on the character sheet. That's actually five different overlays on top of each other.

But enough of that self promotion. My point was simply to point out how he's way off on his assumptions. And yeah, maybe I'm biased a bit when I see another designer, especially one so successful, get attacked or to have their career belittled.

And to be more on point, I think there is a place for the warlord in 5e. I probably wouldn't ever play one, but like it or not, 4e is part of the D&D brand, and the warlord is a big part of that version. It should be in 5e, as best as it could be done to fit in that system. This coming from an AD&D player myself See? Not all of us grognards are unreasonable

 

[Shasarak]

I ticked a few things but my favourites were Spelljammer, Artificer and Cat-folk.

 

[Hussar]

Mind you, the Battlemaster still has the Fighter chassis with all of its perks like Action Surge, Second Wind, feats, etc. But that's frankly part of the problem; giving all these perks to a guy who still gets all this stuff seems poorly-balanced. Which is why I'd like a real Warlord as a class all its own.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Want-From-Older-Editions/page21#ixzz3ehtuCaxt

I'm not convinced that there really is enough left over for the warlord to be its own class. I mean, once you strip out all the fightery bits so it's not stepping on the fighter's toes, there isn't a whole lot left over. Mostly, as I pointed out above, because the action economy and the realities of the table are just so different between 4e and 5e.

But, OTOH, I think that a fighter subclass warlord is a viable option. He'd be a bit more... fightery than a 4e warlord, but, give him a lot more tactical tricks he can do - borrowing from the Eldritch Knight subclass maybe - not as a caster, but, give him a palette of tricks and whatnot, keyed off short or long rests, and have him gain more and more tricks the way an EK gains more and more spells.

Nice thing is, for those who are dead set against the idea of martial healing, since it's siloed off into one single class or subclass, it's pretty easy to ignore.

 

[Yaarel]

Would the Warlord work as a nonmagical Paladin archetype?

 

[Ricochet]

Perhaps moving the discussion about the Warlord class and the analysis of such into another thread (if that is even possible for a mod?) would help clean this one slightly up and restore the simpler "what did you vote" aspect of this one?