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."

 

[Jester David]

Why not? The 5-minute rest rule works fine (that doesn't apply to what happens in a fight, and the HD are still capped since a long rest doesn't restore them all), and the healing surges rule still works fine (using a healing surge takes an action in combat, vs. the warlord's ability to trigger others' healing surges without using a full action), as far as I can see.

It doesn't work with the "gritty realism" rest with 8 hour short rests, it doesn't work with healer's kit dependency, and it seems redundant with the healing surge variant rule.
Classes should work independent of the rules. They should add mechanics and seldom modify existing mechanics to allow easier modularity, which is a key tennant of 5e.

And it also doesn't really allow any extra healing. The party has as much healing as without the warlord, and the adventuring day is not extended - which is the benefit of having a healer. In fact, the action being spent healing would have been better served dealing damage or ending the combat before more hit points were lost. As a turn was spent doing something that could have been done between combats, it's arguably detrimental to the success of the party.

 

[Remathilis]

I'd imagine triggering HD in combat would be a useful way to represent that. It both mimics the 4e-style surge healing, and gives "nonmagical" healing a distinct difference from magical healing. It works with the "warlords use your abilities on their turns" vibe, and has a natural "cap" (you only have so many HD).

I think the first resort would be "extra saving throws," which is useful enough for most abilities. I don't imagine warlords fixing lost limbs or regenerating gouged out eyes, but they could offer new saves against effects that required a save in the first place. This would still leave some gaps that only magic could heal, which is reasonable - I think we'd want warlords who could be more pro-active in these situations (they might not cure the gorgon's petrification, but they can turn your failed save to avoid it into a successful one).

Linked mostly to healing HP. Death by other means (like disintegration) or places where you can't recover the body or situations where they've been dead for years...that's somewhere magic has to go. Again, warlords could be useful in a pro-active sense here - improved saves and AC and the like can stop the beholder's disintegrate from working in the first place.

Which, correct me if I'm wrong, wouldn't make them a really good healer, then. Usual caveat blahblahblah roles, but who would want this guy instead of a bard, druid, or cleric? These abilities don't even begin to match the raw ability of second level spells in most cases.

The problem with this (and this is going to be shock coming from my keyboard) is that I can't see enough utility to make it stand as its own thing. For me, the warlord was good at granting extra actions, healing, stacking bonuses, and occasional melee attacks. Stacking bonuses are off the table (due to advantage being a 1/situation scenario), healing seems fairly weak (not good enough to compare with BCD or even P, maybe on par with a ranger*?) which leaves it as a class that gives other classes a chance to break the action economy (really, its kinda a class that grants other classes Legendary Actions and Resistances; ie extra out-of-turn actions and automatic saves.)

* Though this got me thinking... could a viable warlord be built out of the spell-less ranger chassis minus the obvious ranger stuff (like primeval awareness) and plus this healing surge healing and more superiority dice? Might be a good starting point...

 

[Corpsetaker]

What about a spell less bard?

 

[Jessica]

I voted for Eberron, Dark Sun, Birthright, and Ravenloft for campaign settings. Vryloka, Devas, Shadar-kai, and Revenants for races. And I voted for Shaman, Warden, and Seeker for classes. At the very end I added in a comment stating "bring back the vampire class". Seriously I want to play one of my favorite classes again.

 

[Tony Vargas]

"Inspiration" in combat has always meant mechanically, to me at least, something that results in some sort of to-hit and-or damage bonus - you're inspired to fight harder, rather than last longer.

IRL, the point of morale was to stay on the field, fighting, longer. Inspiration is obviously closely tied to that concept. And, of course, in the context of the warlord, its Inspiring Word restored hps (often among other things, depending on player choices)...

Another thing to keep in mind from an overall design perspective is anything that gives combatants more defenses and-or h.p. in combat (particularly if both sides have it) is going to inevitably make those combats longer. Giving to-hit and damage bonuses will have the opposite effect

Too-short combats are anti-climactic, too-long ones eventually become boring. Frankly, 5e has swung the 'fast combat' pendulum a little far, so having more than one in-combat 'healer'-psuedo-role PC in the party might not be a terrible idea. But, it's an idea that's flexible to implement. If you want really fast combat, no healers and lots of DPR is the party configuration for you.

Which is why the best solution is for warlords to not heal during combat and instead get a beefed up version of Song of Rest and increase the heals after rests.

That would completely fail to capture the Warlord.

You get a replacement cleric in a passive sense. Instead of cure wounds 4 times, the warlord lets every party member heal more on rests.

That doesn't replace the cleric.

The critical difference between a party with a cleric (or Bard or Druid) is not healing between combats, total healing per day, nor even high-level spells like Regenerate or Raise Dead. It's in-combat healing that enables the D&D combat dynamic.

Classes should work independent of the rules. They should add mechanics and seldom modify existing mechanics to allow easier modularity, which is a key tennant of 5e.

It may be a tenet of D&D, but not of modularity. For modules to pop in and out and work smoothly you need points of attachment. A Variant like changing the time to heal fully or number of HD doesn't work so smoothly precisely because healing spells are independent of it. When you have a single mechanic that most/all healing is linked to, you can adjust healing to fit your campaign's theme/tone/sub-genre/whatever without having to change many different rules.

And it also doesn't really allow any extra healing. The party has as much healing as without the warlord, and the adventuring day is not extended - which is the benefit of having a healer.

That's one way in which the Warlord might reasonably differ from the cleric. Extending the adventuring day with a cleric means using a lot of its slots for healing, which reduces the participation of the cleric's player, and the contribution of the PC in other areas, including out of combat. So a cleric might extend the adventuring day very little.

If you did want the Warlord to extend the adventuring day, up-front whole-party Temp hps from inspiration would be a way to do it. It'd be separate from in-combat hp restoration, which, again, would differentiate it from the Cleric, while still filling the critical aspects of the role implied by it.

In fact, the action being spent healing would have been better served dealing damage or ending the combat before more hit points were lost.

Unless it's a bonus action like Healing Word. Which, really, would make a lot of sense, especially for lead-from-the-front inspiration.

Which, correct me if I'm wrong, wouldn't make them a really good healer, then. Usual caveat blahblahblah roles, but who would want this guy instead of a bard, druid, or cleric? These abilities don't even begin to match the raw ability of second level spells in most cases.

Insisting that the Warlord not get his full abilities, then accusing him of being lacking is a pretty lame debating tactic.

Let the Warlord do his thing as well as he did in 4e, and he'll keep a party going in combat just fine, thank you.

* Though this got me thinking... could a viable warlord be built out of the spell-less ranger chassis minus the obvious ranger stuff (like primeval awareness) and plus this healing surge healing and more superiority dice? Might be a good starting point...

It really needs to be its own class. 5e design philosophy is to make each class unique, and the close candidates, functionally, use magic, which makes them wholly unsuitable, while the close candidates conceptually, are locked inflexibly into a narrowly-focused single-target DPR role, also rendering them unsuitable. 5e tried very hard to evoke the classic D&D feel, and the Warlord concept (the archetypes it models) was something that classic D&D consistently failed to deliver. The warlord was simply an innovation, and the only way to include it is to accept that it can't be hobbled by the classic-D&D design imperative, but must be presented as an an optioal alternative that Houdinis that particular straightjacket.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The party healer need not be a in-combat healer.

I agree in principal, but I don't think that's going to hit what folks who want the warlord to replace the cleric would be looking for.

It doesn't work with the "gritty realism" rest with 8 hour short rests, it doesn't work with healer's kit dependency, and it seems redundant with the healing surge variant rule.

It's not redundant - if you're using both, you can still get use out of either.

It also works fine with the "gritty realism" rule (the HD cap still keeps you taking long rests when needed) and the healer's kit rule (that rule only applies during rests anyway).

I don't see any issues there.

And it also doesn't really allow any extra healing. The party has as much healing as without the warlord, and the adventuring day is not extended - which is the benefit of having a healer. In fact, the action being spent healing would have been better served dealing damage or ending the combat before more hit points were lost. As a turn was spent doing something that could have been done between combats, it's arguably detrimental to the success of the party.

Right - there's no extra healing, it's just that a warlord can help you pull on your own reserves in the middle of a fight, where otherwise you might not have time to gather your wits. When it's a choice between going down and losing that character's actions and getting back into the fray, it's clearly useful.

And I think one needs to be cautious about saying "because of optional rule X, optional rule Y can't exist." There's no requirement for the gritty realism rest variant to work seamlessly with the healing surges healing variant, for instance. Not all new options need to work with all existing options.

Which, correct me if I'm wrong, wouldn't make them a really good healer, then. Usual caveat blahblahblah roles, but who would want this guy instead of a bard, druid, or cleric? These abilities don't even begin to match the raw ability of second level spells in most cases.

Healing, as a role, isn't something 5e really needs anyway. If you want to replace the party healer, buy some healing potions - combat's fast and furious and the main function of healing is to stop action attrition from dying characters. Anything that restores HP will do that. So the "healer replacement threshold" is pretty low. If you can restore some HP in combat congrats, you got it covered. Someone with the Healer feat can do that nicely. Heck, arguably the Battlemaster can do that, though their effectiveness ends at 0 hp.

So the "can replace a cleric" thing seems to me to be mostly about having something that can be used on a dying creature to give it some HP back and let it get back in the fight. There might be some support in there for throwing off conditions, too, which is where the save-buffing/save-granting comes in.

It can't raise those who've been dead a week or scream your arm back on, but I don't think it needs to do that to replace the cleric.

I'll let people who are bigger warlord fans correct me if I'm wrong on that.

its kinda a class that grants other classes Legendary Actions and Resistances; ie extra out-of-turn actions and automatic saves.)

I think that idea's got legs, personally.

 

[Minigiant]

That would completely fail to capture the Warlord.

That doesn't replace the cleric.

The critical difference between a party with a cleric (or Bard or Druid) is not healing between combats, total healing per day, nor even high-level spells like Regenerate or Raise Dead. It's in-combat healing that enables the D&D combat dynamic.

Why doesn't it replace a cleric?

The party with the level 5 cleric casts 4 level 1 cure wounds for 4d8+12 hp healed and 1 level 2 cure wounds for 2d8+3.
The party with the level 5 warlord adds 1d12+ 3 to the HP gained during a short rest for 4d12+12 HP healed and everyone gets 10 THP after a long rest.

In 5th edition, in combat healing is usually for emergencies. You don't tend to need healing during combat unless some monster clobbers someone for tons of damage. Combat isn't long like 4th edition. There's no need to "Healing/Inspiring Word" or Second Wind every fight.

And almost all the strengths of the 4th edition warlord are gone or minimized. Stacking bonuses are minimized. In combat healing is not assumed every combat. There is not inherent bonuses for positioning outside of certain classes.

The warlord might need to change with the edition just how the sorcerer and bard did. Instead of healing in combat, a warlord could grant bonuses to keep allies form being hurt and keeps the party topped off in HP at the start of almost every battle. Essentially be a spell-less valor bard with beefed up Song of Rest.

 

[Remathilis]

Insisting that the Warlord not get his full abilities, then accusing him of being lacking is a pretty lame debating tactic.

Let the Warlord do his thing as well as he did in 4e, and he'll keep a party going in combat just fine, thank you.

Part of the problem is that in 4e, Remove Affliction and Raise Dead were rituals, which meant any spellcaster (or person willing to burn a feat) to could use them, but warlords naturally couldn't. So as long as you had at least one ritual user, you could be ok with a warlord who only healed hp as your healer. (Of course, if you had a no-ritual-user party, you were screwed). That is a very different design paradigm than 5e, which returned those abilities back to a limited number of classes (BCDP) in the form of spells. (And not even to ritual casters, which is a bit of a oversight imho). So even if we give the warlord back his full ability (and by that, I mean healing full hp in combat like 4e did) he's still whiffing on those other very key areas. In short, you'd still need a BCDP to shore up those two key areas, which makes him ill-suited for replacing a healer-caster.

It really needs to be its own class. 5e design philosophy is to make each class unique, and the close candidates, functionally, use magic, which makes them wholly unsuitable, while the close candidates conceptually, are locked inflexibly into a narrowly-focused single-target DPR role, also rendering them unsuitable. 5e tried very hard to evoke the classic D&D feel, and the Warlord concept (the archetypes it models) was something that classic D&D consistently failed to deliver. The warlord was simply an innovation, and the only way to include it is to accept that it can't be hobbled by the classic-D&D design imperative, but must be presented as an an optioal alternative that Houdinis that particular straightjacket.

Which is why I'm guessing they opted to leave it out of the PHB. It sounds like it might need its own subsystem or augmented ruleset, much like psionics might, and would have to be an opt-in style system because of how it changes the assumptions of the core rules. Nothing against that, but like psionics I think it would be a polarizing element best suited for a supplement at some point down the road.

Hmmm... the warlord might be a good candidate to put with the martial adepts (swordsage, crusade, etc) in some Martial Power supplement...

 

[Jester David]

It may be a tenet of D&D, but not of modularity. For modules to pop in and out and work smoothly you need points of attachment. A Variant like changing the time to heal fully or number of HD doesn't work so smoothly precisely because healing spells are independent of it. When you have a single mechanic that most/all healing is linked to, you can adjust healing to fit your campaign's theme/tone/sub-genre/whatever without having to change many different rules.

If a rule is too embedded in a class it becomes hard to modify, because more and more unintended side effects result that shift the balance of classes.
For example, if I change how critical hits work it affects the barbarian and the champion fighter, which have abilities tied to crits. The more points of connection the more you're encouraged to leave a mechanic the way it is. The more important a mechanic is as a modular element the more important it is not to tie class or race features to that mechanic or assume play.

 

[Jester David]

It's not redundant - if you're using both, you can still get use out of either.

It's redundant in that everyone can heal on their own so the warlord triggering healing is less necessary and pretty much unneeded. If eveyone deals bonus damage when they have advantage it makes sneak attack less impressive.

It also works fine with the "gritty realism" rule (the HD cap still keeps you taking long rests when needed)

If you're using gritty realism in your game you probably really, really don't want someone healing via shouting. They're pretty antithetical concepts.

and the healer's kit rule (that rule only applies during rests anyway).

And, again, if the tone of your campaign requires you to expend resources from a healer's kit to heal - applying bandages and poultices and the like - having the warlord able to do the same for free goes against the very tone of the campaign.

Right - there's no extra healing, it's just that a warlord can help you pull on your own reserves in the middle of a fight, where otherwise you might not have time to gather your wits. When it's a choice between going down and losing that character's actions and getting back into the fray, it's clearly useful.

And the exact same thing would happen if the warlord instead granted temporary hit points preventing the character going down in the first place.

And I think one needs to be cautious about saying "because of optional rule X, optional rule Y can't exist." There's no requirement for the gritty realism rest variant to work seamlessly with the healing surges healing variant, for instance. Not all new options need to work with all existing options.

Optional rules, yes. Classes are different. Classes should (mostly) be independent of the house rules.

So the "can replace a cleric" thing seems to me to be mostly about having something that can be used on a dying creature to give it some HP back and let it get back in the fight. There might be some support in there for throwing off conditions, too, which is where the save-buffing/save-granting comes in.
It can't raise those who've been dead a week or scream your arm back on, but I don't think it needs to do that to replace the cleric.

I disagree. By the definition of replacing "the cleric" it should the warlord also be able to bring someone back from the dead, turn someone back from stone, regrow an arm, or remove a disease? All vital elements of the cleric and the "healer" role. Even the bard and druid get those spells, and the paladin and ranger get most.

As you say, it's easy to replace the combat healer role with potions and a feat or two, so if the warlord is to fill the role of replacing the cleric/bard/druid so you don't need anyone close to that class ever they need a way to deal with those conditions.