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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7862588" data-attributes="member: 996">Can't agree.I mean, the Fighter, Ranger, & Warlord are /not/ that conceptually different from eachother - they're all heroic warriors of one stripe or another, Backgrounds, if a single martial class were given enough depth & breadth, would be enough to differentiate them.  It's just that the same is absolutely true of the Rogue. The only difference is a vestigial one of, well, specific gameplay niche protection.The Rogue is the 5e incarnation of the 0D&D/1e Thief and the Theif's raison d'etre was it's set of dungeon-exploration/eponymous-'thieving' 'Special Abilities.'  The 1e Fighter was a STR-prime-requisite high-hp, heavy-armor, big-weapon doorstop that blocked the doorway or corridor and, well, fought.  The Thief was a DEX-prime-requisite, low-hp, light-armor, light-weapon scout & very occasional backstabber. That changed over the editions, they converged, but remained stubbornly separate.  In 3e Finesse Weapons and maxDEX by armor type made the STR/DEX choice less about class and more about concept.  A fighter could use a rapier or spiked chain and be all about DEX, it wasn't efficient, but it was possible. The Rogue still had trapfinding as a special ability, but the rest of her toys had become skills, she (Lidda, by 3e convention) just got more of them, and, in compensation, got iterative attacks at high level and Sneak Attack that was more broadly useful than the old Backstab, making it a regular DPR-contributor.  4e kept the Fighter & Rogue separate, by combat role as well as by concept.  But, in 5e, the Fighter and Rogue (upgraded to d8 HD) both contribute DPR, the fighter just with multiple attacks and the rogue with very-lightly-limited SA, and the Fighter can be just as DEX-primary as you like, good at stealth & scouting if an Outlander or good at thieving if an Urchin or the like.  The only clear line between them is a mechanical one: Extra Attack on one side, SA & Expertise on the other.  The conceptual line is gone.  A Rogue could take the Soldier or Noble or other background that suggests the traditional Fighter archetypes, a Fighter Urchin or Charlatan or the like and emphasize DEX and be conceptually much like the Rogue.They're separate classes thanks, mostly, to Tradition, and the separation does neither of them any favors, as the Fighter is sorely lacking out of combat, for no valid reason, and the Rogue artificially 'slow' in combat for want of extra attack, likewise, to no particularly conceptual purpose, just, maybe, to 'balance' SA.  The two classes could be merged, keeping all of their best stuff, and be just fine - even still a bit behind the versatility/power/contribution of most casters.Class Tier 3. Really, the 5e ranger is a whole lot more confused.  Fighter/Druid?  Scout?  Aragorn?  Dritzz?  Grizly Adams?  It doesn't know, and it can't even effectively hand the choice off to the fighter.  The 0e/1e Ranger knew it was Aragorn, after that, no one's been too sure.But, the 4e Ranger was only split by two choices:  DEX or STR primary - in the PH, Archer or TWFer - and Dungeon or Wilderness.  No racist damage bonus.  No nature magic confusing the issue.  The Grizzly Adams thing was one sub-class. MM was on record affirming that they "were not just grid-filling" and the Martial Grid, conspicuously, was never filled.  So you can't pretend the Warlord was there to fill in a mechanical gap.  In the PH, there was already a leader - the traditional one, the Cleric - so it can't have been to provide that role at launch, and there was never a martial controller, so the Martial Source, at least, was being driven by concept, not Role/Source grid-filling.  (Though, I suppose, you could make the Grid-filling claim for every other source - Swordmages and Shamans and Avengers and Invokers and Wardens and Ardents and Battleminds and so forth - since their grids were filled.)Supposedly, in 5e you also need a concept that's broad enough for about 10 sub-classes, ultimately. Now, the Fighter & Rogue (and Ranger) fail the separate concept pretty dramatically, and there are PH classes that still aren't up to 10 sub-classes.  So any "you must be so high to be a full class" rules of thumb are clearly pretty flexible.Were the Fighter class-Tier 1 (or even 2), it could probably handle the Fighter, Rogue, Ranger, Barbarian, and Warlord  - and Scout, Knight, Cavalier, Swashbuckler, Duelist and others.  If.  But it's just a mindless beatstick, albeit, a mindless beatstick that can beat on you with DEX instead of STR if designed to do so from 1st level on. True. And psionics were in a PH1, just, unlike the Warlord, not as an actual class.  A technicality. If we were being fair, the Warlord should have been added as an optional full class first, followed by the Psion(icist?/Mystic?), then arguably the Shaman, and, late-ed, when all the othere elements were in place, the Artificer in an Eberron sourcebook.That'd be a mechanical starting point, but you'd have to expand on them radically. General & Marshall are worse, as they're RL military Ranks, and Tactician is one Warlord build out of 6 or 8 depending on how you count 'em. The h4te was pretty strong, but the hp-as-meat thing prettymuch sprung up to justify it, rather than being the source of it, was my impression. It wasn't just the Warlord, though it became the poster boy, it was that martial classes got encounter and Daily powers, that they were, all-round, closer than ever to balanced with the traditional casters. The core of the edition war was always class balance: every complaint, however dressed up in newly-minted terminology and blazing nerdrage boiled down to begrudging anyone playing a martial concept anything close to parity with a supernatural concept.And, it's the real stumbling block for a 5e Warlord.  The BM & PDK 'shouty heal' and grant actions and have limited-use abilities, and they're not a problem in spite of those having been the complaints voiced about the warlord - because they're the power/versatility equivalent of second-rate 1/3rd-casters.  To step into it's support role - the only role it's had, as 4e was it's one appearance - the Warlord would have to be equivalent in power/versatility to a class-Tier 1 or 2 caster, like the Cleric or Bard.That's a bridge too far.</blockquote>

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