D&D 5E Purple Dragon Knight = Warlord?

[Imaro]

That's not an all-martial party, nor a party depending exclusively on non-magical healing in place of a primary support character. You've got a fairly significant support character in the paladin, and a lesser one in the ranger, both including magical healing. AT could have a few buffs and the like, too. But, OK, in your experience, the game supports a style of play where 3/4 of the party are half-casters, feats are in use, and 'common' magic items are readily available.
Was that ever an issue?

Okay first off I noticed you still didn't answer my main question... do you even know what the variant healing rules are in the DMG? If not how are you making claims about their accessibility and amount...

No it's not an all martial party (and I never claimed it was) but I can with a high level of confidence make the claim, from watching them play without a primary healer, and taking note that neither the ranger nor the paladin has used a spell to heal anyone over the span of 10 levels (though I will admit the paladin made use of lay on hands to heal at various times), that if I were to include the healing variant rules from the DMG it would alllow a non-caster party to function competently. I really am starting to think you are overestimating the necessity of magical healing in 5e... especially for classes that have high HD types, things like the barbarian's damage reduction and/or the fighter's Second Wind and do massive amounts of damage when played well...

 

[Imaro]

Just thought I'd try a thought experiment...

HEALING SURGES
This optional rule allows characters to heal up in the thick of combat and works well for parties that feature few or no characters with healing magic, or for campaigns in which magical healing is rare.
As an action, a character can use a healing surge and spend up to half his or her Hit Dice. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character's Constitution modifier. The character regains hit points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll.
A character who uses a healing surge can't do so again until he or she finishes a short or long rest.
Under this optional rule, a character regains all spent Hit Dice at the end of a long rest. With a short rest, a character regains Hit Dice equal to his or her level divided by four (minimum of one die).
For a more superheroic feel, you can let a character use a healing surge as a bonus action, rather than as an action.

HERO POINTS
Hero points work well in epic fantasy and mythic campaigns in which the characters are meant to be more like superheroes than the average adventurer is.
With this option, a character starts with 5 hero point at 1st level. Each time the character gains a level, he or she loses any unspent hero points and gains a new total equal to 5 + half the character's level.
A player can spend a hero point whenever he or she makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw
The player can spend the hero point after the roll is made but before any of its results are applied. Spending the hero point allows the player to roll a d6 and add it to the d20, possibly turning a failure into a success. A player can spend only 1 hero point per roll.
In addition, whenever a character fails a death saving throw, the player can spend one hero point to turn the failure into a success.

Would these two variants give enough additional healing and buffing to make nonmagical feasible?

Honestly, my personal opinion is that hero points are a nice "to have" but strictly speaking aren't really necessary.... the durability of the martial classes (higher HD & higher Con on avg), along with abilities that mitigate damage (Second Wind, Rage,etc.)... equipment that allows for damage/condition mitigation (healing potions, antitoxin, etc.)... feats that allow for hit point accumulation/damage mitigation (Inspiring Leader, Healer, Durable) on top of their high DPR rate (which again, can be made even more devastating with the right feats) are more than enough to make them functional in a 5e game. I'm also assuming that in a low to no magic game they would face few if any spell casters themselves and thus most of their saves will be of the physical variety which they will also excel at...

 

[Tony Vargas]

Would these two variants give enough additional healing and buffing to make nonmagical feasible?

Maybe not those two in that form, but yes hypothetically, you could introduce enough optional rules to extend the basic functionality of the game to cover styles like the all-martial party or low-/no-magic campaign. That'd be a simple, spartan, and incomplete solution to the issue of supporting those styles. The extremely small and narrowly-focused range of choices available to handle martial, non-magical, and/or non-supernatural character concepts would still leave those styles under-supported. Not that functional but under-supported isn't better than non-functional, just that it still wouldn't be enough for 5e to honestly claim support for those styles.

Adding the Warlord and possibly another martial class or sub-classes, OTOH, would be a more complete solution, fixing the functionality issues the system has with such styles /and/ supporting them in a way that's more nearly seamless and could provide a reasonable play experience for them.

 

[Imaro]

Maybe not those two in that form, but yes hypothetically, you could introduce enough optional rules to extend the basic functionality of the game to cover styles like the all-martial party or low-/no-magic campaign. That'd be a simple, spartan, and incomplete solution to the issue of supporting those styles. The extremely small and narrowly-focused range of choices available to handle martial, non-magical, and/or non-supernatural character concepts would still leave those styles under-supported. Not that functional but under-supported isn't better than non-functional, just that it still wouldn't be enough for 5e to honestly claim support for those styles.

Adding the Warlord and possibly another martial class or sub-classes, OTOH, would be a more complete solution, fixing the functionality issues the system has with such styles /and/ supporting them in a way that's more nearly seamless and could provide a reasonable play experience for them.

Does this idea that 5e needs massive amounts of healing and buffing that you keep claiming come from experience in actual play of the game? Because it is so far from what I have seen in slightly over a year of play that I feel like I must be missing something. Could you further expound on what experiences have led you to believe that the healing provided by the variant rule @Remathilis posted from the DMG (along with that provided by various feats and some class abilities) would not be adequate in making a martial party functional? There has to be something I'm missing here.

EDIT: Okay and now it seems like your argument is shifting into something totally different... that now it is a lack of non-magic/low-magic concepts available in 5e that is the issue as opposed to whether a party that chose the concepts that fit the genre would be capable of functioning in a 5e game or not. Is that what you are now stating? Because low magic is pretty well covered... and even no-magic with the addition of SCAG has been expanded to 3 fighter archetypes, 2 barb archetypes, 4 rogue archetypes, and possibly 1 or 2 monk archetypes depending on whether you view his abilities as magical or not... and this is excluding anything that might be available through UA like the spell-less ranger.

 

[Remathilis]

Maybe not those two in that form, but yes hypothetically, you could introduce enough optional rules to extend the basic functionality of the game to cover styles like the all-martial party or low-/no-magic campaign. That'd be a simple, spartan, and incomplete solution to the issue of supporting those styles. The extremely small and narrowly-focused range of choices available to handle martial, non-magical, and/or non-supernatural character concepts would still leave those styles under-supported. Not that functional but under-supported isn't better than non-functional, just that it still wouldn't be enough for 5e to honestly claim support for those styles.

Not sure what its missing rules wise; HD burn becomes an action (or even bonus action), you get full HD on a long rest, or 1/4th on a short. A fifth level fighter who takes two short rests gets 7d10 HD plus 3d10 Second Wind; 10d10 healing per day. And that is before Healer (1d4 per rest), Rallying Cry (1-10 hp per rest) Ranger polices (1d6 per two ranger levels), or any Temporary HP abilities. Also, Durable would be an amazing feat in such a game.
Similarly, the Hero Points were their to provide nonmagical "buffing", improving an attack roll, a saving throw, or even stablizing before death saves kill you (Spare the Dying dice). Not quite as good as Bardic Inspiration, but something.
And that is no magic; low magic could still add some additional kick (healing potions, monks, paladins, etc).

Adding the Warlord and possibly another martial class or sub-classes, OTOH, would be a more complete solution, fixing the functionality issues the system has with such styles /and/ supporting them in a way that's more nearly seamless and could provide a reasonable play experience for them.

Not more complete, but simply different. Its basically taking those two variants and making them one character class and throwing on a few extra features and ribbons. The point is the warlord isn't needed to do low/no magic, it can be done right now using the DMG and some house rules. Now, that doesn't mean a warlord wouldn't be wanted, I could very easily see a low/no magical supplement with a few additional subclasses or even a warlord (along with variants like the spell-less ranger and additional rule modules), maybe a 3pp might even do that if/when WotC finishes up the licence (I'm not sure WotC will do that in anything that resembles a timely manner, they have too many other projects to do first and I can't imagine the demand is large enough to pull resources from other things to devote to this right away).

So, can low/no magic be done without a warlord? Yes. Does that invalidate the desire for a warlord? No. But I think the *need* for one is over-exaggerated.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Not sure what its missing rules wise

Neither am I, which is why I said 'maybe.' In essence you're proposing replacing 3 or more existing classes and one hypothetical class with two paragraphs of optional rules. I'm a little hesitant to outright endorse that, and the point is really whether it's hypothetically possible to obviate the need for a support class entirely by adding some universal options that let PCs 'support themselves' as it were. I acknowledge that it is theoretically possible.

Not more complete, but simply different.

Different is getting your party's support from a complex/flexible class like a Bard vs getting it from a Cleric vs getting it from a hypothetically complex/flexible enough (though probably less so than a full caster) Warlord. Having all those choices is a lot more complete than having a set of rules that obviate the need for support, for one thing, because you can have support-class concepts.

The point is the warlord isn't needed to do low/no magic, it can be done right now using the DMG and some house rules.

In other words, it can't be done now, with the game as it stands, only by adding to it. The Warlord, then, could fill that need. So could arbitrary rule changes that remove the need for support entirely. So could a hypothetical Marshal, or Field Medic, or anything that arbitrarily didn't 'use magic' and provided support. Those quibbles don't obviate the need, just shift the goalposts around a bit to avoid admitting the need is there and that the Warlord would fill both that need, and others - including the tautological 'need' for the Warlord because people (even if some us us were 4vengers) want to play it, which, alone, should have been enough.

 

[Sadras]

Saving Throws per round, for instance, are not 4e-style saving throws, so the corellation is poor, they're just like the saving-throw-per-round 3.5 used for Hold spells, though.

I disagree, the correlation is very strong in fact. If memory serves me, unlike 3.x, 4e applied the saving throw per round for everything - not just Hold Spells. It was very much part of the 4e system going against the save vs suck, which is very much 5e's philosophy.
3.x was still very much burdened with save or suck.

Second Wind & Action Points were very different both in impact and in availability as well as in being universal.

The point being they were very much ported in from 4e and evolved for the system of 5e.

Tieflings were introduced in 3e.

When in 3e's lifetime? In 4e they were in the first PHB - which is something you give credit for the Warlord being in 4e's first player's handbook but gloss over this for the tielfing and dragonborn included in both the 1st 4e and 1st 5e PHB.

Maneuvers owe at least as much to Bo9S as 4e.

Yes, but Bo9S was very much a later evolution of 3.x
Whereas the Warlord and his powers were very much in 4e's 1st PHB as are the 5e Maneuvers in the 1st PHB. I think we can safely say the reason they are in the 5e PHB is more to include the 4e crowd than that of the Bo9S fans.

And we could go on,

Sure we could, but I would continue to mitigate your watering-down of 4e's inclusion in 5e in your discussion about 5e's lack of 4e inclusion (only to push for the agenda of a Warlord).

This reminds me of when the 4e fans who would argue with the anti-4e crowd that the AEDU system was not really new and that it was very much part of the previous D&D systems - just reflected differently and with different "refresh rates" for the powers/abilities. In fact I have seen @Hussar mention on more than one occasion, and I agree with him on this, that part of 4e's downfall was due to its representation. It was essentially 'alien' to much of the fan-base and they were not able to indentify the similarities between the editions unless it was pointed out (myself included).

....but they're nothing comparable to including a class original to the edition that was in it's PH1.

Actually given the roll-out of 4e and how they broke up traditional classes and races over at least the first two PHBs - I would argue that there could be more you could be arguing for to be included within 5e. And that is my point - at what point would enough be enough?

The Warlord stands fairly unique as 4e poster-child. It was the only new class introduced by 4e that appeared in the PH1. It was a martial class balanced with casters filling a formal role inspired by the de-facto 'healer'/buffer roles that had formerly been strictly caster-only,. There's no 'something else' that significant.

I'd argue, using your thinking about the Sorcerer and other classes that seem to duplicate one another, that the 4e Warlord is just an evolution of 3.x Fighter-Bard. Do we really need one for 5e? Is it really that much of a poster child? Perhaps it was the 4e chassis that was really different that allowed the Warlord to flourish and not necessarily the class itself.
In my opinion - It was the Surges, the treatment of Hit Points, the refresh rates of powers, the AEDU, the universal round-by-round saves which allowed for effects/conditions to be imposed, the various defenses....etc
The Warlord was just a class that naturally complemented the new-system and hence termed "poster child"

In 5e, a Warlord class is not needed. Could we add one? Sure. But it certainly doesn't reflect that 5e cared for less about 4e or did the 4e fans a disservice by not including the Warlord. I don't buy that thinking.
In fact, my own players argue that too much of 4e is in 5e.

 

[Imaro]

So Tieflings who were introduced in 3e (I thought it was 2e, Planescape as a playable race but whatever) aren't a 4e thing... but the Marshall... I mean Warlord is somehow the poster child for 4e?? 2e/3e Tieflings and 4e Tieflings are about as similar as the Marshall and Warlord, both were introduced outside of the PHB 1 and 5e corebook Tieflings are definitely of the 4e variety.


EDIT: As a Planescape fan I really wish they had went the 2e/3e route with Tieflings instead of choosing the 4e version... but hey we're all making concessions, I'll just houserule my 5e Tieflings and use the Planewalkers Handbook for their traits, no biggie... unless I'm playing AL.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I disagree, the correlation is very strong in fact. If memory serves me, unlike 3.x, 4e applied the saving throw per round for everything - not just Hold Spells.

You missed the point. 'Save' doesn't mean the same thing in 5e that it did in 4e. A 5e 'save' is like an inverted attack roll against a defense that may or may not scale with level. It's not only possible, but likely, to have 5e save DCs that are very hard or very easy to make. 4e 'saves' were virtual coin-tosses, 55% chance of success in most cases. Repeating a nearly impossible or virtually certain save every round is very different from repeating a 50/50 save every round.

I would argue that there could be more you could be arguing for to be included within 5e. And that is my point - at what point would enough be enough?

So you're saying I should be arguing for more inclusion, and that because I should be arguing for more, I'm asking for too much? Weird.

I'd argue, using your thinking about the Sorcerer and other classes that seem to duplicate one another, that the 4e Warlord is just an evolution of 3.x Fighter-Bard. Do we really need one for 5e? Is it really that much of a poster child?

That's the point. We need the Warlord at least as much as we needed the Sorcerer, and we have the Sorcerer.

In 5e, a Warlord class is not needed.

It would be easy enough to argue that any given class already in 5e is 'not needed' to the same or even a much greater degree. So that's a meaningless objection.

Could we add one? Sure.

And we should. There's good reasons to do so - it opens up currently un-supported and under-supported playstyles, and it's inclusive in a positive way. There are no valid reasons not to do so (every reason anyone's come up with is either spurious edition war propaganda or applies to an even greater extent to other classes already in the game - or both).

But it certainly doesn't reflect that 5e cared for less about 4e or did the 4e fans a disservice by not including the Warlord. I don't buy that thinking.

I also prefer not to read that intent into the Warlord being the only class that was in the PH1 to be excluded from the 5e PH. Unfortunately, that exclusion ongoing resistance among fans unwilling to embrace 5e's vision of inclusiveness, does create the appearance of exactly that negative intent. That appearance is corrosive. It makes 5e look like "D&D: The H4ter Edition." Perpetuating that appearance is bad for both the game and the community.

In fact, my own players argue that too much of 4e is in 5e.

There's lots of little bits taken from 4e, as there are from every prior edition, but they don't add up to enough support for those character concepts and play styles that 4e supported for the first time. The addition of the Warlord would be a step in that direction.

 

[Imaro]

Tieflings weren't core in 3e? I could have sworn they were but then it has been a while since I've flipped through the books.

Nope Tieflings (& Dragonborn) as core is a purely 4e thing... well except for 5e now. And as I remember it were pretty controversial as PHB 1 races especially since 4e was missing a few classics.

I think I prefer the chaotic looking tieflings from 2e as well, all the different permutations abilities and appearances was pretty cool. Mind you, with SCAG they are opening that up for different flavours of tiefling.

Interesting I have the book but haven't read it in depth yet, My players and I agreed to only use the corebooks for our first campaign, which we will be finishing up soon... so I haven't had a pressing reason to read it yet...