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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6738405" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Excellent! Thank you for sharing this. From this we can conclude three very important things. That is, even within the beefy Fighter chassis with its loads of damage and personal survivability, it is balanced to have:1. A small amount of (group) healing 1/short rest2. A limited degree of truly granting extra attacks, 1/SR (at very high levels, 2/SR but only 1/round)3. A limited degree of support against inflicted conditions (1, 2, or 3x per short rest)While I think your phrasing of the alternative is a little hyperbolic, I generally agree that this is a good choice when one wishes to remain wholly within the Fighter chassis. Straightforward but--hopefully--effective.I'd have put a minor intensifier in front of "small" there. While it's only variably less than the amount healed by Second Wind (drops the 1d10), Second Wind already doesn't strike me as being up to the task of keeping the Fighter conscious. At level 3, 3 HP is (at very most) 1/4 of the squishiest possible character's health (Wiz or non-Dragon Sorc with a -1 Con)--for my Bard, it would be less than 1/7th, and is close (if not equal) to the minimum damage of most attacks monsters use.This is is not at all to say that it's bad. It's good. I'm glad we have it. But as far as healing goes, it's strictly an auxiliary capacity--even a pair of PDKs would have trouble keeping up with damage dealt. As a fifth-wheel "we could use another support character" option, though, the PDK is quite nice indeed--in a party that already has a Cleric (esp. a Life Cleric) or a Bard, the PDK provides the strong Fighter contribution to damage and survivability, with a strong and useful slice of support.Personally, I think you've answered your own question with this third thought. Multiple arguments in favor of a full-class writeup remain in play even with the PDK. Some of the extreme ones ("it's impossible to play anything like it!") are defused now, but with now two different Fighter subclasses that get slices of the Warlord, it seems more applicable than ever to say, "I want the class that is 33% Battlemaster, 33% PDK, and 33% unique features."The PDK is a major step in the right direction, and (hopefully) both its mechanics and its thematics can help resolve deep disputes. Until I have reason to believe otherwise, it seems reasonable to assume that 5e now has a (sub)class that is not explicitly magical, which can restore actual HP. That's a huge and divisive argument eliminated right there, if this is true. Several people, in threads currently visible in this temporary subforum. IIRC,  [MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION], for example, has said that the addition of martial healing would be a dealbreaker. If I'm misrepresenting your position, Jester, please correct me on this front.I don't think the lack of a Warlord class is an insult to 4e fans, though when thrown on the pile of other issues, I absolutely understand both how it can feel that way, and why it's become something of a rallying banner (heh) for them. (For a time, I even felt the same way, but time has given me the distance and reflection to overcome my emotional responses and take a more objective stance.) As I've said several times now, I strongly believe the devs fully intended to make a true, effective Warlord. Then they realized that it was a lot like the Fighter (which it should be, being "martial"), and tried to save space by merging them; an idea I think was unwise, but still workable in the early-to-mid playtest.Then they dropped several overall game elements, rewrote the Fighter class 2-3 more times, and eliminated the "Fighter Warlord's" ability to actually heal (which was present as of August 2013, according to a Mearls tweet--barely over 2 months before the final public playtest packet). I believe they got backed into a corner and couldn't accomplish what they wanted anymore, not without a substantially longer playtest period. So they shelved the 5e Warlord concept, stopped talking about it, and hoped that enough people would be happy with what was available until they had the time and manpower to try again. Whether they were right--within the picocosm of Warlord fans, the nanocosm of 4e fans, and the microcosm of D&D players generally--is both hotly disputed and impossible to prove, so I think it pointless to make claims one way or the other.Not really the intent, but alright. I was pointing out how some posters made an argument that seems directly controverted by the PDK's mechanics. My memory is a little fuzzy (just got up from a nap), but as I recall, you were one of the posters claiming that the Warlord does not fit in 5e because, at its root, it tells other people how to roleplay. If I am conflating you with another poster, I apologize--but I definitely know that at least one person on this forum made that argument, and I didn't see a single "anti-Warlord" poster comment on that argument being wrong, illogical, or inappropriate, from what I could tell. Perhaps it happened and I missed it.I have no interest in a "boss other PCs around" feature. I have interest in attack-granting (and possibly other action-granting) features being present on a full Warlord class. If such a feature were added, it would appeal to neither my interest in the class (assuming it wasn't added to a full-class "Warlord," by that name or another), nor my interest in its features.It's a bit of give and take, technically speaking. If Rallying Cry works on unconscious individuals, and if you always get at least 2 (sometimes 3) short rests per "day," it's actually pretty good.I hold out hope, though yes, it's a bit of a mixed blessing. Attack-granting of some form, martial healing to some degree, is a win. The possibility that WotC will sit back and feel satisfied that they've done everything they need to do is an unfortunate cost.</blockquote>

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