So what do we need from the Warlord?

[Jester David]

That's what you get when you try to take input on class design from people who hate the class on a conceptual level: incoherence.

There is absolutely NO need for that kind of insulting or hostile tone. If you cannot have a civil discussion in a mature manner then feel free to converse with someone else.

I don't hate the warlord on a conceptual level. Or even on a practical level. I hate martial healing on an emotional level and the proposed warlord on a design level.

That's the result of trying to appease the spurious objections to hp-restoration mechanics modeling Inspiration. Inspiration, tactics, & leadership all go together neatly. "Field Medic," conceived as a less abstract way of restoring hps, more literal 'healing' or wound-treating, is irrelevant to the class concept.

Inspiration and tactics don't really go together. Heck, they're not even really tied to the same ability score (Int vs Cha). The guy making the inspiring speeches isn't always the guy planning the attack. That and inspiring leader moment tends to happen before the battle. Focusing on both tactics & strategy and inspiration & leadership really makes the warlord MAD as all get out.

And it really goes together ONLY because it went together in 4e. Because of the conventions of that edition. Which is circular reasoning: tactical leaders heal because the warlord was a healer so a 5e warlord should be a healer because it's a tactical leader.

You don't expect the squad's sergeant to heal you. A new player won't look at a class called "the warlord" and is described as a "tactical commander" and assume that's the guy who restores your health. Heck, half the job of a military commander is sacrificing troops and letting people die to win the battle. That's the opposite of a healer.

Not necessarily, it depends on how abilities are chosen and used. It's like adding a spell to a class list, it slightly increases flexibility, you don't usually have to take away another spell to compensate.

So you're okay with a warlord class who cannot heal by default? A warlord whose healing is a subclass feature? Or an variant rule in a sidebar?

(Honestly… I'd be okay with a sidebar. Putting a "healing maneuver" aside like that would emphasise that it's optional in a way that reiterating DMs have a choice over and over does not. And keep the mechanic from propagating throughout the game, by emphasising to designers that it's non-standard.
I believe I proposed this several times in the past, and it was always rejected because healing was "an essential, mandatory, and non-optional part of the warlord".)

The most critical aspect of in-combat healing is getting a fallen ally back into the fight. Numbers tell very heavily under Bounded Accuracy, and a PC victory usually hinges on taking enemies out of the fight, thereby shifting those numbers in their favor. A party that can't bring an ally back into the fight is very vulnerable to the reverse.

Spending an action to get an ally back into the fight works if the damage that party member can do is significantly higher than the potential damage of the healer (or, in the case of a princess warlord, any other party member).
It also assumes that the party member is in a position to do said damage on that turn and can act before they're reduced to 0 hp again. Because the amount even a good healer can restore is less than the damage a monster can dish out in a round. And the healer is in a position where they can reach the injured party member.
That's very situational.

Really, a warlord power that granted temporary hit points and woke up an ally (slapping them away and inducing a surge of adrenaline) could arguably be more useful. Because temp hp don't last beyond the fight the power can grant more health than healing, increasing the chance of the ally doing something effective.

That's one valid play style. There are others. If that's your playstyle, you'd want to make choices to emphasize offensive buffs. You'll likely have the odd TPK, but that's just part of the sense of challenge that makes that style fun for those who prefer it.

It's not a playstyle, it's math. Math and the rules.

A healer is likely to restore 7 hp with an average cure wounds at first level. This goes up to 12 at 3rd level, 16 at 5th level (assuming no stat bump), 21 at 7th level, 25 at 9th, and 30 at 11th. (Although, at 11th level heal is likely the better choice, healing 70hp.)
With a couple stat bumps this will go up a point or two, but not that much. The amount you heal goes up by 1d8 every two levels while you hp goes up by one die every level. Healing doesn't keep pace.
This is also at a range of touch. The numbers drop significantly if done farther away (restoring 5, 8, 10, 13, and 15).

In contrast, the expected damage of a monster goes up by 6 points every level. A Challenge 1 monster does 11-ish damage, a Challenge 3 does 23, a Challenge 5 does 35, and a Challenge 7 does 47. A healer will generally need to cast cure wounds a couple times for every monster turn.

Combat healing is just *not* an effective strategy. The healer will spend a huge chunk of their resources to heal 16 hp and the monster will come over and deal 20+ damage. But if you can kill the creature before it can attack you have more hp for the next encounter.

One of them a nature-priest, so barely differentiated from the Cleric as a concept, and the other a minstrel - and they're /all/ spell-casters.

And?
The selling feature of the warlord in 4e was not that it was a healer that wasn't a spellcaster (because that was just flavour in 4e) but to be a healer that wasn't a cleric. It was to provide a choice for that fourth role.
Now there is a choice. You can be a cleric or a druid or a bard. And you can be a good off-healer as a ranger or paladin. Heck, a sorcerer a single level dip in bard or wizard with a feat can also be a solid healer. (Albeit without the restoration spells.)
The warlord's hook of being a cleric alternative is no longer needed. It's free to do its own thing outside of the shadow of the cleric.

Plus, giving a warlord abilities that function identically to spells makes it a spellcaster, even if the abilities are called something else.

Meh. 5e is not such a bad game that it can't handle the Warlord. 4e was not such a bad game that nothing from it can work in 5e. The edition war is over, 5e is D&D for everyone who ever loved D&D, and that includes 4e fans who'd like to play a Warlord. 5e is up to that challenge, lingering edition-war prejudices and nay-saying notwithstanding.

That wasn't a shot at 4e. Don't make this into an edition war.

I was making a design observation. 4e had fewer lasting conditions, and most negative effects ended with the encounter. Those few that persisted could be removed by any character at the cost of a feat, a ritual known, and some gold. But even then, those conditions were far more rare, and most were purposly places so they were encountered at the end of the Heroic tier at the earliest.
Hit point recovery was an adequate means of being the "healer".

In contrast, in 5e even low Challenge monsters can unleash some hefty negative conditions and effects that persist until removed. And there are more lasting conditions. A healer style character is far more than just hp recovery.

That's assuming spells are the only possible solution, which you seem to think is the case with restoring hps, as well, but the Warlord could do that. So it might not be an issue at all.

Is there a non-magical way to regrow eyes, turn a statue to flesh, or remove a curse?

Neonchameleon's case is that the Warlord would enable play in low-/no-magic games where spellcasters are inappropriate. Most of the sorts of effects that restoration copes with would also go the way of spellcasters in such a game, so it's a non-issue in that instance. In a higher-magic game, a ritual caster or even NPC could cover lingering out-of combat effects. In combat, the Warlord might offer ways of mitigating or minimizing the negative effects of such things, through inspiration and/or compensating for (or even leveraging) them tactically. In an all-martial party in an otherwise standard World, that last idea might have to be depended upon until an outside resource could be found to remove the effect permanently.

This is odd to me. What's the point of playing a low/no magic game if there are classes that replicate the gameplay effects of spells? Part of the interesting tone in a low magic game is how it changes the assumptions of play.

Of course, I found this argument problematic in 4e as well. One of the points they used to sell the warlord in prior to launch was that you could play a Dragonlance game prior to the War of the Lance when there were no clerics. Which seemed odd, as one of the major themes of such as game is the absence of clerics. The lack of clerics was meant to be detrimental, and their return was meant to be a momentous event. It falls flat if there's another character running around replacing the cleric.

There's no question the Warlord wouldn't be exactly as useful in every circumstance as each of the existing support classes (which are very nearly fungible, because they do cast many of the same spells), which is only to be expected, as it is a very different and unique concept not yet covered by the game, but that doesn't mean it can't adequately contribute support to keep a party going through the 5e adventuring day. And, it does make it's addition all the more desirable.

I agree.
And I'd like to see it be even *more* different and unique, to focus on what makes it interesting and special. To be its own thing rather than focusing on an old edition's grid-filler abilities to strip away half its class features. To step out of the shadow of the cleric and truly become its own class, rather than being forced to conform to a paradigm of a very different class. To function in a support role that doesn't overlap at all with the "healer" classes allow it to be desirable in a party with those other classes without either feeling redundant.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't hate the warlord on a conceptual level. Or even on a practical level. I hate martial healing on an emotional level and the proposed warlord on a design level.

Your hatred is your personal problem. You do not need to offend everyone here with it. It does not give you the right to dictate to everyone how they play the game. It doesn't even keep you from playing the game in spite of the presence of it's object, because you are under no obligation to use anything in the game that you don't care for. None.

Asking for a 5e Warlord - even getting one as part of the Standard Game and AL, which, frankly, would be entirely fair and in keeping with 5e's goals of inclusiveness - wouldn't change that. I'm not trying to tell you how to play the game, I'm just asking WotC to give me the tool to play it the way I want. 5e already provides tools to play many character concepts, both common in fantasy (fighter, rogue, warlock, sorcerer) and virtually absent from it (glowy-in-combat-magical-healing priests, Vancian casters). The Warlord concept is between those extremes, entirely worthy of inclusion.

Inspiration and tactics don't really go together.

They're both very handy things to be good at if you're going to work with others in combat.

Which is circular reasoning: tactical leaders heal because the warlord was a healer so a 5e warlord should be a healer because it's a tactical leader.

It's really not circular. 5e is committed to being inclusive to fans of all past editions. It designs classes based on their appearances in past editions. The Warlord has had only the one past appearance. There's no conflict.

A new player won't look at a class called "the warlord" and is described as a "tactical commander" and assume that's the guy who restores your health. Heck, half the job of a military commander is sacrificing troops and letting people die to win the battle. That's the opposite of a healer.

Calling hp-restoration 'healing' is a misnomer in that concept.

So you're okay with a warlord class who cannot heal by default? A warlord whose healing is a subclass feature? Or an variant rule in a sidebar?

No, I'm not OK with walling off a critical support ability. I am OK with it being one of many flexible options, as it is with every other support class. Flexibility is crucial to providing support, anyway, since it's a contribution that's most important when things are going wrong. You can't be a 1-trick-pony support class.

(Honestly… I'd be okay with a sidebar. Putting a "healing maneuver" aside like that would emphasise that it's optional in a way that reiterating DMs have a choice over and over does not. And keep the mechanic from propagating throughout the game, by emphasising to designers that it's non-standard.

Look, if desire for the Warlord is so slight as you wish believe, and abhorrence of 'martial healing' so nearly universal as you claim to believe, why do you need the write-up of the class to go so many extra miles in repudiating the idea? Do you have so little confidence in your own opinions that you need WotC to actively take your side over and over again, as some sort of security blanket to re-assure you that you're right?

5e is a game that gives options. Take the options you like, leave the rest. Don't be so paranoid that just because something you don't like is available, or something you do like is 'only optional,' not standard, that there's something wrong with your preferences.

Really, a warlord power that granted temporary hit points and woke up an ally (slapping them away and inducing a surge of adrenaline) could arguably be more useful. Because temp hp don't last beyond the fight the power can grant more health than healing, increasing the chance of the ally doing something effective.

5e temp hps last until your next rest long rest, not just until the end of the combat. That would be a novel, inconsistent mechanic, when simply restoring hps already models the effect neatly, and in a way entirely in accord with 5e's handling of hps (which includes Second Wind, HD, death saves, and overnight healing).

The selling feature of the warlord in 4e was not that it was a healer that wasn't a spellcaster (because that was just flavour in 4e) .

Actually, that was a huge selling feature. 4e put martial and magical classes on more nearly-equal footing than ever before (or since). The Warlord made it practical to have an all-martial party or low-/no- magic campaign. It was huge. And, no, the differences among Sources were not merely flavor, the Source keyword could have actual mechanical effects.

It was to provide a choice for that fourth role.
Now there is a choice. You can be a cleric or a druid or a bard.

You could have those in 4e, too. Or an Artificer or Shaman. Choice is a good thing. The choice between Cleric and Druid isn't a very dramatic one, they're both essentially priests. Nor does the Bard, also a spell-caster, offer a compellingly different choice.

The Warlord would add a genuinely new and different choice for a player wanting (or needing) to contribute support for his party.

Plus, giving a warlord abilities that function identically to spells makes it a spellcaster, even if the abilities are called something else.

Sure, you can claim that a Bard casting cure light wounds via the arcane power of words & music, and a Druid casting cure light wounds via the power of nature, and Cleric praying to a specific deity to cast cure light wounds, are really 'all doing exactly the same thing,' and there's nothing to differentiate them. The same doesn't apply to the Warlord. It's not a caster, it'll necessarily have different mechanics. Maybe it'll trigger and enhance HD, for instance, accomplishing the same kinds of contributions as classes that can heal, but with a different concept (Inpiration) and different mechanic.

That wasn't a shot at 4e. Don't make this into an edition war.

It looked like a shot at both 5e /and/ 4e, to me. I'll defend both if you take shots at them. They're each great games in their own way, and the current edition definitely deserves my support.

Is there a non-magical way to regrow eyes, turn a statue to flesh, or remove a curse?

Is there a non-magical way to bestow a curse or turn a person to stone? No. So in a low-/no- magic game, they don't matter. In a high-magic game, resources external to the party could be called upon for those purposes. As far as re-growing things, that's beyond the power of hp-restoring magic like Cure Wounds, anyway, and not something you're going to do in combat. D&D has no mechanics for inflicting those kinds of injuries, anyway, so the point is probably moot.

This is odd to me. What's the point of playing a low/no magic game if there are classes that replicate the gameplay effects of spells?

Playing a low/no-magic game without having to re-write the game, of course. With Inspiration restoring hps, you can have combat challenges work like they generally have done in D&D. You don't have to re-write the combat system, or artificially limit your campaign to vanishingly little combat.

Part of the interesting tone in a low magic game is how it changes the assumptions of play.

You can change the assumptions of play in a game-re-balancing way without low magic. Remove in-combat healing spells, for instance, and you can have a high-magic game with combats that flow differently. Remove all magical healing, and use the alternate healing modules, and you can have a high-magic game that requires signficant re-tooling.

It all depends on what you're after. You snip out the parts you don't need for the campaign you want to run.

And I'd like to see it be even *more* different and unique, to focus on what makes it interesting and special. To be its own thing rather than focusing on an old edition's grid-filler abilities to strip away half its class features.

I'd like to see that too. There's no need, for instance, to limit the Warlord's enemy-influencing tactical maneuvering the way 4e did, since there's no formal 'controller' role to step on. A bravura build could shade into 'defender' territory. But, by the same token, there's no need to give up it's established abilities and functions, either. A 5e Warlord should have more customizability than the 4e Warlord did and cover more potential character concepts, not fewer. It also needs a great deal more flexibility and more resources than it had in 4e, to remain balanced with other 5e classes like the Cleric, Druid, and Bard, whose spells/day and flexibility to prep whatever spells they want and cast them spontaneously has vastly empowered them relative to 4e's AEDU.

To function in a support role that doesn't overlap at all with the "healer" classes allow it to be desirable in a party with those other classes without either feeling redundant.

There is no such support 'role.' Existing support classes overlap to a very high degree, they cast many of the exact same spells to contribute support to their parties. Does a Bard feel 'redundant' because there's a Cleric in the party who can also cast healing word? No, he just has more slots to cast Sound Burst because the healing duties are being shared. Overlap is inevitable, and it's not the problem it was in 4e when stepping on another 'Role' was a no-no. There's no need to exclude hp-restoration from the 5e Warlord's repertoire to make it unique, that it's a non-caster making it's primary contribution through something other than DPR already does that in spades, and he has other tricks, like action-granting that the existing primary-support classes don't do so much.

 

[mellored]

Inspiration and tactics don't really go together. Heck, they're not even really tied to the same ability score (Int vs Cha).

i disagree. without int, you won't know what to do. without cha, no one will follow your advice.
if it's too MAD, let them attack with Int. there's a cantrip that does similar. they really shouldn't be about hitting things damage in the first place.

 

[Jester David]

Your hatred is your personal problem. You do not need to offend everyone here with it.
<and some other stuff I hope he didn't spend too much time writing.>

Okay, I guess we're done here. I should have learned my lesson last time...

 

[Jester David]

i disagree. without int, you won't know what to do. without cha, no one will follow your advice.
if it's too MAD, let them attack with Int. there's a cantrip that does similar.

So they're swinging a sword using their mind? I think I'll pass on that mechanic.

they really shouldn't be about hitting things damage in the first place.

Are you sure? It's been a while since I cracked open my PHB 1 but I remember 90% of warlord powers hitting off Strength and requiring attack rolls. The princess warlord is a neat fan build, but it's not the default for the class.

 

[Tony Vargas]

i disagree. without int, you won't know what to do. without cha, no one will follow your advice.
if it's too MAD, let them attack with Int. there's a cantrip that does similar. they really shouldn't be about hitting things damage in the first place.

RuneQuest, IIRC, used something like 4 of your 6 stats to calculate your % chance to hit... now that I think of it, it was 5 - STR (hit harder, push past parries), DEX (agility, accuracy), SIZ (reach advantage, leverage, mass), INT (outsmart your opponent), and POW (maaaaagic!). 5e sure doesn't seem to want to go that way, though.

One nice thing about how 5e has handled weapons is that you can fairly neatly go STR or DEX as you like, you don't need a whole 'nuther class to do a 'light fighter.' The Warlord would also benefit from that. You could have a fencing master Warlord, for instance. Though, I suppose certain maneuvers subbing INT or CHA might make sense.

Another nice thing about 5e is that, among arrays, a 20 cap, ASIs, Bounded Accuracy, and six saves, it makes MAD a little less MADdening.

 

[mellored]

So they're swinging a sword using their mind? I think I'll pass on that mechanic.

No.

A warlord use Int to analyze the enemy, and create tactics that boost his allies to-hit.
Why could he not use Int to analyze the enemy, and create tactics that boost his own chance to-hit?

"Tatical Attack: Your head your own advice, attacking with tactical skill instead of brute strength or speed to slip past the enemy defenses. You can use Int in place of Str or Dex for melee weapon attacks and damage rolls."

Are you sure? It's been a while since I cracked open my PHB 1 but I remember 90% of warlord powers hitting off Strength and requiring attack rolls. The princess warlord is a neat fan build, but it's not the default for the class.

They did. But so what?

 

[Tony Vargas]

No.

A warlord use Int to analyze the enemy, and create tactics that boost his allies to-hit.
Why could he not use Int to analyze the enemy, and create tactics that boost his own chance to-hit?

"Tatical Attack: Your head your own advice, attacking with tactical skill instead of brute strength or speed to slip past the enemy defenses. You can use Int in place of Str or Dex for melee weapon attacks and damage rolls."

That might have been less appropriate in 4e, because Role was more tightly defined, but there's no reason not to do something like that in 5e. Such a tactical attack might not even necessarily use an attack roll, it could require an INT save from the target, instead, for instance.

 

[Jester David]

No.

A warlord use Int to analyze the enemy, and create tactics that boost his allies to-hit.
Why could he not use Int to analyze the enemy, and create tactics that boost his own chance to-hit?

"Tatical Attack: Your head your own advice, attacking with tactical skill instead of brute strength or speed to slip past the enemy defenses. You can use Int in place of Str or Dex for melee weapon attacks and damage rolls."

Adding it as a bonius kinda shatters bounded accuracy. A +2 bonus to hit is great, a +3-5 is ridiculous. Especially every round.

Just hiting off Int straight just seems weird. Combat is fast, so stoping to analyse seems impractical. Would it add to your damage? Don't buy that. The justification is too handywavy for me.

They did. But so what?

So it shouldn't be the default. Or people who want to update other warlord characters will have difficulty.

 

[Ainulindalion]

That kinda shatters bounded accuracy. A +2 bonus to hit is great, a +3-5 is ridiculous. Especially every round.

I'm not seeing this. If my INT mod is +3 instead of my STR mod at +3, wouldn't my attack bonus still just be PROF + MOD?