There are a number of Battlemaster Manuevers that don't mimic anything that a 4e Fighter did and instead mimic what a 4e Warlord did. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think the Battlemaster was intended to allow you to play a number of different concepts, one being the warlord.
And we literally cannot know which of us is right, because it would require us to have internal documents from the post-public-playtest phase (when the vast majority of these maneuvers were created, because again, remember that something like half or more of 5e only crystallized in the last 6 months before it went to print!)
It's low level features are painful. By high level it actually looks decent.
Having to wait until high level to actually get your class fantasy was, as I understood it, one of the
specific things 5e was trying to tackle. This, at the very least, would seem to be an admission of
partial failure.
That bad EK comparison keeps getting brought up repeatedly. Should be obvious that repeating it 15 billion times doesn't make it a more compelling point.
You may not find it compelling, but it rather succinctly communicates what I--and others--have wanted. And it's not unique to this thread. People, at the very least myself, have been saying this for literally years, that the Eldritch Knight is to the Wizard
what we see the Battle Master being to the Warlord: a thin, pale shadow, something that, yes, it does contain a
seed of the baseline mechanics/concept, but it is far to fundamentally Fighter-y to ACTUALLY do the job. I mean, if the BM contained ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER of the Warlord, you wouldn't even bother suggesting it--but by that same token, the Valor Bard and Inquisitive/Mastermind Rogue contain
something of the Warlord while still failing to hit the mark.
To perhaps turn this around: What, exactly, does the Wizard (not its subclasses, just the base class itself)
do for its concept that the Eldritch Knight doesn't? The only class features a Wizard had prior to Tasha's were Arcane Recovery, Spell Mastery, and Signature Spells--and both of the last two are literally just "cast more of the spells you like most." All three are about as flavor-packed as boiled oats. The
only other thing that EKs can't do that Wizards can is transcribe spells. Is that really SO dramatically important that it, alone, makes the EK completely and thoroughly disconnected from the Wizard class concept? I...just don't buy it myself. "Spell research" is effectively a non-entity for the Wizard; I've gone on record both here and at GITP that this is
actually the biggest reason why people don't feel the Wizard, Warlock, and Sorcerer are sufficiently distinct, because the Wizard literally doesn't do anything to support its concept besides "cast
MOAR SPELZ."
I'd say you have barely scratched the surface. But it's a start.
Option 1 - also has the following cons: conceptual overlap with different mechanical implementations. Lessens the Fighters already space - leaving him more and more fighting man and nothing else. Adding in very many different mechanics for similar things can cause issues with bounded accuracy and/or multiclassing.
"Conceptual overlap" is already covered by "reduplicated effort." And, as noted, I don't actually see this as REDUCING the Fighter's space at all; I see it as letting the Fighter be focused on, y'know, doing actual Fightery things. Particularly since we're talking about a
subclass, which the Fighter can totally keep. Like...adding the Warlord literally does not require that we change ONE THING about the Fighter, so you're inventing a con that doesn't exist. Further, I already covered multiclassing as a con, so....yeah, you're definitely just repeating what I already said there.
The bounded accuracy thing, though, is an idea I hadn't covered. What do you mean by this? I had assumed whatever a Warlord did would already be perfectly fine with that, since it's kind of a central design conceit regardless of my feelings on the matter (and regardless of the fact that it is neither particularly
bounded, nor particularly about
accuracy.)
Option 2 - There are also variant classes, not just errata.
I'd need to know what you mean by this difference. See above with my "an ultra-heavily errata'd class is effectively a brand-new class." Like...people got
real damn salty about the "class feature variants" in the UA, particularly things like Spell Versatility, to the point that when SV was removed you literally had a thread on this forum titled, verbatim, "Spell Versatility is GONE. Rejoice!" Complete with posters legitimately expressing
glee that Sorcerers, very specifically, weren't going to get it. People didn't treat Tasha's much differently from a full-on errata, and you can see from things like the angst about racial ability scores and the like that people fear Tasha's-like "variants" almost as much as they fear formal errata.
Option 3 - This is more the - we have considered the pros and cons of the possible solutions and determined that the doing nothing solution is better than one of the bad solutions we have.
From your own phrasing, it sounded pretty clear to me that you didn't exactly see this as a
positive thing. At the very least, what you've said isn't really a pro or a con; it's just (effectively) an admission that the problem,
despite being a problem, is too difficult to solve. Which...is a pretty bad sign, all things considered, given that this was supposed to be the light and flexible edition with "modules" and the like. To be
genuinely unable to solve a class balance problem would reflect rather badly on 5e.
Manuevers are very flexible.
Not in my experience. They do one pretty specific thing each, and that pretty specific thing is often not particularly useful (a
lot of the maneuvers are, frankly, trash....and, as generally agreed by most class guides, the "Warlord-like" ones are at least mediocre if not outright bad, barring special circumstances or ideal party compositions.)
The specific battlemaster implementation does them both well. Not great, but well.
Not in my experience. You do a couple of
potentially interesting things, and then nothing at all until you get a short rest. And because short rests are quite rare (most groups do 1, maybe 2 short rests a day), you're getting MAYBE 12 once-a-round things you can do. Whereas the Wizard has 12 powerful, encounter-defining things they can do (counting Arcane Recovery) at
fifth level, a mere two levels after the Battle Master gets maneuvers
at all. And it only goes up from there.
That's not ever been a part of the Warlord concept. Most fictional Warlords were also very capable warriors. I think alot of people are probably happy that 5e doesn't ask players to pick between an elite warrior that leads and a lesser warrior that leads better.
Firstly: actually, yes, it HAS been part of the Warlord concept. It was literally part of the 4e Warlord concept. So...I'm not sure where you're getting this from.
Second: You make it sound like it's a choice between "good thing, or bad thing that gets compensation." It's not--because we're not even talking about a choice at that level. where the classes
already exist. It is, at present a choice between "you only have
one option and it's
not really very good for what you want, for several reasons," and "you could actually have
two options, which could be tailored to suit their strengths." We're talking about the potential to craft a new solution that need not take
anything at all from the Fighter. Just like how you could (for example) make an "Anointed" subclass of Fighter that is (effectively) a "divine EK," and not take anything from the Paladin or Cleric by doing so. It's quite possible to have rather fine divisions of a concept and actually support each part properly; this isn't sordid and is well-trodden ground by 5e's actual design. (Even if, as noted above, I think there are several classes that could do it
better, like actually supporting Wizards who
do research.)
A level 3 Battlemaster can dish out 12d8 + 36 temp hp = 90 temp hp. A life cleric using all slots on cure wounds and his channel divinity will heal = 116 hp.
Only if that Battlemaster has dumped one of their other important stats (Str, Dex, or Con) in order to have maximum Cha at character creation. The Cleric, meanwhile, should have 16 Wis regardless (since it's their casting modifier). You've (very slightly) under-valued the Cleric's healing, it should be 119. And...yeah, no joke, gonna take 119 much more precisely-targeted healing over 90 THP any day of the week, because at the end of the day, 90 THP (indeed,
infinite THP) can't save your life if you're dying. 1 hit point of healing can.
And then if we don't look at, y'know, the most favorable possible level you could pick for the Battle Master, and instead look at some higher level, the comparison becomes rather more clear. Take 7th level, when the BM now has five superiority dice per rest, theoretically. 127.5 THP
if you assume two short rests a day (which is high, based on Crawford's own words); with the same number of rests, the Cleric--
just using CD--can heal 210 HP. The scaling is really bad for the BM, and the fact that it's THP makes it worse.
And that Charisma? Yeah, it's only going to help that one maneuver. Because the Battle Master (and the Fighter generally) gets
nothing else that benefits from Cha. You don't even get Persuasion or Deception in-class; you have to get that from your Background (which is irrelevant to a discussion of what
the class itself provides).
That's very Warlordy to me. And at this point what Warlord implementation could possibly compete with that at level 3?
At this point? Nothing, because there isn't one. But if allowed to make a different class? I
guarantee you it could compete handily--because it wouldn't be handing out mere THP.
I'm pretty sure there's more than 4 now. I'm not up to date on all the manuevers that have been added though.
Those four are in the PHB. I didn't look at the later ones; doing so now, there's only one new "Warlord-like" option, which is....really
really niche? Swap places with an adjacent ally (but you must have 5 feet of movement to do so), give one of you an AC buff. I would personally call it more of a Defender move, but since it
is repositioning and can
technically buff your ally (it's just...better to buff yourself unless you're SUPER worried about your ally getting hit, since you're presumptively putting
yourself in harm's way) it has some arguable, vaguely-Warlord-like uses.
Unless you are going to make the Warlord a fake caster it doesn't work well to start with a full caster base.
On this, at least, we're in full agreement. The Valor Bard is not a Warlord; it is a full spellcaster with some minor fighting capacity and Inspiration dice. Strip out those spells, and all you have is "some minor fighting capacity and Inspiration dice," which...is
very very far on the "starting" side of "starting idea." Hence why my concept--which uses the overall mechanical shape of the Warlock--is still stuck in pure-theory mode, because I haven't found a good replacement for Mystic Arcanum slots. But it's a damn sight more involved than "1. Take bard 2. Cut out its most prominent & powerful class feature 3. ???? 4.
Profit Warlord!"
I don't buy that. A leader that warriors and a warrior that leaders are conceptually the same thing.
You may not buy it all you want, but for us, the two are EXTREMELY distinct things. Like, as different as night and day....or other differences you have repeatedly dismissed.
To give a different comparison: The Battle Master is, for me, "a Warlord" in the way that a person with engineering degrees is "a mathematician." Yes, the engineer needed to have a fair amount of math training, and could probably teach intro math courses. But she isn't a mathematician. And her colleague who has a pure mathematics degree, while completely capable of understanding the formulae and diagrams used in engineering,
isn't an engineer and
couldn't teach engineering courses. A Battle Master may
choose to incorporate
some effects, of reduced potency and flexibility, that are either the same as or similar to what a Warlord might do.
Under the current classes, if my concept is elite warrior that is a great leader I pick Fighter/Battlemaster and pick the appropriate manuevers and I'm both a top tier warrior and a top tier leader. Now suppose we created a warlord class with much better leader mechanics and minimal warrior mechanics. I no longer can play a class that is an elite warrior and a great leader. I must choose elite warrior and average leader or great leader and average warrior.
Then this is an ENORMOUS, potentially impossible gap between your position and ours.
Because, for me, that is a COMPLETELY inaccurate description of the choices available. For me, the choice described is a
competent warrior (you aren't top-tier; that's Paladin, or Totem Barbarian if you want to tank) and an
at utter, absolute best mediocre leader. I want something that is a mediocre warrior and a competent leader. As a result, I'm going to stop replying to posts here, because picking this specific point apart is going to be make or break for whether we can get any progress at all; the rest is pointless if we can't resolve this part.
