NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 9168714" data-attributes="member: 996">I kinda did, actually, back in 3.5 - built, not played, because the build ultimately was not satisfactory - but the concept wasn't warlord.  It was, humorously, "back-seat adventurer" that is, a Sage who knew all about monsters, treasures, history, tactics, etc, on an academic level, but no experience or talent for the actual work of exploration and little for fighting.  The initial thought for a Sage was, of course, Wizard, but that came with so much spell power it'd be the inevitable focus of the character.  So, Bard, it's 'song' giving everyone a bonus could be re-skinned as annoying advice - all the more annoying because it sometimes helped!  But, ultimately, anemic a full caster as it was, the 3.5 Bard was still a full caster, and it wasn't practical in terms of either available choices or overall contribution, to downplay that enough to fit the concept.An actual warlord would run into the same issues.  Re-skinning spells to the point they're immune to anti-magic &c is squirrelly, and downplaying them enough to fly under the not-magic-I-swear radar would leave you under-contributing. Mechanically distinct in the sense that the BM would be profoundly inferior and unable to pull it's weight in a support role, while rivaling the dedicated melee types.  OK, and in the sense that the two superior warlords are shut down by antimagic.  And the annoying way you'd have to willfully pick sub-optimal spells every day as the cleric (at least the Bard need only do so at level-up).Ultimately, the Bard is a fair touchstone for how powerful/effective/versatile a warlord class would need to be for basic viability, tho.  Re-skinning is awesome, yes.  3e let you do some explicitly (you could describe your character & gear as you liked, re-skinning spells apparently required Spell Thematics - better than 2e, where you needed to cast a spell, Sense Shifting, to re-skin other spells); 4e you could re-skin more (even spells) and very easily, since fluff was separated from crunch to a degree, but you couldn't change keywords which means re-fluffing Source was out; 5e  <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤷‍♂️" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f937-2642.png" title="Man shrugging    :man_shrugging:" data-shortname=":man_shrugging:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /> ask your DM the rules are vague with little to differentiate re-skinnable fuff from sacrosanct rules text (and, even then, the rules text is often vague and begs for rulings).</blockquote>

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