D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[Vaalingrade]

High level point. Each class in 4e had 10,000 powers (or however many).

You speak very authoritatively about how things shouldn't exist when you don't seem to have done even the basic research as to what they actually were.

 

[FrogReaver]

Inspiring leaders shouldn't exist in fantasy. Got it.

Why do you do this?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Why do you do this?

Call out people insisting I shouldn't' be allowed to have my fun via a preposterous assertion about a very common archetype?

No idea.

 

[FrogReaver]

Call out people insisting I shouldn't' be allowed to have my fun via a preposterous assertion about a very common archetype?

No idea.

Cheerlord exists in no fantasy save 4e.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Cheerlord exists in no fantasy save 4e.

Please tell me what you think a cheerlord is.

I know your distain for lazylord, but what to you is a cheerlord?

 

[Neonchameleon]

High level point. Each class in 4e had 10,000 powers (or however many). There’s no way a 5e Warlord can replicate them all.

I will quote the answer you were replying to again and add extra emphasis.

LOLNope. If it can not shout at someone on 0hp and provide them with enough energy to stand back up it isn't remotely comparable to a 4e warlord. End of story. It can't do the single most important part of the job of a warlord.​

This was something literally every single warlord in 4e could do at first level. By moving to temp hit points the 5e warlord's Rally is not fit for purpose. And complaining that there were a lot of options in 4e in no sense makes up for the fact that this was a first level ability shared by literally all warlords.

2nd high level point, martial classes had more overall power in 4e than they do in 5e. Your not going to see the same strength of effects in 5e.

So what you're saying is that 5e martials are so half-assed that none of them should be allowed to do the single class defining feature literally all warlords in 4e could do from first level.

lazy lords did more damage by attacking with Ally’s. They had healing. They had plenty of multi attack powers (with ally’s) Their support options were top notch, could grant initiative give the whole team tons of movement on turn 1. Etc.

They were much more than 1 trick ponies. They were really strong.

Almost all warlords did more damage by attacking with allies. For that matter so does the Battlemaster.

A Lazylord was very specifically a warlord who had no significant ability to attack themselves and who had to give all their attacks away because they had no other choice. They got no actual mechanical benefit for this other than being able to dump strength.

You can say that the Conjuration school is a powerful school of magic if you like just as you can say that giving away attacks is powerful. But a Lazylord is the equivalent of a wizard who restricts themselves to only the conjuration school and doesn't take a single spell from outside that school. They are inevitably going to be weaker than a conjuration specialist who takes the majority of their spells from Conjuration but also has a smattering from other schools.

So why was the Lazylord such a big meme in 4e? Because they allowed you to play characters that you could play no other way and in no other edition of D&D if you wanted to be part of the team. They enabled you to play a character with no personal martial skill and no magical talents who nevertheless actually contributed their share rather than were just part of an escort mission. For example a princess being escorted might be a lazylord. Played by a player and given a full personality - but the player doesn't have to sit out the combats. Instead they can scream for help, point things out, yell duck, and organise things and not as a player be consigned to boredom and to the knowledge that as a player they aren't doing their part.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Inspiring leaders shouldn't exist in fantasy. Got it.

non-magical inspiring leaders - Bard is fine, since it's a full caster.

LOLNope. If it can not shout at someone on 0hp and provide them with enough energy to stand back up it isn't remotely comparable to a 4e warlord. End of story. It can't do the single most important part of the job of a warlord.

Being able to bring allies back into the fight is a critical support function in any version of D&D. Because of how hit points work &c.

A class meant to be capable of support that can't do that is a trap. If the party depends on it, instead of a fully capable class, the party is at a greater risk of outright TPK.

It gets worse, tho....

High level point. Each class in 4e had 10,000 powers (or however many). There’s no way a 5e Warlord can replicate them all.

Pre-E Classes ranged from a low of 90-some powers, (Seeker, IIRC), up to a high of well over 400 (Wizard). Each class had it's own list, by late Essentials, I believe, one power, Healing Word, had been "recycled" and used by a sub-class of a different class. That is a daunting amount o work for anyone who wants to clone 4e or create new classes for it.

5e provides over 300 spells, and liberally re-cycles them among basically all the classes. Some classes, the Sorcerer the only full caster among them, have no unique spells, at all, while the Wizard had the most at launch, 33.

5e and 4e were very different games, indeed. 5e pointedly cut off design space used by 4e to build powers, particularly martial exploits (which were, overall, narrower in breadth/flexibility than the powers of other sources), so it would be difficult to implement any 4e martial class in 5e, as the Battlemaster illustrates.

2nd high level point, martial classes had more overall power in 4e than they do in 5e. Your not going to see the same strength of effects in 5e.

I suppose that's debatable in terms of very simple, raw single-target damage that D&Ds use of hp makes multiple attacks extremely efficient at delivering. Relative to the hp of their enemies, at 11th a 5e fighter does a lot of damage. Nothing else worth mentioning, but a lot of single-target damage. As far as versatility and range of contributions, 4e classes certainly beat 5e martial classes cold.
OTOH, 5e casters leave every 4e class in the dust with their sheer versatility/power and glut of resources.
(ie the martial/caster gap was much narrower in 4e)

Unfortunately for anyone trying to add a Warlord to 5e, the support-capable classes are, well, the Paladin (as a support character, most notable for its aura), and multiple full-casters (Bard, Cleric, Druid, the odd sub-class of other full casters). The Paladin is also, in 4e terms, a striker and as close as 5e comes to a defender, in addition to a leader. The full casters are Controllers powerful beyond the dreams of 4e controllers, non-combat problem-solvers, and so forth.

And, we're back in the crab-bucket. A faithful 'port of the 4e Warlord would be a lethal trap for any party that relied on it as their only support character, far too weak and limited to take the place of a Bard, Cleric or Druid. At the same time, it would leave every other martial character in the dust (except, if done right, in terms of DPR). It falls right into the wide & bottomless abyss of the martial/caster gap.

 

[Minigiant]

I just want to do a trickery attack with Charisma.

Let me fake out with Charisma then go POW, man.

 

[FrogReaver]

Please tell me what you think a cheerlord is.

I know your distain for lazylord, but what to you is a cheerlord?

From context it’s a warlord that cheers/shouts to buff Allys instead of attacks. Basically a cheerleader.

If it was a warlord that attacked and shouted to buff ally’s it would just be a warlord.

 

[Vaalingrade]

From context it’s a warlord that cheers/shouts to buff Allys instead of attacks. Basically a cheerleader.

If it was a warlord that attacked and shouted to buff ally’s it would just be a warlord.

See, the issue is I knew cheerleaders and how they do their do. Cheerleaders... lead the crowd and direct one another through complex routines.

The cheerlord is the active mode of the lazy lord relying on the aforementioned wolfpack tactics and position switching. They direct the action around them while attacking while canceling negative statuses with the forced saving throws warlords had access to but no one acknowledges when talking about what they can do and how you can 'totally' replicate them with a battlemaster.

Think the general that leads from the front. your King Arthurs.

So maybe it's a tiny bit ill advised to say something doesn't exist when only working from context to know what it even is.