I have been working, mostly in concept, on a Warlord based on the 5.0 Warlock shape.
The concept sketch is:
- First-level choice is your Leadership Style, which determines your Leadership modifier: Bravura (Cha), Tactical (Int), Observant (Wis).
- Warlock spell slots become Strategems--you have to practice them with your group in advance, hence why you can't have too many available at any given time.
- At 2nd, you begin to pick up Machinations (=Invocations), the various tricks and tools that factor into your specific way of leading.
- At 3rd, you pick your Specialty, your subclass proper, which gives you the key thing you do. E.g. the Mage-Captain specializes in amplifying magical attacks and getting the most out of spellcasting, while the Commando makes the best use of stealth tactics and precision damage. The Field Medic would be the pure healing-focused one, for example; all other forms would have passable healing, on par with something like a Bard, not a Life Cleric.
- Potentially--if it survives playtesting--I'd like to have some kind of build up and expending of a resource, Gambit or Grit or something like that. This would act as a gate on the better Strategems or unlock better/cooler/more useful features of workhorse ones.
Just as with the Warlock, some Warlord Machinations would require that you have a specific Specialty and/or Style, and would be keyed off your Warlord level, not your character level. The base class would get Light and Medium armor and shield proficiency, simple weapons, and a small selection of martial weapons (with, presumably, some options to get heavier armor and/or heavier weapons.)
The one sticking point is that I still haven't come up with an effective, and more importantly
thematic, mechanical alternative for Eldritch Arcana. Once that's solved, the core concept is ready, just needs the mechanical details filled in so testing can begin.
I mean, when I'm saying the magic IS the problem, it's a bit hard to just sweep it under the rug. But alright. I was using the background to show that
anyone can be good at Cha skills if they want; the background
isn't the special part here, other than the access to magic.
But the Wizard's access to magic lets it do a ton of incredibly powerful things all by character level 3. Continuous advantage on all Cha checks for an hour--no downsides. Meanwhile, we had to wait through six months of playtesting to get...uh...2/day (+1 per short rest) getting to add 1d10 to ability checks.
That's literally just getting a suped-up
cantrip, except now it's limited to 3-4 uses per day. (Specifically, this is a superchaged
guidance.)
Then you are overlooking the actual gold mine.
Charm person is actually very limited, needing a second spell (
disguise self) or special circumstances (people you're unlikely to ever meet again) to be any good. I listed a few before, but here they are again, along with a few more for comprehensiveness. Cantrip: It's not on the Wizard list, but as mentioned,
guidance is awesome. 1st:
disguise self, find familiar, silvery barbs (only if the DM actually has NPCs roll checks, not just fiat declare results). 2nd:
alter self (upgrade from
disguise self),
borrowed knowledge, detect thoughts, enhance ability, gift of gab, invisibility (indirectly),
suggestion. 3rd level: Not very much here actually, though
clairvoyance is indirectly useful and
tongues eliminates any pesky language barriers. 4th: not too many here either, but
greater invisibility (again, indirect) and
Mordenkainen's private sanctum (safe diplomatic space that can't be eavesdropped on) have their uses. 5th:
dominate person (note, it does
not say the target knows you did this!),
geas, modify memory, Rary's telepathic bond, and
skill empowerment are all quite good.
Is that a sufficient accounting? Looking just for "inflicts the
charmed condition" is a poor approach for finding the very good social-affecting spells. The reason
charmed is useful is that it grants advantage on all social rolls.
Enhance ability can do that with one small restriction (only Cha, not
all social rolls) and zero downsides. Note also that I am NOT saying a single Wizard absolutely has to have every single one of these prepared. They don't. This is just a shortlist of the really good social and/or versatile spells a social-focused Wizard would want.
I am of the opinion that spotlight balance is an idea that sounds wonderful...and doesn't work.
The problem is, the game encourages players to selfishly work to make sure that the things they're great at are the ones that happen the most--and to reshape the process of play to facilitate this. The dirt-simple version of this is "uh oh, Cleric's out of spells, guess we'd better rest for the day so we don't get killed." The Wizard has the same issue.
If they don't care, why should we care about what they think? They literally wouldn't care either way, so it doesn't matter.
I fear I can't respond to points that might theoretically be made. I hope that is an acceptable answer.
