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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7364816" data-attributes="member: 996">Well, first off, again, balance - 'best' was by a narrower margin.  Pre-Essentials but post-Fey-Charger-nerf, the DPR optimization king was briefly a Ranger tricked out to make a series of Encounter-power minor-action attacks on top of it's usual load-out.  That's probably what you're recalling.   But all the striker classes of it's day were pretty competitive, especially off that bleeding edge of optimization.  In any case, the Ranger build in question didn't achieve it's uber DPR via a basic attack.  Have you listened to the Mike Mearls podcast that re-ignited this discussion?  He addresses the point you're getting at.  And, bottom line, yeah, it can be OP, and yeah, that level of OP is w/in the broad margin for error to which 5e is balanced (if you can call that balanced).   Actually, a lot of 5e critters have /tons/ of hps - the ones that noticeably lower hps are de-facto minions, or sub-minions when hit with AE save:1/2 damage that ganks them on a successful save.  But, that aside, the 4e Rogue had 2d /to start/, and any striker and not a few fighters could be a great target for action granting.  What really made Commander's Strike more tactically interesting and merely good than go-to-optimal in combination was the Rogue.  In 4e, at release, mind you, the Rogue's Basic Attack wouldn't keep up as you leveled, because there was no Melee Training Feat yet, and, his SA was 1/round.  So he was only a good target for Commander's Strike when he hadn't been able to get in an SA, and was behind the damage curve, the Warlord would then give him a chance to get back on track - exactly a leader thang.  Design elegance at work, really.  But while 5e is inelegant in the name of natural language & classic feel, that just makes it more complicated, not gimped. 5e could totally handle anything the Warlord did in 4e.  Some of it might be a little trickier to design, or take three sentences instead of two words to explain, but that added complexity is just in the nature of 5e.Abject nonsense.  The Warlord challenged paleo-D&D's One True Way.  The Band-Aid cleric and meatshield fighter and LFQW. The 4e warlord absolutely has to be fit to 5e design.  5e design is less balanced and unconstrained by Role, the Warlord needs to be adapted to that.  It needs to be powered up to the degree that the Bard, Cleric, and Druid were from their 4e 'Leader'-role versions.  And, it needs to be expanded to fill the whole range of archetypes the concept suggests, which should include what would have been game-breaking intrusion into the controller role in 4e. The fighter needs to take some of that same medicine. You could, it would just be radically underpowered and non-viable compared to a Cleric, Bard, Druid or Paladin.</blockquote>

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