The Warlord, about it's past present and future, pitfalls and solutions. (Please calling all warlord players)

[n00bdragon]

Most other RPGs out there have moved away from tying stats to attack rolls at all. This is for a good reason. It's dumb and forces people to max out stat X so that they can hit things, which is by far the most common action taken by players in RPGs. Just give people a flat bonus based on their level and leave it at that.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Yeah, agreed. There was even a project undertaken by some ambitious houserulers over on Something Awful, I believe, to free D&D 4e of all stat-dependance entirely. The gist of it was that they decided to bake-in some assumed stat bonuses to everyone's attack, damage, secondary, and skill values. Pretty interesting actually.

That said, D&D will never be rid of this particular legacy baggage; it's too much sacred animal flesh for many. At the end of the day, I respect that, but it would be some tasty hamburger for some Unearthed Arcana splat.

 

[steeldragons]

So we're agreed then... Ok, so no one agrees on anything...but to just throw in a coupla coppers on the [semi-relevant?] topic of what the Warlord should/could/might entail...in the future...in 5e...

First off, I'm of the "Warlord should be a theme/specialty takeable by any class" camp, but whether it appears that way in the "Basic" game or appears in the "Standard" product as its own class...or attached as a class [or specialty] in the "Advanced tactical options" product...I see no problem with a "Warlord" that presents the following (as best I understand the current 5e mechanics):

The way I see it...the Warlord is a legitimate archetype for the genre and the game of D&D. If one looks as Fighters as being the Strength-based warrior character. Paladins, I think it safe to say, are the Wisdom-based warrior archetype. Rangers are the Intelligence Fighters. Barbarians are the Constitution fighters...Warlord fits nicely as the Charisma warrior. (and then, I suppose you'd have a Swashbuckler or Duelist or something as the Dexterity fighter to complete the list...or the Monk?...but one marginal class/theme at a time...ANYwho...)

The Warlord:
1) Has an ability/trick/maneuver/whatever you want to call it that allows them to "give/spend" their combat/extra Dice on an ally's [or allies'] attack, granting them some bonus to hit or damage or to perform some maneuver they don't, themselves, possess ("Grab him!") or any/all of the above.
2) Has an ability/trick/maneuver/whatever you want to call it that allows them to "unlock" allies' Hit Dice within combat.
OR that allows the Warlord to spend their OWN HD on their allies inside of combat? Maybe Warlords get more/extra HD as a class feature?
Either option, I'm not sure should be allowed more than once per combat...but I'm flexible.
3) Has an ability/trick/maneuver/whatever you want to call it that allows them to apply a bonus to saves against fear/confusion/morale effects to allies within a certain distance of the Warlord. Maybe size of the bonus and/or area of effect scales with level...maybe not...
4) Non-combat "field medic"/mundane healing skill...to, possibly, assist in the "exploring time" stuff.
i.e. You guys camp for the night? The warlord bandages folks up for an extra X hp of healing/or renewal of HD for relieving fatigue/etc...or, for literal "exploring", suppose the Thief fails a trap check and takes a crossbow bolt to the face? Or there is no Rogue and the Fighter falls into a pit? Here ya go, get back X hp/HD. No magic/spell resource drain necessary. No magic/spell -or screaming- explanation needed. Just bindin' up some wounds...something they can do outside of/in between actual combat situations to help out.
5) Non-combat negotiations/diplomacy skill...to, possibly, assist in "interacting time" stuff. (seems self-explanatory)

I think that's all it needs...and none of it breaks my immersion [or hurts my feelings] or seems ridiculously "over the top" or anything. Could be a specialty...could be a Standard Class...could be available as BOTH! Maybe the specialty one has a set number/amount of bonuses they can do/spend/effect, but the full class option (obviously) would "get better"/increase as they level up...

And, again, this is coming from someone who doesn't think they should be a class...but I could see something like this working out just fine if it were offered in the Standard game. Does that [or ANY of that, really] sound like it scratches the pro-Warlord pundits' itch?

--SD

 

[MoonSong]

This is how I envision leading from the back and the front simultaneously:
http://mangafox.me/manga/history_s_strongest_disciple_kenichi/v28/c255/11.html
read until this page
http://mangafox.me/manga/history_s_strongest_disciple_kenichi/v28/c256/10.html

In this scene, Hermit (the guy in a hoodie) is basically a monk, a striker, and thanks to the combined effort of all the team lead in the front by Takeda (the long haired guy with bandaged arms) and in the back by Nijima, (the weird guy with the big point nose) he manages to land a critical blow thank to the advantage bought by this combined effort.

Takeda is how I like to think of a frontline warlord, using his might and skill to buy the rest of the party opportunities, he also evaluates the situation and reacts in situ.

Meanwhile Nijima is a lazy warlord, doing almost nothing himself, but ensures the group tactics are kept tight and sound. He himself doesn't buys opportunities for the group, but he coordinates their efforts making them more effective. Also while he is disliked by most of the group, he is responsible for keeping them as a team.

(and the guy with the hat and coat? definitely a bard...)

 

[MoonSong]

The way I see it...the Warlord is a legitimate archetype for the genre and the game of D&D. If one looks as Fighters as being the Strength-based warrior character. Paladins, I think it safe to say, are the Wisdom-based warrior archetype. Rangers are the Intelligence Fighters. Barbarians are the Constitution fighters...Warlord fits nicely as the Charisma warrior. (and then, I suppose you'd have a Swashbuckler or Duelist or something as the Dexterity fighter to complete the list...or the Monk?...but one marginal class/theme at a time...ANYwho...)

I'm sorry but I digress with this, IMHO Fighters are STR based and Barbarians CON based, no doubt, but Rangers are WIS based, Paladins are CHA based (or even MAD based), and Warlords are ANY based or NONE based. That is part of the cool factor of warlords, they can have almost any stat combo and still be usefull.

I don't disagree with your ideas on the warlord (except that I think it has to be a class), but the possibilities are way wider:

Grant damage reduction/parry or a bonus to AC as a reaction
Grant extra attacks.
grant extra reactions
Grant advantage on attacks or even attribute checks
Grant free disengage actions to allies

And that is without even getting the grid involved

 

[Grimmjow]

somewhere in 4e it said about the warlord "Your fighter hits the orc with his sword, you hit the orc with your fighter" Thats what the warlord needs to be helping the rest of your party succeed in and out of combat

 

[tuxgeo]

Rethinking my own previous position:

However, if that class is going to get a different name, what should the name be? Neither "Provoker" nor "Convoker" will work; "Cohort" simply means battle-comrade; "Proconsul" is a political/diplomatic position; "Veteran" needs to be available to all classes, and to unclassed NPCs; "Marshall" is a higher position, dealing more with strategy than with tactics; "Ensign" is naval and commissioned, not land-based; . . .

I may have been wrong about the (one-L)"Marshal": the higher, more strategic position is "Field Marshal," as in "Field Marshal Erwin Rommel." However, the verb "to marshal" has meanings that include: "to arrange" (as in "to marshal the facts"), "guide, conduct, or usher"; and those are the sorts of things that a 4E Warlord often does.

 

[Jester David]

The focus of the warlord should be on Intelligence first and foremost, with flavour suggesting tactics and strategy and general knowledge of warfare and enemy actions.
The Charisma-based warlord is fine, but overlaps a little with the bard. Having both classes inspire through rousing charismatic speeches is an unnecessary overlap. There could be some inspiring warlord design later, but it might shouldn't be a core build unless there's some free space.

I think some freedom in weapons would help differentiate warlords. By not mandating Strength or Dexterity, warlords could stack one or the other and favour heavy weapons, ranged weapons, sword & board, etc. Warlord powers could be ranged neutral just mentioning spending an action to attack or attacking with a weapon.

Martial Damage Dice and maneuvers would really compliment the warlord. As they get more MDD they can help more allies at once, eventually moving or buffing the whole party, or really stack a boost on one character.

Unlike the fighter, who is differentiated by their weapon choice, the warlord should not. That's a big difference between the warlord and fighter, none of their builds or choices should depend on weapon.
I think you can break the warlord down into a few different builds: offensive, defensive, and debuffing. I think all builds should have some movement component; all warlords should have the ability to reposition allies, spending a MDD to move an ally 5 feet. That's their "parry" that all warlords get.
An offensive warlord would focus on giving his MDD to allies, granting extra attacks, negating attack penalties, and potentially granting advantage. Defensive warlords would reduce damage against allies, grant DR, mitigate crits, grant saves, and the like. Normally I'd include spending Hit Dice in combat to heal here, but today's Legends & Lore article suggests might not fit their simple core. Debuffing is something warlords haven't done a lot of in the past because they were trapped in the "leader" role and debuffing is part of a controller's job. But you can certainly turn the warlord's powers around and use them on enemies, stopping or inducing movement, imposing penalties to attack or damage, preventing reactions, etc.


A different direction would be to rework the warlord. D&D has a history of a "cavalier" class, the mounted knightly warrior. It's always been a little awkward because it overlaps with mounted fighters and paladins. The warlord shares a lot of similarities with a leader-build fighter. Combining the two classes gives them both extra flavour and more differentiation from the fighter.
In addition to the other builds above there might also be a "mount" option, where the class inspires their steed so the two fight as one.

 

[Hussar]

I think you might be over-simplifying it a bit, here. Adding a keyword doesn't address the fluff of the Warlord class, or the nature of the magic it wields, and it's also clearly house-rule territory. As always with 4e, refluffing is crazy easy, but it's also just easy enough for someone who isn't a big fan of it not to play 4e (just as it'd be easy for [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION] to not play 5e if they didn't support the kind of warlord he wants to play), and as we've seen over and over in this thread, getting the psychology right is more important than getting the mechanics right, in a lot of cases.

But, I think the psychology thing is dead on.

Adding an "Arcane" keyword to a warlord makes him a bard that doesn't suck. We've had years of people not having an issue with bards healing through arcane magic, so, I'm thinking this isn't too much of a stretch.

Do people REALLY need that spelled out for them? I guess a sidebar would have ended this conversation pretty quickly.

To be honest, the psychology seems a lot more to do with, "It's in a 4e book, therefore it's bad" than anything else. The fact that Next healing gets a pass but healing surges are a problem pretty much shows that.





And I think I've made it pretty clear that this is something of an overreaction in my mind. I've already responded to GX.Sigma. But let me illustrate in some more detail to JC here:

/snip
I think you're kind of looking at this the wrong way around.

4e's assumption was that every combat was a slog-fest to the death, more or less: it was designed to put most characters into at least bloodied in an encounter, so that they needed healing to continue. Healers would then "unlock" your extra HP for you.

5e's assumption tends to be that combats aren't necessarily crazy lethal, so you can see more attrition over the course of an adventuring day: imagine if all of your surges were converted to HP and then just added to your total.

You make a lethal combat in 5e by giving it the ability to drain the party's entire day of resources at once, making it a true "give it your all!" kind of moment. If they don't have in-combat healing, the only way to recover from that is to kill the other guys first, so that the party can then rest and recover naturally.

And if you DO have in-combat healing, you get that yo-yo effect: you've got a few HP's sitting out there in your teammates that they just need to unlock for you, whenever they get around to it.

The problem here though is that X encounters are never really dangerous. X is the number of encounters you can have before you run out of between encounter healing. What incentive is there to do X+1 encounters? Only that X+1 encounter is actually threatening in any real sense. So, we're right back to the 15 minute adventuring day where as soon as your healer is out of healing juice, you stop for the day unless there is some time dependent issue in game (which means that in order to make this work, you need to make virtually every adventure time dependent.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

Adding an "Arcane" keyword to a warlord makes him a bard that doesn't suck. We've had years of people not having an issue with bards healing through arcane magic, so, I'm thinking this isn't too much of a stretch.

Do people REALLY need that spelled out for them? I guess a sidebar would have ended this conversation pretty quickly.

To be honest, the psychology seems a lot more to do with, "It's in a 4e book, therefore it's bad" than anything else. The fact that Next healing gets a pass but healing surges are a problem pretty much shows that.

First, I don't think it's as simple as a keyword, as I mentioned above. A keyword or a sidebar aren't going to change the feel of the thing, and this is about the feel of the thing.

I also don't imagine most folks are as biased as all that. Being close-minded is kind of an exceptional trait. So there's more going on here than ill will.

The problem here though is that X encounters are never really dangerous. X is the number of encounters you can have before you run out of between encounter healing. What incentive is there to do X+1 encounters? Only that X+1 encounter is actually threatening in any real sense. So, we're right back to the 15 minute adventuring day where as soon as your healer is out of healing juice, you stop for the day unless there is some time dependent issue in game (which means that in order to make this work, you need to make virtually every adventure time dependent.)

Not all encounters are the same difficulty, and whether or not to have encounters is not always entirely in the PC's hands. Even if those things were not true, if healing isn't an essential part of the game, we don't have characters rushing off to rest when you're out of heals.

The challenge comes in determining if you can survive the next encounter, and about knowing when to retreat and when to press on -- the same thing it's always been in D&D.