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

[Jeff Carlsen]

The warlord, in 4e, is defined by the way that s/he occupies the action economy of the game: every 4e class has ways of "spiking" their output (via encounter and daily powers). Some clases get bonus dice with such powers; some get bonus conditions; some get to do AoEs instead of single target attacks; some get to do minor or immediate action attacks; the warlord gets to grant bonus actions to other PCs.

Stripped of that - or, in 4e terms, confined to at-will abilities - the warlord becomes much less interesting, I think. You can sacrifice you own action to have another PC act (Commander's Strike etc), which is a bit of a power-up on Aid Another; and you can hand out some modest buffs, like a cleric or a bard.

This would seem to be the 4E mechanic for representing commands that open up opportunity. While D&D Next doesn't have encounter powers, it has another mechanism for manipulating the action economy: Reactions.

In this paradigm, the Warlord's commands could grant his allies the immediate ability to use their reaction for something they normally can't. Because each character only gets one reaction per round and often doesn't get an opportunity to use it, these abilities would be both powerful and self-limiting.

For example, a simple command could be to select a creature. All allies in melee range of that creature may take an opportunity attack against it. This represents the warlord coordinating their actions.

This exact ability might not work as written, but it represents the concept.

Similarly, I could see the warlord having something akin to stances. Hey shouts out a battle plan that has effects on the combat that last until his next turn. These effects could be bonuses and such, or they could also open up a new option for reactions. Such as one that allows spellcasters to use an at-will spell as a reaction.

 

[pemerton]

While D&D Next doesn't have encounter powers, it has another mechanism for manipulating the action economy: Reactions.

That's an interesting suggestion.

My handle on the mechanical balance of Next isn't that strong - would it be broken to allow reactions to be used for attacks?

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

That's an interesting suggestion.

My handle on the mechanical balance of Next isn't that strong - would it be broken to allow reactions to be used for attacks?

At the moment, attacks are one of the few things they are used for, in the case of the opportunity attack for someone leaving your threatened area.

Getting the balance right would mostly be a matter of how much damage these attacks are allowed to do, or how many allies are able to take them at a time. But making this work is simple a matter of making sure that the extra damage per round of having a Warlord in the game is similar to having another fighter or wizard.

 

[Hussar]

Really, if reactions are similar to 3e AOO's, it shouldn't be too much to allow. Granted, allowing everyone to take their AOO at a target might be a bit much, but, granting someone the ability to use their reaction now and not later does open some interesting tactical options. Yup, you get to smack him, but, you also no longer threaten anyone until after your next turn.

That might work. Spend a reaction to move, attack or make a saving throw. Something like that.

 

[Cybit]

The other thing to take into account is that action generation is exponential power gain. There is a balance issue to take into account, and I wonder whether that's part of 5E's reticience to add a character that enables actions / bonuses to a system that is very tight on both.

 

[Ratskinner]

While this is true, I think you may be over-estimating what "core" may be in NEXT.

I would not be surprised if the only thing they assume your using for most products is the Basic game (and even that might not be a "tight" assumption): everything else will be explicitly opt-in. I imagine this includes monks as much as it includes inspirational healing.

That, I think is spot on. Basic D&D, I think, will be a very small game rules-wise. If the Basic DMG\gameguide is supposed to fit in 16 pages...That's not a lot of room for options and discussion.

 

[Ratskinner]

There is an approach to RPG design - with The Forge at the centre, but the ripples have reached pretty far by now (Marvel Heroic Roleplaying thanks Vincent Baker and Clinton R Nixon in its acknowledgements!) - which holds that every episode of play should be awesome; that every episode of play should deliver dramatic thrills. (When Ron Edwards talks about playing for "story now", the emphasis is not on "story", it's on "NOW!")

At least in my own experience, real life - the weeks between sessions, and the moments during sessions when people eat food or take other sorts of breaks - delivers the necessary downtime to make the pursuit of ingame drama at every opportunity desirable.

If I'm looking at a system, and I'm seeing that in order to get the awesome I'm going to have to game through hours of non-awesome - eg combats or traps that nickle-and-dime away the first third or half of PC hit points; calculating encumbrance, inventory etc - then I don't think I'm interested. Whatever pleasure I am able to get out of that sort of thing I can get solving crosswords by myself.

I agree, and generally feel the same way. Although, honestly, I haven't found any edition of D&D very good at this. While I am curious to try 4e again, based primarily on our discussions here, I find that the generally slow (real-world) pace of resolution and all the fiddly-bits to be a distraction/detraction from the awesome. (True in both WotC editions.) To be fair, there are also those who find the "Fantasy Logistics and Accounting" portion of the game to be exciting/rewarding. (Gods help me I dunno why, but they're there. )

More to the point. Lately I find that other systems, which began from the "Story Now" perspective and serve it wholeheartedly, have a tremendous advantage over D&D with its sacred cows in this regard. I've gotten a chance to try out the latest incarnation of FATE, with kids even, and it just rolls right past D&D. So much so that, to some extent, I've given up trying to fit D&D's square peg into that round hole. I'd much rather play a fantasy version of FATE or one of the MHRP hacks when I'm looking for that story. D&D still has a place in my heart (and my weekly schedule), because its much better at scratching a different itch.

So for me, the litmus is - when I look at this system can I see where it is going to deliver all awesome, all the time? And for me, the warlord in 4e was one marker of that. The very fact that the game has as part of its core build that class, with those abilities and that function, tells me something about what the game apsires to. (Whether it also meets its aspirations is important too - in my own experience 4e mostly does, though it's not without its flaws.)

I almost hate to say this, but...

For better or worse, I don't think that's even close to the primary design goals for Basic/Core 5e. To wit: I think they are going for a "just slightly more than a board game" basic dungeon-crawl. I'm conjecturing that from all that "essence of D&D" talk combined with their recent revelations of what the Basic game product will be. They seem to believe that they can tack on the rest of it (for any given value of "the rest of it") in optional modules....who knows for certain?

Side Note: I will invoke some possibly hot-button terms here out of necessity. I'm not trying denigrate any particular aspect of 4e or its playstyle(s). Rather, I'm trying to make a point about designing 5e in the wake of 4e.

One side-effect of that gambit which seems to have many 4e fans upset is that far less is being built right into the root of the system. However, I think they are forced to take that route. See, 4e has very tight table-presence (I don't even want to call it playstyle), particularly in combat. I've heard words like "gonzo fantasy", "cinematic", "super-heroic", "set-piece battles", and a lot of others used to describe it. I'm not a particular fan of any of those terms, but whatever-you-want-to-call-it, 4e is focused on making it happen. In part, not surprisingly, because it was built from the ground up to play to those conceits using a D&D framework. The numbers, the mechanics, and the interaction of the mechanics, are all tightly integrated and focused in that direction. I think you're right in saying that 4e does a great job of creating that sort of thing...that particular sort of thing. I suspect that since they are trying to make 5e hit a far wider range of table-presence, they can't start from such a tightly-knit root as 4e did. (Or perhaps they feel any such root would be essentially meaningless? - hard to tell.) Even if that's not the case, they have fairly plainly stated their belief that it's easier to create this variability through add-ons to a stripped-down core than re-building the core to different specifications. Which indicates that even if a more variable form of the 4e root did exist, they have chosen not to make finding it their priority.

Of course just about all of that is pure speculation and conjecture.

 

[pemerton]

While I am curious to try 4e again, based primarily on our discussions here, I find that the generally slow (real-world) pace of resolution and all the fiddly-bits to be a distraction/detraction from the awesome. (True in both WotC editions.)

And as we've discussed before, I think that's completely and utterly reasonable. 4e's a heavy system, and it relies upon you being able to look at a piece of action economy (say, Calastryx growing an extra head when bloodied) and have that speak to you in a way that generates an emotinal response.

I personally think it's well suited for a crossover of light narrativism and traditional heavy mechanics lovers - based mostly on conjecture, I would put it in the same sort of space as Burning Wheel or The Riddle of Steel in this respect.

A game like MHRP is so obviously lighter - when I wrote up my own rules summary trying to teach myself the system I got it onto 2 A4 sheets - I think there's almost no comparison. If the mechanical bits of 4e don't speak story to you, I think there's no way you'll get story out of it, because of its mechanical weight.

That's why I was so surprised and excited when it was released - it's the game for a Rolemaster-lover who finds The Forge a great RPG advice site - and I didn't think the market for that sort of thing was as big as D&D's market. And maybe it wasn't.

For better or worse, I don't think that's even close to the primary design goals for Basic/Core 5e. To wit: I think they are going for a "just slightly more than a board game" basic dungeon-crawl.

That may be right. Given they're trying to go lighter, I think it's a pity they aren't going more of the MHRP-ish route: as well as backgrounds as free descriptors you could loosen up spells a whole lot, and really give the idea of "rulings rather than rules" the space to flourish. I find the mix of lightness in places like skills with traditional AD&D-ish exhaustive detail on spells a bit inconsistent - to me, they really seem to pull in different directions.

One side-effect of that gambit which seems to have many 4e fans upset is that far less is being built right into the root of the system. However, I think they are forced to take that route. See, 4e has very tight table-presence (I don't even want to call it playstyle), particularly in combat.

<snip>

I suspect that since they are trying to make 5e hit a far wider range of table-presence, they can't start from such a tightly-knit root as 4e did.

<sip>

Even if that's not the case, they have fairly plainly stated their belief that it's easier to create this variability through add-ons to a stripped-down core than re-building the core to different specifications. Which indicates that even if a more variable form of the 4e root did exist, they have chosen not to make finding it their priority.

That all sounds very plausible to me. As I've already indicated on some other threads, my feeling is that when you go this way it might just turn out to be impossible to recapture that "table presence" via the modularity route. Particularly when a key part of the table presence is such a distinctive approach (by D&D standards) to metagame
mechanics and GM force, and the game seems to have at its core an aversion to metagame mechanics and a heavy reliance on GM force.

 

[Ratskinner]

A game like MHRP is so obviously lighter - when I wrote up my own rules summary trying to teach myself the system I got it onto 2 A4 sheets - I think there's almost no comparison. If the mechanical bits of 4e don't speak story to you, I think there's no way you'll get story out of it, because of its mechanical weight.

<snip>

That may be right. Given they're trying to go lighter, I think it's a pity they aren't going more of the MHRP-ish route: as well as backgrounds as free descriptors you could loosen up spells a whole lot, and really give the idea of "rulings rather than rules" the space to flourish. I find the mix of lightness in places like skills with traditional AD&D-ish exhaustive detail on spells a bit inconsistent - to me, they really seem to pull in different directions.

I very much agree. I think there's precedent, especially within D&D's earlier versions, for this kind of disparity, but I don't think its a good precedent. Now, rather than having rules that give you some kind of real structure to the non-combat parts (like FATE, BW, or MHRP/Cortex+ do) they appear to be throwing their hands up and saying "do what thou wilt." The other nasty side-effect is having to resort to looking up spell effects/descriptions during play. I utterly and profoundly hate having play come to a screeching halt to dig up some particular detail of a spell (which even Old-school doesn't avoid), or feat, or equipment, or whatever....yech. Not only does it slow play at precisely the wrong time, but it encourages DMs to limit source material so as to avoid the problem in the first place. (OTOH, they need some reason to sell you splat books. Hard to do with FATE, where conversions often start with the question "do we need anything other than aspects?")

That all sounds very plausible to me. As I've already indicated on some other threads, my feeling is that when you go this way it might just turn out to be impossible to recapture that "table presence" via the modularity route. Particularly when a key part of the table presence is such a distinctive approach (by D&D standards) to metagame
mechanics and GM force, and the game seems to have at its core an aversion to metagame mechanics and a heavy reliance on GM force.

Hard for me to say. When I think of 4e's table presence, I find it hard to distinguish the effects of the overall structure and design and the character of the powers as written.

 

[Guest 85555]

Count me in as someone who values speed of play. Personally, I started to find combats taking too long beginning in 3E (continuing into 4E). Especially when I went back to 2E after years of 3E, I noticed the differencevwas considerable. For me, I don't want combat to slow down the things going on in between fighting (because for me that is actually the heart of the game). So i find that if you have the colossally slow battlese inbetween the ingame drama, it really cuts deeply into my enjoyment. I recently started playing cubicle 7's doctor who and one thing I love about it so far is the speed of combat encounters (perhaps this has just been the combats we have had so far, but i think it is a fast system). I my own games, I try to keep combat lightning fast.

i do think there is a valid point being made about the magic system even in AD&D being somewhat at odds with the speed of its other parts. I am working on a new game using a very fast system we devised for action and investigations. But this one has magic and that makes it a lot harder to maintain the speed. I think it is a trade off. If you want a robust magic system that will tend to slow things down. I D&D, i feel it kind of works because wizard is "the complex class". You go in knowing it takes a but more mastery than a fighter to run. So when I pay, we always have an unspoken rule that when you play a wizard you have to know your spells before using them (we dont want to slow down combat because you have to look the spell up and read on your turn). This has worked out okay for me. But in the past, i have seen conbat reduced to a crawl when a player doesn't know the details of his spell.