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

[Jester David]

The thing is? You're not describing Next here. Not as the system stands. The design core has damage and HPs as the major scaling element.

But sure - show me a system where healing is not vital and we'll talk. It's simply not the case now.

Combat healer was always a sub-role in D&D. Bring in combat healer as a regular role just means combats have to last longer and be deadlier to necessitate the healer being useful.
Most of the time, healing shoud just lengthen the adventuring day. There are ways to do that beyond replicating cure light wounds.

Damage reduction or temporary hitpoints are functionally the same thing as healing. Only they're better than healing. It's pre-healing. It's damage you're not taking. You never a miss a turn before being healed if you don't take the damage in the first place.

Again, this is an example of design decisions I find regressive. Roles are just an acknowledgement that classes often have jobs. If you need healing, and a cleric is the only one who can heal, you're making a cleric mandatory. By expanding the healing role to include other classes, you're at least doing part of the job and making it so it's not always the cleric.

Yes, warlords and clerics should have different niches. They certainly did in 4e, and the similar healing mechanic never overshadowed those distinctions.

-O

Classes shouldn't have roles. Characters have roles. If the player of the cleric doesn't want to heal instead they can tank, or be the party face, or deal damage.

Nothing in the warlord description relates to healing. They were the worst healers in 4e.
But let's look at this from a class design perspective. Fighters are the class most comparable to warlords. They get two maneuvers at first level.
A warlord would either get two maneuvers or one maneuver and some form of healing. Look at the list of what warlords should do (initiative bonuses, granting attacks, granting bonus damage, allowing allies to move, etc). Now, the warlord could do two of those at first level, or just one and also heal. Two things unique to the warlords that fit the class and its flavour... or half that number and also healing.
Does healing make the warlord better with that design? No, it detracts from the warlord. The warlord loses something unique for something generic that could be aquired via a specialty or some multiclassing.
Laaaame.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If hit points are defined in such a way that a warlord's inspirational healing all of a sudden seems cleric-like to the designers, I'm not a fan.

It's not about what the designers think, though, it's about what individual tables want.

Not everybody wants HP's to be 90% luck/divine favor/plot armor/whatever. 5e currently defines it that way, but it's not going to be something that everyone who enjoys a less narrative or more realistic game, and who have been narrating HP just fine as actual wounds (if not always grievous, life-threatening wounds) for 30+ years is just going to automatically accept as true.

So the definition of hit points needs to be flexible. Different tables are going to define them and use them differently. One possible definition of hit points must include that they are mostly meat, and the things that a Warlord does needs to be able to work in that context, too. If regaining HP means erasing wounds, then inspirational healing at that table is a non-starter, and that has to be a valid way to play the game.

It doesn't have to be the only valid way to play the game, but it needs to be one of the ways that it is possible to play the game, because that's how a lot of people are going to use them, and no amount of WotC inveighing that they shouldn't be or quoting 1e about how they never actually were is going to stop people from narrating a hit with a sword as an actual hit with a sword.

Which is why a warlord that has that mechanic hard-coded into it is going to be problematic.

Now, as one option among many (even a default option, given 5e's definition of hit points!), it's not a big deal. But if all tables must view HP all in the same way, that's gonna be a problem for WotC, because clearly, that's not how their game is actually played.

 

[Obryn]

Damage reduction or temporary hitpoints are functionally the same thing as healing. Only they're better than healing. It's pre-healing. It's damage you're not taking. You never a miss a turn before being healed if you don't take the damage in the first place.

...and if you're unconscious already, or between fights? DR and temp HPs are touchy to work with. DR needs to be fine-tuned between "useless" and "overpowered." Temp HPs generally don't stack and are pretty well inferior to real ones given the "temp" nature and - again - inability to get a downed combatant back in the running.

Nothing in the warlord description relates to healing. They were the worst healers in 4e.

Wha? Inspiring Warlords are second only to pacifist clerics. I think it's the only class in the game that can pick up a 4th minor-action encounter heal, and between stuff like Stand the Fallen and Rousing Words, they're a top pick.

But let's look at this from a class design perspective. Fighters are the class most comparable to warlords. They get two maneuvers at first level.
A warlord would either get two maneuvers or one maneuver and some form of healing. Look at the list of what warlords should do (initiative bonuses, granting attacks, granting bonus damage, allowing allies to move, etc). Now, the warlord could do two of those at first level, or just one and also heal. Two things unique to the warlords that fit the class and its flavour... or half that number and also healing.
Does healing make the warlord better with that design? No, it detracts from the warlord. The warlord loses something unique for something generic that could be aquired via a specialty or some multiclassing.
Laaaame.

I think you just put together a lot of what-ifs and used it to make a conclusion.

It's not about what the designers think, though, it's about what individual tables want.

Not everybody wants HP's to be 90% luck/divine favor/plot armor/whatever. 5e currently defines it that way, but it's not going to be something that everyone who enjoys a less narrative or more realistic game, and who have been narrating HP just fine as actual wounds (if not always grievous, life-threatening wounds) for 30+ years is just going to automatically accept as true.

So the definition of hit points needs to be flexible. Different tables are going to define them and use them differently. One possible definition of hit points must include that they are mostly meat, and the things that a Warlord does needs to be able to work in that context, too. If regaining HP means erasing wounds, then inspirational healing at that table is a non-starter, and that has to be a valid way to play the game.

It doesn't have to be the only valid way to play the game, but it needs to be one of the ways that it is possible to play the game, because that's how a lot of people are going to use them, and no amount of WotC inveighing that they shouldn't be or quoting 1e about how they never actually were is going to stop people from narrating a hit with a sword as an actual hit with a sword.

Which is why a warlord that has that mechanic hard-coded into it is going to be problematic.

Now, as one option among many (even a default option, given 5e's definition of hit points!), it's not a big deal. But if all tables must view HP all in the same way, that's gonna be a problem for WotC, because clearly, that's not how their game is actually played.

So... who's on the "D&D must have this element I care about" side of this debate, again? I'm struggling to understand why it's unreasonable for me to insist that hit points be allowed to have a more narrative function and reasonable for others to insist hit points be meat damage. Otherwise... why exactly is it problematic?

But if you missed it - I said I'm fine (naturally) with switches, toggles, and options. I am simply insisting that it be an option. If you call it "scream-heals" a few more times, I might get the point, though.

-O

 

[Garthanos]

I'm struggling to understand why it's unreasonable for me to insist that hit points be allowed to have a more narrative function and reasonable for others to insist hit points be meat damage.
-O

Gygax considered the meat damage model stupid enough to decry it as pretty ridiculous in the DMG and in magazine letters.

Give me scream-heals they are more honest.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm struggling to understand why it's unreasonable for me to insist that hit points be allowed to have a more narrative function and reasonable for others to insist hit points be meat damage.

The point you're missing here is the subjectivity of a game mechanic.

At Bob's table, he can insist that hit points are narrative. At Alice's table, she can insist that hit points are meat. To serve both of their tables, WotC needs to design mechanics that work in both situations. WotC can also design mechanics that work in only one or the other situation, but these mechanics should not be inflexible elements of a thing, because that would limit the reach of the mechanic (and the associated game element). A mechanic that depended on all HP being meat wouldn't fly at Bob's table, for instance, so the design for a class that, say, grew more powerful as blood coated it might not want to use a mechanic of escalating damage as their HP went down (or, at least, it might want to provide a few other options for how that mechanic works in a game with more narrative HP's...perhaps less of a scale, and more of a switch...). I was under the impression we already agreed that inspirational healing is fine as long as it is not hard-coded, which is probably a decent solution here. This is just me explaining some of the reason why you might not be able to tell what the designers are thinking just from their HP rules, or whether or not there is inspirational healing -- why you might not want to use inspirational healing as a litmus test for the whole play experience (of course, if you still do, like I said, everyone's got their thing).

Currently, the playtest shows them explicitly defining HP as primarily narrative, but they also have no inspirational healing at the moment. It doesn't seem like that's putting your mind at ease, despite the explicit view of HP in the game being apparently in line with what you already would like it to be.

 

[FireLance]

Huh... where you lost me.

This post.

 

[Garthanos]

Combat healer was always a sub-role in D&D.

D&D right? Cleric in every party D&D? Clerics being made progressively more potent (beyond healing) so people will play them D&D? This is the D&D you are talking about right?

Wait... that is what the becoming progressively more potent beyond healing was about making healing in to a lesser aspect of the class and requiring less resources.

The warlord is the most versatile of the leader classes... so if you wanted to de-emphasize healing aspect it was certainly an option...

Hmmmmm

 

[GX.Sigma]

...and if you're unconscious already, or between fights? DR and temp HPs are touchy to work with. DR needs to be fine-tuned between "useless" and "overpowered." Temp HPs generally don't stack and are pretty well inferior to real ones given the "temp" nature and - again - inability to get a downed combatant back in the running.

How does that work narratively, then? A Warlord healing an unconscious character, that is. How does a power called "inspiring word" take a character from being on the floor, helpless and bleeding out, to back on his feet and fighting in a few seconds?

 

[FireLance]

The point you're missing here is the subjectivity of a game mechanic.

At Bob's table, he can insist that hit points are narrative. At Alice's table, she can insist that hit points are meat. To serve both of their tables, WotC needs to design mechanics that work in both situations. WotC can also design mechanics that work in only one or the other situation, but these mechanics should not be inflexible elements of a thing, because that would limit the reach of the mechanic (and the associated game element).

I'd be quite happy for warlords to have a mechanic that directly restores hit points for those who prefer that hit points are largely intangle, as well as an alternate ability (granting temporary hit points, or simply enhancing attacks and/or damage) for those who can't get behind the idea of non-magical hit point recovery. My only concern is that once that option is even on the table, you're going to get a chorus of, "Shouting wounds closed! 5e bad!" from that segment of the gaming population who went, "Martial mind control! 4e bad!" because fighters had the option of taking come and get it.

 

[GX.Sigma]

I'd be quite happy for warlords to have a mechanic that directly restores hit points for those who prefer that hit points are largely intangle, as well as an alternate ability (granting temporary hit points, or simply enhancing attacks and/or damage) for those who can't get behind the idea of non-magical hit point recovery. My only concern is that once that option is even on the table, you're going to get a chorus of, "Shouting wounds closed! 5e bad!" from that segment of the gaming population who went, "Martial mind control! 4e bad!" because fighters had the option of taking come and get it.

The thing is, all it takes is for one player to take that option, and then everyone at the table is playing a game with shout-healing and MMC. If you want to play in a game without shout-healing and MMC, you have to remove those options. Passing the buck to the DMs ("I know the book says you can take that option, but I say you can't") won't really work.

What you have is a class of mechanics (disassociated mechanics?) that some people like and some people don't. What happens depends on how much they like or dislike it. If it turns out that some people really can't stand it, and the other people just don't mind (some negative, some ambivalent - a net negative), then the best thing is just to remove it. If most people don't like it, but some people really like it, the best thing is to include it as an advanced optional rule.