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

[Mishihari Lord]

I really like the idea of the warlord. Love it, in fact. It's an archetype that includes a lot of fictional characters I'd like to play, such as, just in The Black Company, Croaker, Elmo, and the Captain.

Unfortunately I really don't like how 4E implemented it. The warlord as a healer is the biggest problem I have with it. I just can't see morale as part of hit points. Physical health, luck, and fatigue are all fine in hit points, though I'd prefer a system where it was just physical health. But when you're out of hit points you fall; you don't just run away. If morale was a part of hit points I'd expect to see people go to zero, freak out, and flee combat.

For Next to have a warlord class I would play, it would need to introduce a proper morale system for D&D combat.

 

[FireLance]

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.

IMO, this is only a problem if there is a clash of playstyles at the table, and frankly, in the aftermath of the Idiotion Wars, I think gamers as a whole have already balkanized into groups who can tolerate the playstyles of the other players at the table and who are a lot more careful about checking for playstyle compatibility before adding new players ("Are you currently, or have you at any time in the past, been a Narrativist?")

 

[pemerton]

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.

Why not? After all, that's how they handle the issue of halflings and gnomes as PC races!

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?

Well, for those who play games with inspirational healing, they don't narrate the unconscious and helpless PC as "bleeding out".

Another model to consider is the dream-sequence in the 2nd LotR movie "Two Towers" in which Aragorn regains consicousness dreaming of Arwen. Inspirational heals on unconscious PCs can be narrated in ways along those lines.

 

[Obryn]

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.

Nope, not putting my mind at ease. Because for every voice saying one thing, there's another saying the opposite.

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?

I dunno, how can a guy get shot with 5 crossbows, hit by 3 swords, get fireballed and fight just as well as he did before?

I am going to make a guess that if having this discussion for the past 5 years didn't convince you, I won't be able to either. But the key is how aware a person with the "unconscious" status is, and how incapacitated they are.

-O

 

[Jester David]

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

Yes.
In 1e-3e healer was an important role, but combat healer was less important. Healing was done between combats or much more occasionally in combat, given it cost an action and was a touch spell. But not every combat, and certainly not every round like the other roles. Even in 4e, it's not something you do all the time, just 2-3 times a fight.

Dedicated healer classes are a mistake. Period. 4e made it so you didn't have to play the cleric but made it more important that someone played a leader. The "who's going to play the cleric" question shifted laterally to "who's going to play a leader."

Having someone play the cleric should always be a bonus. Adventuring days might be shorter, but you can still play and the DM just writes different sorts of adventures.

 

[I'm A Banana]

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.

I'm of the opinion that part of being an adult is to have the capacity to let other people have fun in their own way. I'm not so sure we'd get much of an ardent chorus against the inspirational healing, if it was something you could swap in or swap out as you desired.

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.

With the way 5e is structured, I'm pretty sure anything above "basic" is going to be explicitly optional, anyway. If you WANT to add in a warlord with inspirational healing, you can, but if you don't want that, no one will make you. Same thing with paladins (for people who don't like the Code) and barbarians (for people who say "it's a society, not a class!") and monks (for those who don't like Asia in their fantasy make-believe!). The game won't assume their use, but it will certainly allow for it. DMs, I think, need to be active managers of their game, and so doing things like presenting a list of available classes is going to be par for the course.

The only problem would be, I think, if WotC automatically tethered "Inspirational leader-type character" necessarily to shout-healing and martial mind control. As long as these things are recognized as not necessary for the archetype, just as Vancian spellcasting is being recognized as not necessary for the Wizard archeytpe, I don't see any reason why someone who doesn't like those things can't enjoy the game without them, while someone who loves those things can include them in their own games.

And I think that not everybody is as extremist as all that. I'm not particularly a fan of inspirational healing, personally, but I play 4e on a regular basis, and have even played a Warlord or two in my time (though, I gotta say, I much prefer the Skald's Aura as the X Word mechanic, though it has some problems), and with more than one in the party, too. It's possible to let someone else have their fun twice a combat or so, and not get too worked up about it.

So having it as a dial that you can switch, as a DM or as a player, isn't a bad place for it.

Dedicated healer classes are a mistake. Period. 4e made it so you didn't have to play the cleric but made it more important that someone played a leader. The "who's going to play the cleric" question shifted laterally to "who's going to play a leader."

Having someone play the cleric should always be a bonus. Adventuring days might be shorter, but you can still play and the DM just writes different sorts of adventures.

I've been following a different thread, but I saw this, and, with the caveat that some people really like to play dedicated healers, I'm going to agree, and even expand the argument: none of 4e's roles should be anything that anyone "has to play." Rather, each class should ultimately be capable of doing all of that and then some, even changing on a round-to-round basis. The roles were a (moderately successful) attempt to avoid Accidental Suck, but a better way to do that is just to make sure NONE of the "roles" are required.

 

[Jester David]

...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.

There are plusses and minuses to both. But at the end of the day the results are the same: less lasting damage and more encounters per day.
The point of combat healing is always to prevent people going down, because then they lose and action and the party's collective DPR drops. Healing is reactive. You need to take the damage first. But it's finicky as you cannot heal before they reach a certain amount of "damage" or you overheal, which is a waste. And there's always a risk of a couple lucky strikes between the healer's turn that can drop a non-injured-enough character.
DR is pre-healing. So even if someone is not-injured-enough for healing, they can still take some DR. It prevents those lucky strikes from dropping the character.
Plus, picking which ally to pre-heal is strategic and fits the theme of the warlord. So it compliments the playstyle of the class.

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.

They're a top pick because of the power bloat they've had compared to other classes. Which is really class neutral and more to do with warlords getting an extra book of powers and some extra articles.
Divorced from powers, going with just the class itself, the warlord heals via surge+d6. Almost every other class heals more or gives a bonus. There's a little perk. The exception being the shaman that heals two people at once, one surgelessly (and surgeless healing in 4e is always gold). It's base healing is bland. Baseline. It's the least interesting thing about the class. Everything else a warlord can do is much, much, much more interesting than healing, and much more relevant to the theme of the class.

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

Which isn't answering my question or countering my point. It's deflecting.
They may just be "what ifs" but they're valid deductions based on looking at the class material we have. 1st level characters do not do much. They have a couple small options. Fighters have two manoeuvres and cleric can cast two spells and channel divinity once.

Should a warlord should have more options that other 1st level characters? No, that'd be silly. They also should follow the pattern of other martial characters and focus on manoeuvres, spending their MDD for bonuses.
Which means they can either have at-will powers that rely on their MDD to reduce damage keeping with the design of the power source, or they can have a daily heal that seems tacked-on from a design perspective and also comes at the cost of other more warlordy options.

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.

...
I...
Words fail.
Do I really need to explain this?

Why is it problematic? Well, first it's not unreasonable to want hitpoints to represent one thing any more than it is for the other side to insist it represents the opposite. That's not the issue. The point is that the game itself cannot take sides and has to cater to both parties. It can do this with abstract rules and optional rules (which currently exist in the playtest package) that give more abstracted hp and the meat damage model.

Giving a class an ability tied to one interpretation of hitpoints changes this dynamic. One side "wins". And you can see for yourself what has happened to the balance of power by letting one side "win" for an edition.

 

[Jester David]

And clerics healing characters potentially to full health at level 1, in a game where one hit takes you down... doesn't mandate a cleric?

Not sure exactly how much healing makes itself obligatory... we are talking about psychology... ummm anybody with sound theories on this?

- cause I don't have any.

No, it doesn't.

It mandates some what to heal between fights.
Done. Hit Dice and potions.

It mandates options to allow people to heal in fights.
Done. Potions again or resting overnight.

It mandates options to reduce damage below the "taking you down threshhold".
Done. Parry.

All three (and likely more options) are valid replacements for clerical healing.
Plus, in a game where one hit kills everything... fights seldom last long enough for the cleric to be able to heal anyone.

 

[Jester David]

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.

Gygax was never one to pass an opportunity to beat people with his opinions.

Both options for hitpoints are valid expressions of the idea.
Personally, I like the 5e vague default of 50/50 where your first half is luck-energy-skill and the second half is meaty goodness. But I appreciate some of the first optional rules added to the game being slower and faster healing and rules that make hp more or less abstractions.

Here's the catch though: it should be up to the DMs to pick what hp are in their games. You should be able to decide hp represent lucky and skill. I should be able to have a mix. Other people should be able to have it be pure meat damage model.
("meat damage model" is my new favourite phrase. I'm totally using it everywhere I can work it into conversation.)

Scream-heals break choice. I had a warlord in my 4e game. Suddenly, I had to change every single description I added to the combat. The entire narrative of how I played the game changed. Because of a player's choice. That's uncool.

 

[Obryn]

There are plusses and minuses to both. But at the end of the day the results are the same: less lasting damage and more encounters per day.

So tell me - why is inspirational healing immersion breaking, but DR and Temp HPs are suddenly not? Can you get poisoned if you hit and the only damage is Temp HPs? Does your skin get thicker? If the problem is "immersion" you're going about it a funny way.

Everything else a warlord can do is much, much, much more interesting than healing, and much more relevant to the theme of the class.

And everything a Cleric can do is more interesting than healing. And everything a Bard can do is more interesting than healing. We get it - healing is boring. It's also non-optional at this point.

Should a warlord should have more options that other 1st level characters? No, that'd be silly. They also should follow the pattern of other martial characters and focus on manoeuvres, spending their MDD for bonuses.
Which means they can either have at-will powers that rely on their MDD to reduce damage keeping with the design of the power source, or they can have a daily heal that seems tacked-on from a design perspective and also comes at the cost of other more warlordy options.

I have a hard time seeing how martial damage dice are going to work for a Warlord, and last I saw, Mearls was talking about stepping back from them as a core martial mechanic. Which is good - I think they're pretty flawed.

As for class features, it's apparently not a problem for every class to get more trained skills than Fighters and Barbarians, so...

...
I...
Words fail.
Do I really need to explain this?

Why is it problematic? Well, first it's not unreasonable to want hitpoints to represent one thing any more than it is for the other side to insist it represents the opposite. That's not the issue. The point is that the game itself cannot take sides and has to cater to both parties. It can do this with abstract rules and optional rules (which currently exist in the playtest package) that give more abstracted hp and the meat damage model.

Giving a class an ability tied to one interpretation of hitpoints changes this dynamic. One side "wins". And you can see for yourself what has happened to the balance of power by letting one side "win" for an edition.

I've said in pretty much every post here that I'm fine with warlord healing having a toggle switch. I'm insisting it exist as an element of Warlords, but with other options for those who prefer other ways of doing it.

Having it not be an option is what's unacceptable to me.

I'm of the opinion that part of being an adult is to have the capacity to let other people have fun in their own way. I'm not so sure we'd get much of an ardent chorus against the inspirational healing, if it was something you could swap in or swap out as you desired.

Oh, dear sweet lord. I'm good with options. If Next doesn't include this option, it won't be a game I'll go and seek out. I'll wish WotC and fans of Next the best and play any number of other good games. My goodness.

shout-healing and martial mind control

Scream-heals

Yep, just a few more times and I'll see how ridiculous inspirational healing is, folks. We're almost there.

-O