D&D 5E The Warlord shouldn't be a class... change my mind!

[Don Durito]

How many paladins are there in literature - actual paladins that cast spells AND lay on hands and smite evil with some kind of holy damage?

What class fits Aragorn better? Fighter or Ranger?

How many spells does Flewdur Flann cast? What about Alan a Dale?

How many popes could cast raise dead?

As for characters who explicitly do warlord stuff - there's a few cases with Mal Reynolds in Firefly. There's a gunfight where Zoey gets shot and falls to the ground and Mal explicitly calls out to her to see if she's ok and she gets up (spends a healing surge). There's another where they're in a bar fight and Mal distracts a guy just so Zoey can sneak up behind him and smack him with the butt of the shotgun.

And I recall the scene from Untouchables where at the end of the gunfight they have one guy left with a hostage and Kevin Costner's character calls out to Andy's Garcia's character "you got him" and is answered with "Yeah I got him" before Andy Garcia's character shoots him in the temple. (This scene has been referenced in multiple other movies since.).

Do you need an explicit Warlord class to model these things? No. Some of them could be sort of covered by the help action (but even then - no one can be especially good at the help action). But you don't need a ranger class to represent Aragorn, or a Paladin class to represent Galahad. You don't in 5e even need a rogue class to represent the Grey Mouser - and the bard class really doesn't model anyone very well at all.

What the Warlord does is find ways to make some of the above things mechanically meaningful - just like say the rage mechanic is a way to make your character's way of fighting mechanically meaningful (it's certainly not necessary. You could just play your character in a reckless way - make him rush into combat without caution and describe how he is frothing at the the mouth - but presumably there is some reason for going further and making a mechanic for this.)

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Just a thing though, and remember, I'm in the camp that wants a mundane-leader class:

Re: Captain America, Odysseus, Tanis, Aragorn, Arthur Pendragon as warlords.

This is a dangerous slope for class theme, because those character are all, more or less, the main character of their story, awesome by the power of fate, worth following because they are THAT awesome. Now, my table usually as a ''main character. My players come from JRPG backgrounds, so having a lead character that the rest of the party support and follow is quite common. But...having a class whose niche is being presented as being the main character is probably not a thing that should be encouraged in a cooperative tabletop game.

Re: The gruff sergeant who barks order.
See my first point. I dont think this is the kind of character that should be encouraged, because the targets of those ''insightful barks'' are other players at the table who are also there to have fun by making decision with their characters. In a book or movie it works, but at the actual table I think the fun of barking orders and having the other characters do as you say would be one-sided after a few games.

Anyway, just to point that presentation is key. The actual mechanics dont bother bother me, just gotta be cautious on how you frame the class.

 

[TwoSix]

“Not the toughest fighter in the party” and “person in charge” isn’t a warlord though. Not in DnD terms. What did all of those people do that emulated warlord features? Specific examples. Because all of those people were just essentially fighters with higher CHA or WIS otherwise.

This might be a new-school versus old-school thing. To me, if a particular character has the characteristics of a high attribute as part of their identity (like King Arthur or Tanis displaying a high Charisma), then the most obvious class to model them is the class that leverages that stat as part of its mechanics, above and beyond the base benefits provided by the system for having a high attribute. (This is why I think it's a new school thing, as old-school classes didn't provide too much specific benefit for high stats outside of prime requisite XP, spellcasting bonuses, and maybe percentile strength.) Giving a fighter a high Charisma is functionally spending character resources to make a narrative declaration about your character, much like spending skill points on Profession(farmer) was back in 3e. I'd rather see a tighter mapping between a character's attributes and their class choice.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

For Hodgepocalypse (my post-post apocalyptic world with magic), I made the equivalent into a combatant class (essentially a fighter) that uses a path known as the Commander.

besides the standard class fighter abilities, I gave them the following:

additional powers
Armor. All heavy and exotic armor
Skill. One skill of choice
• Grenades. All hand grenades

what I did with it

1. use the rally as essentially as charges for the character power source to do actions
2. gave it bardic inspiration that had a range, but also could be used through a radio.
3. battlefield maneuvers: you immediately have an ally take an action instead of you.
4. the have the following level ability-based command tactics options they can take
- boot camp - increases inspiration die.
- combat awareness - gain advantage on initiative rolls as long as not blinded, deafened or incapacitated
- coordinated attack - if an ally damages a creature with an attack, you may immediately use your reaction to make a weapon attack against the enemy.
- draw fire - target one creature and make a charisma check against the wisdom's saving throw (or insight). If you win, you the enemy cannot take attack actions unless they include you until the end of your next turn.
- Move It! - you may spend any amount of your normal movement to allow one ally you can see to move instead of you.
- take a bullet - you may activate 2nd wind to taking damage as a reaction without expending your rally.

*
When tested, the player played a kamidaver (think undead stuntman) commander who was fairly similar to a certain character from the movie full metal jacket and it was a blast both from a mechanical and role-playing perspective.

*
The reason I'm bringing this up, is the concept of the warlord is not only a missing niche, but when filled, it can add a lot to the gaming table.

and I don't know about you, but I want to play a young Julius Caesar whose tongue and brain was greater than his force of arms.

Make a charisma based fighter that does any of the following and the warlord could very easily be a subclass.

 

[jayoungr]

Have just skimmed this thread, but it seems like some people are arguing whether a 5E warlord should exist at all, rather than full class vs subclass.

Also: Aragorn, a warlord? He's inspiring, sure, but he can also take any human warrior in Middle-Earth in single combat. I don't think he fits the mold.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Battlemaster touches on similar ideas as the Warlord, but its too combat orientated and not support orientated enough. Much as the Spellthief does not negate the need for the wizard despite touching on wizard themes

Saying "Battlemaster is good enough" falls right into that "Well, let's just make Paladin, Ranger and Barbarian all different types of fighters" because they're all people who use weapons and fight.

There is no ingame mechanic for this at present, the sort of thing a Warlord would do

I didn't say the battlemaster was "good enough". I swear, if people would actually address what I'm saying instead of addressing strawmen, these conversations would probably go better (just like no one was arguing you had to have an example in literature to justify the class doctorbadwolf). You said there was no mechanical representation. I replied there is. Good enough, not good enough, not the point. The fighter has mechanical representation for things you said it didn't.

And how exactly do you create a mechanic for "good planning on the fly"? It's the players who plan for adventures and battles by role playing their characters.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

Simple

You give the warlord a handy dandy table that gives them minor situations that the class can exploit

 

[Aldarc]

Just a thing though, and remember, I'm in the camp that wants a mundane-leader class:

Re: Captain America, Odysseus, Tanis, Aragorn, Arthur Pendragon as warlords.

This is a dangerous slope for class theme, because those character are all, more or less, the main character of their story, awesome by the power of fate, worth following because they are THAT awesome. Now, my table usually as a ''main character.

Odysseus is the protagonist of The Odyssey (who'd a thunk it?) and his retainers follow him there, but in THE Hellenistic EPIC - The Iliad - he's more of a side character who plays second fiddle to much greater kings and warriors (e.g., Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon, Ajax, etc.).

In other media, I see the idea of the Warlord archetype with non-protagonist characters as well:

• Quatre Raberba Winner (Gundam Wing): the other four pilots were better mecha fighters, but he excelled in optimizing team coordination, strategy, and tactics.
• Rick Hunter/Hikaru Ichijyo (Robotech / SDF-1): he was the main character and an above average pilot, but Max Sterling and Roy Fokker were better pilots. However, he positioned himself into a leadership role.
• Prowl (Transformers): military strategist for the Autobots, but not a great frontline fighter.
• Sokka (Avatar the Last Airbender): non-bending warrior whose strength was his strategic mind over any actual combat prowess
• Brooklyn (Gargoyles): not the best fighter (Goliath) or even the smart guy (Lexington), but he did end up becoming a secondary leader and tactically-minded character.

Game of Thrones is probably mostly filled with a mix of fighters, rangers, rogues, warlords, and some barbarians; however, I'm not gonna go through the entire catalog of characters to speculate.

 

[Garthanos]

• Sokka (Avatar the Last Airbender): non-bending warrior whose strength was his strategic mind over any actual combat prowess

Took stupid long for that character to suddenly show he had a mind though.

 

[generic]

Nope. No other class has to be justified that way.

Don't even bother, the OP has already acknowledged that the purpose of this thread was bait and trollery, and no one else will change their mind. If 18 pages hasn't changed the OP's mind (which was never going to be changed anyway), nothing will.