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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Undrave" data-source="post: 7876984" data-attributes="member: 7015698">Alright, I now have time to get into it a bit...So the game already has SOME elements of the Warlord, for sure. The Battlemaster has Commander Strike and Rally as well as a maneuver that helps to move an ally, the Mastermind Rogue has ‘Master of Tactics’ (Great feature!) and there’s the Inspiring Leader and Healer feats. But all of these have flaws.‘Master of Tactics’ is the only thing the Mastermind does that is not self-serving. It’s a BRILLIANT feature but the rest of the Mastermind kit doesn’t work as a Warlord figure. It’s the Arcane Trickster of Tactics: a dabbler, at best. I’ve already mentioned my position that Battlemaster feels more like a multiclass subclass than a full Warlord. The first problem is the fact that you can’t be the Tactician from round to round. A Spellcaster can use Cantrip and feel like a caster all the time all day long, and even more with Ritual Casting. The Battlemaster gets a handful of tricks per short rest. Is the Ranger a good substitute for the Druid? I’m sure we could flavor it well enough to justify it. If Commander Strike was simply an at-will ability that only added INT dmg like in 4e, for exemple, it wouldn’t break the game.The second problem with the Battlemaster is the lack of progression. Your maneuvers you pick at level 3 are the best of the bunch and then all you do is pick your second-best choices later on. Your maneuvers at lv 20 will still do the exact same thing as they did at level 3, but now with more damage. You don’t get new maneuvers that help counter the new level of threat you encounter, your maneuvers don’t let you affect more than one ally at a time, nothing of the sort. A potential Warlord would need to be less front-loaded than the Battlemaster for sure. Third problem is that it’s entirely possible to play a Battlemaster with 10 in all their mental stats and not be any less effective than another Battlemaster that spent point in INT or CHA (and nothing but Rally even uses a mental stat). The Tactical or Inspiring Leader aspect of it is entirely optional. Heck, the rest of the Fighter kit doesn’t give you any reason to invest in your mental stats to begin with (unless you want good perception I guess) so you can just focus on STR and CON (or DEX) and probably end up MORE effective than if you had ‘wasted’ points making your Rally maneuver slightly better.Finally, the feats are good but I’ve said before that there’s a bunch of feats out there that feel more like Fighter Class features that were shunted to the Feat section of the book (to be pilfered by any other class) just so they could do the whole ‘Fighter get more Feats’ thing to appeal to 3e loyalist. Inspiring Leader could easily be folded into an CHA based Warlord subclass, and Healer into a different one (Combat Medic?).Now, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to make subclass that are part Warlord for other classes. As mentioned we got the Mastermind and the College of Swords Bard. The Barbarian and the Sorcerer (and Monk too?) have Divine flavored subclasses but we still have Paladins and Clerics. But the reverse is also possible: A sneaky, underhanded, Rogue-ish Warlord, a Warlord that dabbles into Arcane magic or one who had a sudden religious revelation could all be interesting subclass of the Warlord.I’m sure there’s plenty enough of material for multiple subclasses without going into the multiclass styles too! At the end of 4e we had: Tactical, Inspiring, Bravura (who put themselves at risk), Insightful, Skirmisher and Versatile (both INT and CHA) Warlords and some I don’t even recall.There’s enough material to make a Warlord class (or whatever we want to call it, I don’t mind a name change), so I don’t see why not.</blockquote>

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