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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6046753" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, there's something we can suss out here.[sblock=buffs]Buffs: I don't see any reason that you couldn't "grant buffs" within the Expertise Dice system. The thought-experiment's ability to grant attacks...is a buff. Conceivably, you could apply those Expertise Dice to other ally actions as well -- make them slightly more narrow, usable-on-ally forms of what already exists. Instead of upping your own AC with them, or lowering your own damage with them (or upping your own attack rolls or damage rolls), you do that to an ally. The main challenge in a purely at-will system would be buffs that had long durations, but there's no reason a commander couldn't keep his Expertise Dice on his ally each time they recharged, giving you a sort of "as long as you concentrate" kind of buff. Does the Warlord rely on long-term buffs to define it so that losing those would invalidate the concept? I don't believe so.[/sblock][sblock=enemy position]Position of Enemies: There are at-will ways to handle this that don't necessarily break disbelief, but most of them rely on the warrior actually applying physical force to the enemy, because that is how you move people without dictating their actions (something that would be within the domain of magic). But it's entirely possible to have an Expertise Dice ability that pushes enemies 5 or 10 feet or so. Again, for realism, it might need to be limited to "when you hit with a melee attack, spend some dice and send the enemy flying and add the dice as damage," or "when you miss with a melee attack, spend some dice and the enemy moves a bit and takes the biggest roll as a penalty to AC" or something similar, but there's no reason that can't be there.The main difficulty here is that dictating bigger waves of enemy movement would be overpowered for an at-will, and achieving that pseudo-magical action dictation is something that should probably stay out of non-magical characters by default. Do warlords necessarily need to change the entire battlefield more so than an at-will ability would be capable of? Do they rely on mind control? I don't believe so. Though this is one of the points where we see some overlap with a bard: there'd be NO issue having a charm or an enchantment that forced an enemy to move like that. One alternative, that might be a bit sticky, is kind of comparable to how 4e's marking mechanism is an improvement over the 3e knight's challenge: rather than dictate an action, it introduces a choice. Rather than pulling, sliding, or pushing enemies, I could see some Expertise Dice abilities offering that sort of choice, but we'd still have to be careful not to get into magical territory. It still has to be clear what the choice offers: a maneuver that, if the enemy doesn't move, punishes them with some damage or some penalty, might work pretty OK. Maybe a "Paint the Target" ability that lets a warlord spend ED's on allies' attacks as long as the target remains in the same place. Abilities like this are feasible, they just require more thought and caution than "pull 5 squares" so that you can keep things believable. [/sblock][sblock=grant hp]I think you run into some of the same "pseudomagical" problems here with certain games, but 5e HP is already rather explicitly 99% karma, and by all signs is likely to remain so, so this actually isn't a problem from that standpoint. Still, if it is something the designers might want to avoid, using Expertise Dice to instantly, undo, add AC, move allies, etc., all are more viable ideas that straight HP recovery. Thankfully, a commander (or anyone else) with the Healer specialty can remain entirely 'non-magical' and just drop herbal healing potions on their allies anyway, while using their in-combat abilities for something more dynamic and in-the-moment, rather than long-term. That'd be my preferred solution. But, again, the only issue with straight healing, like the only issue with straight NPC action dictation, is that desire to avoid overly supernatural powers for characters that are not supernatural, and if a particular group doesn't share that problem, there's no reason why it can't work even as straight healing. But, I also don't see straight healing as necessarily the mechanical representation of protecting and inspiring your allies. I don't think the archetype necessarily rests on that specific mechanic for that fiction. There's a lot of ways to model protecting and inspiring your allies that don't involve simply giving them back lost HP, and in many ways, that's the least interesting way to do it. [/sblock]The thought experiment was mostly done to show how to think about using these sorts of abilities might look if the warlord was conceived of as a way to showcase a "war-leader" kind of character using the fighter's class mechanics. It wasn't meant to be the sum total, but rather a starting point. Does my explanation help elucidate the viability for Expertise Dice to do this kind of thing, or is there still a sticking point?</blockquote>

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