This is a spin-off from [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]'s warlord thread.
The thematic ideal of a warlord that I'm interested in is the inspiring "battle captain" of Tolkien or Arthurian romance. This a staple of the romantic/heroic fantasy genre; Aragorn, Faramir, Arthur and Richard the Lionheart all fall within this archetype. In D&Dnext, the current version of the cavalier paladin gives us a magical version of this archetype. I'm interested in what a non-magical version might look like.
What does the character have to do
Lead by inspiration. There are two main points-of-entry into this, I think, both when one looks at the 4e warlord as a model, and when one looks at the current D&Dnext architecture. One is action economy - the heroic battle captain gets more "oomph" out of his/her friends and allies. The other is healing - the heroic battle captain can urge his/her friends and allies on when they would otherwise give up.
A possible worry - there seems to be less room in the action economy of D&Dnext for warlord abilities than there is in 4e. The reason for this is that there is no clear and uniform analogue to the encounter or daily power, nor to the basic attack. In 4e, granting a basic attack is an easy alternative to adding dice of damage to an encounter power - making it a basic attack puts an upper limit on the power of the extra action, and building it into an encounter power creates an expectation of a certain degree of extra heft. These maxima and minima are less clear in D&Dnext, I think.
Also(It goes almost without saying that if you are using a non-magical battle captain who can heal, you are treating hit points as a flexible gestalt of factors rather than as meat only.)
The current fighter options in Next
The current options don't strike me as going very deep. Strike Command seems somewhat weak, especially as a fighter is a pretty reliable hitter and so is likely to be better off going with Deep Wound or, if a frontline combatant, the perhaps overpowered (in comparison to the others) shield Slam.
Warning Shout looks more useful than Strike Command - permitting a buff of AC to lower-AC PCs - but doesn't on its own capture the spirit of the heroic battle captain, nor substitute for healing. Bolster Allies is comparable in this respect to Warning Shout, I think.
Oddly enough, Attack Orders looks like the best of the "warlord-y" abilities, because it lets the fighter buff attack rolls carrying heavy payloads (eg the wizard's Ray of Enfeeblement). But that's still not giving us the heroic battle captain archetype.
A new option?
If we look at the fighter for a non-magical option, we have to consider what can be traded off to create adequate room for an inspiring martial leader who will be capable of occupying something like the same mechanical space in the game as the cleric does vis a vis healing, but who can also grant bonus actions.
In 4e, the fighter has quite a lot to trade off: armour proficiency, marking and the associated combat challenge, a very meaningful +1 to hit, and better hit points and surges; in D&Dnext, I don't have enough of a sense yet of how the classes are built to know exactly what the scope is for trade offs. What follows is therefore tentative.
Let's start by comparing to a fighter's expertise dice. At 1st level, 2d6 is an average of +7 damage, 1x/enc. Suppose that a warlord can grant his/her ally a bonus attack per encounter - how much damage would that be? The damage from a bonus attack given to a fighter at 1st level looks to me like +1d10 (standard weapon die) +4 for stat +1 for something else (feat, magic, etc) or 10.5. Let's say a 2/3 chance of hitting (+4 for STR, +1 for class, +1 misc for overall +6 vs AC 13 for an Orc or 14 for a goblin or hobgoblin), then the average damage is 7, which is the same as 2d6. So maybe a 1x/enc bonus attack from the warlord is comparable in effect to a fighter's encounter damage dice.
Let's say that, at 1st level, just like a cleric or paladin has to choose which Channel Divinity to use, a warlord has to choose which "inspired action" option to use: so instead of a bonus attack 1x/enc, let's say that s/he can also grant an ally (or all allies?) a bonus movement 1x/enc.
Now let's turn to healing: if a 1st level cleric uses his/her 2x/day spells for healing the total is 4d8+4 at R:T, or 2d8+4 at R:50' and as a swift action. Given that a whole premise of D&Dnext is that we can balance daily against encounter at something like a 1:4 ratio, let's say our warlord can once per battle can heal (say) 1d8 (an alternative would be to permit use of a hit die) as a standard action at R:5'.
So our tentative 1st level warlord can inspire action (either attack or movement) 1x/enc, and can hearten an ally (+1d8 hp) 1x/enc. Two meaningful choices per encounter sits nicely in comparison to a fighter, who has two dice to spend at 1st level.
To balance these abilities against a fighter you would reduce armour proficiency to light and medium, and reduce hit die from d10 to d8. Now instead of expertise dice we have inspire action, and instead of armour, hit points and a feat we have 1x/enc healing. (I think we should say that the battle captain cannot hearten him-/herself. Therefore the battle captain doesn't pesonally have more hp available than the fighter.)
Questions
How viable is that? And can it scale up levels at all? My feeling is that, at a minimum, we would have to say that an extra attack cannot benefit from Deadly Strike dice. And given that all martial PCs (except the barbarian) get special daily abilities at 11th level, this character's ability should probably be an "inspired surge" that lets an ally take a full extra action. (Compared to Combat Surge, this would not double expertise dice - but it would be balanced by being more flexible, as non-fighter PCs could also be inspired if the warlord desired.)
Does this have to be a separate class, or can it be a fighter? The cleric builds provide a precedent for trading off proficiencies for other abilities, but we also have different hit dice from a fighter, and those seem to be defined at the class level, not the sub-class level. Plus we don't have expertise dice, nor bonus feats. So I think the answer is "yes, this is a separate class".
The thematic ideal of a warlord that I'm interested in is the inspiring "battle captain" of Tolkien or Arthurian romance. This a staple of the romantic/heroic fantasy genre; Aragorn, Faramir, Arthur and Richard the Lionheart all fall within this archetype. In D&Dnext, the current version of the cavalier paladin gives us a magical version of this archetype. I'm interested in what a non-magical version might look like.
What does the character have to do
Lead by inspiration. There are two main points-of-entry into this, I think, both when one looks at the 4e warlord as a model, and when one looks at the current D&Dnext architecture. One is action economy - the heroic battle captain gets more "oomph" out of his/her friends and allies. The other is healing - the heroic battle captain can urge his/her friends and allies on when they would otherwise give up.
A possible worry - there seems to be less room in the action economy of D&Dnext for warlord abilities than there is in 4e. The reason for this is that there is no clear and uniform analogue to the encounter or daily power, nor to the basic attack. In 4e, granting a basic attack is an easy alternative to adding dice of damage to an encounter power - making it a basic attack puts an upper limit on the power of the extra action, and building it into an encounter power creates an expectation of a certain degree of extra heft. These maxima and minima are less clear in D&Dnext, I think.
Also(It goes almost without saying that if you are using a non-magical battle captain who can heal, you are treating hit points as a flexible gestalt of factors rather than as meat only.)
The current fighter options in Next
The current options don't strike me as going very deep. Strike Command seems somewhat weak, especially as a fighter is a pretty reliable hitter and so is likely to be better off going with Deep Wound or, if a frontline combatant, the perhaps overpowered (in comparison to the others) shield Slam.
Warning Shout looks more useful than Strike Command - permitting a buff of AC to lower-AC PCs - but doesn't on its own capture the spirit of the heroic battle captain, nor substitute for healing. Bolster Allies is comparable in this respect to Warning Shout, I think.
Oddly enough, Attack Orders looks like the best of the "warlord-y" abilities, because it lets the fighter buff attack rolls carrying heavy payloads (eg the wizard's Ray of Enfeeblement). But that's still not giving us the heroic battle captain archetype.
A new option?
If we look at the fighter for a non-magical option, we have to consider what can be traded off to create adequate room for an inspiring martial leader who will be capable of occupying something like the same mechanical space in the game as the cleric does vis a vis healing, but who can also grant bonus actions.
In 4e, the fighter has quite a lot to trade off: armour proficiency, marking and the associated combat challenge, a very meaningful +1 to hit, and better hit points and surges; in D&Dnext, I don't have enough of a sense yet of how the classes are built to know exactly what the scope is for trade offs. What follows is therefore tentative.
Let's start by comparing to a fighter's expertise dice. At 1st level, 2d6 is an average of +7 damage, 1x/enc. Suppose that a warlord can grant his/her ally a bonus attack per encounter - how much damage would that be? The damage from a bonus attack given to a fighter at 1st level looks to me like +1d10 (standard weapon die) +4 for stat +1 for something else (feat, magic, etc) or 10.5. Let's say a 2/3 chance of hitting (+4 for STR, +1 for class, +1 misc for overall +6 vs AC 13 for an Orc or 14 for a goblin or hobgoblin), then the average damage is 7, which is the same as 2d6. So maybe a 1x/enc bonus attack from the warlord is comparable in effect to a fighter's encounter damage dice.
Let's say that, at 1st level, just like a cleric or paladin has to choose which Channel Divinity to use, a warlord has to choose which "inspired action" option to use: so instead of a bonus attack 1x/enc, let's say that s/he can also grant an ally (or all allies?) a bonus movement 1x/enc.
Now let's turn to healing: if a 1st level cleric uses his/her 2x/day spells for healing the total is 4d8+4 at R:T, or 2d8+4 at R:50' and as a swift action. Given that a whole premise of D&Dnext is that we can balance daily against encounter at something like a 1:4 ratio, let's say our warlord can once per battle can heal (say) 1d8 (an alternative would be to permit use of a hit die) as a standard action at R:5'.
So our tentative 1st level warlord can inspire action (either attack or movement) 1x/enc, and can hearten an ally (+1d8 hp) 1x/enc. Two meaningful choices per encounter sits nicely in comparison to a fighter, who has two dice to spend at 1st level.
To balance these abilities against a fighter you would reduce armour proficiency to light and medium, and reduce hit die from d10 to d8. Now instead of expertise dice we have inspire action, and instead of armour, hit points and a feat we have 1x/enc healing. (I think we should say that the battle captain cannot hearten him-/herself. Therefore the battle captain doesn't pesonally have more hp available than the fighter.)
Questions
How viable is that? And can it scale up levels at all? My feeling is that, at a minimum, we would have to say that an extra attack cannot benefit from Deadly Strike dice. And given that all martial PCs (except the barbarian) get special daily abilities at 11th level, this character's ability should probably be an "inspired surge" that lets an ally take a full extra action. (Compared to Combat Surge, this would not double expertise dice - but it would be balanced by being more flexible, as non-fighter PCs could also be inspired if the warlord desired.)
Does this have to be a separate class, or can it be a fighter? The cleric builds provide a precedent for trading off proficiencies for other abilities, but we also have different hit dice from a fighter, and those seem to be defined at the class level, not the sub-class level. Plus we don't have expertise dice, nor bonus feats. So I think the answer is "yes, this is a separate class".