Warlord Player's job is to tell other players what to do??

[Ten]

I don't know about you guys, but thoughts of the warlord forcing anyone's character to do anything that their player didn't want him to do is absurd; There is a natural defense against player abuse, and it's called throwing an object of variable weight at the player until he decides that action isn't prudent.

Being serious for a moment, I have never played with someone who would seriously go against my will and force me to do something I didn't want to do. I play with my friends, and if a warlord wants to move me, he would ask me outside the game exactly what I wanted to do, and if I wanted to be moved. If, for some reason, I didn't, he wouldn't shift me. Simple as that. As such, it really is a non-issue to me.

The reason I suspect it is worded as it is, is so there is no chance that you will be attacked as per a move or have special abilities trigger, as per a shift when next to someone like a fighter. It's a conflict free move.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I don't know about you guys, but thoughts of the warlord forcing anyone's character to do anything that their player didn't want him to do is absurd; There is a natural defense against player abuse, and it's called throwing an object of variable weight at the player until he decides that action isn't prudent.

Agreed!

Yeah, it's basically table-conduct - if the players are trying to incite conflicts, that just another way of doing it. Just like fireballing the own party, doing AoO on your party members and so on.

And ruleswise: It only affects allies, hence it's not forced movement, otherwise it'd affect enemies as well, right? Hence it's voluntary.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Voss]

And ruleswise: It only affects allies, hence it's not forced movement, otherwise it'd affect enemies as well, right? Hence it's voluntary.

Um... no. These aren't linked concepts. If you can move your allies characters (and the power [white raven onslaught] explicitly says you can), it is forced movement. You (or the attacker) pick up someone else's character and move it. You don't need their consent, permission, or anything else. Technically, they don't even need to be capable of movement- the warlord/attacker slides them at the warlord/attacker's whim as part of a successful attack.

 

[Burr]

Um... no. These aren't linked concepts. If you can move your allies characters (and the power [white raven onslaught] explicitly says you can), it is forced movement. You (or the attacker) pick up someone else's character and move it. You don't need their consent, permission, or anything else. Technically, they don't even need to be capable of movement- the warlord/attacker slides them at the warlord/attacker's whim as part of a successful attack.

But they are only your allies if they are allied with your moving them. If they are in conflict with your decision, that makes them enemies within the scope of that conflict/decision. Thus, they cannot be forcibly moved.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

But they are only your allies if they are allied with your moving them. If they are in conflict with your decision, that makes them enemies within the scope of that conflict/decision. Thus, they cannot be forcibly moved.

This makes absolutely no sense. Either they are allies or not, unless they start attacking you they aren't suddenly going to switch into 'not-allies' just because they decide to take a different action than the warlord chooses. In fact there's no hint of this in any of the previews so far or the wording of the abilities we have.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Yet at least the first can be said in character, with the other player able to in-character tell the first to get lost, or comply, as the situation and personalities suit.

The second is pure metagaming and more annoying than you can possibly imagine. (characters have no idea what hit points are, or what "+5" means!)

This is one of those things about metagaming. Metagaming is when you think of the game AS a game and use that information to base your characters decisions on.

The problem is that often game rules have a direct correlation to the in character world so the only difference between metagaming and roleplaying is the choice of words you use to describe it.

If a player says "There's a trap here. Whoever made it must have made a way to turn it off so they could get past when they needed to. Let's search for it." then it is roleplaying.

If a player says "The DM wouldn't put a trap that was completely impossible to get past without giving us a way to disable it. He wants us to get to the other side. Let's search." then its metagaming.

However, the result is the same. It's advisable to use roleplaying thinking whenever possible. However, metagaming isn't such a bad thing 95% of the time.

I, personally don't care if someone says "I only have 15 hitpoints left out of 200" or "I'm extremely hurt and tired and I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out against these foes!" The only difference is one takes less time to say and is more precise and doesn't end with bad feelings when the cleric casts cure critical wounds instead of heal and causes the death of the character involved. The other one might be slightly more flavorful, but ends up bogging down the game so that battles take forever when a game is filled with them.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Um... no. These aren't linked concepts. If you can move your allies characters (and the power [white raven onslaught] explicitly says you can), it is forced movement. You (or the attacker) pick up someone else's character and move it. You don't need their consent, permission, or anything else. Technically, they don't even need to be capable of movement- the warlord/attacker slides them at the warlord/attacker's whim as part of a successful attack.

You only need their permission out of character. There is still a DM running the game and no DM is going to say "It doesn't matter what you want, Steve...Mark is playing the Warlord and he can do whatever he wants with your character."

The point is completely moot in 99.9% of all cases as most groups are going to discuss the use of their powers out of character and say "Is it alright if I move you over here, that way we can get the flank in?"

 

[Orius]

A good group of players would work together to coordinate their characters' actions so that there would be no warlord-based conflicts arising at the game table.

Bad players would use it as an excuse to pick a fight at the table, but I can't really follow my initial feeling and say it's a bad move on WotC's part. Without a warlord, the players would probably find something else to bicker about.

 

[Valdrax]

I just assumed there would be some kind of dialogue. Like this:

Warlord Player: "What were you planning on doing this round?"
Other Player: "Was thinking of moving, then attacking that -Insert Monster- over there."
Warlord Player: "Cool, let me give you a bonus with -Insert Ability-"
Other Player: "Great, thanks.. since it will be such a great bonus to hit, maybe I'll use an encounter power instead of an at will one."

This is exactly how we do it in my group. I play a tactician wizard -- a brilliant former general who makes quick plans and then casts spells and gives orders to bring the party to victory. IC, he yells out plan code names and directs allies towards appropriate targets.

OOC, we all decide on a course of action that sounds cool, and I make sure to get buy-in from other players instead of bossing them around. Once we collectively pool our brains into figuring out the kind of battle plan that an experienced general would come up with, my character leads the others to execute it.

Out of battles, we generally follow the lead of the party's most charismatic character or whoever has the most amusing / ballsy idea, so in RP-heavy sessions, I don't end up bossing around other players there either, generally only chiming in with guidance on matters of tactical or arcane import and going with the flow (to avoid going nuts) the rest of the time and soliciting the advice of the other PCs in their areas of expertise whenever possible.

That's really the way to do it. A Warlord will bark orders on the battlefield, but that doesn't mean he gets to bark orders all the time nor that the *player* gets to bark orders either. A little metagame conversation, and you can convincingly keep the illusion that the Warlord knows how best to put his men to use without running roughshod over them or provoking a mutiny.

 

[Sir Sebastian Hardin]

The Warlord concept is awesome!

But the warlord rules are just disgusting!

Some time ago it was discused here if the warlord was often going to be role-played a la barking, on-your-feet-scumbag seargent... but the actual mechanics made him even worse! He jus moves peaople arround...
Even if you can decide wether or not to do as he says, it's like "marking" your own allies: "You can do something else, but you lose this benefit for us all".

It makes me sick...

There's GOT to be some other way to work this concept without being this potencial madness and weirdness in the table. Simply horrible.

I'm cool with the other classes.... but this one sucks. No wonder why the warlord did't make it to the DDXP. The chaos would have been to obvious.