My reaction to the original poster is to make me more interested in playing a Warlord. Commander's Strike is an excellent at-will power! It reminds me of Snake's Swiftness from 3.5, and that was a very good spell. Melee basic attacks generally deal more damage than most at-will attacks, and Commander's Strike adds your INT mod to that. What a deal! What's the range on that, eh? I don't see it as self-sacrifice at all. Characters succeed only insofar as the Party succeeds. The faster we can end this fight in our victory, the sooner we can get to the loot.
I do not see any imbalance whatsoever. The Warlord's power is to enhance the power of others. If he had that power, and kicked ass on his own, then it would be unbalanced, like the 3.x cleric. You're not "giving up" an action with Commander's Strike, your action is to activate another character's basic attack. Supose there were an arcane at-will ability that briefly conjured a doppleganger of another character, with the same stats and equipment, which disappeared after making a single basic attack. Would that be a "sacrifice," or a really neat trick? Well mechanically, that is essentially what Commander's Strike does.
Milambus gives a very good example of how powerful the Warlord really is, although the subsequent discussion of readied actions made my brain hurt for a while.
I strongly disagree with Azigoth. The idea that the Warlord is "sacrificing" himself for others is to choose a deliberately denigrating perspective. If the Warlord instead summoned brief exact dopplegangers of the player characters that acted then disappeared, the probable reaction would be that the ability was too powerful, not too weak. Milambus's example shows the kind of damage a Warlord really deals.
As others have pointed out several times, the Warlord generates measurable damage output, and if you properly attributed all damage they are responsible for to the Warlord, you'd see that you have a very effective damaging class, probably somewhere between a striker and a defender.
The notion that the Warlord sacrifices but the striker does nothing for the Warlord in return is, I feel, the result of an overly narrow and essentially fallacious point of view. It's like assuming the conclusion, instead of looking more closely at the actual mechanics and their outcomes. Rigamortus makes some excellent points. The strikers and defenders help the party at risk to themselves, while the Warlord may hang behind the front line and help the party.
Smeelbo
