D&D 5E Warlording the fighter

[Obryn]

But you just perfectly described the bard. It's what I do every session when I'm a player. -.- This is why I am still confused. It's like you won't take yes for an answer.

I said upthread - the Valor Bard is certainly the closest thing this edition has to it. What it's missing are mainly enabling abilities and team tactical abilities. And remember, 4e had a valor bard as well, which was a whole lot closer to the 5e valor bard than the warlord ever was.

Hmm. According to my own copy of Rules Pulled From My Hat, the first rule of reskinning is "As long as the numbers don't change, it can look like whatever you want." So aside from converting the fire damage to slashing damage (and the fact it sounds kinda silly), I'm not sure why you couldn't do that particular reskin. At the end of your turn, the exact same result has been achieved.

The way I would do it would be to simply call the bard's spell slots "Leadership Actions" or something and ignore anything on their spell list that doesn't fit your vision of what a warlord should do. The uses/day values remain unchanged, the recharging on a long rest remains unchanged, and other than the risk of a RBDM counterspelling you just to be annoying (which shouldn't be a problem if you've discussed it with them beforehand), you've got what you want.

-The Gneech

Respecting the numbers is pretty well respecting the rules; tomato/tom-ahh-to. It's 90% there, anyway. The issue with the sword bit other than, as you said, being a bit silly are ... fire damage, excessive movement, avoiding OAs, trap/terrain issues, issues of cover/concealment/invisibility, selectivity of targets, etc. On the other hand, something like "your soul fragments into a dozen shards, appearing next to your enemies and attacking them with flaming weapons," would work dandy.

For example, my Zeitgeist 4e game has a goblin 'monk.' Only he's not actually a monk - he's a dude in a steam-powered suit with power fists. All of his abilities work as normal; they are just abilities of his equipment. They have different names and different flavor.

But yes, the potential for counterspells is a concern, along with dispelling, anti-magic, etc.

 

[Remathilis]

And now to make me feel better about encouraging a new class that has martial healing and even kind of uses healing surges, I'll go argue with [MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] for 5 pages.

Ya old softy. Wanna debate whether or not we need an assassin class? I'll let you pick either side!

 

[The_Gneech]

What it's missing are mainly enabling abilities and team tactical abilities.

See, this the kind of specific, "warlords can do X which bards can't" answer I was looking for! This is something that can be addressed and a problem that can (at least theoretically) be solved. Thank you. At least now I know what we're looking for.

Actually addressing these specific issues is a little trickier of course, but at least possible now that they've been enumerated. The main hurdle I see is that by default 5E doesn't have the emphasis on tactical play that 4E did. Given that fights rarely last more than 2-3 rounds and that map use is explicitly shunted off to a DMG "if you feel like it" subsystem, the whole "moving this guy into position" and "setting up that gal for a sneak attack" type of activity is something that's only going to be useful to groups that still emphasize maps and miniatures. (My own group does, so I'm sympathetic, but it's something that's gonna be on the mind of the devs.) So in some campaigns, a warlord is gonna be huge, and in others they won't have anything to do (at least in a fight) because by the time they get to shine, the fight is over.

Another big problem is trying not to pfutz with the action economy. 5E is strictly designed to be "you act on your turn, and only on your turn, except for reactions." So warlords granting people actions, moving people around and such is breaking a major system taboo. Granted, that could be the warlord's signature bit, but it's a giant can of worms to open.

Finally, there's the issue of team buffing. 5E didn't quite kill buffing, but definitely took it out back and gave it a severe thrashing. Heck, the cleric's bless spell only effects three targets, by giving them +1d4. That's pretty anemic compared to the days of "bless + aid + bull's strength + haste, okay open the door." The "martial leader" types in the MM, the Knight and the Hobgoblin Warlord (Hmm!) both have Leadership, which is basically spammable AoE version of Bardic Inspiration, and that's as good as it gets for rule system precedent.

If the CM/bard options don't provide enough warlordey bang for your buck and you want to do more group buffing rather than individual buffing, it does sound like trying to figure out some way to make a "spell-less" cleric (working out some kind of limitation to put on the abilities to move them away from the inherent limitations of spellcasting) may be the way you'd have to go. It's a big task, tho!

-The Gneech

 

[I'm A Banana]

Reskinning is well and good, but you have to remember the first rule of reskinning. Reskinning fully respects the mechanics. If you're going to reskin an ability, the mechanical specifics, with a little wiggle room, must remain constant. So you can't, for example, reskin a fireball into "I take my sword, run over, hit everyone, then run back" but you could reskin it as "I throw a hive of fire bees into their midst, which run out and sting them with incendiary venom." Now, you can certainly use the effeciveness/power of one ability as a gauge for another, but the reskin has to match the details.

So aside from converting the fire damage to slashing damage (and the fact it sounds kinda silly), I'm not sure why you couldn't do that particular reskin

For me, this is what stops the bard's spellcasting from being a great fit.

It can work, but I get why warlord fans are not a big fan of it. In 5e, spellcasting is pretty tightly tied to mechanics like components and concentration and slots, and spellcasting effects are pretty overtly magical for the most part.

The bard isn't a bad fit conceptually, and the Inspiration mechanic is pretty great, but the magic stops it pretty directly. Ditch the spellcasting (a la the ranger) and you've got a good runner, but if you ditch the spellcasting from a full spellcaster, it's not all that different from whipping up a new class, anyway.

 

[Eric V]

I think it's poor form and basically rude to, in a thread about how to make a warlord in 5e, come in and crap on the idea of a warlord in 5e.

Seriously, it's right there in the title: people are brainstorming ways to have a warlord in 5e. What the hell are naysayers doing in this thread? What did you think you were contributing?

 

[Eric V]

Seconded! My character is a lore bard (with the Battle Mastery feat) whose whole premise is that she doesn't fight, that's what she's got staff (i.e., the rest of the party) for– but she sets up tactical situations, heals and buffs, and occasionally pulls out the whip and trips or disarms her foes. She was created for Pathfinder, but converted almost perfectly to 5E (except that now in 5E she's actually too good at combat, go fig). I hadn't heard of the "lazy warlord" before this thread, but it's exactly her concept.

I played a Warlord during my group's flirtation w/ 4E (which admittedly not very long), but from what I recall of it, I'm really not sure what conceptually the class is supposed to provide that the 5E bard doesn't, especially if you're willing to reskin the healing spells to be morale-boosting effects.

What is it that my battle-mastering-bard doesn't do that a Warlord does that people are missing? This isn't snark, it's a genuine question.

-The Gneech

Can you give some specific round-to-round examples of what your toon does? We have a Lore Bard in our group and he bears very little resemblance to the warlord... :/

 

[Umbran]

What the hell are naysayers doing in this thread? What did you think you were contributing?

And, if they should answer you, would that further the goal of folks brainstorming, or would it merely prove to be another tangent that gets in the way?

How about we just let that portion of the conversation die, hm? Move forward, and all that. Thanks, everyone.

 

[pemerton]

The insightful and inspiring warlords are really better served by the cleric and bard respectively.

The inspiring warlord should evoke Aragorn, Arthur, even some moods of Conan. I'm one of those who has trouble seeing a bard - who is more of a Merlin- of Gandalf-esque loremaster - in this light.

In the same way that LotR has room for both Aragorn and Gandalf as inspiring figures - but their mode of inspiration is different - so I think D&D has room for both a warlord/battle captain and a bard.

On the reskinning bards issue - a voice of support for [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] in reply to [MENTION=82555]the[/MENTION] Gneech. Spells are embedded enough into the 5e fiction as distinct little mini-rituals that are subject to counterspelling, anti-magic and the like that I don't find the idea of "reskinning" them as personality and gentle words of encouragement very appealing.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Aside from the martial healing debate, the idea of a general or squad leader healing people is odd. Inspiring people to keep fighting really sounds more like temporary hitpoints or resistance than healing.

It might sound that way. But it really isn't. Temp hps nicely work for inspiring people /before/ the battle. Restoring hps, though, is critical to getting allies back into the battle, and it's something Warlords could do quite well.

And the warlord was the worst healing in 4e (or tied for last with the bard), so healing was never an integral part of the class.

Depended on the build, there were 54 healing powers, so you could choose to have a lot of healing, and the Inspiring Build, in particular could heal in the same league as the cleric (not the Pacifist Cleric, of course).

Plus, healing is a big class feature in an edition where classes seldom get more than one or two features each level.

Nonsense. Every class with Cure Wounds on it's list has healing as a feature, and many, many other things, just by having a spell list. The 'cost' of adding healing ability to a class is trivial - heck, it is arguably a burden in return for which the class is given /more/ resources and other abilities.

At best, the warlord should have "stratagems" or some other choice akin to maneuvers or spells, where healing is an option. So it can be ignored for people who don't like martial healing or want a {LESS 4e-warlordy} warlord.

Definitely. There's no need to rope any class into a hard 'role' in 5e. The healing abilities need to be there, and be worthy of what the Warlord could always do, but they needn't be mandatory. It'd probably be rare for a Warlord not in a party with a magic healer or two to eschew them, but choice is better than no choice, even if it means every party TPK'd at first level until you learn to make a different one.

 

[The_Gneech]

Can you give some specific round-to-round examples of what your toon does? We have a Lore Bard in our group and he bears very little resemblance to the warlord... :/

Well it depends on the fight in question; most of the recent fights we've had have not been particularly complex affairs, so she hasn't been doing a lot of tricky stuff since hitting 4th level. Keep in mind also that I have not been using her to emulate a warlord specifically– she was actually created to be the party arcanist with a minor in healing, so to speak. But she does buffs, debuffs, and tactical support most of the time. (And she was also created as a Pathfinder character and then ported over, so some of her abilities were designed to emulate her history rather than to be optimal choices.)

If we were to get into a big fight, however, probably her first action would be to cast Heroism on melee fighter, using her bonus action to provide Inspiration to the ranged fighter, then backpedal away from the fight and get herself some room to maneuver.

On subsequent rounds she would react to the situation and change her actions accordingly, but she typically acts as a pocket healer for the melee guy (who, frankly, gets hurt a lot), hands out inspiration to whoever's having trouble hitting their target, or works on debuffing the foes with Vicious Mockery and/or Cutting Words. If they're trying to lock down a foe, she'll attempt to trip them with her whip using her Martial Adept maneuvers (trip and disarm, specifically), although this is an ability that got considerably weaker in the conversion from Pathfinder and which I mainly kept for continuity's sake, or cast Hold Person. She also directs the party strategy, which is pure RP and not reflected in mechanics, but is still important and effective.

If I were going to make a build to specifically emulate a warlord, this character wouldn't be it (she has high Int and low Str, not much in the way of Con, and has sub-optimal equipment choices), but even built this way she does hit all the notes [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION] described:

But the role is a battle-capable (though not dominant) character, capable of performing a variety of buffing, enabling, and healing/damage mitigation/etc. actions.

BATTLE CAPABLE: She has something like AC 15, +5 to hit, 1d8+2 with her rapier and 33 hit points at 4th level. Not a powerhouse by any stretch, but she's not made of tissue paper. As a valor bard she'd probably have AC 18, with a +1 chain shirt and a shield, but the flexibility of spell selection and debuff options of a lore bard were more than worth the trade since her concept involved never fighting personally if she could help it.
BUFF: Heroism, Inspiration
ENABLE: Inspiration
HEAL: Cure Wounds is her tool of choice, but Healing Word is good too

If I was going for more of a mitigation-based character she could remove fear or charms with Calm Emotions, remove poison or disease with Lesser Restoration, and at 6th level pick up some interesting buffs like Haste with her Spell Secrets selection. Also if I were building a warlord-mimicking bard my choice would probably have been valor bard with the Shield Master feat, so I could push foes as a bonus action instead of blowing the feat on only having one superiority die. (As I mentioned when I waded into this thread, I only played a warlord for a little while, but the main thing I remember from playing him is A. healing allies, and B. shoving people around the battlefield.)

Hope this helps!

-The Gneech

PS: ETA I found a journal writeup that has the closest to a blow-by-blow describing the sort of stuff my bard does. It dates back to her Pathfinder days, but in practice 5E her is not that different. http://the-gneech.livejournal.com/2289975.html