NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6657099" data-attributes="member: 37579">The catch with subclasses is that they should be 90% about flavour and 10% about mechanics. The inspiration should be one of story and fluff, with the mechanics supporting that rather than grafting story to interesting mechanics. Similarly, things like combat roles and weapon use are character choices not subclass choices. Most should work equally with a ranged weapon, single melee weapon, or two-weapon fighting; tanking feats and heavy armour or DPR feats and light armour. And "archery" subclass is a poor design choice.  4e had five or so official builds: bravura (gambling), insightful (wise), inspiring (charismatic), resourceful, skirmisher (mobility), and tactical. Plus the unofficial lazylord. The insightful and inspiring warlords are really better served by the cleric and bard respectively. That leaves bravura, resourceful, skirmiersher, and tactical. However, when designing a class it's a good idea to look at what makes it unique and interest and not just blindly update what came before. In this case, the warlord is a strategic, cunning, smart, and tactical fighter. The battlefield commander. Charisma is nice, but it really seems secondary to Intelligence in the scheme of the class. Leading from the front and leading from the back seem to be the two big ideas. One grants bonuses when people attack the same target as she is, and the other paints a target and encourages people to attack that.I imagine there could also be a meta warlord. The gambit-based one ("Ah ha, you fell into my trap!") that ostensibly has a plan that she expects enemies to do, even if the players didn't overtly make said plan. A subclass that has lots of reactions and can trigger reactions. Basically retconning her into having planned an attack. Healing is still a stumbling block. 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. 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. Plus, healing is a big class feature in an edition where classes seldom get more than one or two features each level. The warlord is seriously trading some unique warlord powers and flexibility for healing. 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 more warlordy warlord.</blockquote>

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