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="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6671776" data-attributes="member: 996">Sounds like you're in complete agreement.  Hussar asserts that the fighter is the 'worst' possible choice for a ship's captain, in the sense of 'worst' that allows him to share that distinction with a number of non-fighters, as well.  And, you have a definition of 'good captain,' that sets the bar so low any character that walks in it's general direction can clear it - all it takes is a CHA 12 or the right Background.  Absolutely any PC could do that.  Even the ones worst-suited to being a Ship's Captain - like the fighter.I'm glad to see you've resolved your differences. Well, of course, there are going to be examples like that.  Part of the point of a class ability is that not everyone can do it, otherwise it'd just be a generally-available action. Well, those are matters of degree.  Only 4 classes are actually in the Basic Game.  And 5e's bar for 'balanced' is not set particularly high, even for D&D.  As long as a class has some opportunity to shine in the spotlight-balance sense, some of the time, and doesn't entirely eclipse any other class, it's balanced enough for 5e.  The only balance risk in introducing a Warlord would be doing it as a Fighter sub-class, since it would readily eclipse the fighter if given much of it's traditional functionality, while still retaining the Fighter's primary (multi-attack DPR) feature.But, yes, balance aside, any class in the PH should work seamlessly with the standard game, by definition.  Optional classes should, at least, work with the standard game, otherwise unmodified.  Compatibility among all modules, though, is not something that's practical.  It's nice if you can do it, but it's not always going to be possible or called for.  And where incompatibility is a logical impossibility, there can be no expectation the two modules would ever be used together.  It makes no more sense to be concerned with how a Warlord hp-restoration mechanic might work within a module that makes healing even a single hp without magic take a day, for instance, then it does to worry about how Cure Wounds would work in a module that does away with magic, entirely.  In both cases, the point of the module is to remove the mechanic in question. Mainly because those classes were present in multiple editions, even if they were only in a PH1 once.  Also, in the case of the Sorcerer, because their original shtick - spontaneous casting - was given to prepped casters for free.The Warlord, OTOH, has only one past-edition source, so the vision of it is much clearer.   One part.  There's nothing about the ratio among them being fixed, though.  So if you get topped off with extra morale-based hps, you're still at full.  If you get a night's rest in the Standard Game, you're up to full hps, even if you were beaten to within a single death save of your life repeatedly over the course of the day - multiple severe injuries, in your paradigm.  You can't be fully-recovered, physical/durability wise from that kind of trauma after only 8 hours, so, inevitably, that ratio has shifted.The level of abstraction of hps just leaves too much room to quibble over what 'kind of hps' are being lost or restored, the detail isn't there.One could easily envision a system with a higher level of granularity and detail, in which different hp pools were tracked and restored separately, with some pools, like morale or divine grace being over-fillable and others, like physical durability, being static. The answer is, 'enough.'  The Warlord could keep a party fighting in the face of a tough battle, and probably even turn around a disastrous one with good use of his resources.  That absolutely means being able to stand up fallen allies, which requires restoring hps rather than temp hps, and restoring them in downed allies.  Asking 'how much healing,' presupposes that the Warlord will work like the Cleric, with a pool of healing resources (like spell slots) that can provide a total amount of extra healing over and above what the party could do without the Cleric - or, can be expended for other uses.  That represents both a lot of potential healing, and a tremendous amount of versatility for the Cleric.No Warlord design is likely to match either.  Porting the Warlord as directly as possible from 4e wouldn't come close, for instance - Casters, like the Cleric, have far more spell resources than 4e characters had 'powers.' Conversely, no martial character in the PH has close to the resources/versatility it had in 4e.  That's another reason why 'balance' is really a pretty minor concern.One idea that's been floated is having the Warlord use the 5e HD mechanic (which bears a resemblance to 4e surges, though they're much less mechanically significant, both in total hps provided and in their importance to the rest of the system) in a way similar to what it did in 4e.  So the Warlord might 'trigger' HD in combat. That provides the ability to restore hps, in combat, and get fallen allies back in the fight - but, unlike casters' slot-based healing, doesn't increase the total hp reserve available to the party.  See how that /both/ gives one of the Walord's functions, /and/ is nothing like the way the Cleric heals? Not only that, but, by itself, it leaves Caster Supremacy untouched, since there's none of the tremendous versatility of neo-Vancian casting.   And that's just amateurs spit balling on the internet.   I can't see how a skilled designer could have any problem with this challenge. A more specific example, from just the other day, was based on the Fighter's Second Wind (1d10+level hps healed, 1/rest, no action).  That's an example of 'instant' non-magical healing, in combat, so there's a precedent for it in the Standard Game.  The fluff is that the Fighter digs deep into some hidden reserve of vitality or something like that.  The Warlord's "Inspiring Word" had a similar idea, that the Warlord got his allies to 'dig deep' that way (4e gave all characters a lot more such capacity, of course), even if they couldn't, on their own.  So, doing the same thing in 5e would correspond:  The Warlord uses his Inspiring Word, the ally rolls 1d10 (or, more reasonably, his HD size, so d6 for wizard, for instance), plus, say, the Warlord's level, and recovers that many hps.  The Warlord could inspire someone else, later, but not that same ally until the ally had taken a rest (short or long, like the Fighter getting back Second Wind).  To help it keep up with the large numbers of hps at higher levels, the ally could kick in his own HD, as well - until he was out of HD, of course.  The advantage of this idea, over /just/ triggering HD, is that it still works in games that don't use HD - it's just much less effective in such games, which is the intended effect of doing away with HD:  "nerfing" non-magical healing to make magical healing more critically important. It's neither weird, nor bizarre, just a natural continuation of the edition war.</blockquote>

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