D&D 5E [Warlords] Should D&D be tied to D&D Worlds?

[Mishihari Lord]

Still missing the "We're using skill and steel in a magical world" a la Conan or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser without feeling like chumps.

The solution to this issue is to swap out hit points for some other mechanic. Nothing in those books makes me think "hit points."

I love the idea of a warlord but don't care for 4E's version. I'd prefer something that could be used to model Croaker or Elmo from Glen Cook's The Black Company books.

 

[Cyberen]

I've seen a similar sort of comment about the ranger's hunter's quarry becoming a spell.

Traditionally, D&D has put a lot of mechanical weight on something being "magic", or "a spell": the casting mechanics, the dispel mechanics, etc. This is an obstacle to refluffing. I don't have a sense, yet, of how close D&Dnext is to this tradition. (Though the fact that it's Anti-Magic Field spell goes for more than half a page makes me a bit anxious!)

If you want to give a 4e flavour to Next, you could rule Rangers and "Warlords" (reskinned Paladins) spells as Daily martial powers.
Also, the way anti-magic interacts with inspirational healing is better left to each table. "not taking Gary and co output as input for our games", as you would say. I understand your concern with player empowerment, but I don't think Next is so carefully balanced for this kind of issue (can a warlord heal in an antimagic field ?) to seriously matter.

 

[Leatherhead]

I still want to see WotC do an official stab at ritual based healing. I feel it's more dramatically appropriate to the genre. And being a ritual you could give it to anyone you want, like the town doctor instead of the town cleric.

More importantly though, I am a bit surprised that everyone automatically thinks a "panic button", as something that prevents death, has to be something that adds hit points. You could, for example, have people temporarily stop losing hit points instead. There are allot of potential mechanics and cool fluff lurking under just that one alternate idea. And I know it's not the only idea that could be explored.

 

[pemerton]

I am a bit surprised that everyone automatically thinks a "panic button", as something that prevents death, has to be something that adds hit points. You could, for example, have people temporarily stop losing hit points instead.

Sure, there are a range of options that could be tried. But in the meantime there's one option that actually has been tried, and is known to work, and is fairly easy to roll out. (I think this is also [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]'s point.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I still want to see WotC do an official stab at ritual based healing.

For all my gripes about 4Ed, I think their stab at introducing ritual magic- flawed though it was- was a HUGE step in a good direction. And having a goodly portion of magical healing be ritual magic is, IMHO, a good idea. As you point out, it is something that potentially any character could learn, and as something that takes time, major magical healing in an "active" campaign* becomes a matter worthy of serious thought as opposed to "insta-cures".







* as in, events in the campaign world don't stop progressing just because the PCs are taking a break. The party, then, can't simply go to the spa for a month and expect to resume the quest when they're all better.

 

[Cyberen]

I agree a 5e warlord should not be too hard to roll out (I would even argue it's already been done both officially through existing builds, and on these boards, as I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] reverse engineering of Next encounter math is spot on).
I also think acknowledging healing fountains as mandatory in order to make a functional party would be very counter-productive. It confines the game in a style better left in a module.
(the problem is not mundane healing but insta-healing being spammed, really)
Disclaimer : I speak from the point of view of someone who genuinely like (errata'd) CaGI as a fighter ability, but couldn't bring his friends to switch to 4e because of the CRPG feel of combat. I definitely WANT some of 4e to transfer to Next, but not "every class balanced in the combat pillar through niche protection of Roles as archetypes borrowed from computer games which themselves are built on D&D foundations". I hope my agenda is transparent !

 

[Neonchameleon]

Oh good grief...

You can lead a horse to water, and all that...

I'm out. It's obvious that an objective discussion with you on this subject is not possible. Good Day.

Indeed. You can lead a horse to water. But if you first try treating humans as horses and then refuse to drink yourself when it's obvious that you are parched, you're unlikely to get anywhere. Combine that with repeated factually incorrect statements in your "objective discussion" and it doesn't get anywhere. Good day to you too.

Sure, there are a range of options that could be tried. But in the meantime there's one option that actually has been tried, and is known to work, and is fairly easy to roll out. (I think this is also @Neonchameleon 's point.)

It is.

For all my gripes about 4Ed, I think their stab at introducing ritual magic- flawed though it was- was a HUGE step in a good direction. And having a goodly portion of magical healing be ritual magic is, IMHO, a good idea. As you point out, it is something that potentially any character could learn, and as something that takes time, major magical healing in an "active" campaign* becomes a matter worthy of serious thought as opposed to "insta-cures".


* as in, events in the campaign world don't stop progressing just because the PCs are taking a break. The party, then, can't simply go to the spa for a month and expect to resume the quest when they're all better.

Agreed. I wish 4e had gone further with the rituals rather than tried then stopped with Essentials.

 

[Starfox]

I've already commented, multiple times now, that the paladin and the warlord fill the same archetypical space. The reason for distinguishing them in D&D is that D&D draws a very sharp magic/non-magic divide (unlike romantic fantasy fiction of the Arthurian or LotR variety, which does not draw such a distinction). Also, a D&D paladin has a tendency to bring other mechanical baggage (alignment, falling mechanics) which are notorious for a whole range of reasons (and are in various ways connected to the diving magic branding of the paladin).

I could do all that, rebuilding the game from the ground up - or I could do something which requires fewer mechanical tweaks: namely, let my Aragorn PC use Inspiring Word to restore his allies' hp. I mean (and just picking up on one of your points), why do we need to introduce Fate Points when the game already has a perfectly good combat-related ablative metagame resource?

I sympathize on bemoaning the magic/non-magic divide, and I can see classes straddling it more - 4E and Pathfinder have each taken steps in this direction, but Next seems to avoid it. I guess Meals & Co. think this divide is part of the DnD identity. But it really isn't that old - AD&D allowed effective crossovers trough multi-classing. Much of the problem actually hails from 3Es multiclassing - in 1E and 2E you could meaningfully multiclass a magic and a non-magic class, but that mostly ended with 3E. In my AD&D games, most everyone was multiclassed - it was just more fun that way.

To return to the magic/mundane divide, a semi-magical leader class already exists - the bard combines magical and mundane abilities and does heal a little. A bard also inspires, often being a better buffer than a cleric. And bard is a very versatile class - it can lean towards fighter, cleric/buffer, or even controller/wizard, all in the same class. Just use Oratory for your perform, and it makes a great leader - except that is has spells.

What you seem to want is the bard concept married to a fighter instead of a rogue, removing the spells but adding mundane healing and some fighting omph. Maybe this discussion could improve if it became somewhat more concrete. Make suggestions on how a Next warlord could work, trying to make it so that it doesn't offend people's sensibilities, and possibly the discussion could move on from sweeping generalizations to something useful?

 

[pemerton]

I speak from the point of view of someone who genuinely like (errata'd) CaGI as a fighter ability, but couldn't bring his friends to switch to 4e because of the CRPG feel of combat.

Whereas at my table there is no sense that 4e combat is CRPG, but we resolutely stick to pre-errat CaGI (partially on principle, partially because we just like it better, partially because the player of the fighter built his whole character around it).

What you seem to want is the bard concept married to a fighter instead of a rogue, removing the spells but adding mundane healing and some fighting omph. Maybe this discussion could improve if it became somewhat more concrete. Make suggestions on how a Next warlord could work, trying to make it so that it doesn't offend people's sensibilities, and possibly the discussion could move on from sweeping generalizations to something useful?

You are right about more fighter, less rogue - and also perhaps the bard name itself, which since 2nd ed AD&D at least has tended to have rogue-ish connotations.

I don't know that I can avoid offending sensibilities (see first paragraph of this post!), but what do you think of the sketch in post 89 above?

 

[Starfox]

I don't know that I can avoid offending sensibilities (see first paragraph of this post!), but what do you think of the sketch in post 89 above?

It's a beginning, but could be much more concrete. And collected - perhaps it needs it's own thread.

But then, I was never in the anti-warlord crowd. For me the warlord is a problem of execution (making a good, fun, balanced class), not principles.