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

[Starfox]

that left physical exhaustion as the only logical reason for martial daily powers

I always saw the usage limits on 4E powers of all kinds to be narrative in nature. "Come and Get It/Fireball/Sneak onto the back of monster and backstab" are each exceptional stunts, and to insure they stayed extraordinary, they were each given a narrative limit - once per action day or once per scene/encounter. In other words, the limits were there to prevent boring and repetitive use of these exceptional schticks, making them seem ordinary. It had nothing to do with in-world considerations.

 

[Starfox]

To be honest... I don't think there is anything that a cleric can do (assuming you're smart about the choices you make on some of their spells) that can't be explained away mundanely. You just avoid selecting the majorly magical ones. 1st level-- Healing Word. Bless (as tactics). 2nd level-- Aid (as inspiring "pumping up" for the day). Augury (as the warlord determining for himself whether his tactical plan will work) 3rd level-- Mass Healing Word. Beacon of Hope. Past that... higher level uses of the Healing Word spells.

A cleric/warlord reskin that has to stay away from some (say 2/3) of all cleric powers because of his concept is not equivalent to a cleric with no such limitation.

 

[Obryn]

No. Not "because it's magic." Because the lore of the game has established that arcane magic has a limitation other than physical exhaustion. If Wizards had stipulated that the martial power source required memorization and subsequent forgetting of specific maneuvers, I would not have a leg to stand on. Fortunately, it would also have been /insane/, so they did not do that. Unfortunately, that left physical exhaustion as the only logical reason for martial daily powers, which begs the questions in my previous post.

Magic is not the absence of rules or logic. It is just a different system of internal consistency.

Lore is mutable. It's just fluff. Boom! That lore exists now.

I don't think everything needs magic. Sometimes metagame mechanics are just metagame mechanics. They streamline play; that's their job.

 

[DEFCON 1]

* To me this was one of the WORST points of 4E - it divorced the rules from the in-world action and events and made reading class abilities about as much fun as reading the telephone book.

* Never ever again! Reskinning a cleric to a warlord by changing a few keywords is a stillborn idea.

The two points do not follow one another.

Just because the way the 4E PH was laid out such that it wasn't fun for you to read... does not mean therefore that adding a few reskinned cleric multiclass abilities onto a fighter to create a "warlord-like" character makes the idea stillborn.

The issue for including an actual Warlord class in the Player's Handbook is because some players want the buffs and heals that come with it, without there actually being "magic" involved. And personally, I think it can easily be accomplished by simple clerical multiclassing and the reskinning of "cleric magic" into "warlord inspiration".

It's the same exact argument that's been going on for years as to whether you needed a paladin when you could have a fighter/cleric multiclass, or needed a ranger when you could have a fighter/rogue multiclass that focused on nature abilities. And will also be the same exact argument we are going to have once we see all these "Fighter sub-classes" which'll be in the next playtest packet. And the answer all comes down to "Is the class unique and important enough to warrant being its own class?"

For the Warlord personally... I'm actually ambivalent. I'd have no problem if there was an actual class in 5E, just like I'd have no problem giving a Fighter a couple uses of the Healing Word spell (in exchange for some other ability, or maybe even adding the spell as a potential use of an expertise die.) I just enjoy the thought experiments that come with figuring these things out.

 

[DEFCON 1]

A cleric/warlord reskin that has to stay away from some (say 2/3) of all cleric powers because of his concept is not equivalent to a cleric with no such limitation.

It's not supposed to be. Why does that matter?

The issue is whether you can make a fairly straightforward "warlord" class using the tool already available, rather than needing to create a whole new class. And yeah... by having this particular warlord player prepare only certain spells (ones that can be considered more mundane than magical), is part of that process. This player isn't trying to create a warlord like a cleric, he's trying to create a warlord like a warlord.

 

[Cyberen]

* Please, please, please ! I beg you to stop trying to use reason to demonstrate your/edition X/poster Y take on HP is awesome/stupid/inconsistent/the real D&D !/certainly not part of D&D !/makes better coffee. Also, please stop quoting Gygax, Mearls, or the Holy Bible on this matter. This thread, and many others, show there is no consensus on this subject. We have to admit it, in order to overcome it and stay united. Of course, some posts saying "When I do this, I have that problem", or, even better, "I had a lot of problems with HP (did you ?), but I took this approach and I stopped worrying !" are more than OK, but on this question, your mileage SHALL vary. On a personal note, I stopped worrying when I embraced the abstract and undefined nature of HP... till the last one.
* On the HP front, I hope the designers will keep a Reserve mechanism (Healing Surges, Hit Dice, whatever) to silo "combat" staying power and "adventuring" staying power, with different (or, optionnally, similar) Refresh rules, enabling both Encounter design, and "Adventure" design levels. That could go a long way towards uniting the player base. It's imho one thing 4e got totally wrong : enabling Encounter-based design is cool (for "combat as sport", for cinematic play, for "pemertonian scene-framing",etc.), but mandating it is not (and saying "however, people used clerical healing or CLW wands before, so let's assume everybody heals overnight" is a legitimate CHOICE. See this thread to learn how bad things can go when people are denied their choices). I expect a (mini) chapter in the DMG about refreshing pools, through sim-process time rests, or Cut scenes, Refresh Scenes,...
* About magic and mundane characters/effects/balance : There is an aesthetical choice to be made, between skills as spells (a la 4e Power, focusing on player empowerment) and spells as skills, for instance the Knock spell acting like an Int ? Dex ? check to open locks. As @Neonchameleon and others' proposal to give reliable-instantaneous healing to the Warlord rubs me the wrong way, I think this empowerment (entitlement ?) plays a big part, and I would rather have both clerical preach/soothing and Bravelord inspiration working like skills than powers...
* The more I read, the more I believe (optional) Hero Points would be a great addition to the game. It would solve so many problems ! For instance, they could protect Heroes against certain death (SoD, lava pools, ...), enabling some effects to actually bypass HP, without being DM fiat or "I win" buttons (and 5e could be the first edition my NPC wizards would cast "Polymorph any Object" aka saveless "Hero to Toad" on a PC without any remorse !). They would also power the bigger SFX (it would dovetail nicely with spells as skills discussed above : spend a Hero Point to get +XX to a SFX check), previously called "Dailies". Having general guidelines, dials, and specific rules about the presence/absence of such points, and their acquisition, would enable great genre customization, and balance classes according to table tastes (Each local game would have to answer : what makes a hero ? the answers could be sim-oriented - wizards study, clerics pray, ... , or cinematic, or campaign specific, or characters goals/emotional state driven,...). I know the game starts to look more than "Cyberen Fantasy Heartbreaker" at this point, but @mearls record with token pools, some L&L talk about a Fate points module, and the dragon we saw this week give me hope !
* concerning refluffing/reskinning : try building a Bravelord out of a Paldin instead...

 

[Alzrius]

You don't have to understand physics to apply it, and you don't need to cast spells to take advantage of magic.

This part I agree with; having access to magical abilities (other than magic items) should be more than a clear-cut spellcaster/non-spellcaster divide.

However, I'm at something of a cross-purpose with D&D as a whole in this regard. My frustration with the constraints on abilities in regards to the themes of character classes has caused me to largely give up on the idea of pre-built classes altogether; hence, I use a d20 point-buy character-builder now. As such, to me the solution seems obvious, but I doubt that it would be embraced by many other players.

As an example of this, the book I use has an ability you can buy called Grant of Aid, where you can self-heal once per day per three character levels. It doesn't say what the source is, or give any other fluff consideration - you decide if it's a recurring blessing from a deity, the ability to consciously invoke short-term hyper-regeneration, turning back a bit of time on part of your wounded body, a set of nanites that need time to recharge after use, or anything else you can think of.

If we subscribe to the idea of PC exceptionalism, then them having extra-normal abilities where the fluff is built to help justify the mechanical limitations of the crunch (so as to avoid dissociated mechanics - something we can do since there is no standard of how all magic must, as a whole, function) shouldn't be a problem.

 

[I'm A Banana]

To be clear, I don't personally think it's a good idea just to reskin.

I think [MENTION=7006]DEFCON 1[/MENTION] is basically right in that there's not really a problem with it if you accept martial encounter/daily powers and especially if you choose less obviously-magical spells and if you have equipment customization that enables you to wear chainmail and use a sword (rather than heavy armor and a mace), but reskinning shouldn't be required to get the non-magical spike healing jazz.

But the problems with "bow fighters are just rangers!" crops up. I don't think THAT'S a good idea, either.

 

[Manbearcat]

@DEFCON 1 I don't have time to look it up but do you recall that thread I did on attempting to refluff a Warlord out of a 5e Cleric template (I believe you participated in it...I don't have the minute or so it would take to look it up). I tried hard to just refluff the cleric and create the Warlord out of its mechanical infrastructure (put it on the same resource scheme, etc). Unfortunately, it became quite clear that it wouldn't do the job thematically, mechanically, and the actual tactics delivered by the 5e cleric (wrought primarily from its passive buff spells) wouldn't remotely deliver the interactive, reactive tactical experience of the Warlord. So I used the template, but the final product wasn't anything near a refluff.

@Kamikaze Midget, on the other hand, engineered a Bard using the Cleric template (not a mere refluffing). He then refluffed those engineered mechanics sufficiently to create a mundane Bard that would likely do the trick. Again, however, given my experience with all the editions prior to 4e, if the mechanics that inhibit spellcasting are in place (spell resistance, anti-magic, etc) within 5e (which they are thus far), invulnerability to those inhibitions would flatly make the Warlord better than KM's refluffed/subclass of Warlord as Bard (engineered...not refluffed...off of the Cleric template).

 

[Alzrius]

Just to be clear, "re-fluffing" is where you change the flavor text of something without altering any of its mechanics in any way. If you have an ability that requires an attack roll and deals 2d8+(Strength bonus) on a hit, and change the name from Feel the Wrath of My God! to I'm Punching You Really Really Hard!, that's re-fluffing.

"Re-skinning," on the other hand, involves changing the mechanics of something (though usually not the numerical aspects). For example, if you changed the above power was changed from dealing 2d8+(Strength bonus) normal damage to dealing fire damage, that's a re-skin, since the mechanics for fire damage are different from normal damage (e.g. application of damage reduction, etc.).

Just so everyone's on the same page.