Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink

[Lord Twig]

So bladelocks summing pact-weapons from thin is not magical?

All of those just require more wizards.

Classes have balance as a limiting factor yes.

What's the limit of magic?

Actually Tony Vargas gets to the heart of the issue in the above post. Magic doesn't actually exist, so any limit it has is based on the work of fiction that it is portrayed in. You could create a story where magic is literally unlimited and could create or destroy entire universes if you wished. Of course you could create a story where science could do the same thing. At a certain level they are indistinguishable.

On the other hand, magic might be limited to only creating illusions or tricking the mind. Or whatever. It can be whatever you want it to be. But once you decide what magic is and what it can do in a story, you need to keep it consistent. At least if you want it to be a good story you do.

D&D magic actually does have rules and limits.

Edit: What is the point of this line of discussion? I said magic was not just arbitrary. Are you trying to say it is?

I guess it could be. You could have a world with arbitrary magic that is unlimited and can do anything, but that's not what we are talking about. D&D has rules on how magic operates. It is limited. Not as limited as what can be done without magic, but if magic couldn't do any more than could be done without it, then why even have it at all?

 

[pemerton]

The "shouty martial healing" requires that you remove the actual, physical damage.

No. It requires that being inspired allows a heroic character to carry on despite his/her physical injury.

How verisimilitudinous this is depends on how severe you envisage the physical injury being. Given that, in D&D, no non-fatal physical injury is severe enough to impede performance (eg no debuffs as a result of being injured, unlike many other RPG combat systems), the physical injuries seem not to be so severe that a heroic character couldn't carry on in disregard of them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

No. It requires that being inspired allows a heroic character to carry on despite his/her physical injury.

If any.

10 hps of damage could be inflicted by a psychic blast, a ball of fire, a sword, a contact poison, or just anything that might ruin your day. Though it's unlikely, even a semi-bogus source of damage like an illusion can drop you to 0 and leave you dying, without a mark on you. In turn, measures meant to help you recover from physical injury can bring you right back.

The bottom line is that D&D hps are abstract. Anything that can take away hps of any imagined sort/type/description can drop and even kill you, anything that can give you back any imagined sort/type/description of hps can heal you back from it, no matter how great the conceptual mis-match between the two.

How verisimilitudinous this is depends on how severe you envisage the physical injury being. Given that, in D&D, no non-fatal physical injury is severe enough to impede performance (eg no debuffs as a result of being injured, unlike many other RPG combat systems), the physical injuries seem not to be so severe that a heroic character couldn't carry on in disregard of them.

Maybe it's better to think of max hps more as full ability to face/survive danger than just being fresh as a daisy. There's no verisimilitudinous way you're going to be 100% perfectly healthy after being a single save away from death after a 1hr rest, yet that can happen in 5e without any magic at all. Full hps simply can't be deemed to represent perfect health, there already need to be more flexibility in conceptualizing hp loss/recovery and 'full hps' just to account for what can already happen in the standard game.

 

[mellored]

D&D magic actually does have rules and limits.

There's nothing stopping a DM from making a city levitation spell.

Edit: What is the point of this line of discussion?

semantics.
I did warn you.

 

[Jester David]

Nod. But there's only so many that have made an appearance in a D&D PH1. The Warlord is one of those.

Absolutely true. But that's a completely arbitrary benchmark. The line to cross for inclusion could just as easily be "any class that has appeared in 3 or more editions", "any class that existed in OD&D", "any class created by Gygax & Arneson", "any class published in a hardcover book within 1 year of the start of an edition", or even "any class recognised as a class by a high percentage of the fanbase."

Classes are how 5e delivers most of a character's capabilities, so the 'need' is really only there when mechanical support for the concept isn't already available from other classes. Since 5e doesn't assume MCing or Feat, BTW, so 'other classes in combination' doesn't cut it, either - thus, for instance, we have Paladins even though a Fighter/Cleric could fit the bill, and an EK even though a Fighter with Magic Initiate might squeak by.

The Warlord concept requires mechanics that don't exist in sufficient number/power in one class. MCing+ Feats + Backgrounds could get pretty close to suggesting the concept, though not as close as a Fighter/Cleric is to a Paladin, and such a build wouldn't be terribly viable if it stuck to doing concept-appropriate things.

But I could say the same thing about a myriad other concepts, many of which are as iconic in fantasy if not more iconic than the warlord.
Like the alchemist. Or the dedicated shapeshifter. Or the summoner. The blue mage that copies monster abilities. The elementalist. The shaman. The pirate. The witch doctor. The tinkerer/engineer. The inquisitor.

There's no shortage of possible class hooks, each of which is very distinct and cannot be done with the current rules and has even less support than the warlord. Some have a history in the game and some do not, but all are viable potential classes.

And the Sorcerer, Warlock, and Warlord have been in only 1 PH1, yes. 5e was meant to draw from all editions, not just the older ones, and to be for fans of all editions, not just for h4ters.

The cleric is arguably not a fantasy trope, at all, the Vancian caster certainly isn't, FWIW (nothing, in D&D). But, yes, 5e tried very hard to feel like D&D, and that necessarily meant including extraneous and redundant material from the early days of the game.

The criterion Mearls asserted was 'in a prior edition PH1' - all the '1' did was exclude a lot of 3.x and 4e classes, since the few AD&D classes not introduced in the PH (like the Barbarian) were helpfully in later PH1s. The Sorcerer, Warlock, and Warlord were the only classes to appear in only one PH1, the Warlord and Warlock both only in the 4e PH1.

The sorcerer was in two PHBs: 3e and 4e.
Mearl's criterion was an early goal. And he was quick to amend that the options might not be classes. Which is a good thing as a distinct assassin and illusionist classes would be unneeded.

Actually it's a very powerful (in a storytelling sense) archetype. And one much more prevalent in genre than any sort of magic-wielding protagonist.

That doesn't make it a class thought, it makes it a party role and character archetype. We also don't need a "Big Silent Strongman" class or "Brainy Knowitall" class.

I personally think there probably is room for tactician and strategic planner class. But that may or may not overlap with the leader role depending on how the player wants to portray their character and what role in the party they want to fill.

 

[pemerton]

The goal is to find examples that don't imply that inspiration and/or tactical ability are inevitably linked to being in a position of authority over the rest of the group.

Aragorn was the acknowledged leader of the Fellowship after Gandalf's fall.

I don't think that being invested with authority is sufficient to establish a character as inspiring to his/her fellows. The history of the world is full of formal leaders whose underlings followed their orders out of simply duty rather than love or devotion.

And the reverse is also true (and is probably more common in fiction than reality): that an inspiring person, in virtue of the respect/devotion that s/he evokes in his/her fellows, becomes acknowledged as a leader. This is the case with Aragorn, I think.

Thus, I think you are reversing cause and effect. The reason that Aragorn was the acknowledged leader is because of his ability to lead, his capacity to inspire his comrades.

Here is what I think is the key passage (p 349 of the Unwin one volume edition, "The Bridge of Khazad-Dum"):

'He cannot stand alone!' cried Aragorn suddenly and rang back along the bridge. 'Elendil!' he shouted. 'I am with you, Gandalf!'
'Gondor!' cried Boromir and leaped after him.​

At that moment Gandalf lifted his staff, and crying aloud he smote the bridge before him. . . . With a terrible cry the Balrog fell forward . . . But even as it fell it swung its whip, and the thongs lashed and curled about the wizard's knees, dragging him to the brink. He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss. 'Fly, you fools!' he cried, and was gone. . . .

Even as Aragorn and Boromir came flying back, the rest of the bridge cracked and fell. With a cry, Aragorn roused them.

'Come! I will lead you now!' he called. 'We must obey his last command. Follow me!'​

They stumbled wildly up the great stairs beyond the door. Aragorn leading, Boromir at the rear.​

We can see that Aragorn is able to inspire Boromir - his notional peer, as another "Captain of the West" - to follow him to Gandalf's defence. And we see that Aragorn assumes the mantle of leadership without any formal investiture of authority - and Boromir accepts it.

Later on, Frodo and Faramir discuss the nature of Aragorn's leadership of Boromir ("The Window on the West", p 696):

'. . . [A]lways it displeased [Boromir] that his father was not king. "How many hundreds of years needs it to make a steward a king, if the king returns not?" he asked. "Few years, maybe, in other places of less royalty," my father answered. "In Gondor ten thousand years would not suffice." Alas! poor Boromir. Does that not tell you something of him?'
'It does,' said Frodo. 'Yet he always treated Aragorn with honour.'
'I doubt it not,' said Faramir. 'If he were satisfied of Aragorn's claim, as you way, he would greatly reverence him. . . .'​

But how did Boromir become satisfied of Aragorn's claim? At first, he was not ("The Council of Elrond", pp 263-4):

[Aragorn] cast his sword upon the table that stood before Elrond, and the blade was in two pieces. 'Here is the Sword that was Broken!' he said.

'And who are you, and what have you to do with Minas Tirith?' asked Boromir, looking in wonder at the lean face of the Ranger and his weather-stained cloak.
'He is Aragorn son of Arathorn . . . descended through many fathers from Isildur Elendil's son . . .'​

Boromir's eyes glinted as he gazed at the golden thing. 'The Halfling!' he muttered. 'Is the doom of Minas Tirith come at last? But why then should we seek a broken sword?'

'The words were not the doom of Minas Tirith,' said Aragorn. 'But doom and great deeds are indeed at hand. For the Sword that was Broken is the Swrod of Elendil . . . Do you wish for the house of Elendil to return to the Land of Gondor?'
'I was not sent to beg an boon, but to seek only the meaning of a riddle,' answered Boromir proudly. 'Yet we are hard pressed, and the Sword of Elendil would be a help beyond our hop - if such a thing could indeed return out of the shadows of the past.' He looked again at Aragorn, and doubt was in his eyes.​

It seems to me that it is Aragorn's valour, together with his inspiring personality, that satisfies Boromir of Aragorn's claim.

In 4e, PC development has a certain trajectory that makes this LotR-style character development easier to bring out in the game. Because of the transition from heroic tier to a paragon path to an epic destiny, a warlord PC's destiny of being a great ruler or leader can emerge as the game unfolds: eg at 11th level the warlord PC becomes a Knight Commander, retrospectively vindicating his/her earlier claims to be a leader; and then at 21st level s/he becomes a Legendary Sovereign.

I think that 5e doesn't build in quite the same trajectory for PC development, so there is perhaps a greater risk of a 20th level warlord not having progressed much beyond 1st level in terms of character backstory revealing how and why the character is an inspiring leader. But in a game in which the participants care about the story of the characters, I think they will be able to fill this in in an ad hoc way, even if the game's mechanics don't deliver it "automatically" in the way that they do in 4e.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

That's a lot of good inner-party roleplaying right there. Why are we trying to ascribe or force mechanical doodads to those friends' interactions again? And what evidence is there anything mechanically was being gifted between them? What am I missing in all that? Cliff Notes, please...

 

[pemerton]

There's nothing stopping a DM from making a city levitation spell.

4e has one, with the Raise Land ritual (in the FR Player's Guide).

 

[ChrisCarlson]

4e has one, with the Raise Land ritual (in the FR Player's Guide).

What a coincidence. 4e had a warlord too...

 

[pemerton]

if magic couldn't do any more than could be done without it, then why even have it at all?

Do you mean "couldn't do more, in the fiction"? Or do you mean "couldn't do more, as a player resource"? I think they are different questions.

In the fiction, magic makes impossible things possible.

But that doesn't mean that, at the table, a player of a magic-user must have capacities to influence the play of the game that are greater than the player of a non-magic user.

Marvel Heroic RP is a good example of a game that illustrates this. The difference between Wolverine's d10 attack and the Human Torch's d10 attack isn't mechanical potency, but the fictional constraints on action declaration (eg Wolverine can't declare an attack against someone he can't make physical contact with; the Human Torch can't (safely) declare an attack while confronting Dr Doom in a room full of innocent people).