Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink

[pemerton]

If I decide that my Ranger has a problem with authority (a pretty common trope for adventurers), and that's why he is in an adventuring group instead of in the military, then someone else bringing in a Warlord character is going to be a problem.

So you do not approve of my character concept and I must change it to fit into your idea of a team?

This just illustrates the problem with the Warlord.

I think you are overstating things. (Or, perhaps, overgeneralising from your own idiosyncratic preferences.)

One consequence of expressing inspiration mechanically is that it doesn't impede any other player's agency. If the warlord player uses an action which allows another PC to charge and attack an enemy (say, a balrog), then (i) the other player gets to choose whether or not his/her PC performs the charge, and (ii) if s/he does choose to do so, no agency is lost, because the warlord has amplified the action economy, not used it up.

Similarly with hit point recovery, or granting some sort of bonus or reroll to a die roll - this doesn't interfere with anyone's play of his/her PC, and if the player doesn't want to take the buff (on the grounds that his/her PC would not be inspired) s/he is not obliged to. (Eg in 4e, the player can choose not to spend the healing surge.)

None of this implies that the player of the warlord is empowered to direct the other players how their PCs should act or expend their own resources and their own action economy.

On the general point: there are many character ideas that can upset other players. Eg I roll up a paladin of Bahamut and you roll up a cleric/assassin in service to Wee Jas. If we both bring these characters into the game, are you going to accept my Lay on Hands? Am I going to accept your Bless? Working these things out, either at the meta-level when building PCs or by seeing how it unfolds in actual play, is just part and parcel of playing a party-based RPG.

 

[pemerton]

So I take it Aragon has no "warlord" qualities or mechanical features, to represent the passages you quoted, in any of the various LotR systems (or its clones)?

Are you yourself familiar with these systems, or not? How much of their mechanics are you asking me to inform you of?

In Burning Wheel there is a "linked test" mechanic, which is a more elaborate version of Aiding Another/Helping. It is eminently possible to use the Command skill as a linked test for another's efforts. (Upthread I gave the example of Hestiation recovery using that skill, which is the analogue - in that system, which has multiple systems for debilitating characters - of inspirational hit point recovery.)

In the comments on his RPG.net review of Decipher's LotR game, Dan Davenport canvasses using HeroQuest for playing LotR. I had thought of mentioning HeroQuest Revised in my earlier post. It has a very flexible system of augments (help/aid-another type actions), and would certainly permit the building of a character whose inspirational personality helped other PCs achieve their goals and/or recover from setbacks.

 

[jayoungr]

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.

You're looking at it backwards, when it comes to the point I was trying to make. The idea is to keep the inspiration (or tactical skill) without the rank/authority.

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.

And this is the problem from a game point of view. In fiction, there's no problem: Character A displays the capability to inspire and coordinate others, and therefore Character A is given a position of leadership. But if you come into a game and announce "My character has a superior talent for leading, inspiring, and coordinating others," you risk the other players hearing "I want my character to be the commander of the rest of you" or worse, "I want your characters to revere my character so much that you agree to make him your leader"--and that's largely true because this trope is so extremely common in literature.

What I was trying to find is an alternate archetype: the character who leads, inspires, and coordinates without being the commander of the group.

Thus, I think you are reversing cause and effect.

Actually, I think they both feed into each other. But I'm trying to separate them, so that one does not inevitably follow the other.

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.​

And here's where we run into that problem I talked about with Tolkien. You read this and it's crystal-clear to you that Boromir felt inspiration at seeing Aragorn leap forward. Possibly you think Boromir would have just stood there and watched the Balrog eat Gandalf without Aragorn to show him the way. I read it and I just see that Aragorn rolled higher initiative. Neither theory is provable, because Tolkien says nothing at all about Boromir's feelings or state of mind. Just enough detail to spark the imagination.

 

[pemerton]

What I was trying to find is an alternate archetype: the character who leads, inspires, and coordinates without being the commander of the group.

And I gave you an example: Aragorn inspires Boromir but is not his commander. The Fellowship doesn't have a commander as such - it is not a military unit - and to the extent that there is an informal "boss" it is Gandalf.

And this is the problem from a game point of view. In fiction, there's no problem: Character A displays the capability to inspire and coordinate others, and therefore Character A is given a position of leadership. But if you come into a game and announce "My character has a superior talent for leading, inspiring, and coordinating others," you risk the other players hearing "I want my character to be the commander of the rest of you" or worse, "I want your characters to revere my character so much that you agree to make him your leader"--and that's largely true because this trope is so extremely common in literature.

Not too far upthread [MENTION=31754]Lord Twig[/MENTION] says the same thing.

I just don't see it as such a big issue, because of the form the "leadership" takes. When the leadership takes the form of conferring extra actions outside the action economy, or buffs to dice rolls, there is no interference with the agency of the other player. Of course there is colour/flavour - the other player's PC is inspired - but I don't see how this differs from the relationship between those other PCs and paladins, bards, clerics etc.

And here's where we run into that problem I talked about with Tolkien. You read this and it's crystal-clear to you that Boromir felt inspiration at seeing Aragorn leap forward. Possibly you think Boromir would have just stood there and watched the Balrog eat Gandalf without Aragorn to show him the way. I read it and I just see that Aragorn rolled higher initiative. Neither theory is provable, because Tolkien says nothing at all about Boromir's feelings or state of mind. Just enough detail to spark the imagination.

But this is true for any example of literature, unless you are talking about the Order of the Stick or some similar parody.

The warlord, mechanically, is primarily about manipulating die rolls, hit point totals and action economy. These are all features of the mechanics, not features of the fiction.

Your own comments on initiative are no different in this respect. "Rolling initiative" isn't something that occurs in JRRT's fiction. You're projecting a particular mechanical framework onto that fiction.

There are FRPGs with no action economy (eg Dungeon World) - in a system like that, one could imagine Boromir's player having written down a Bond or an Alignment statement that means, by joining in Aragorn's charge, he gets a point of XP.

The relevant question isn't "Is there a work of literature in which the fiction can't occur unless there is a warlord class along 4e lines"? The question is, "Does the existence of a warlord class along 4e lines reliably generate fiction and tropes that one wants to find in a piece of fantasy fiction?" I think the answer is yes - it's a reliable way of having one character call "Elendil!" and charge, and have another follow, inspired by his/her companion's example.

 

[jayoungr]

And I gave you an example: Aragorn inspires Boromir but is not his commander.

Like I said, I don't see him as "inspiring" Boromir. I just see him as faster.

The Fellowship doesn't have a commander as such - it is not a military unit - and to the extent that there is an informal "boss" it is Gandalf.

I was trying to avoid using the word "Leader" because it is so imprecise.

I just don't see it as such a big issue, because of the form the "leadership" takes. When the leadership takes the form of conferring extra actions outside the action economy, or buffs to dice rolls, there is no interference with the agency of the other player. Of course there is colour/flavour - the other player's PC is inspired - but I don't see how this differs from the relationship between those other PCs and paladins, bards, clerics etc.

And now we're back to a stage of the discussion that has already been well-trodden without either side making headway, so I think I'll abandon this particular thread of conversation. Cheers!

 

[pemerton]

And now we're back to a stage of the discussion that has already been well-trodden without either side making headway, so I think I'll abandon this particular thread of conversation. Cheers!

I wouldn't expect you to change your mind on my say-so - either in relation to these examples, or in relation to reading Tolkien, or even if I pointed out that there's a whole edition (4e) in which most healing is inspirational (Healing Word, Inspiring Word, Majestic Word etc, all requiring the recipient to spend a surge).

But the reverse is also true. I read Tolkien a certain way. I enjoy that edition. I don't see leadership/inspiration by a person as raising wildly different issues from inspiration or blessing by a god. I don't see putting inspiration into a class as different, in its formal structure, from putting the gods listen to my prayers into a class.

So, for me, my answer to your question "Are their literary examples of the warlord" is yes. My answer to the question "Would I like a warlord" is yes. And it seems obvious to me that 5e has the mechanical space for such a class - as is well known, it already has all sorts of relevant bits and pieces in other builds of other classes.

The question of how many people need to be more like me than you before WotC designs and publishes such a class is an essentially commercial question, not a question about RPG mechanical design or FRPG tropes. I don't know what the answer is to that question, nor - if one knew the threshold - how short of it, or in excess of it, the FRPGing population is. (If I had to guess, I would say "somewhere short of it", but that's only a guess. I think there are many people who don't care whether it's there, or not there, and those people don't generate any commercial motivation for WotC to do the necessary work.)

 

[Uchawi]

I'm not sure I entirely buy this argument.
The crux of the argument seems to be that the warlord was a class in a past edition, and isn't a full class now, so the subclasses cannot be the warlord. But the assassin, favoured soul, illusionist, scout, jester, wild mage, and cavalier have all been downgraded from full classes to subclasses and work just fine. And the eldritch knight, arcane trickster, and assassin have been downgraded from 10-level prestige classes to subclasses with a handful of features. Heck, the ninja was even folded into the Way of Shadow with the shadowdancer, so neither even have their own name anymore.
Subclasses did not exist in prior editions (at least not as we currently know them), so the warlord could not have been a subclass. It seems odd to limit the design of an option for 5e based on limits from a past edition. It's like saying a 2nd Edition kit updated cannot be updated as a feat as it wasn't originally a feat.

Heck, even at the end of 4e, the warlord was fading as a class, being omitted from Essentials. Had that line continued, we might have seen a leader variant of fighter similar to the cavalier and slayer, replacing the warlord like the Essentials ranger replaced the seeker.

That's the nature of the hobby: options should be designed to best use the existing design space, and old ideas and options should be used as inspiration for new ideas.

I believe the bigger problem for a class like a warlord is not having a wide selection of maneuvers, which is limited by being a subclass of a fighter. Both the EK and Battlemaster would have been better as a separate class. Of course, subclasses will be not be a problem for the majority of 5E classes that have access to spells. Because spells always offer the opportunity to expand or fine tune a class or subclass. That is not the case for non-spell classes.

So it is a challenge of mechanics and flexibility of choice for a class or subclass. All classes in 5E do not have equal footing in that regard.

 

[jayoungr]

So, for me, my answer to your question "Are their literary examples of the warlord" is yes.

That actually isn't my question. My question is whether literary examples of a warlord-like character are always linked to the character having command/authority over the rest of the group. Because if they are, that's a factor that needs to be taken into account when attempting to translate what they can do to game terms.

The time I asked "Are there examples?" was after people said that warlord-types weren't always the leaders of their parties. I wanted to know who the non-commander warlords were, and how they interacted with their parties. In that sense, the Tolkien example works, because if we pretend that the book had an extra sentence about how Boromir felt at seeing Aragorn run forward, it would show how such a party interaction would play out. Though it's worth noting that the actual group commander was unavailable at the time.

It's also (still) confusing to me when people say "I want to play a Leader of Men" and reel off a list of great literary kings/generals/group leaders as their inspiration, but then say that they wouldn't necessarily be in charge of the PCs while playing this archetype at the table.

The question of how many people need to be more like me than you before WotC designs and publishes such a class...

You misunderstand me again. I'm not going to be upset at the very idea of WotC designing and publishing a warlord. I've even played alongside a warlord in my brief forays into 4E, and just for the record, I didn't dislike playing 4E either. (Didn't instantly love it, but then I also haven't played enough of it to really learn it thoroughly.) But I hadn't thought about the fluff of the warlord class at that time; reading this board is making me think about it now.

 

[Jester David]

I believe the bigger problem for a class like a warlord is not having a wide selection of maneuvers, which is limited by being a subclass of a fighter.

I'm not going to say that there are enough maneuvers. It's a small list. But it is a single subclass, and they likely didn't want to give it more pages than an entire class.
There's certainly room for a good PDF on the DMsGuild with more maneuvers. To an extent. 5e is a little less tactically robust of a system - less finicky in terms of bonuses, conditions, and positioning - so there is significantly less room for maneuvers. The list will always be smaller than spells.

But so long as there's enough maneuvers to make a single character with a warlord focus it works just fine. It doesn't do a player any good if there are a dozen different maneuvers they want to take but can't.

Of course, subclasses will be not be a problem for the majority of 5E classes that have access to spells. Because spells always offer the opportunity to expand or fine tune a class or subclass. That is not the case for non-spell classes.

That sounds like the game is working just fine to me: not everyone want to comb through the long list of spells every time they gain a level or have to pick and manage spells after every long rest.

 

[Lord Twig]

I would like to point out that the problem with the Warlord is not a mechanical issue, nor is it one of player agency. It is purely thematic.

Mechanics are pretty easy to balance, or at least strait forward enough.

Player agency also is not much of a problem. In my experience players are usually consulted before buffs are placed on them. "Did you want a Haste spell? Yes? Okay, I cast Haste on you." After a while it might become standard practice. "The fight has started, so I will cast Haste on the Barbarian as usual." No need to ask since it is expected. The same would be done with Warlord abilities I'm sure.

The problem is the inspirational nature of the Warlord's powers.

Consider the example of the Lawful Good Paladin of Bahamut working with a Cleric of Wee Jas. First they are going to need a good reason for working together, but we'll assume they have a common goal. Maybe the partnership is temporary. If the Paladin casts Bless there really is no problem with the Cleric accepting it. All he is doing is channeling his god's power to make a magical effect. Likewise if the Cleric cast Bless on the Paladin. It doesn't require the target to have any particular feeling towards the caster or his god. He could actively hate the caster and the spell would still work.

There really isn't such a thing as "pagan" gods in D&D. A Bahamut worshiper has no doubt that Wee Jas and dozens of other gods and goddesses exist. He might even respect some of the others. He has just decided to revere Bahamut above all of the other deities out there. The only thing required of the target is to accept that magic exists (it does) and to accept the spell being cast on him. He doesn't have to like, respect, or fear the caster or have his emotions manipulated in any way for the effect to be gained.

The Warlord is different. In order for his powers to work the target must be inspired by the Warlord or motivated in some other way. So the target the target must like, respect, or fear the Warlord or have his emotions manipulated somehow. So if I don't really know the Warlord (Maybe we just met), he is not my commander or leader, I don't respect him (Remember we just met?), I don't fear him (I'm a tough adventurer! I fear no man!), that leaves emotion manipulation (Do I get a save against that?). I don't know about you, but I don't appreciate being manipulated.

So the problem is distasteful fluff to explain how the Warlord's abilities work.