D&D 5E What is a Warlord [No, really, I don't know.]

[Hussar]

What I'm saying is that currently 5e feels and plays like a vastly different game than 4e.

We seem to agree on that any conversion document needs to make comprehensive changes and not be afraid to make deep alterations to the 5e game and its gameplay to be successful, if the measure of success is "now I'm using the 5e chassis and it feels like 4e".

Like you, I don't see this happening if all they plan is a perfunctory mimimal-effort kind of document.

For AD&D or PF that will probably be helpful to some, since the underlying gameplay isn't completely dissimilar.

But 4e to 5e? Not a chance.

To say it with other words: if the conversion doesn't piss people off, it won't be successful ;-)

Again, I find this baffling.

AD&D had none of the rules that you find in 5e. About the only commonality is speed of play. 5e plays at just about the same speed as AD&D. Cool. It's light years faster playing and simpler than Pathfinder or 3e. Good grief, you can't play a large swath of straight, 3e PHB classes in 5e. I want to play a summoning wizard... oops, sorry, nope, not happening. I want to play a 3e Druid with a scaling pet ... nope, not happening. Good grief, 5e has teleporting paladins and flying barbarians. That's about as far from AD&D or 3e as you can get. I can play a spell casting monk in 5e, something that has never appeared before. My Battlemaster fighter has encounter powers. What is the 3e equivalent to that?

What underlying gameplay is similar?

See, I go by the character sheet test. If you can hand the character sheet of one game to a player of another game and he or she can sit down and play, then those two games are close enough. A 1e character can pick up a 2e character sheet and play without any real difficulty - there's a few hiccups but not much. A 5e player can look at a 4e character sheet and find more similarities than differences. Saving throws are different of course, and the numbers might be a bit different, but, not too much. It's not like you have stats in the mid-20's or 30's on a 4e character sheet (at least very often ). Hand a 5e player a 3e character sheet and he won't have a clue what to do with it. The numbers are very different. The skill system numbers are generated in a far more complex manner (5e lacks synergy bonuses for one, and there is no skill points in 5e - where are these numbers coming from on a 3e sheet?) The magic system for 5e is completely different. All 5e casters are now sorcerers. 3e casters lack at-will powers and are far, far more complex than 5e.

You could take a 4e character and actually play it in a 5e game, and it would work. The only thing you'd have to do is remove the half-level number increases. Other than that, it would work pretty much exactly the same as a 5e character. 4e characters are more complex in that they are heavily tied to the battlement due to movement powers. But, other than that, you'd be pretty close.

 

[JohnLynch]

At it's heart the Warlord is a martial (non magical*) who supports his allies on the battlefield and deals minimal damage of his own. That's the core concept (IMO). Mechanically it should cover the basic cleric role abilities so that the "healing-spellcaster" role is optional rather than "required" (HP healing, which anyone can do for themselves is an important but somewhat minor part of the healing role).

That's it (IMO). Citing specific mechanics would be like saying "wizards must have classic Vancian spell slots or else it's not a wizard!" How the Warlord was realised in 4th edition is really only one option on how to mechanically manifest the class.

So why don't the current classes allow the Warlord to be realised? The bard, cleric, Druid, paladin, warlock, sorcerer and wizard are explicitly magical. The fighter (with 4 or 5 attacks per round?), rogue (with sneak attack) and barbarian (with rage) are all explicitly focused on damage. The monk I want to say is also focused on damage but I might be wrong? Regardless it comes with it's own baggage. So you see the core classes really don't fit the central concept of a warlord. Had damage been a subclass choice for the fighter than it would have certainly been appropriate. But it wasn't. And really, that's quite a significant point. If you don't want to focus on damage your better off playing a spellcaster. For those who aren't fans of Spellcasting this isn't a palatable state of affairs** (of course you could check out 3PP offerings to expand on the PHB).

* It doesn't need to be explicitly non magical, but it must not be explicitly magical. If you want to attribute someone whose ability to inspire others to greater heights as magic of some kind that's fine, so long as it's not the default fluff of the character. A sidebar with alternative interpretations or simply stating "Some attribute these abilities as a form of magic intrinsic to all living creatures" or something to those effects would be acceptable.

** I also believe the uproar on the warlord is (for some) a proxy war on Martials vs Casters. 3e saw a greater divide between Martials and Casters created than had ever existed before. Many complained fighters were simply cohorts to the casters and had no meaningful contributions to make. 4e fixed this by massively merging casters. 3e was also derided by WotC to try to drum up interest in 4e and so the Edition Wars began. Martials vs Casters was simply one front on which that war was fought and I believe -some- are still fighting that war and see the warlord as the "other side's" first assault (and in fairness it likely is -for some-).

 

[Guest 6801328]

Could someone elucidate for me the need for the class to be non-magical? I can see wanting to play in a non-magical, Game of Thrones sort of world, but given how practically everything else in the game is magical, this doesn't seem like the right system for it. I've been going on faith that "non-magical" is absolutely necessary, but honestly I haven't understood it.

It seems like the cleric has pretty much everything Warlord fans want, except that it's magical. Could the Cleric just be re-fluffed as "Inspirational" rather than magical? (After all, when I describe what I don't like about the Warlord the response is, "Oh, that's easy. Just re-fluff it however you want.")

 

[JohnLynch]

Explaining why the warlord needs to be non-magical is like explaining why the wizard needs to be magical. Without that part, your no longer playing a warlord but are instead playing yet another spellcaster. Reflavouring can be great for those who like it, but for me it would be wholly unsatisfying. There is a rather good example of the warlord in EN5ider so I disagree that it doesn't fit within the framework of 5e.

[EDIT]: I saw someone earlier used spell-less rather than nonmagical and I think that gets the point across. As I said it doesn't need to be explicit non-magical, just not explicitly magical.

As for being told to "just reflavour" there is a simpler suggestion: just don't use it (and I dare say that is the option you've taken).

 

[Guest 6801328]

Reflavouring can be great for those who like it, but for me it would be wholly unsatisfying.

I completely agree with you there, but a lot of people do suggest that those who object to the Warlord can reflavor it. So I assume those people don't object to re-flavoring.

 

[Andor]

Again, I find this baffling.

AD&D had none of the rules that you find in 5e. About the only commonality is speed of play. 5e plays at just about the same speed as AD&D. Cool. It's light years faster playing and simpler than Pathfinder or 3e. Good grief, you can't play a large swath of straight, 3e PHB classes in 5e. I want to play a summoning wizard... oops, sorry, nope, not happening. I want to play a 3e Druid with a scaling pet ... nope, not happening. Good grief, 5e has teleporting paladins and flying barbarians. That's about as far from AD&D or 3e as you can get. I can play a spell casting monk in 5e, something that has never appeared before. My Battlemaster fighter has encounter powers. What is the 3e equivalent to that?

The tattooed monk PrC is the direct precursor to the 5e bender monk. Feat and Bo9S had plenty of fighter encounter powers. Between PrCs and magic items teleporting paladins and flying barbarians are kiddy stuff. 3e could get whacky.

And to your later point, you could drop a 1e or 2e PC into 5e with little trouble. The AC would need to be fixed, but aside from that they would play just fine. 3e is the most problematic due to it's complexity since it tried for a unified system. 4e with it's exception based design, was simpler in play, although as frequently noted it had no "easy button" for character design like the 3e Fighter or Rogue at release.

 

[El Mahdi]

The one caveat is that I've yet to hear of an "inspirational healing" mechanic that didn't carry the connotation of "your player looks up to my player". That's my only objection to it. Second Wind, for example, is fine.

Why is this an issue?

A Healing spell only works if a Cleric initiates it...

A Paladin's Lay on Hands only works if they initiate it...

Why is it an issue that a Warlord (or Battle Master) is the initiator of the hit point recovery? Regardless of the underlying narrative, the mechanical result is the same.

What if a player decides their character is an Atheist? (Not outside the realm of possibility either. It seems a thread pops up about this very thing every few months or so...)

Is that player really going to choose to not accept the hit points from a Cleric or Paladin on principal?

What about any of the buffs a Bard can provide based on Inspiration? Do you take issue with them too?


Seems like a pretty thin objection...

 

[El Mahdi]

Bounded accuracy is a direct relation to 4e mechanic...

Eh...I'm not seeing it.

Mathematically, you could still run into "always hit except on a fumble" and "always miss except on a crit situations".

Those situations are what bounded accuracy is meant to prevent, and 4E didn't have that.

If anything, I'd say that the idea of bounded accuracy came from the E6 concept - just spread out over 20 levels.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Not really. It's just whether you like things done on the front or back end. In 5e it's on the front end. Everything floats around that 60% success rate and goes from there. For 4e, it works on the back end. You still get that 60% success rate simply because they tweak the target numbers relative to your level.

The end result is largely the same. In order to fight wildly inappropriate encounters, you'd tweak the opponents up or down. With the flat math, less tweaking has to be done obviously.

There is no constant 60% success rate in 5E. You can impose one, and apparently you like to do so, but it isn't built into the game in any way. Bounded Accuracy allows low-level PCs to rally the town to defeat a dragon--each guard will only have a 30% chance of landing a shot, but the weight of numbers will tell if you can keep them alive long enough. The scenario might be mostly about leading the dragon into an ambush where your men can get the first shot in, and a role-playing challenge to ensure that it won't run away nor will your men. But there's no 60% constant there--anyone the dragon hits is shredded with probability approaching 100%, except maybe if he's a barbarian.

 

[Hussar]

Could someone elucidate for me the need for the class to be non-magical? I can see wanting to play in a non-magical, Game of Thrones sort of world, but given how practically everything else in the game is magical, this doesn't seem like the right system for it. I've been going on faith that "non-magical" is absolutely necessary, but honestly I haven't understood it.

It seems like the cleric has pretty much everything Warlord fans want, except that it's magical. Could the Cleric just be re-fluffed as "Inspirational" rather than magical? (After all, when I describe what I don't like about the Warlord the response is, "Oh, that's easy. Just re-fluff it however you want.")

I want to run a campaign, using the 5e rules, which I like, in a specifically low(ish) magic world like Primeval Thule. I want The Black Company and Conan to be my inspirational reading for the campaign. Which means that if every group has a cleric/bard/paladin, then I'm not getting the feel that I want. Now, that's not to say that it's not close. Again, I've said in other threads, you can get about 60% of the Warlord with existing classes. But, none of them go all the way. Clerics get the healing but not the action granting. Bards get the buffing and healing, but, again, no action granting, which is part of a Warlord. Battlemasters get action granting, but it's limited and they don't get enough healing or buffing.

Take a Battlemaster, strip off some hit dice, give him medium armor profs, lose the fighter powers like second wind and action surge, add in a list of "tactical options" - perhaps using the BM's Superiority Dice as a base - and have the baseline Warlord grant the use of Hit Dice in combat and with bonuses out of combat, and some ability to negate conditions, and you're good to go.

There is no constant 60% success rate in 5E. You can impose one, and apparently you like to do so, but it isn't built into the game in any way. Bounded Accuracy allows low-level PCs to rally the town to defeat a dragon--each guard will only have a 30% chance of landing a shot, but the weight of numbers will tell if you can keep them alive long enough. The scenario might be mostly about leading the dragon into an ambush where your men can get the first shot in, and a role-playing challenge to ensure that it won't run away nor will your men. But there's no 60% constant there--anyone the dragon hits is shredded with probability approaching 100%, except maybe if he's a barbarian.

I never said it was constant. I said that the game generally baselines there. If you are dealing with fairly typical stuff for your level, then your chances of success will be about 60%. Since dragons attacking low level PC's isn't a typical encounter, I'm not sure why you'd think it counters my point. That baseline of 60% is obviously going to vary from encounter to encounter, but, again because of bounded accuracy, you're rarely going to see situations where you always have a 100% chance of success. This was an issue in 3e where the die bonus simply over ran the actual d20 roll, particularly when dealing with skills. It wasn't that hard, at least by about 10th level, to have +15 or +20 to a skill, meaning that the die roll was, more or less, an afterthought for most actions.

With bounded accuracy, it's much more difficult (although not impossible) to get to that point. Which is why the game baselines to about a 60% success rate for most typical actions.