Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6728315" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I gave an answer which, I think, covered most of this in a previous thread, and was relatively well-received by the person who requested it. Technically, they asked for some more information than you did (e.g. whether it had appeared in *other* editions too), but I figure that info can't hurt. Spoilerblocking because it's a bit of a long post.[sblock="An attempt to answer"][/sblock]To give a little bit more in the way of mechanical specifics--which, since I have to spell this out or I'll get pounced on for it, neither can nor should be perfectly preserved--requires a bit more explanation. For example, at 1st level, a 4e Warlord chooses a "Warlord Leadership" option, a "Commanding Presence" option, and (assuming we're talking about late-4e with all the supplements) may also choose to give up shields and tougher armor proficiencies in exchange for getting some archery bonuses instead. Again, spoilerblocking because this gets a bit long--I'm trying to be both thorough and avoiding any deep knowledge of 4e.[sblock=Explanation of Warlord options]"Warlord Leadership" had three options: "Combat Leader" (self & all allies within 50 feet that can see & hear you gain +2 to Initiative, but it doesn't stack with certain other kinds of bonuses), "Battlefront Leader" (gain proficiency with Heavy Shields, and an ability that could only be used at the moment everyone rolls initiative, which allowed one ally to reposition without fear of opportunity attacks), or "Canny Leader" (self & all allies within 50 feet that can see & hear you gain generic +2 bonus to Insight and Perception checks). Both Battlefront Leader and Canny Leader were relatively late additions to the game."Commanding Presence" had several options, expanded over the course of 4e's lifetime. Each "X Presence" (e.g. Bravura, Inspiring, etc.) is a fundamental feature, which later options (called Powers--pre-defined actions you could take) could hook into to provide additional bonuses. Each one gave some kind of benefit for an ally that could see you spending an Action Point, or AP, to take an extra action. These AP were only handed out occasionally, and generally spending one meant going "all out," so these features meant a 4e group with a Warlord opened up a slightly bigger can of whoop-ass when they really went for the kill--or needed to draw on extra strength to pull through. Alphabetically the Presences were: "Bravura" (if the extra action was used to attack, ally can get a free bonus attack, or a bonus move action, if they hit--if they miss, they're vulnerable to enemy attacks until the player's next turn), "Insightful" (AP-spending allies get a bonus to all defenses, your pick of half Cha mod or half Wis mod, until the start of their next turn), "Inspiring" (AP-spending allies regain HP equal to half-level + Cha mod), "Resourceful" (spending an AP to attack gives an ally half-level+Int mod to damage if they hit, or if they miss, half-level+Cha temporary HP), "Skirmishing" (spending an AP to attack lets an ally move, as a free action before or after they make the extra attack, 5 feet times your Int or Wis mod without provoking opportunity attacks), "Tactical" (spending an AP to attack grants that ally half your Int mod as a bonus to the attack roll).Now, this may sound like the Warlord was wholly dependent on allies spending Action Points and utterly useless otherwise--but that would be analogous to saying that a 5e Warlock is useless if she isn't casting Eldritch Blast. That is, these Presences were primarily useful because powers would hook into them and provide some interesting/meaningful benefit in addition to whatever that power did on its own. The Action Point benefits are, of course, quite nice--but being a "Tactical Warlord" meant that your abilities favored a particular style of fighting enemies, usually one that involved being very *accurate* with your attacks. A "Bravura Warlord," by comparison, would favor powers that were high-risk, high-reward: IF the attack hits, it hits like a truck, but if it fails.... Etc.[/sblock]Now, again, to reiterate directly and plainly so it's made absolutely clear:These mechanics cannot, and should not, be directly ported to 5e. But I feel that there isn't--yet--enough support for this mechanical structure; that they shouldn't be directly ported does not, at all, mean that they couldn't be better translated.* The 5e Fighter, with the Battlemaster subclass, absolutely definitely comes closest to it. That cannot be denied. However, the Fighter chassis is...well, for lack of a better term, "too good" to hold the Warlord. It gets too many attacks, too many personal actions, too much personal survival, too much tankiness, too much benefit from simply going all-out on its own. Thus, what Warlord-y features it has must, of necessity, be weaker, smaller, and secondary to the main focus and goal of the class. Or, as other posters have said elsewhere: the Battlemaster Fighter is to the (as yet non-existent) "5e Warlord" as the Eldritch Knight Fighter is to the Wizard: It's still, at its heart, mainly and centrally a Fighter, but (if you select the appropriate maneuvers) a meaningful side of Warlord, just as the Eldritch Knight is still, at its heart, mostly a Fighter, that can field a few spells (one-third Wizard, mechanically speaking). In brief, EK is "100% Fighter, 33% Wizard"; BM is "100% Fighter, 33% Warlord (if you choose to be)."By that logic--if you consider it valid, and not all do of course--some Warlord fans argue that they would like to see the class that the BM gets 33% of. It would need to abandon many of the features that distinguish the Fighter, both because that keeps Fighters distinct and meaningful, and because it WOULD be too much to expect the Warlord to get many bonus attacks AND great armor AND more maneuvers (or whatever the other, undefined 66% of the class is), particularly when many of the suggested "Warlordy actions" are quite powerful in 5e. Whatever those options were, they would need to follow the core design philosophy of 5e: all classes start small, and don't really have all their tools in place until level 3 or even level 5. Which specific features a 5e translation of the Warlord would need is a matter of intense debate--and even if it were settled (which I don't think it will be), exactly how to parcel them out over 3-to-5 levels, and how to properly scale them to 5e's power curve, is an entirely separate and often just as heated debate.*To use a linguistic analogy: in English, a metaphorical phrase for something being unbelievably expensive is that "it costs an arm and a leg." A direct translation of this idiom into Spanish would be gibberish--it would sound like it LITERALLY amputates an arm and a leg, which is of course not true. However, conveniently, Spanish has its own idiom which is almost perfectly identical in meaning, but sounds nothing alike when directly translated to English: "cuesta un ojo de la cara," which literally translates as "it costs an eye of the face." So instead of using a simple, non-figurative translation ("es caro" -> "it is expensive") you can, if you know the two languages well, choose a translation that hews very closely to the original intent, despite having different execution. However, and this makes the analogy even more apt, there is a natural extension or intensification of the Spanish idiom that does not back-translate into idiomatic English: "cuesta un ojo de la cara ya parte del otro," literally "it costs an eye of the face and part of the other." In English, we have no "simple" intensification of this idiom (the closest would probably be "costs an arm and a leg and your firstborn child," but that's bringing in a second idiom rather than simply making the first more impactful). More simply put: I believe 5e has gone for a "lossy" translation of the 4e Warlord. Important stuff was bled off to make it fit within the Fighter box. I think 5e absolutely has the tools and potential to do better than that, and achieve a much less "lossy" translation. And because 5e is a different game--more "loose" or "flexible," whichever you prefer--I believe that we can actually improve upon the "original" document, in that we can allow it to be extended (if the player so invests for it) into areas it could not natively go, before.</blockquote>

Verification