Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnLynch" data-source="post: 6728551" data-attributes="member: 6749563">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-).</blockquote>

Verification