D&D 5E What the warlord needs in 5e and how to make it happen.

[Hussar]

Rogue has no issue on it's own. Commander's strike has no issue on it's own.

Though you are right that it's the combination that is OP. It's also arguably an underpowered maneuver when a rogue isn't in the party.

But just to reiterate you can't in good faith act like it's the rogues fault that commander's strike is OP when a rogue is in the party.

Meh. We have all this already in the game. Add in the Sentinel feat and rogues potentially get extra sneaks. There's more than a few ways to grant off turn actions and the game doesn't seem to be hurting for it.

I mean, you almost never see threads talking about how OP rogues are. You'd think that this would be a major issue if it was so OP. As far as being underpowered if you don't have a rogue, well, you still have the Great Weapon Master raging barbarian in that corner and the Paladin in the other corner. It's not like there's a great shortage of spike damage characters.

AFAIC, that's the long and the short of the argument. Everyone agrees you can get a fair ways towards having all the elements of a warlord in the game already. If we already have all these elements in the game and the game isn't breaking, then adding these elements under the umbrella of one class isn't going to break the game.

To be honest, what we really, really need is something concrete to discuss. All this theory crafting just isn't going to go anywhere. They need to do what they did with the Ranger. Give us a couple of iterations until they get something everyone can live with.

 

[FrogReaver]

I guess the more I look at it, the more I wonder why "Warlord" isn't just a War/Life Cleric 1/Valor Bard X, Fighter/Valor Bard X, or Battlemaster 3/Valor Bard X.

OK, think about a Valor Bard X/Cleric 1/Fighter 1. You get:

bless
guidance
resistance
Combat Inspiration
healing word
heavy armor
martial weapons
Song of Rest
Non-spell healing (with Life Cleric 2)
Protection Style

You don't need high Wis and you don't need very high Cha, so you can take higher Dex, Con, and Str.

Be a Half-Elf. If your DM lets you use SCAG variants, be a half moon/sun elf and take the Elf Cantrip for booming blade for extra battlefield control.

Take stats:

Str 16 (15 + 1)
Dex 10
Con 13
Int 8
Wis 13 (12 + 1)
Cha 16 (14 + 2)

Start with Bard. Gives you the most overall, although you can take Fighter first if you'd rather.
At level 2, select Life or War Cleric. Gain Medium Armor, Heavy Armor and Shields. Gain healing word, bless, resistance, and guidance.
At level 3, select Fighter. Gain Protection Style. Gain simple and martial weapons.
From here on, take Bard. Select College of Valor to get Combat Inspiration.
At level 4, ASI to increase Con and Str, or select Inspiring Leader or Shield Master.
At level 8, you get Extra Attack. Late, but booming blade should have made it not too painful.

Now, yes, I can easily see arguments for dropping Cleric or Fighter, depending on the style you want. It's up to you. This is kind of the all-inclusive build. You gain a fair bit by taking Fighter 2, Battlemaster 3, and Life Cleric 2, too, but Bard is the bread-and-butter. War Magic is a bit too deep into Eldritch Knight to be worthwhile, however.

No, you don't get all these abilities on reactions. Essentially nobody gets good reaction abilities anymore. There's Riposte Maneuver (Battlemaster), Misty Escape (Archfey), Defensive Duelist, and that's basically it. No, you're not handing out Action Surges. I mean, let's be honest, if we ever get a 5e Warlord, he's not going to be the Action Economy Trading Post that he was in 4e. If 5e ever has a 4e Warlord-style "grant an action" ability, it will -- at best -- allow: a) a single attack, b) a cantrip, c) some amount of movement. If it happens off-turn it will probably take the target's reaction to do so, and might still be limited by the Charisma mod of the Warlord. The Bard's ability to grant bonus dice is a reasonable approximation. No, d6 or d8 isn't as big as an extra 1d8 + 4, but numbers in 5e are a lot smaller overall.

Now, if your whole argument is, "But I don't want to do it with spells!" well, I'm sorry. 5e reverts to the old D&D model and puts most special abilities into the "spell" column. That's why 4e made some people feel like every class was casting spells.

There's plenty of cool things that aren't spells in 5e. Superiority dice. Inspiration dice. Reckless attack. Rage. Sneak attack. Rogues bonus action disengage. There's just not enough non-spell cool things in 5e.

 

[FrogReaver]

Meh. We have all this already in the game. Add in the Sentinel feat and rogues potentially get extra sneaks. There's more than a few ways to grant off turn actions and the game doesn't seem to be hurting for it.

I mean, you almost never see threads talking about how OP rogues are. You'd think that this would be a major issue if it was so OP. As far as being underpowered if you don't have a rogue, well, you still have the Great Weapon Master raging barbarian in that corner and the Paladin in the other corner. It's not like there's a great shortage of spike damage characters.

AFAIC, that's the long and the short of the argument. Everyone agrees you can get a fair ways towards having all the elements of a warlord in the game already. If we already have all these elements in the game and the game isn't breaking, then adding these elements under the umbrella of one class isn't going to break the game.

To be honest, what we really, really need is something concrete to discuss. All this theory crafting just isn't going to go anywhere. They need to do what they did with the Ranger. Give us a couple of iterations until they get something everyone can live with.

Sentinel isn't the same thing as a guaranteed extra sneak attack granting attack every turn. It also requires the rogue to be in melee to even attempt and commander's strike does not...

Have you ever seen a battlemaster with commanders strike play with a rogue? I imagine it isn't very OP till about level 11+. But once it's there it's there...

 

[Tony Vargas]

According to wrecan, one of the experts on Warlords, a warlord in 5e

wrecan wasn't around for 5e, and what you're extrapolating from was an analysis of what the warlord could do in 4e.

A 5e Warlord probably should be able to do everything it could in 4e, in one way or another, but it needn't be limited to that.

You also left out the interesting, if small, sub-set of Warlord exploits that wrecan classes as 'hectoring' - (edit: I notice you mention them in another thread) influencing enemies rather than allies. 5e definitely has room to expand on those beyond what 4e did, since it's not limited by formal-Role boxes and thus needn't worry about stepping on the toes of the 'Controller.'

If so, how could this be implemented in 5e? I am curious what peoples thoughts are on this.

Implementation is a tricky design question. I'd never have considered implementing the Sorcerer or Warlock the way the finally did, for instance. The Mystic is certainly a departure from past takes on Psionics. So, who knows? I hope they come up with something that does the concept justice.

 

[Blue]

I'm aware it is powerful, but what I'm saying is that this already exists in the game and, if putting together a warlord, we should be looking at similar abilities that already exist, it's ridiculous to ignore them just because people feel that it is overly powerful.

If people want the warlord to trade their attacks with others then they should be looking at Commander's Strike and the PDK's action surge attack granting power, it works as a good baseline where the target must use their reaction to get the extra attack.

It works as a baseline, if you are planning to allow 4 (+1-2 at high levels) uses of Warlord powers per short rest and they are all competing for those uses. If you're planning on more usage, you have no existing baseline in the rules.

 

[mellored]

Have you ever seen a battlemaster with commanders strike play with a rogue? I imagine it isn't very OP till about level 11+. But once it's there it's there...

... it's on par with a bard/wizard/sorcerer with haste + rogue.

Since they can use the haste action to attack, and their normal action to ready an attack. And there are enough spell slots to keep it running every combat.

 

[FrogReaver]

... it's on par with a bard/wizard/sorcerer with haste + rogue.

Since they can use the haste action to attack, and their normal action to ready an attack. And there are enough spell slots to keep it running every combat.

I haven't considered delaying an action and using haste on the rogues turn. Interesting!

 

[FrogReaver]

So essentially at 5th level a sorcerer or wizard or bard can already allow another character to do an off turn reaction attack about every round. The battlemaster can do it about half the rounds of a typical adventuring day at that level.

As much as I dislike that they have done that, there are enough sources to justify a new warlord class getting something similar.

Come to think of it haste does the attack or disengage etc. and extra movement and extra ac all. That spell does almost everything we want our warlord to be able to do!

 

[Hussar]

The other issue I have here is the actual theory crafting that goes on.

Let's look at the example of the wizard/sorcerer casting two fireballs. Ok, that's pretty powerful. However, there are two issues.

1. Anyone can already do this simply by taking a couple of levels of fighter - Action Surge allows two full spells in a turn per short rest. Since we haven't seen huge amounts of complaints about this, I would assume it's a rather moot issue.

2. Even if two fireballs go off, so what? Fireball is doing about 30 points of damage, half on a save. In the example, it was two groups of enemies getting blasted. If your encounter for your 5th/6th level party can be ended by each opponent taking 30 points of damage, how difficult did you actually expect this encounter to be? We're talking CR 1/4-1/2 opponents here against a 5th or 6th level party. Yes, with bounded accuracy they could deal some damage, but, by and large, this was going to be a pretty light encounter anyway. Is it really such a big deal that it ends on round 1 instead of round 2?

People in this thread have admitted to not playing 4e and having virtually no direct experience with seeing a warlord in play, yet they are criticizing the designs as being over powered or whatever. I'm sorry, but, if you've never seen it in play, and have only tangential knowledge of what's being talked about, why do you think your opinion should carry any water? Warlords in 4e were not overpowered. They simply weren't. So, the presumption that warlords are coming from any sort of power gaming position is patently false.

Warlords simply provided a very different play experience that some people really enjoyed. Considering this thread is talking about adding stuff to the game that is distinct from what is already in the game, I'd say that warlords should get a pretty open welcome.

 

[Imaro]

The other issue I have here is the actual theory crafting that goes on.

Let's look at the example of the wizard/sorcerer casting two fireballs. Ok, that's pretty powerful. However, there are two issues.

1. Anyone can already do this simply by taking a couple of levels of fighter - Action Surge allows two full spells in a turn per short rest. Since we haven't seen huge amounts of complaints about this, I would assume it's a rather moot issue.

2. Even if two fireballs go off, so what? Fireball is doing about 30 points of damage, half on a save. In the example, it was two groups of enemies getting blasted. If your encounter for your 5th/6th level party can be ended by each opponent taking 30 points of damage, how difficult did you actually expect this encounter to be? We're talking CR 1/4-1/2 opponents here against a 5th or 6th level party. Yes, with bounded accuracy they could deal some damage, but, by and large, this was going to be a pretty light encounter anyway. Is it really such a big deal that it ends on round 1 instead of round 2?

People in this thread have admitted to not playing 4e and having virtually no direct experience with seeing a warlord in play, yet they are criticizing the designs as being over powered or whatever. I'm sorry, but, if you've never seen it in play, and have only tangential knowledge of what's being talked about, why do you think your opinion should carry any water? Warlords in 4e were not overpowered. They simply weren't. So, the presumption that warlords are coming from any sort of power gaming position is patently false.

Warlords simply provided a very different play experience that some people really enjoyed. Considering this thread is talking about adding stuff to the game that is distinct from what is already in the game, I'd say that warlords should get a pretty open welcome.

Ultimately I'm sure WotC could make something that worked... but the real question is whether there is enough demand among those who play 5e for WotC to devote the resources to a warlord as opposed to other things for the game... Personally I am very meh on the warlord... I wouldn't object to one but it doesn't even rank in my top 10 things for 5e I want. But I guess there could be demand enough to justify the resources... and I just haven't seen it. Or maybe the addition of a Warlord is suddenly going to make all those who stayed with 4e convert to 5e... but I honestly doubt it.