And if you want the warlord to heal like a pacifist cleric, he won't be adding as much damage.
To be fair, you'd also have been waiting until Epic to kinda sorta rival the pacifist cleric.
And that's where the issue comes in. Sure, you expect that from a Warlord. But you shouldn't expect that from anything 5e.
Still don't see 5e as as that starkly inferior. Sure, something that was neatly balanced in 4e might be broken in 5e - that's the case for every caster that was in both editions, for instance - that's just the way 5e design works, it's not balance-first, or even third. Balance is something the DM can impose if he wants, not something that determines what classes can exist in the game.
Now, I happen to think there is a place in 5e for the warlord. But I'm willing to work within 5e's design philosophy to get there.
5e's design philosophy is class-concept-first. The hardest part of sticking to that is going far enough in making a class awesome without feeling too guilty about it.
I have to admit as somebody who never played 4e, given the fanatical demand for Warlords it's pretty hard to shake the suspicion that Warlords were OP and that what's really going on is that a bunch of 4e players miss WTFPWNing the battlemat.
Most of D&D's history, it's been a poorly-balanced game, and getting a 'lucky'-rolled character or a wildly OP magic item in the olden days, or crafting a wildly OP build in 3.x was a significant aspect of enjoying the game for some players. If you played any edition other than 4e, you can't help but internalize that to a degree, you /know/ part of the appeal of the game is 'winning' by getting the character that overpowers and overshadows everything else.
4e, in relative terms, all but did away with that, and that really seemed like it was always the driving force, the bottom line behind the edition war, that it didn't have the 'system-mastery' or 'skilled play' opportunities to 'win' by overpowering that 3.x and the classic game provided.
So it's deeply ironic, as well as flatly unjustified, for you to be harboring that particular fear.
For every post like Tony's (who knows his game and I tend to believe) saying that they weren't OP, there are 10 posts reminiscing about how effective they were. It's hard to ignore the pattern.
There's actually no inconsistency there. 4e was the most nearly-balanced edition of D&D, by quite a large margin. The Warlord (and Fighter & Rogue & Ranger) were all wildly effective compared to the traditional Fighter & Thief,
precisely because they were roughly balanced.
This is my own bias and perhaps failure of imagination, but I have a really hard time understanding why it's fun to visualize granting somebody else an attack.
Fun's like that. I don't get the appeal of the 4e Striker role, it's boring, to me, while Leader was awesome, Controller potentially fun, and Defender something I could at least work with. But, I don't hold that against people who do want to play a Champion or a blasting sorcerer or whatever. And, hey, if I can give them an extra shot of their attack-and-damage-rolling fun, in the process, it's a win-win.
In my mind's eye I see gameplay like I'm watching a movie. I imagine my sneaky rogue stabbing somebody in the kidneys, or my archer pulling off pinpoint heart-shots, or my barbarian screaming and cleaving foes in twain...etc. But I try to imagine "granting an attack" and there's just no there there.
Happens in the movies all the time. The set-up, the encouraging word, the tossed weapon, the significant look even.
Ideally we should assume that no matter which class/subclass we add to a party the combats should become easier by about the same degree.
That's an ideal D&D has rarely come close to. The closest it came was in 4e, and even then, it would have to be in terms of classes of the same role, as synergies among roles would make swapping out any character for any other quite different.
In other editions, swapping in a caster is usually better than swapping in anything else, period. A party of CoDzillas & Wizards in 3.5 was strictly superior to just about anything else, even if you could work up some synergies. A party of multi-class characters in the classic game was superior at low-level, at high level you'd want a bunch of humans - but class could be less important than magic items, too.
And although currently that is most definitely not true...both because party composition matters and because some builds are demonstrably more effective than others...I think making that even less true is a terrible rationale for the existence of a class.
Even the crazier takes on action-granting would be unlikely to result in a Warlord that would be strictly better when swapped into a party than a character of any other class. Strictly better than another martial class in combat, perhaps, since all the existing martial classes are primarily contributing DPR, and in a party full of DPR, swapping in anything else would be a good. But that's a failing of the existing classes.
if you really want to win me over to the Warlord you'll resolve the name first, rather than kicking that particular can down the road.
The Warlord already has a name, and it's a fine one, evocative of genre, especially the pulp end of it, and of characters like John Carter. Sure, it has an arguable sinister side to it, but it's not like Warlock and Assassin - and in the benighted modern context, even Cleric - don't, either.
The one historical figure that I think most resembles what you all are talking about is Odysseus. He was clever and charismatic, and is known more for his planning than for his prowess in arms.
And what was Odysseus? A Hero.
- Can't imply seniority/primacy over other characters (Warlord, Captain, Commander). That honor is earned over time, not chosen at level 1.
The existing class and sub-class names Wizard (originally the name-level title for an 11th level wizard), Knight, Champion, and backgrounds like Noble already imply primacy or accomplishment.
- Can't be dryly descriptive (Tactician)
'Fighter.'
I'm sorry, but any 'requirement' a returning class's name be changed to fit is going to have to be one that every other returning class's name already fits. And that's neither of the two you've put forth.
IMHO: Give anything you planned on giving to a warlord to the fighter to increase their versatility.
If you combined every toy the fighter ever got in every edition, with everything the Rogue ever got, and added everything anyone's ever wanted for the Warlord, why, then, you just might have a genuinely OP class.
Though in 3.5 it'd've probably been Tier 2.
