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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6761162" data-attributes="member: 996">Here's my take on what a Warlord might have been in 2e terms.  <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?470527-Alternate-History-The-Warlord-in-prior-editions&daysprune=365" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?470527-Alternate-History-The-Warlord-in-prior-editions&daysprune=365</a>Understanding a 4e class in 2e terms requires considering what 2e Class Groups represented, and how 3e changed certain of the classes...Groups, and no supposition about it.  2e sorted classes into groups based on the nature of their abilities, both primarily how they did things, martial prowess, cunning & skills, divine intervention, or arcane magic, and what they accomplished - general toughness, healing & support, sneaky trapfinding, or fireballs & wish-fulfillment.  ;P   So you had:Warriors:  Primarily hit things with weapons to do lots of damage.Priests:  Primarily used the power of the gods to heal their allies.Wizards:  Primarily cast spells to solve problems of any sort.Rogues:  Primarily used skills opportunistically, including stabbing enemies in the back with weapons, but were generally 'weaker' than other classes and advanced more rapidly in experience because of that.3e changed that, some.First of all, it tried to get everyone on the same power level, so every class advanced at the same rate with the same exp.To that end, Rogues became their own class (no more 'Thief' sub class), and a more broadly-usable, deadlier 'Sneak Attack' replaced the lowly backstab.  Fighters got 'feats' that they (or anyone, fighters got a lot /more/ of them) could choose to make them better with different weapons & maneuvers (like specialization, but much more varied).  Ranger, Paladin, & Bards got more spells and got them at lower levels.  In addition to setting up Rogues as high-damage sneak-attackers, 3e still expected Clerics to heal (and made them better at it, by giving them spontaneous casting of 'cure' spells), Fighters to 'tank' in the front line (and made them better at it with 'attacks of opportunity,' reach, and special attacks like tripping that all together could make it harder to just run right past them, while dialing down sheer damage via specialization & TWFing), and Wizards to do anything/everything else with magic.4e de-coupled how you did things (Source) from what you accomplished on behalf of your party (Role).  What you could accomplish was a 'Role':Striker:  Do lots of damage to enemies one at a time.Defender:  Protect allies, mainly by blocking enemies and attracting their attacksLeader:  Enhancing allies - granting extra hps, actions, bonuses, &cController:  Degrading the enemy's ability to act, including imposing conditions and changing the battlefield.How you did it was your 'Source': Martial:  Prowess with weapons, skill/determination/heroism far beyond the ordinaryDivine:  Power direct from the GodsArcane:  Mysterious eldritch magic & occultismPrimal:  Power of nature via 'primal spirits.'Psionic:  Power of the mind, And clear Sources.  And, they were independent of 2e's class groupings.  Before they were de-coupled, doing things a certain way (divine magic, say) generally implied accomplishing specific things (like healing).  You had classes like the Paladin that were primarily one pair (dealing damage with weapons) with some of another (divine magic to heal by laying on hands, later a few spells).  And, of course, you had multiclassing.  But, a Cleric, for instance, had always been a Divine Leader and remained one in 4e, it's just that there were other kinds of Leaders and other Divine classes with different roles, as well.  In 3e, the Rogue gained much deadly Sneak Attacking to contribute damage in combat (while prior to that it was just 'weak in combat'), while the fighter stayed shifted from insane damage (as TWFing & double-specialization were nerfed) to tanking, and 4e stuck with those keeping them both clearly Martial, and better-supporting the Rogue's Striker and Fighter's Defender roles mechanically.So in addition to retaining the traditional Cleric as Divine Leader & Wizard as Arcane Controller and the 3e-re-designed Fighter as Martial Defender & 3.5-re-focused Rogue as Martial Striker, 4e shuffled things around a bit, making the 3.5 at-will-caster (yes, 3.5 really went there) the Warlock into an Arcane Striker, the hybrid fighter/cleric Paladin into a Divine Defender, and creating a Martial Leader, the Warlord.4e went on to cover most Role/Source combos.  The Bard became more focused as an Arcane Leader, the Druid as a Primal Controller, the Swordmage became an Arcane Defender, and so forth.  It also doubled up on some Source/Roles - there was a second Arcane Striker, the Sorcerer, for instance.Here Zard badly misrepresents the effect of de-coupling source & role.  Each class got strong support for it's traditional role (if it was focused enough to have a traditional role), which made it better at that role.  Most also had some support for one or two 'secondary' roles, so there was support, not 'hard coding.'  The Fighter was a primary Defender, but it could be quite effective as a Striker, as well or instead.  While it was STR and melee-focused, the Ranger, which was no longer a spell caster, was a Martial Striker and did very well focused on DEX and ranged combat.  So you could play a tough fighter or a deadly archer, they just used different classes.  The range of concepts you could play, especially when it came to martial characters, expanded substantially.  The Warlord was a significant contributor to that expansion.  While the Fighter let you play a much more effective 'Tank' (Defender) than ever before, with special abilities that made it harder to avoid or escape melee with him, and harder to attack allies, and the Ranger let you make a deadly, woodsy archer, or the Rogue a deadly sneaky backstabber with a variety of thiefly skills, those were all traditional enough concepts.  The Warlord as a martial leader opened up a role that had previously been held almost exclusively by the Cleric, and a range of concepts that ranged from aggressive lead-from-the-front 'bravuras,' to tactical geniuses, to sources of inspiration, to resourceful opportunists, even with some outre choices effectively-contributing virtual non-combatants. But, as the game evolved, there were even more.  The party no longer 'needed a Cleric,' any leader could handle the job.  So if you didn't want to play a divine character, you could play an Artificer or Bard or Warlord or Shaman or even Ardent and your party got what they needed, while you got to play a concept closer to what you wanted. All leaders had some way of giving allies back hps.  Warlords did it through Inspiration, Clerics through Divine Power, Artificers (a second Divine Leader class) through a magical healing infusion, and so forth.  Most healing triggered a resource of the character being healed, however...  A character could spend one surge via a 1/encounter Second Wind option, or any number of surges when resting.  Leaders could all trigger surges, and most added to the points restored to varying degrees (the Cleric, in general, added the most).5e has also tried to take some of the healing burden off the traditional Cleric/Druid and Bard, by expanding HD to act a bit like surges - you can re-roll each of your HD once/day when you rest, regaining that many hps.  But, it is back to using spells for magical healing, so Clerics, Druids, Bards, & Rangers who know a Cure Wounds spell need to give up casting some other spell to do so.  There's no Warlord in 5e and no way to trigger HD other than resting, so the game is less dependent on spells for healing than 2e and earlier, but still dependent on them, while in 4e it wasn't.  Restoring the Warlord to 5e would open back up the kinds of characters, parties, and play styles that independence from Clerical healing enabled.</blockquote>

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