D&D 5E Why is There No Warlord Equivalent in 5E?

[Yaarel]

And even that physicality is not so strictly bound as some want it to be. Someone can recover from shock (which is usually what actually kills people in a number of violent-injury situations), or at least hold at bay the dangers of shock, due to external stimuli--like someone shouting at you. A rush of hormones, a delayed stress-response or (more likely) stress-relief response, a conscious effort to stay focused on breathing...these things can LITERALLY save lives, because the injuries can be more reparable than the breakdown of circulatory function.

All this to say: it isn't actually unphysical to 'heal' someone by shouting at them. It sure as hell isn't something one can easily control, but that's already true of half or more of the amazing things D&D characters do on a daily basis that don't have a lick of magic in them at all. Motivation alone literally can keep someone going long enough for "real" medical treatment (as though treating shock were somehow virtual medical treatment?) to arrive.

Yes. Psychological factors can be relevant to overcome the stress of physical wounds, and even resist death.

At the same time, I prefer the Martial powers that restore nonphysical hit points (such as alertness and morale and so on) to be different powers than the powers that overcome physical damage, namely, the "stay with me" powers.

Flavorwise, the morale powers tend to be at range, the "stay with me" powers touch.

The Warlord should be better at restoring nonphysical hit points, than the Life Cleric.

"Perhaps it is magic: the magic of the human heart, focused and made manifest by technology. Every day, you here create greater miracles than the burning bush."
"Maybe. But God was there first, and He didn't need solar batteries and a fusion reactor to do it."
"Perhaps; perhaps not. It is within that ambiguity that my brothers and I exist. We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner. Holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know...many things."
"Such as...?"
"The true secrets. The important things. Fourteen words to make someone fall in love with you forever. Seven words to make them go without pain. How to say goodbye to a friend who is dying. How to be poor. How to be rich. How to...rediscover dreams when the world has stolen them from you. That is why we are going away, to preserve that knowledge."

I consider any extraordinary powers that rely on the soul, mysticism, etcetera, to qualify as "magic".

I also consider any extraordinary technology (a sufficiently advanced technology) to qualify as "magic".

The Warlord must focus on nonmagic, things that seem plausible within a scientific naturalistic world view, even if amazing.

The higher tiers segue into the superhero genre. Even when the nonmagic powers of the Warlord become larger than life, it still needs to be the nonmagic flavor that shines thru, despite achieving impossible effects.

I cannot overstate how much Babylon 5 shaped my understanding of fiction, both science and fantasy. Possibly the only thing that can equal it is Myst, and in particular, not the game (which was good, but not that impactful), but the novel, Myst: The Book of Atrus.

Babylon 5 is a great example, where "fantasy" and "scifi" are the same thing. It an other examples are why I routinely refer to fantasy genre as "scifi".

With regard to D&D, I view levels 1−4 and 5−8 as the realm of the possible (even if achieved by magic it resembles reallife), and levels 13−16 and 17−20 as the realm of the impossible (even if achieved by the Martial power source and hypothetical reallife scientific speculation). The tier of levels 9−12 is the blurry overlap in between.

 

[Yaarel]

Regarding the definition of nonphysical hit points. I consider the "Bloodied" condition to be a compromise.

Before becoming "Bloodied" the damage is strictly nonphysical. Heavy nonphysical damage is more like seeing the target awkwardly escaping damage and alarmed. There can be physical contact (mainly for the sake of poison attacks), but the contact is mainly touch without any meaningful physical damage.

After Bloodied, bruises, cuts, and scrapes start happening. The situation is like a boxing match, when the combatants are fatiguing, getting sloppy, and body blows start to land, cuts and blood, start to happen. All of this physical damage is nonlethal, but it is going to hurt the next day. Bandages and herbal poultices help.

Downed at 0 hit points is something else. The target is completely vulnerable to any attack. If the attacker is careful to remain nonlethal, fine. If the attacker is lethal, the target is Dying. At this point the attacker chooses − since the targets hit points to evade damage are gone.

In my games, Dying means "life or limb". In other words, failing three Death Saves might mean the loss of an arm, rather than the loss of life. It depends on the attackers intent, or in the case of an avalanche or whatever, a random outcome.

ALL attempts to catastrophically injure a target, such as shooting thru someones heart or tearing off a limb, require the target to reach 0 hit points first.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Agree on all points except one: I think plenty of people enjoy D&D with the perception of hit points as "meat points." They seem to enjoy it more that way, in fact, and it's not hard to understand why.

My assertion is that they are allowing an entirely abstract and philosophical "enjoyment" (the pleasing notion of logical symmetry) to interfere with the entirely practical and immediately manifest enjoyment of functional gameplay.

Like how some people in the Renaissance objected to the game we now call "chess", which started out as a variant derisively called "Mad Queen" or "Killer Queen" chess, not because of any gameplay fault of the change (which was almost unequivocally positive and a huge reason for why this variant became predominant over all others), but because it made the queen, a female piece, the most powerful piece on a warfare simulation. The scandal! Allowing women to dominate over all the other, male, pieces?! Even the kings and bishops?! No, unacceptable; they're ruining the enjoyment and value of the game!

Attachment to abstract rules-aesthetics that have little to no actual bearing on the experience of play, when doing so completely forbids many extremely useful and engaging gameplay design options, is IMO a very serious problem in game design.

Prioritizing above all else rules-aesthetics, like symmetrical rules and "realistic" rules and having a singular rule for every distinct situation etc., is the way to make games that look pretty on the page and suck to actually play.

I would much rather play a game that looks ugly on the page but which is an absolute blast when you bring those rules to life by actually playing them. I don't see the point of games as a pure work of fine art. They are, at best, a performing art, and IMO they aren't even that, they are a technology. Technology should care about aesthetics, but never to the point of crippling its own functionality.

Seriously, give this a try: the next time one of your players makes an attack roll, ask them to describe what it looks like when their character scores a hit.

I run DW, meaning I always ask this, unless it's just not necessary to do so (or a more immediate interest is at hand.)

 

[Minigiant]

Moreover, I do not think 5e is really capable of supporting such a character. As I explained in an earlier post, pretty much everything that made the Warlord work in 4e (healing surges, grid with tactical significance, granular modifiers) is gone in 5e.

The 5e replacements for these 4e things (hit dice, ad hoc conditions, and advantage) exist/
Plus more exist:

• Dice Rerolls
• Reroll 1s
• Triple advantage
• Roll minimums (a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10)
• Action granting
• Bonus damage dice

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm gonna need to definition check on the word 'cinematic' if 'attack attack attack, never do anything cool or interesting' is cinematic.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The Warlord must focus on nonmagic, things that seem plausible within a scientific naturalistic world view, even if amazing.

Magic is scientifically natural in a world where magic actually exists. That is literally what wizards are: thaumatologists, scientists studying the field of arcane energy transfer. This distinction of science vs mysticism is only meaningful to you and I because we live in the modern era, defined by the Empirical Project and its rejection of non-empirical explanations of phenomena. Magic empirically exists to these people, so there is no division between phenomena that can be empirically explained and phenomena that can't. The space of "things with empirical explanations" is just bigger because the supernatural is empirically verifiable.

Things which exceed what is possible on our physical Earth can be purely physical phenomena in a world where dragons are real and utterly ordinary humans can fall 30 stories and walk it off consistently. (If you have over 100 HP, you are effectively guaranteed to survive any fall of 200+ feet...once a day, anyway. A Fighter can achieve this by level 11ish, with decent Con.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The 5e replacements for these 4e things (hit dice, ad hoc conditions, and advantage) exist/
Plus more exist:

• Dice Rerolls
• Reroll 1s
• Triple advantage
• Roll minimums (a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10)
• Action granting
• Bonus damage dice

Hit dice are absolutely not healing surges. They look similar. But they are actually doing completely different things, and (tragically) 5e doesn't even use them in any of the ways it could still have picked up from 4e.

I would argue nearly all of the others you mentioned are either so profligate in their use that they have been made irrelevant (see: the rampant overuse of Advantage), or are so limited and rare that they effectively never matter ("reroll N or below" mechanics barely exist in 5e.)

 

[Yaarel]

Magic is scientifically natural in a world where magic actually exists.

Yes but natural magic is still "magic".

That is literally what wizards are: thaumatologists, scientists studying the field of arcane energy transfer. This distinction of science vs mysticism is only meaningful to you and I because we live in the modern era, defined by the Empirical Project and its rejection of non-empirical explanations of phenomena. Magic empirically exists to these people, so there is no division between phenomena that can be empirically explained and phenomena that can't. The space of "things with empirical explanations" is just bigger because the supernatural is empirically verifiable.

Yes. And. Natural magic, innate magic, fantasy technology magic, are "magic". The reverse is also true, an astonishing reallife technology is also "magic".

Things which exceed what is possible on our physical Earth can be purely physical phenomena in a world where dragons are real and utterly ordinary humans can fall 30 stories and walk it off consistently. (If you have over 100 HP, you are effectively guaranteed to survive any fall of 200+ feet...once a day, anyway. A Fighter can achieve this by level 11ish, with decent Con.)

That is a good example. It is possible for a human to survive a fall from 100 meters or even much higher. But to do so consistently would be superhuman.

I prefer to see this this maybe-maybe-not phenomena during levels 9-12. Then the clearly impossible to be levels 13-16 and 17-20.

 

[Minigiant]

Hit dice are absolutely not healing surges. They look similar. But they are actually doing completely different things, and (tragically) 5e doesn't even use them in any of the ways it could still have picked up from 4e.

But Hit Dice exist.
The issue is that the Designers used HD poorly.
The Warlord could be the HD class. The Warlord could have "As an action, you can have a character who hears you spend a HD to roll it X times and gain that many HP"

I would argue nearly all of the others you mentioned are either so profligate in their use that they have been made irrelevant (see: the rampant overuse of Advantage), or are so limited and rare that they effectively never matter ("reroll N or below" mechanics barely exist in 5e.)

I fell that attack rolls being turned to "a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10" or "your d20 roll is a INT/CHA score -5" cold be the replacement for all the little bonuses to attack in 4e.

And Warlords could be the +[W] class and let warriors and casters roll damage dice again.

Again the Designers barely tapped the mechanics of 5e for slow easy profit and milked the wizard biased Core Books.

 

[Yaarel]

But Hit Dice exist.
The issue is that the Designers used HD poorly.
The Warlord could be the HD class. The Warlord could have "As an action, you can have a character who hears you spend a HD to roll it X times and gain that many HP"

Rather than "spending" hit dice, I prefer all healing to be amounts of healing equaling multiples of the hit die.

And Warlords could be the +[W] class and let warriors and casters roll damage dice again.

In 5e, the damage types of Piercing, Bludgeoning, and Slashing turn out to be less useful. Sadly.

It is possible to combine all three as the "Weapon" damage type.