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

[Minigiant]

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



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.

Spending HD would be the cost.

Warlords could have "unlimited" Healing but it costs the target. The stronger the target (more HD), the more times they can heal someone.

 

[Yaarel]

Spending HD would be the cost.

I dont think there needs to be a cost. Spending the power is the cost.

On the other hand, if the Warlord has at-will hit point restoration, then ok, the target must pay the cost, by spending any hit dice.

Warlords could have "unlimited" Healing but it costs the target. The stronger the target (more HD), the more times they can heal someone.

Yeah. Like this.

Still, the Warlord should have powers that restore hit points even after the target spent all the hit dice.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But Hit Dice exist.
The issue is that the Designers used HD poorly.

I mean, if we're going that direction, essentially nothing in any prior edition is impossible to find some sort of vaguely similar structure and then one can simply claim it was used badly or constructed badly but still in the right approximate guesstimated conjectured ballpark. Ish.

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"

Sure, I've considered it. Key problem: You only earn back 50% of your hit dice with a long rest. That kind of cripples any action dependent on expending them frequently.

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.

Perhaps. I'd need to see the testing on it. Personally, I think most folks are simply having an overreaction to the presence of bonuses. Yes, 4e had a lot. So did 3e, and basically every prior edition. We should not take a stance of "ABSOLUTELY NO such bonuses," because that closes off fruitful design space. And WotC clearly didn't learn the lesson, because (as noted) they were still profligate with the bonuses they did include. We should instead be aiming for making the presence of bonuses actually matter--and for a world where such bonuses are handed out judiciously, where the design is cognizant of the system overall and what it means to give out some particular bonus.

I hadn't considered using "replace roll with [raw score]-5." That's an interesting approach, and something certainly worthy of being added to the quiver. Between that, fixing both the over-use and weak structure of Ad/Dis (have it soft stack: count up sources of Ad and Dis, whichever wins out applies), and restoring SOME restrained amount of minor (non-stacking or minimally-stacking) flat bonuses, you probably have the makings of a system that avoids being fiddly while still being useful.

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

Oh, that would absolutely be delightful. Plus, we could dare to do what even 4e did not: bring implements (or, as 5e puts it, "foci") into the same spectrum as weapons, where they have [F] dice, and properties! (I would write [ I ] but that would result in BB code.)

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

Well sure. As noted, anything that smelled too much of 4e had to be sanitized before it could be used, and most of those things were too 4e to be sanitized in the last ~8 months of playtesting time they had after pissing away over 2 years of public playtesting.

 

[Minigiant]

Sure, I've considered it. Key problem: You only earn back 50% of your hit dice with a long rest. That kind of cripples any action dependent on expending them frequently

In my "Warlord WOTC would actually do"

The main aspects are

1. Roll HD for healing in combat
2. Roll HD for attack bonus in combat
3. Heal all HD on long rest
4. Let allies Roll X weapon and spell dice again for bonus damage
5. Let allies reroll saves as reaction
6. X pre long rest "Get up Soldier" feature at tier 2.
7. Have expertise by tier 3

 

[ECMO3]

Again, defensive options don't advance the game state, it doesn't make you win the encounter. It's a stupid design for a limited resource and Monk shouldn't have to rely on it to get baseline toughness.

You don't like playing a Monk and you don't like using Ki for a defensive option when you do, but that doesn't make it wrong or stupid, especially when the players who use these "stupid" design elements are the ones who also have fun with the class.

This "advance the game state" crap is a bunch of nonsense. Options that make the game more enjoyable are what matters, not theory crafting about what advances the game, especially when that theorycrafting is not backed up by any mathematics.

As an aside, Armor on a fighter is a defensive option, so I guess your Fighters all go naked since wearing armor doesn't "advance the game state".

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now I am thinking if the future warlord will be a class, then it will be with some magic-like power, style the ki-techniques or martial maneuvers by martial adepts. A "no-magic" warlord only could be a fighter subclass.

Or maybe the warlord will be a subclass of the martial adepts.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes but natural magic is still "magic".

My point is, you are drawing a distinction that only applies on Earth, but forcing it to be applied to things that definitionally aren't from Earth. It's more or less a form of equivocation fallacy; simultaneously using both Earth-standards and fantasy-world-standards, but inconsistently, sometimes hewing to the one, sometimes hewing to the other, with little rhyme or reason.

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

But that means that everything player characters do is "magic." Because they do things all the time that are physically impossible IRL. For God's sake, just the jumping rules are utterly unrealistic for real world phenomena. (Seriously, the world record long jump is just shy of 30 feet/9 meters. D&D characters with just halfway-decent Str can jump half that with no training or practice whatsoever while carrying loads over 40kg.)

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.

I assert that simple movement (running ~5 m/s at all times while carrying 45 kg, jumping ~5 m horizontally or ~1 m vertically under the same weight), surviving a point-blank fireball or other similar damage, shrugging off falling damage (the median lethal fall distance is under 15 meters, a d8 hit die character with +0 Con survives the maximum possible damage of such a fall at level 6), and various other things are already beyond the realm of ordinary human capability.

D&D isn't Earth-realistic even when we aren't looking at outright magic. It never has been. Many people would like it to be; many have pretended that it is, or re-interpreted it to be so, or presumed it is so without actually checking the numbers. It has at best only the loosest association with physically achievable feats on Earth--except, perhaps, for ordinary NPC humanoids, who hew rather closer to what an actual, ordinary human could achieve.

Even in the early editions, much of this was true. Yes, at first or second level, maybe even third if you rolled crappy scores, you might die to an errant breeze or an unhappy housecat. But once you'd gotten a couple more levels under your belt, many of the kinds of things that could kill an ordinary human outright simply can't do that to you anymore. They'll hurt like a son of a gun, but they won't even incapacitate, let alone kill, even before we factor in that later editions have been rather softer than (the reputation of) old-school D&D. (Whether that reputation actually bore out in practice is a separate matter.)

If D&D people are that resilient so quickly, what isn't "magic"?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Now I am thinking if the future warlord will be a class, then it will be with some magic-like power, style the ki-techniques or martial maneuvers by martial adepts. A "no-magic" warlord only could be a fighter subclass.

Or maybe the warlord will be a subclass of the martial adepts.

Why? Seriously. In a world where creatures constantly violate the square-cube law, where utterly average level 6 characters can ALWAYS survive the kinds of falls that have a 50% fatality rate for IRL humans, where bus-sized flying creatures (not just dragons, all sorts that are just beasts and no more!) exist and ravage the skies, what is actually so magical about someone being able to help an ally deal with the physical shock of injury, a thing that people really do IRL and that really saves actual lives?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In my "Warlord WOTC would actually do"

The main aspects are

1. Roll HD for healing in combat
2. Roll HD for attack bonus in combat
3. Heal all HD on long rest
4. Let allies Roll X weapon and spell dice again for bonus damage
5. Let allies reroll saves as reaction
6. X pre long rest "Get up Soldier" feature at tier 2.
7. Have expertise by tier 3

Having both attack bonuses and healing come from HD is simply a non-starter. Like, I get that you want to tie it to a physical resource, but for the vast majority of the game, that would be far too much competition for far too few resources. E.g., a third-level character gets...three rounds of any kind of benefit, at all? And when they've done so, they're totally tapped for personal healing resources for the day.

Tie healing to HD. Tie attack bonuses to something else. Having the Warlord allow the party to regain all HD on a long rest is a great idea though--possibly work in some similar stuff. E.g. "when you take a Short Rest, if you do not spend any Hit Dice to heal, you can regain one spent hit die instead. This benefit extends to a number of allies equal to your Leadership modifier. At 11th level, you can regain two hit dice instead."

Personally, I'd either tie Expertise to one or two specific subclasses, or have each subclass provide a choice from a short list of theme-appropriate options. E.g. a Sapper (combat engineer) subclass might get the choice of Nature, History, or Survival, while a Skirmisher (lightly-armored front-line warrior) might choose between Athletics, Acrobatics, and Intimidation.)

You've definitely got some good ideas here though and I will absolutely keep some of this in mind, when(/if) I get to my own Warlord homebrew concept.

 

[Minigiant]

I dont think there needs to be a cost. Spending the power is the cost.

On the other hand, if the Warlord has at-will hit point restoration, then ok, the target must pay the cost, by spending any hit points.

Inspiring Word​

As a bonus action, you can call out to a wounded ally and offer inspiring words of courage and determination that helps that ally heal. A creature within 30 feet of you can spend a Ht Die. The player rolls the die twice and adds the your Charisma modifier to it. The character regains hit points equal to the total (minimum of 0).

At 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 20th level, the character rolls the die an additional time.