Yeah, im curious what the right amount of exposure is. I mean, D&D is a community game so I appreciate the dev blogs and stuff. Though, how much of it is the big picture and how much is just wagging the dog? What is the best approach to be clear and honest even if you leave some folks disappointed?
There's probably no single answer. Few things of this nature are simple enough for that.
But I think we can all agree that "just stop saying anything and hope no one notices" is almost certainly
not the correct response most of the time.
Oh by doable I think you can get very close to the 4e original classes. Like I keep saying 5e is mechanically closer to 4e than TSR editions.
I mean, a Fighter who becomes a
literal lord, who goes to war actually seems like more of a "Warlord" than the Battlemaster Fighter, in my humble opinion.
But honestly, no, I strongly disagree. There's nothing like the Avenger, Warden, or Shaman--and the """avenger""" and """warden""" Paladins are practically
mocking the classes they claim to be, looking essentially nothing like either.
Actually they did. The design phase of 5e from the time of announcement to the first year of 5e was tons of flipping and flopping on design goals. 5e could have looked like 4 different things if design and development stopped at certain points.
"Flipping and flopping" back and forth...doesn't meet the thing I described. Nor does it match, as I noted, the
explicit statement that the "warlord fighter" would have martial healing....only for the end result to not do that thing. The Battle Master Fighter doesn't heal anyone, it can't grant saving throws to anyone, and Commander's Strike is
hilariously weak as far as ally-empowerment goes. The Battle Master is, in fact, better at imitating a
controller from 4e than a leader, because it has plenty of relatively-useful tools for repositioning allies and applying forced movement to enemies.