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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6100645" data-attributes="member: 42582">I share your puzzlement. I don't really see how this game fits with the Mearls of old, who (back in <a href="http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?194448-Mike-Mearls-is-a-God-Damned-Genius&p=4024472#post4024472" target="_blank">2002</a>) saidThe simple truth is that few in the gaming industry put any real, useful thought into their work. The Forge is really the crucible for a lot of the real examination and exploration of the underlying structure of RPGs. Outside of the Forge, there are few other designers who think of games in a useful, interesting way. . . The Forge might be useful. It's the sort of thing that you have to go look at and judge for yourself. I find it a bit too steeped in jargon, but a lot of the end ideas are useful to think about in terms of my work.It doesn't seem like a game informed by Forge sensibilites. (Whereas 4e definitely does have that feeling, at least for me.) What I particularly mean by that is that, because of its assymetric resource recovery schemes for classes, D&Dnext seems to depend very heavily upon GM force to make it work, but that isn't called out. A Forge-theorist might make a GM-force heavy game, but would know that was what s/he was doing, and would therefore be explicit about it.How would someone's statement lead me to believe something about what they're doing unless it was evidence for that? I mean, that's basically the definition of evidence: something is evidence of X if it would tend to lead a rational person to believe that X, all other things being equal.I have said that I have evidence that the warlord in 4e form won't exist in Next. My evidence I've pointed to: the tweets, the podcast. And I've offered (in this and other threads) some pretty detailed analysis, the main part of which is that D&Dnext simply doesn't have the game-mechanical space for the warlord to do its thing.Obviously it's your prerogative to disagree with me, but I don't really like the insinuation that I'm being misleading.This seems to be an attack upon   [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION]'s integrity as a poster (and, by implication, mine too). I feel it would be more fruitful to actually try to rebut our analysis.  For instance, how is a designer who makes jokes about "yelling severed limbs back on" going to make martial healing work, in the context of traditional D&D damage and healing mechanics? Personally, I can't see it.The thing which   [MENTION=336]D'karr[/MENTION] said was stupid was the joke about yelling severed limbs back on. I don't think you have to be biased to see the comment as silly. Obviously no 4e player thinks that a warlord who rouses an unconscious PC is "yelling severed limbs back on". Rather, to the extent that those players think about it at all, they think of hit points in more metagame terms - as marking a wearing down of energy and resolve - and see the warlord's inspiration as reinvigorating the unconscious PC.Because for reasons that Obryn and others have given, the warlord is a litmus test, a canary in the coal mine, for a certain sort of 4e play. Everything that is distinct about 4e - it's tight action economy; it's overtly metagame hit points; it's encounter-based pacing and resources; it's synergistic group play; it's self-conscious story of violent yet heroic high fantasy - is leveraged by the warlord. It's the poster child for that way of playing and thinking about 4e.That's why these particular 4e-players take uncertainty with respect to, and downplaying of, the warlord - and the martial healing that is associated with it - as a sign (and not the only one - people can read the playtest rules, after all, and draw inferences from them and their development over time) that D&Dnext is unlikely to support 4e play along those particular lines.There seems to be some misunderstanding. As I read this thread, no one is denying that WotC have said that, in Next, you will be able to play a character that looks like, smells lilke and plays like a 4e warlord. Rather, people are saying that WotC is mistaken in making that claim. (Perhaps WotC is being disingenuous; perhaps WotC doesn't understand the implications of its own mechanics; perhaps WotC doesn't understand the relevant approach to 4e play. This is the puzzlement that I share with   [MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION].)Whatever the explanation for WotC's mistake on this point, the evidence that people are pointing to to support their claim that WotC is mistaken is pretty clear: these particular 4e players look at the mechanical underpinnings of the 4e warlord as it plays at their tables - and I've mentioned some of them above - and they note that Next (i) lacks those underpinnings, and (ii) also seems to lack the points at which such underpinnings might be bolted on. In other words, the evidence people are pointing to in arguing that WotC is mistaken in its claim is not evidence to do with WotC's intelligence or moral character - rather, it is an argument based on game design, and on the relationship between mechanics, the scope of possible designs, and play experience.This is why I really don't understand why you are raising issues about good faith in posting, when the people you are criticising are making design arguments, reinforced by reference to comments by WotC designers about relevant design considerations (like the relationshp between wounds, hit points and martial healing). If you think that people are wrong in not seeing scope for their style of warlord play in Next as it currently, or might, stand, it would be great to hear your design analysis."Organic" and "unobtrusive" seem to me to be in the eye of the beholder. I don't think you can do a warlord in the particular style that I have described in this thread, and this post, in a a way that would be unobtrusive to the relevant audience.My hope, up until the end of last year, had been that the warlord would be a distinct class, leveraging metagame mechanics, which those who don't want martial healing, complexity in the action economy, etc could opt out of. Rolling it into the fighter would make the opting out approach less viable - because there would then be a list of class options that would have to be vetted line-by-line - and hence makes it more likely that the fighter warlord won't leverage metagame mechanics in the relevant fashion at all.</blockquote>

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