D&D 5E Working on a Warlord Full Class

[GSHamster]

It is a little confusing sometimes rolling one leadership die, and sometimes rolling the entire pool. I think you should pick one of the two and balance around that.

 

[the Jester]

Are they getting standard martial stuff like a fighting style and extra attack?

No. Combat Leader is the equivalent of extra attack for them. Some subclasses might get a fighting style, but it's pointless for the lazylord, so it won't be part of the base class.

 

[the Jester]

Oh, and you really need to either have rolling the dice expend it, or split the leadership die from your points.

Why?

The point of a dice pool is that you roll and expend. Half of your abilities roll different numbers of dice than they expend.

I mean, that CAN be the point, but I don't see why it must be.

One of the things about martial abilities is that it can strain credibility if they can't be used often, sometimes at will. I want many of the warlord abilities to be available essentially at will unless the warlord has run him or herself ragged. The stuff that depletes your leadership dice pool is the stuff that has a bigger impact than the rest.

So far, I believe the only thing that isn't "roll one die" or "roll all the dice" is inspiring word- which needs to have some degree of scaling by level to maintain its worth, but without being too good. Is the issue you see here that it's too complex to keep track of what uses how many dice? Or is it just a personal preference? Or something else I'm overlooking?

This the Ki - Martial Arts system. Ki aren't a Martial Arts die pool, they are points. The impact is usually, but not always, measured by the Martial Arts die size.

BM is a die pool. Every single BM maneuver rolls 1 maneuver die and consumes it.

Sure, but that doesn't mean that all systems have to match one or the other of those.

All that said, this is all still first draft stuff, so I may end up changing it like you suggest. I just don't think there's a compelling reason to do so.

 

[the Jester]

Will these abilities affect characters who are higher level? For example, can a 2nd level Warlord tell a 20th level Barbarian to "Get up!" and it will work?

I don't see why not.

 

[CubicsRube]

If you're looking for inspiration or to see how other people approached this, the most complete and polished warlord homebrew I've seen is Kibbles Tasty's Warlord class - he's a fairly well respected and prolific homebrewer in the Unearthed Arcana subreddit.

And there's Rob Schwalb's one as well.

 

[Marandahir]

I'm going to suggest the same rotation I've suggested to other people.

In general, 5e classes and subclasses are either how you combat or why you combat. Classes where both the class and subclass are how you combat tend to be a bit hollow (the Fighter is an example of this).

Warlord is a how you combat. If you rotate subclasses from being clones of 4e to being why you warlord I suspect you'll get a lot more inspiration for "utility" (ie, non-combat) mechanics.

Grizzled Sergent
Aspiring Ruler
True Believer
Academic Strategist

You can remap those back to your "Presence"s, but they should also inspire features that aren't "more combat tweaks" or "combat support" for the PC to get access to.

Cannot emphasize this enough. If you just map the 4e builds as subclasses, you don't really have room to grow the Warlord. Better to think of Marshal Archetypes (see what I did there) that align on-top of the Warlord. Otherwise you get the question, "Why is this a Warlord and not the Barbarian, or the Paladin, or the Bard, or the Cleric, or the Fighter?"

The answer to the above is that all of them do commandery things, but this is a class all about commanding. But if it's all about commanding and then different ways you command, then there's limited room for growth. Better to think about "this is the Knight Commander" this is the "Strategist Commander" this is the Slightly divine Commander, this is the slightly Arcane commander, this is the slightly primal commander, etc. There's plenty of room to grow if you try to think of war-leader archetypes rather than just Int-Warlord, Cha-Warlord, Wis-Warlord.

Early 4e was trying to give you the tools to make your own characters from the build-specific class features. So all back-row cha warlords are Inspiring, while all front-row cha warlords are Bravura (and same thing for Wis - Insightful vs Skirmishing respectively, while Tactical was Int and Resourceful was a compromise between Cha and Int). These don't really tell you a story about that build, it just gives you the tools to make your own story.

This is a BIG part of why 4e was criticized as being a WoW-clone etc - the builds just weren't grounded in archetypes (for many classes) until Essentials rolled around and focused on story over function. It was like 3.5e CharOps wrapped up into a package deal instead of providing us options that are jumping off for stories.

5e class and subclass design are about "what stories do I want to tell with my character and do I have a good-enough option to jump at it from?"

To WotC, they seem to have decided spreading the Warlord out among the classes is the "good-enough" way (with Battle Master, Banneret, Valour Bard, War Cleric, Mastermind, etc filing the niches of the class stories). But if you're going to try to create a unified Warlord class, you could either pull some of those subclass concepts INTO the Warlord, or try to carve out new niche stories that reflect real world commanders from history & fictional commander archetypes we know and love. Then you can map those to the Presences of 4e, but story really should come first if the class is not defined by story.

 

[NotAYakk]

Why?

Superiority dice are physical things. You have some next to you. You pick up one, roll it, and put it aside.

The kinetic part of the "pool of dice" is mapped to a physical pool of dice. Your resource is your object.

What you have, above, is a point system that pretends to be a "pool of dice". It isn't. It is points, and a dice size.

Points and a die size are fine, but they aren't a die pool.

 

[RangerWickett]

Have you seen EN5ider's "Noble" class, which appeared in the Masterclass Codex?

 

[Marandahir]

Have you seen EN5ider's "Noble" class, which appeared in the Masterclass Codex?

I have - it's an interesting thought experiment on a 5e Warlord, but ultimately hollow with little room for expansion IMHO.

The Noble tries to be both a story-based and mechanics-based class (like the Fighter does). This left it with 3 subclasses and never an expansion article because Noble itself is a very limited story concept (seeing as it's already multiple Backgrounds, to boot!).

 

[Undrave]

Man... your thread already get more participation than most of the times I posted my own Warlord class... I'm kinda jealous...

It's also because I have my own class that I don't know how to properly critique your stuff, because my own perspective would warp it. I just want to say that just because a mechanic doesn't work like the rest of 5e (like your abilities sometimes depleting dice and sometimes not) doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. I would say to maybe review your wording to match up with 5e's vocabulary a bit better?

I went with a system somewhat similar to yours, but mine generates their ressources by interacting with the combat in some way. I wanted an At-Will class based off of the Rogue, so it's a different feel than being short-rest based.

I will say I feel like the Presences are a bit scattershot. They affect different things at different times... I think it'd be easier for a player to better judge what is the best one for them if they all had similar interaction points.

Also, I would give it an extra skill or maybe a pick of tool proficiency. And I'd put Insight on the class skill list.

No. Combat Leader is the equivalent of extra attack for them. Some subclasses might get a fighting style, but it's pointless for the lazylord, so it won't be part of the base class.

Defense would be a good fighting style for the Lazylord. A flat +1 to AC would be welcomed.

I didn't even consider Fighting style for mine (I mean, the Rogue doesn't get it)

Cannot emphasize this enough. If you just map the 4e builds as subclasses, you don't really have room to grow the Warlord. Better to think of Marshal Archetypes (see what I did there) that align on-top of the Warlord. Otherwise you get the question, "Why is this a Warlord and not the Barbarian, or the Paladin, or the Bard, or the Cleric, or the Fighter?"

That's a good point!

When I wanted inspiration I went to look at 4e Paragon Paths, also made a 'White Raven' tradition since it was a name that came up often in 4e powers, and I considered the type of job in a war that specific Warlord would have. It's why I have some that specialize in directing ranged attacks and other that specialize in directing anti-caster troops.