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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marandahir" data-source="post: 8080895" data-attributes="member: 6803643">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.</blockquote>

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