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

[Shardstone]

A conservative and anemic view on balance, as previously stated, holds back striking vision design out of unfounded fears disappeared with playtesting never done.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well let's hear it, then. What's your version of the 5E Warlord?

I already described it above.

• Warlock chassis. Major subclass is your specific Combat Focus (with ideas like Sapper/sneaky, Skirmisher/frontline attacker, Fusilier/ranged attacker, Knight-Enchanter/magical tactician, Strategos/working through proxies aka "lazy", etc.) Minor subclass is your Leadership Style, e.g. Bravura (Cha-based, high-risk high-reward), Resourceful (Wis-based, better healing and condition mitigation), or Tactical (Int-based, better buffs and damage mitigation)
• Instead of short-rest spells, short-rest "Strategies" that you can prepare with each short rest. There wouldn't be a ton of strategies, perhaps 20 or so, with some requiring higher Warlord level to prepare
• Instead of Invocations, you have Tactics, always-on benefits that make sense to never be exhausted and not need resources
• Still working on what to replace Mystic Arcana with. Perhaps that's where my "gambit" idea should go; as stated above, this is technically back-burner because I have a Summoner homebrew I'm chewing on first.

Strategies recharge with short rests. Taking a leaf from the 5.5e Warlock updates, I'd probably include a feature to refresh your Strategies without a short rest, perhaps with a roll or the like.

It ain't perfect, and a whole lot of it depends on the execution of the Strategies, Tactics, and whatever fills the void left by Mystic Arcana. But I definitely believe it's the best approach to making a full-throated, diverse, well-supported, not brokenly overpowered Warlord.

 

[Minigiant]

A conservative and anemic view on balance, as previously stated, holds back striking vision design out of unfounded fears disappeared with playtesting never done.

Funny.

There is a kneejerk reaction among many to claim any implementation of the Warlord as broken or overpowered but then fans say there is a decade of Warlord homebrew that any reasonable DM should allow.

And people ask me why an official option from the primary IP holder is such a important part of making the Warlord live.

Almost like many DMs don't ban any hefty homebrew and third party products not already in their personal libraries.

 

[pawsplay]

They replaced the whole bardic music system from 3e with a handful of class features in 5e. Why would the warlord get more than that? Fundamentally, 5e always aims for a simplified action economy. All that White Raven Tactics stuff is just very un-5e-like.

 

[Vaalingrade]

They replaced the whole bardic music system from 3e with a handful of class features in 5e. Why would the warlord get more than that? Fundamentally, 5e always aims for a simplified action economy. All that White Raven Tactics stuff is just very un-5e-like.

All the more reason to bring it back.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

They replaced the whole bardic music system from 3e with a handful of class features in 5e.

Did they? The vast majority of relevant things bardic music once did is wrapped up in Bardic Inspiration now. And one of the very few things to make it from 4e pretty much unchanged (apart from truly necessary translation to 5e mechanics) was Vicious Mockery. I'm not seeing the connection.

Why would the warlord get more than that?

I don't understand. Warlord didn't get more than that. It got less than that. Far, far less. Orders of magnitude less.

Fundamentally, 5e always aims for a simplified action economy. All that White Raven Tactics stuff is just very un-5e-like.

I strongly disagree, and if I weren't exhausted and sleep-deprived, I'd go through the various things that disprove it. Bardic Inspiration--and some subclass-specific tweaks to it--alongside Diviner Portents and other similar things show that 5e is perfectly comfortable injecting things between others' turns and modifying actions as they happen. If those things are in, it's totally possible to translate (not copy, actually translate) 4e Warlord mechanics to 5e.

 

[CapnZapp]

Let's see how long this particular thread lasts. Could be more than six days; it was quite a while since everybody got the opportunity to declare their vision the only acceptable path forward

At page 35:

Gonna last more than six days...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

At page 35:

Gonna last more than six days...

I mean, it doesn't help that a contingent of anti-fans is always eager to come out of the woodwork and tell people who like Warlords that they should sit down, shut up, and enjoy the table-scraps they're so graciously given because their preferences are wrong, invalid, unfit, not really a class, or some other variation of "it's not for me therefore it's not for anyone."

 

[CapnZapp]

I mean, it doesn't help that a contingent of anti-fans is always eager to come out of the woodwork and tell people who like Warlords that they should sit down, shut up, and enjoy the table-scraps they're so graciously given because their preferences are wrong, invalid, unfit, not really a class, or some other variation of "it's not for me therefore it's not for anyone."

Actually, I would say it helps... if we're discussing why and how this thread is so alive and vibrant

 

[CapnZapp]

I'd argue it didn't crash, it BURNED OUT.

Not sure what distinction you're getting at here, but I guess it's material for a different thread...