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.
I thought the entire point of the warlord was so that its not magic. And... you've just given them spells but calling them strategies? How are they different? It seems that they're going to scale up like spells? I mean, that's the whole point of the warlock chasis is that their spells automatically level.
Are you going to have an Eldritch Blast equivalent? What is it? How does having a sword-and-board-warlord or bow-warlord fit in here? I presume that its going to take up Invocation-equivalents, just like blade-lock and agonizing/repelling EB do.
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."
Glass house, throwing stones.
But you're ignoring the rest of the class when you do that. Action surge used on yourself, as a Fighter, is almost always better than using Action Surge on someone else. Indomitable is kinda meh overall, so honestly I don't think that factors in much, but since you get so few uses of it, you'll run out long before you can do much. Second Wind is a hilariously inadequate healing feature--the Banneret already did better than that (giving HP equal to your Fighter level to up to three other targets!) and it was nowhere near enough.
I'm not ignoring the rest of the class. The fighter chasis (not counting asi/feats or subclass) gets the following abilities - fighting style, second wind, action surge, extra attack, Indomitable. That's literally the entire class. There's a number of feats more suited to a support playstyle than damage, so there's no point in discussing them. 1D&D adds weapon mastery stuff, which can be used to support team instead of just yourself.
"But its not as effective!!!" That sounds like an optimizer problem. I don't care about optimzers. I don't play with them. If my group likes playing it and has fun, and its effective enough, does the rest matter? No.
If you're not building a fighter for all damage, then it shouldn't be a surprise when another character is better with the action surge. Second wind isn't enough? Then use some more of the power budget on improving it, or get more uses of it, or something. 1d&d Indomitable is much better than the previous version, and one I've been using for a while now.
Forget banneret. It was badly made, and diffierent attmepts at a thing can be made.
Okay. That might be the start of one single mechanic that could be useful. I'm not seeing how that covers an entire class worth of stuff--nor how this would ever be in any way the better option than just using your own strong features. Which, again, is precisely the problem. The Fighter's base features are already so good, the option of giving them to someone else is mostly pointless.
Of course its one single mechanic. I only talked about what I would do as a level 3, and only in part. Not even the whole of the subclass. Just the bare bones beginning of the archetype.
The point is to showcase how we can turn the core Fighter chasis from being selfish to being a party enabler. Not do everything immediately at level 3. Its something that requires multiple levels as well as feats. Possibly adding in something akin to a superiority die. I don't know everything yet, as its not been designed past the idea stage.
How would it be better? Gee, I don't know, maybe because
its something the player is enjoying doing? My goal is to make something that's fun to play and fills a need for my table.
The former is unacceptable by demonstration; the designers could have actually deleted class features via subclasses, but they never, ever have. Hell, they don't even like doing errata, even in places that sorely, direly need it like the PHB Sorcerer subclasses or the Beast Master.
But I'm doing the latter, and you said it was OP. You have not demonstrated how its OP. You're just claiming it without explaining why it is.
That's the catch-22 here. Change nothing except adding sharing, and you've added a worthless option that will never be used because it isn't better than just...not using it. Change things so it's more than just sharing, and you've now made something OP, because you have a floor of "be a strong Fighter who already does competent damage," which you can then exceed by using your features on allies instead.
Or... maybe I find a way that it works together to make a harmonious whole that fulfills the class fantasy for my table and isn't OP. I don't buy into your false dichotomy.
Again, no, it isn't. If the so-called "Warlord Fighter" is simply adding the choice of being allowed to use their selfish features on others, they will still be used selfishly because it is essentially categorically true that using them on yourself is better than using them on anyone else, unless you intentionally and overtly slant the example.
"If I make a selfish, damage focused build, I will categorically be better at using action surges on myself" is a statement that really doesn't need to be said.
But I'm kinda assuming that anyone choosing to play a subclass of mine won't be focused on taking damage options - they'll be taking things like the shield-based reaction FS, or the Inspiring Leader feat, instead of things that directly improve damage. I've already suggested non-selfish Weapon Masteries. Which changes the math drastically, and your personal damage
will drop.
The fact that theyre taking a theoretical warlord subclass means they're already doing less damage than their contemporaries.
Optimizers look at the Bladesinger and claim that its best to be used to cast spells normally instead of fight with a blade. But I still see lots of fighting with swords on a bladesinger. Why?
Because that's the whole reason that my players take the subclass. The vast majority of players aren't there to optimize party efficienty, they are there to have fun with a specific character concept they have in mind, and want their character to be fun in play.
And the only other option is to DELETE the ability of the "Warlord Fighter" to use those actions on themselves, something that 5e's rules do not support doing and never have.
Again with a false dichotomy.
Oh, no, no. They knew exactly what they were doing. Well, sort of. They knew exactly part of what they were doing, and that part was intentional.
That's why Mearls "joked" about shouting hands back on when he dismissed Warlord as a class concept. That's why they kept pushing out any 4e rules as belonging to the "tactical combat module," which was total vaporware (and most 4e fans could see that literally a year before release). That's why they explicitly said it would be "3e rules with 4e streamlining." This was very intentional. That intentional effort was intensified by various mistakes, I don't deny that. For example, their critical fumble on the Specialties system, where they went absolutely all in on a system they later abandoned, and instead of attempting to fix the issue, they just stopped talking about martial healing. But make no mistake: there were never any bones about this being an intentional effort.
There's a saying called Hazlon's Razor.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Well, saying "stupid" here is a bit of a too strong word here, but its conveys the same vibe. You're ascribing malice to people when they just as likely messed up. Mearls put in a lot of effort to make his own warlord subclass for fighter as well, which leads me to think this entire malice-assumption to be silly.
Which brings me to another point. If you're going to keep bringing up Banneret while simultaneously claiming that the devs were malicious in, well, effectively sabotaging a warlord-fighter subclass. Then wouldn';t that mean that Banneret shouldn't even be something to consider? Why bring it up at all if its effectively sabotaged?
