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.
That is the point. And no, Strategies are not spells. There would be a new list of them. That was kind of the point of specifying that. They would differ by not scaling as spells do...as you say, that's the whole point of
warlock spells, which Strategems are not. They would simply be following the overall mechanical model.
Are you going to have an Eldritch Blast equivalent? What is it?
Nope.
How does having a sword-and-board-warlord or bow-warlord fit in here?
Perfectly well. Sword-and-board might be Vanguard or whatever one chooses to call the "front-line attacker" Warlord subclass. Bows would be an option for any of them, but would work best with those that emphasize stealth or ranged attacks, I'd presume.
I presume that its going to take up Invocation-equivalents, just like blade-lock and agonizing/repelling EB do.
I mean, some might, but I'd expect most of that stuff to be right out the gate.
Glass house, throwing stones.
Not at all. But I had thought you disliked people simply dismissing arguments out of hand?
"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.
But we design the game for all the people who play. Not just the people who think that anyone who ever cares even the tiniest bit about being effective at what they do is a
dirty filthy optimizer.
Forget banneret. It was badly made, and diffierent attmepts at a thing can be made.
I will not do so, specifically because what you are suggesting is WORSE than the Banneret--I already showed how that was the case with Second Wind. If your suggestion is worse than something you already say was badly made, how can we take your suggestion seriously?
The point is to showcase how we can turn the core Fighter chasis from being selfish to being a party enabler
But it does not do that. It is still selfish. That was the whole point of talking about the effectiveness of the actions. Being
able to be an enabler is pointless if the game actually
rewards being selfish.
You must give people a mechanical incentive to do the behaviors you want them to do (or, if necessary, a mechanical incentive to avoid behaviors you don't want them to do, but carrots are better than sticks by far.) If you don't, then most players
won't do that thing.
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.
Again, you are relying exclusively on inbuilt player enthusiasm for something--an enthusiasm so strong it overcomes a demonstrable loss of effectiveness. I'm not saying players are perfect logic machines, but come on man, people care about doing what will keep their characters alive, what will further their characters' goals, what will help them succeed better and more. We do not live in some perfect utopia where nobody cares about the possibility that they might fail. D&D players are notoriously anti-risk (except the few that are aggressively pro-risk, but that's a whole different topic.) That's why the 5MWD is a problem even though it actively makes the game less fun for everyone involved. These concerns are not some weird unhinged dedication to perfectionist optimization. They're
practical. People care about succeeding. They want more successes and fewer failures.
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.
Except you aren't. You haven't changed one thing about how the ability works. You've simply allowed its utterly unchanged effect to be applied to someone else. That is not OP. It is, as I have repeatedly said,
completely insufficient, for exactly the same reasons that the Banneret is completely insufficient.
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.
My apologies. I'm not designing for Mephista's table. I'm designing for the typical table, where a realistic spectrum of people will be playing. The majority of that spectrum cares enough about effectiveness to get upset when they feel shortchanged and to pursue options that are powerful even if doing so can lead to a loss of fun. As the saying goes, "people will optimize the fun out of your game if you let them."
"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 you need to make only one choice to do that:
Play a Fighter.
I'm not interested in discussing your tirade against people who care about effectiveness. You've made your point that you think anyone who cares about that is a dirty filthy
optimizer sullying the game.
Again with a false dichotomy.
Nope. It's just a dichotomy you refuse to recognize because you believe nobody ever cares about being effective.
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.
When he
explicitly and openly mocks something with known edition warrior rhetoric, it's not stupidity and it's not an accident. Whether or not he was joking does not matter. He used those words. He insulted things I care about, and he did so
knowing that it pisses people off.
There WAS intent.
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?
Because it is useful to have a point of negative comparison--as I did above, where I showed that your idea of letting the Fighter give someone else her Second Wind is
woefully inadequate because the Banneret gets something (significantly!) better than merely transferring the Second Wind effect to someone else...and you openly admit that the Banneret is bad!
Having a point of negative comparison gives us a floor from which to rise, or a ceiling to step back from. This one is a floor. Others are ceilings. We can narrow in on a useful point in the middle.
