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

[Justice and Rule]

Spells in 5e are generally not complex. OTOH, a Mad Berserker Barbarian using frenzy is quite the beast, mechanically speaking.

Adjudicating spells can be incredibly complex, largely because effects are built from the ground up for each spell. "Rulings, not rules" all that. But adjudicating a berserker barbarian? That's pretty damn easy. Extra attack, toss some exhaustion.

 

[Mephista]

Serious answer: They're not because they're not magical. The problem with design in 5E is that anything more complicated that "Attack plus a minor effect rider" can only be a spell is an incredibly confining design principle. The better question to ask is "Why is anything that is slightly complex suddenly a spell?", because that is the far more important question.

They're using totally-renamed spell slots. They're being picked from a list that sounds suspiciously like a spell list. They're functioning like the warlock's spells do. When someone says that they want to make a non-caster using the spell slot system, why shouldn't be people be curious about the differences?

 

[Vaalingrade]

I think it's a big problem when people are complaining about the balance of martials versus casters, and arguing the Champion Fighter and Battlemaster fighter are somehow underpowered.

Boring.

The Champion is boring.

And the Battlemaster is the baseline of what a fighter should be-- literally was the baseline of the fighter before the Champion ruined it.

 

[pawsplay]

Adjudicating spells can be incredibly complex, largely because effects are built from the ground up for each spell. "Rulings, not rules" all that. But adjudicating a berserker barbarian? That's pretty damn easy. Extra attack, toss some exhaustion.

As long as they make an attack or take damage every round. And if they fail to do so, they gain exhaustion, a heavy penalty. Complex. If you use hold person, you can conceivably stop AND exhaust them. Tactical. Are they using finesse-able weapons? Rules knowledge. There is a lot more baked into that one example than, say, fireball.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

The fact that Disarming is an alternate optional rule in 5e tells you everything.

I really hope the optional combat maneuvers in the DMG are put in the PH, just like Chris and Jeremy recently said that things like "breaking an object" and "perceiving illusions" will be more front and center in the PH.

If it is a player action, please let it be in the PH.

Heck, put some basic "leadership-style" Actions in the combat section for everyone to use! Then they can be referenced if a class or feat or maneuver enhances that action, like makes it a bonus action, or adds damage on top, etc.

 

[Minigiant]

They're using totally-renamed spell slots. They're being picked from a list that sounds suspiciously like a spell list. They're functioning like the warlock's spells do. When someone says that they want to make a non-caster using the spell slot system, why shouldn't be people be curious about the differences?

I for one don't want a spell slots system.

Im more of a fan of a points system. Brainpower is my go to name.


"I use 10 brainpower to use Quadruple Team"

 

[I'm A Banana]

What you can't do is recreate the 4e warlord. A 5e Warlord isn't going to resemble a 4e Warlord any more than a 5e cleric resembles a 4e cleric. They are completely different creatures.

A big reason warlord discussions often fail to go anywhere is that the warlord is, in some cases, just a shibboleth for "I prefer how 4e did things." So, the convo just becomes grousing about how 5e doesn't have 4e's model of martial powers, or how 5e doesn't officially support a purely morale vision of hit points, or how 5e's Fighters "can only do one thing," or how 5e doesn't cleave tightly to 4e's role grid, or how 5e resists option bloat (especially at low levels), or how 5e favors big effects rather than granular options. The warlord had a lot of tethers to 4e's systems, and the transition away from many of those systems is going to leave any 5e version of a warlord quite a different beast. That can be OK, if what you're looking to do is play a character who fits a warlord archetype - who is an inspiring leader and brilliant tactician. There's an abundance of options in official 5e to play a character like that. There just isn't much of a way to get back to some of 4e's assumptions.

Weirdly, this is similar to some of the problems with the psion (though change 4e for 2e/3e). At the core is a 5e design choice that I think is basically a good idea: they're reluctant to reinvent the wheel, mechanically.

So, like, healing word. That spell is very warlord-coded. It's literally a shout that restores hp. But, the flavor is "you're casting a spell." So a certain segment of warlord fans are never going to be happy with using that as part of their inspiring commander. If you duplicated the effects of casting healing word (and maybe a bunch of other healing and restorative spells), but called it an inspiring shout or battlefield medicine, you might get some people on board. And, after a few rounds of this and adding some more class features (let's add command to the list of nonmagical spells, oh, and here's a 4e power I really liked that could make a good nonspell, too), congratulations, you've basically recreated the core of cleric or the bard or the paladin or whatever, and all you've done is file the serial numbers off and call the magic skill/inspiration/narrative juice/etc. And it still wouldn't satisfy people who want more low-level options, for instance ("That's not a real warlord, look, I can't XYZ at 1st level in addition to other things, this is just proof 5e is bad at this, if only the devs would realize this...").

There isn't a lot of apparent appetite in the 5e developer tower to spend their limited budget and pagecount for the year on something that is basically "the bard, but replace magic with inspiration, disappoint about 1/3rd of the people in the process, and maybe open up the hit point debate for a brand new generation." And I can't really blame them for that. The risk/reward just doesn't pan out. I'm sure their surveys have given them this feedback, too - the juice hasn't been worth the squeeze.

You can see the same phenomenon at work with the psion. There's spells out there that do what we'd expect a psion to do, but the flavor is a little different. It's "you're casting a spell," not "you're using MIND POWERS." We could file the serial numbers off of several spells and throw them into a class and get a lot of people on board. But, then we have recreated the psion or the wizard or the warlock and all we've done is say "It's not that kind of magic!" And we still would leave people who wanted something more radical out in the cold ("Where's my power point escalation mechanic?!").

I'm sure if their surveys told them that what we want is, idk, four versions of the warlock with subtly different magical coding (arcane! martial/narrative! psionic! and here's a version with runes, too!), they'd give it to us. And, I don't think the warlord (or psion!) fans are wrong for not being satisfied, for whatever reason they have for not being satisfied, even if the reason they're not satisfied is only because they really liked how 4e did things when it came to warlords, and 5e just will never be the same. That's valid, and one of the limits of 5e is that it won't ever be 4e, or 3e, or 2e, or 1e. It's not the same and won't ever be the same.

But I do enjoy playing my college of swords bard as an inspiring leader whose words can lift armies and curse my enemies. And I enjoy playing my battlemaster fighter as an action economy thief who can lock down big threats until they decide to pay attention to him. And I enjoyed playing my alchemist artificer as a non-magical healer who brewed medicinal tonics in the heat of combat. And I enjoyed playing my devotion paladin as a tactical genius / blowhard who always thought he knew what was best for people and who enjoyed using his party members as his weapons most of all. Just like I enjoyed playing my 4e warlords as team dads, lazy drunken bosses, and literal princesses.

 

[Undrave]

As long as they make an attack or take damage every round. And if they fail to do so, they gain exhaustion, a heavy penalty. Complex. If you use hold person, you can conceivably stop AND exhaust them. Tactical. Are they using finesse-able weapons? Rules knowledge. There is a lot more baked into that one example than, say, fireball.

How is that complex? "Attack or take damage or take a penalty" is pretty easy.

Why would they be using a finesse weapon instead of a big stick? And Hold Person is not a problem the Beserker player needs to concern themselves with because they're not the one using it.

 

[Justice and Rule]

They're using totally-renamed spell slots. They're being picked from a list that sounds suspiciously like a spell list. They're functioning like the warlock's spells do. When someone says that they want to make a non-caster using the spell slot system, why shouldn't be people be curious about the differences?

I didn't realize that spells had a monopoly on "disposable resources" and "lists". Again, this is confining vision down to only allowing one thing to have access to more complexity than "add a rider and a die".

As long as they make an attack or take damage every round. And if they fail to do so, they gain exhaustion, a heavy penalty. Complex. If you use hold person, you can conceivably stop AND exhaust them. Tactical. Are they using finesse-able weapons? Rules knowledge. There is a lot more baked into that one example than, say, fireball.

Is that like a 5.24 thing, because my PHB says it's just "You take exhaustion at the end of your rage."

Also it's not that complex, because usually the result of this is "That's terrible, I'm just going to play a Bear Barbarian."

 

[Undrave]

A big reason warlord discussions often fail to go anywhere is that the warlord is, in some cases, just a shibboleth for "I prefer how 4e did things." So, the convo just becomes grousing about how 5e doesn't have 4e's model of martial powers, or how 5e doesn't officially support a purely morale vision of hit points, or how 5e's Fighters "can only do one thing," or how 5e doesn't cleave tightly to 4e's role grid, or how 5e resists option bloat (especially at low levels), or how 5e favors big effects rather than granular options. The warlord had a lot of tethers to 4e's systems, and the transition away from many of those systems is going to leave any 5e version of a warlord quite a different beast. That can be OK, if what you're looking to do is play a character who fits a warlord archetype - who is an inspiring leader and brilliant tactician. There's an abundance of options in official 5e to play a character like that. There just isn't much of a way to get back to some of 4e's assumptions.

I agree that you can't just port the 4e Warlord, you need reinvent it through the 5e prism. I think, if the Warlord is to endure beyond 4th edition, it NEEDS to show it can be reinterpreted for a different rule systems. When I went through my various versions of the Warlord I realized I had to focus on what I wanted it to FEEL like to play the Warlord and not how it worked in previous incarnations. I hit on a system that focused on reactions to help allies (including extra reactions), a few core abilities you can actively do, handing out bonuses at initiative, being effective at helping with skill rolls, and then I added a couple ribbons to fluff up the class. I don't think it would play like a 4e Warlord, at all, but it should feel like a good support class.

There is indeed some options already in 5e, but they're not all in the same class. I actually tried not to copy any of them word for word.