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

[I'm A Banana]

I wish Support Class wasn't verbotem...

Personally, I like that class isn't a tactical or strategic decision.

And I wonder what a warlord that wasn't tethered to the requirement of being a "support class" would look like (even if it was a good support class).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Personally, I like that class isn't a tactical or strategic decision.

And I wonder what a warlord that wasn't tethered to the requirement of being a "support class" would look like (even if it was a good support class).

What does "not tethered to the requirement of being a 'support class'" mean?

Because in 5e it essentially always means "doing your support stuff is usually a waste of resources unless it's exploiting some rules quirk" (e.g. "whack-a-mole" healing.)

What would you intend for such non-tethering to actually entail?

 

[Remathilis]

I wonder if you read the relevant bit upthread. You did read the bit about the alternative spellcasting mechanic?

Here it is again.


The idea is that it's pretty easy to make a martial character able to access a list of non-magical "spells." No more complicated than bards and artificers, really. If that's the issue, then that's solvable without a big lift. My assumption is that this is not the actual issue.

But you also seem to assume my position relies on summoning angels, so maybe you're not exactly acting in good faith here.

People keep trying to carve out a niche for martials (be it the fighter, warlord or rogue) where they get "magic" effects equal to a wizard but better because they don't worry about the drawbacks like antimagic or spell components. It just proves that magic is an absolute necessity in D&D and that you can't really do a nonmagical character without basically giving them magic but not really anyway.

 

[Remathilis]

Personally, I like that class isn't a tactical or strategic decision.

And I wonder what a warlord that wasn't tethered to the requirement of being a "support class" would look like (even if it was a good support class).

A warlord who self buffs is a fighter with extra steps.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

People keep trying to carve out a niche for martials (be it the fighter, warlord or rogue) where they get "magic" effects equal to a wizard but better because they don't worry about the drawbacks like antimagic or spell components. It just proves that magic is an absolute necessity in D&D and that you can't really do a nonmagical character without basically giving them magic but not really anyway.

I don't want them to be better than magic. I want them to be different from magic, without "different from" necessarily meaning "worse than."

That's part of what makes the Warlock chassis so useful as a starting point. It builds in customizability, but with tools that are class-specific. It recharges quickly but not instantly, which at least makes an effort to recognize the folks who fervently hate daily resources on non-spellcasters. Much of its power comes from permanent, passive bonuses or indefinitely reusable tricks. And it has a split main/secondary subclass model that fits extremely well with the diversity of approaches that Warlords did embody in 4e and could potentially embody even better in 5e.

As I said, this is merely a concept stage, but conceptually it works quite well. You can squeeze a great deal out of this model without needing to give up core elements of the 4e concept (like being actually nonmagical and not using spells). That's why I feel that something derived from the Warlock is so much better than most other paths forward; the customizable nature, flexibility, and relative simplicity makes for highly fertile soil.

 

[Undrave]

Personally, I like that class isn't a tactical or strategic decision.

And I wonder what a warlord that wasn't tethered to the requirement of being a "support class" would look like (even if it was a good support class).

That's just a Fighter.

A warlord who self buffs is a fighter with extra steps.

Basically. If the Warlord isn't making its allies better than it's not a Warlord. The 4e Warlord did have some powers that could buff/heal themselves but that wasn't the norm.

I don't want them to be better than magic. I want them to be different from magic, without "different from" necessarily meaning "worse than."

That's part of what makes the Warlock chassis so useful as a starting point. It builds in customizability, but with tools that are class-specific. It recharges quickly but not instantly, which at least makes an effort to recognize the folks who fervently hate daily resources on non-spellcasters. Much of its power comes from permanent, passive bonuses or indefinitely reusable tricks. And it has a split main/secondary subclass model that fits extremely well with the diversity of approaches that Warlords did embody in 4e and could potentially embody even better in 5e.

As I said, this is merely a concept stage, but conceptually it works quite well. You can squeeze a great deal out of this model without needing to give up core elements of the 4e concept (like being actually nonmagical and not using spells). That's why I feel that something derived from the Warlock is so much better than most other paths forward; the customizable nature, flexibility, and relative simplicity makes for highly fertile soil.

The Warlock is such a good framework...

 

[I'm A Banana]

I didn't, no. It was in the jump between the first unread posts and recent posts.

This is literally just spellcasting, but with a "it's totally not spells! Everything else is identical but it's totally not spells you guys!" disclaimer. Like... it's there, verbatim. "It's Not Magic" is a word for word subheading. If I did not know better, I would think you were being sarcastic, because this is genuinely at the level of parody.

This whole bit of the convo started because I said that martial exploits and magical spells aren't actually mechanically very distinct and that a lot of spells could work pretty easily as martial exploits. Showing that to be true means showing that, for instance, the distance between circle of power (the paladin spell) and circle of power (the warlord exploit) is a matter of a few largely aesthetic choices that are easy enough to change. So, it sounds like you basically agree with my point: that the distinction between a daily martial exploit and a daily magical spell is mostly that one is not described as magic and the other is.

So you can see why I'd disagree with this:

The vast majority of spells are completely unacceptable unchanged. Period. They would need to be changed so significantly, they would be barely recognizable.

It sounds like you agree that essentially writing "it's not magic" next to a spell doesn't mean changing it so significantly it would be barely recognizable.

Warlords (with the one exception, as I have noted, of an EK/AT-style subclass) should not be using magic. Period. It should be a genuinely distinct mechanic. At absolute most, some of the exploits (or whatever we call them) might be equivalent to certain healing spells, since that's a subsystem that doesn't really allow for a lot of variation, but if possible they should definitely still be distinct.

I mean, we can define whatever "should" we want, but this all increases the barrier to "official creation." Maybe that's not really the goal, in which case, let's go HAM, but the question in the OP is: "Why is there no warlord equivalent in 5e." Is part of the answer, "Because a true warlord equivalent would require a separate class?" Because then we can talk about why 5e just doesn't want to add new classes in general and why the warlord is required to be one and why the Fighter, Rogue, and Cleric are eating everyone's lunches and making more classes difficult to implement because of their conceptual broadness.

I did not add summon celestial to the list. You did that. If you wanted people to not draw the conclusion that your proposed spellcaster masquerading as a Warlord could summon angels...perhaps it would have been better to not mention that they could summon angels.

Spells that outright conjure something from the void are absolutely not thematically appropriate for a completely nonmagical class. They just aren't, and I struggle to take seriously the notion that you sincerely believe they are a fitting component of any proposal for a 5e Warlord.

Aragorn calls upon a ghost army. It's not exactly out of pocket. We just had a whole thread about how we should allow martial characters remarkable powers, too. It's also not intrinsically magical on the part of the warlord. We don't have to limit warlords to "shout heal good" any more than rogues need to be limited to "skill check good."

But I think you're smart enough to see that the idea of "I summon these angels with divine magic" and "I summon these angels because I am a legendary commander of armies and the hosts of heaven are glad to serve at my call" are very similar effects, mechanically, which is the meat of the point - that the mechanical distinction between magical and not magical is not all that deep of a valley, and can be crossed fairly trivially, even when it comes to summoning angels.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What does "not tethered to the requirement of being a 'support class'" mean?

Because in 5e it essentially always means "doing your support stuff is usually a waste of resources unless it's exploiting some rules quirk" (e.g. "whack-a-mole" healing.)

What would you intend for such non-tethering to actually entail?

Like any other 5e class, that this hypothetical warlord could also serve in some minimal capacity in any combat or adventuring role. That it has a way to burst damage, that it has ribbons that reinforce its out of combat identity, that it doesn't have to rely on its allies to carry it.

Basically. If the Warlord isn't making its allies better than it's not a Warlord. The 4e Warlord did have some powers that could buff/heal themselves but that wasn't the norm.

And 4e is a different design paradigm, where party comp was an important consideration.

5e is not that design, and there's good reasons for that. So, is that an answer to the OP, then? 5e doesn't have a warlord because a warlord requires a game with party comp as part of its metagame and 5e didn't want to be that game?

 

[Yaarel]

Aragorn calls upon a ghost army.

An ancestor of Aragorn magically cursed the Men of the Mountain to become restless undead until they fulfilled their oath. When Aragorn arrives, the undead are finally able to fulfill their ancient oath. The situation is Necromancy.

Warlords are something different.

 

[Yaarel]

When I think of Warlord, I think of Greek Odysseus, getting his crew back home, working together to kill Cyclops, figuring out how to free his party from Circe, and so on. Tactician, inspirer, team captain, rescuer, etcetera.