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

[Shardstone]

I’d suggest it’s more likely that your ‘playtest’ was something like ‘yay warlord’ and this warlord feels great’ without realizing that’s because it’s highly overturned (at least at low levels).

The numbers don’t lie. Guy heals more than a life cleric with channel divinities assuming 2 short rests at level 2. On top of that he gets fighting style, a few martial weapons, can take heavy armor and has exploits as well.

Its uncharacteristic of you to make so many personal jabs in a discussion. Everything ok? Or do you just think its ok to assume im an idiot blinded by some shiny new class?

 

[FrogReaver]

Its uncharacteristic of you to make so many personal jabs in a discussion. Everything ok? Or do you just think its ok to assume im an idiot blinded by some shiny new class?

Apologies. The point is playtesting won’t tell you it’s overturned if you are just testing if people like it. People always like the overturned things.

 

[Shardstone]

Apologies. The point is playtesting won’t tell you it’s overturned if you are just testing if people like it. People always like the overturned things.

Indeed and I am aware, but I stan laserllama cuz ive tried his stuff and offered it in many situations and as a designer, I find it is worth the hype. He has yet to put forth anything that screwed up my many tables balance. The warlord specifically feels good because it empowers other players too. I consider the class a force multiplier, not a showstealer.

 

[Staffan]

I don't think that is a hot take, I think it is old school.

Classes today are designed for smaller groups and less specialization and think that is something players mostly like.

Bank in 1E you needed to adventure with a Cleric and a Thief (Rogue) or you would fail, and no one wanted to play those classes.

One of the strong points of 4e was the WoW-inspired roles, where multiple classes could each fill those roles. So you didn't specifically need a cleric for healing – you'd do just fine with a warlord, bard, artificer, shaman, or ardent. If you want a functional table, you still need one leg in each corner, but those legs can have a variety of different looks.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I feel like outhealing 5e's famously anemic healing isn't exactly a benchmark.

 

[Yaarel]

I agree with the lich. I was a Warlord fan. It was my first 4E character and I loved supporting the party. But what I realized is that I liked the abilities, and really wanted those leadership abilities to be available to any class.

One playtest concept I really hoped stuck (but didn't) was for all classes to have the same subclass level progression. That would have allowed class-agnostic subclasses that any class could take.

Imagine a "Commander" subclass with a "maneuver/exploit-like" subsystem built in that any class could take. Such "maneuver/exploit" system could even have magical options for the caster/gish classes. Feats and Weapon Masteries are other ways they could have leaned into Warlord-friendly abilities.

THAT would have been my ideal "Warlord."

I agree with is.

I also agree with @Undrave pointing out, the Warlord needs to be a full class, and at the same time, other classes can dabble in its mechanics.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There's no hostility towards the people who say they want a Warlord for 5E... it's much more about being amused by it.

It's been TEN YEARS. An entire decade of people wanting a Warlord. And yet despite being told they aren't going to get it from WotC, and being told there are plenty of 3rd Party designers who have made usable Warlords for people... they still just keep saying the same things again and again, year after year.

They say they can't use 3rd Party Warlords because they play online and it would be too hard to program the Warlord into whatever system they use. Well, they've had 10 years to try to add it and work out all the bugs but apparently that's not enough time. Or they say they can't use 3rd Party Warlords because their DM refuses to use random third party material. Even though those DMs have had 10 years to look at the playtested Warlords of these designers and even run playtests of these Warlords themselves with the player who wants to use them. And still that apparently isn't enough.

I just find the whole thing amusing. You've had a decade to convince your DM of the balanced nature of the 3PP material or to hand-type the information into Roll20 or Foundry yourself, but still... that's apparently still a no go. So instead we get another thread here with someone asking "How come there's no Warlord?" to which we get 30 PAGES of people talking about it and complaining about it. People seem to have all the time in the world to type pages after page after page here about why there should be a Warlord or what the Warlord should do, but no time to actually get a usable Warlord put in front of the people who could actually incorporate it into their game. That's just funny to me.

 

[Undrave]

Face, explorer, tricks/traps, exploration, ranged .....

You got exploration twice. Ranged is just a type of DPS and the others can be fulfilled by like 2 skills, top. It's not something you build a whole class around.

I don't think that is a hot take, I think it is old school.

Classes today are designed for smaller groups and less specialization and think that is something players mostly like.

Bank in 1E you needed to adventure with a Cleric and a Thief (Rogue) or you would fail, and no one wanted to play those classes.

Well in 4e I played every roles (except Controller, but I probably would have gotten to it if we played more) and enjoyed them all. I particularly liked Divine classes and played a couple Clerics, a Paladin and an Avenger. I was a big fan of the Leader role and I haven't found a support class in 5e that really scratch my support itch. In 5e it all feels very 'fire and forget'. I throw up Bless or Shield of Faith early on as a Cleric and then I just spend the rest of the combat using boring Sacred Flame or attacking and never feel like I have to make particularly interesting decisions... and I usually keep spell slot(s) in case we need heals. 5e feels very selfish, like once the battle start you're just supposed to worry about your own butt and forget everybody else exist, it's just really boring.

that emphasized distinct party roles that many have expressed disliking in terms of the traditional D&D aesthetic.

Look at ECMO3's comment regarding Clerics and Thieves... Roles were ALWAYS a thing in D&D and then just because 4e pointed them out explicitly suddenly it made them BAD?!

Augh. I'd say roles were memory holed when the 3e casters and a la carte Multiclassing made it easy to throw all of the roles onto one character.

This is such a myth. Champion is not easy. Fighters aren't easy to play for a beginner. You need to understand movment, positioning, resistance, Armor class advantage/disadvantage.

This is a ludicrous position. Movement and position in 5e is barely a thing, Resistances don't matter outside of 'do you have a magic weapon or not?' because anything with interaction to the three weapon damage type is stupidly rare, AC is basic math and advantage/disadvantage is not something a fighter needs to really worry about in normal play and can learn how to use at their pace by simply playing.

 

[Minigiant]

There was a demand for the 3e style of Fighter where it was just all feats like expanded critical and enhanced fighting style stuff. Sure, I can agree with that. It did shape the core Fighter.

I'm not sure I can agree that its why the Battlemaster fails to provide the warlord fantasy. I think I would sooner blame the fact that the Fighter really didn't lean into its core archetype and flesh it out first.

Here's the thing. The 5e Fighter walks the line between being part 3e Fighter, and 4e Fighter. Champion was the simple 3e Fighter, and Battlemaster is meant to kind of reproduce 4e maneuvers, with a few warlord-inspired maneuvers added in. Eldritch Knight was added in as a Fighter-Wizard gish hybrid option to round out the class.

That's a crappy way to design subclasses.

The Fighter's big class fantasy includes being the mercenary man, the ex-guard, the soldier girl, the gladiator. The Fighter's subclasses should have revolved around those kinds of things. Warlord should have been a core subclass that got attention. The Gladiator subclass should have had options for being flashy and using weird weapons like the net or whip. Guards should have been all about perception and putting down things without necessarily killing. Mercenary should have been a thing that had a few abilities that related to earning gold and being efficient hunters. I don't mind the Eldritch Knight subclass.

I mean, we can blame the Champion, sure. The Fighter design was so focused on threading the needle between 3e and 4e that it didn't give the warlord the weight and consideration for working within 5e framework the attention it deserved. So its kind of true. But its only a part of the story.

The Battlemaster fails at providing the Warlord because the top priority of Archetypes that the Fighter was designed to provide is the Champion.

And the Champion was designed to be simple as possible by pushing most of the class power into attacks multiple times. This leaves little room for design for vertical design or alternative verticals.

 

[pawsplay]

The fact that they don't scale.

Battle master maneuvers are problematic because they don't scale properly. The fighter as a concept is designed with a primary focus on their attacks scaling. They have the fastest multiple attack scaling after all.

"Why don't maneuvers scale?" you ask.

Because when you get to pick more maneuvers as you level up, you pick from the same pool of maneuvers as you did last time you made a choice. It is like playing a wizard who never gets spells above level 1.

I can see what you're saying, other than the fact, they do scale. From d8 to d10 to d12. And you get more of them. And wizards don't get a free 1st level spell slot any time they don't have one. Or the fact that fighters are not actually dependent on their maneuvers to keep doing what they do best. And that wizards don't eventually cast multiple 1st level spells a round. And that wizards can't simply cast 1st level spells on top of their other spells to make them more effective.

Other than that, it's exactly the same.