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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 9:38PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Sep 18, 2009
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What is a warlord? What makes it unique? Stripping the 4E Warlord of all aspects in common with a fighter, rogue, or any other martial class, and you get the voice. With it, a Warlord can encourage his allies, demoralize his foes, and give orders for battlefield positioning. A mute warlord would be impossible unless telepathic (that would be a 4E Ardent, but I digress). From that point of view, ANY class can serve that function. Some are more likely (bard, fighter, & cleric) than others (rogue, sorcerer, & warlock), but it can be done. It says little of your overall fighting style, but mostly it's how you interact with others in the battle that makes a warlord into a warlord.
Would a specialty work for everything Warlords need to do? Sure. Remember, these get 4 feats, minimum (1,3,6,9). 1) Buff allies; 2) Demoralize foes; 3)Ally positioning; 4)some other leadership thing.
The verbal aspect, I think, kills Warlord as a class. If you are for any reason struck mute or ensconced in Silence (for example, by a spell), you are an unnecessarily verbose fighter, and that's it. Plus, deaf characters or noisy settings mean you can't be heard, and are useless again. It doesn't seem right to have a class where EVERYTHING unique about the class can be rendered useless so easily.
Like? Dislike? Kiss my dice? Intelligent thoughts welcome.
"Our idea of rules modules has a wide range of scope; sometimes, our rules modules might just be small tweaks and variant rules, while other times they could be large-scale changes and entirely new subsystems. We want people to make the game their own, and that means provided a whole array of possibilities based on what you, the players, tell us that you want." -D&DNext Q&A Blog, 8/29/12, Answer #3.
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 10:12PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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Slightly less plausible than a ranger ... but both could be done but not necessarily to a satisfying degree in my opnion.
Some warlords inspire by doing so seeing their moves and bravery gets your heart pumping too. Some are litterally gorgeious and will get that done other ways as well.
Most could use signals to guide there allies. (in 4e there was a martial practice for usig a battlefield sign language I think)
Many of there tricks dont actually need to tell there allies anything ie they just make the openings and its obvious to the allies ooh look wow you just kicked his calve at the right moment and the enemy careened in to my sword.
I very much could make a deaf mute Warlord.
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 10:15PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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My favorite uses the snapping of whips and grabbing of enemies with her whips ... distracting the enemy at the right moment and dragging them in to a new position and one of her whips is always used to say to her allies pay attention to this (it has whirring whistling cuts in it).. When she catches her self actually commanding she gets all embarassed and appologizes after the fight. She is an ex slave mistress of Drow heritage.
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 10:49PM
#4
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I would consider this if there is a cleric option that doesn't worship any god and doesn't use arcane magic.
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Imagine a world where the first-time D&D player rolls stats, picks a race, picks a class, picks an alignment, and buys gear to create a character. Imagine if an experienced player, maybe the person helping our theoretical player learn the ropes, could also make a character by rolling ability scores and picking a race, class, feat, skills, class features, spells or powers, and so on. Those two players used different paths to build characters, but the system design allows them to play at the same table. -Mearl
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 10:52PM
#5
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Even if for some reason you are married to the notion that a warlord relies completely on its voice, it's pretty extreme to suggest that something is killed as a class concept because it's merely an eh-ish fighter if it can't talk. There's this one class, "wizard", that's a heck of a lot worse off than that if it's stuck without the abilty to talk, and I don't think many people are suggesting that wizard doesn't make a whole lot of sense as a class because you're just a commoner with a toad for a pet if you're "for any reason struck mute or ensconced in Silence".
(Is this some kind of weird veiled thread that's actually about some wizard issue? If so, my mistake.)
Dwarves invented beer so they could toast to their axes. Dwarves invented axes to kill people and take their beer.
"Feel free to claim I said anything you like. How's someone going to call you out on it? Are they going to be all like, 'I know all of the things that Gary said, and that's not one of them?'"
- Gary Gygax
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8 months ago ::
Sep 29, 2012 - 12:21AM
#6
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Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
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If the warlord is reduced to specialties, I can see no fewer than 3 of them.
One for a Tactlord:
A "Commander Strike" feat
A "extra move" feat
One for the Inspirilord
A "healing" feat
A "Furious Smash" feat
And one for a Bravura or Reslord
Orzel, Halfelven son of Zel, Mystic Ranger, Bane to Dragons, Death to Undeath, Killer of Abyssals, King of the Wilds.
Constitution Based Class for Next!
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8 months ago ::
Sep 29, 2012 - 1:08AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2004
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The warlord is more distinct from the fighter than the wizard is from the sorceror. He's also more distinct than the berserker is from the fighter.
The fighter goes out into combat to fight, he's good at fighting.
The warlord frontilines because he's better at it than the rogue or the wizard. He's passable at fighting, his primary function is to organize the party and help them operate at their peak potential, sometimes that means stabbing a few goblins yourself.
In my mind that's the distinction, the fighter is fighting, the warlord is leading or guiding.
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8 months ago ::
Sep 29, 2012 - 1:55AM
#8
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It's been asked before, and it's not going to please the Warlord fans.
A Speciality simply won't be able to do enough, even if married to a fighting style.
However, that is no reason not make a Battlefield Leader specialty and a Team Work fighting style.
Those are great ideas.
The Warlord, for integrity, needs to be able to keep his/her allies up, whether this is Resistance, Temp HP, or HP Recovery is open for debate.
They'll need options for enhancing other's offense, defense, and movement.
As much as it is contentious, some will desire a focus on out of turn actions.
They can stand the frontline, just as some Clerics can. However, their combat puisance is through the use of others. They strike to draw attention, or make a flashy show, allowing others to capitalize. They take hits not as a course of action, but to cover an escape, or create an opening. Personal combat is at best a means to an end.
Now, if CS dice didn't have 2 of their 3 initial options pre-selected, then that might allow more growth with the idea of a Team-Work style... but the Warlord was front loaded. Hp Recovery, Bonus to Ally action dice usage, Initiative (or start of combat) bonus and whatever their initial powers let them do, in addition to choosing feats is what is being stacked against. The current Fighting Style and Specialty structure is not equal to accomodate it. However that doesn't mean it couldn't be.
I have an answer for you, it may even be the truth.
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8 months ago ::
Sep 29, 2012 - 3:56AM
#9
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I would make Warlord a fighter Fighting Style. It is too powerful for a specialization (or becomes too weak) and while it could absolutely be combined with other classes such as cleric or wizard it would become too hard to balance if done that way.
(and since the fighter/warlord combo would probably be worse than combining the 'leader' powers of warlord with a class that is a 'leader' in iteslf to create a 'super leader', that will just feed into the ongoing fighter class envy wars... "Why should fighters be worse warlords than class X?!")
Better to just give it to fighter as a solid class option and make it right.
Also, since Specializations are just a prepicked bunch of feats, it will be hard to balance a collection of feats powerful enough to recreate the entire warlord in a way that still makes sense to free-picking of feats. If one or two feats carries the core abilities of the warlord, then many would pick them up before lvl 10.
As for the Silence... well... how powerful is a fighter when rooted to the ground, a rogue in bright light an no hiding places or a wizard when silenced or in an antimagic field...
to be silenced should be a big deal.
A silenced fighter with a warlord fighting style would still be able to fight though.
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8 months ago ::
Sep 29, 2012 - 7:22AM
#10
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Date Joined:
Sep 18, 2009
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All right, I'll grant that a Warlord, to be done properly, is a bit much for a specialty. Same for as a Fighting Style.
I just don't feel that it's enough to be its own unique class. Prestige Class, maybe. They say they want Prestige Classes to mean something. All right:
"To be not only an adventurer-quality combatant, but also an adventurer-quality leader, requires more training and focus than most people, even career military, ever have. To be a ______ Marshal, you need to go to __________, and train under the ________ for ________ months. Should you survive, you will be admitted into their ranks as one the premiere warlords in the world."
Just an example of how it could go. To me, it looks like it could work.
"Our idea of rules modules has a wide range of scope; sometimes, our rules modules might just be small tweaks and variant rules, while other times they could be large-scale changes and entirely new subsystems. We want people to make the game their own, and that means provided a whole array of possibilities based on what you, the players, tell us that you want." -D&DNext Q&A Blog, 8/29/12, Answer #3.
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