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

[Shardstone]

I fail to see how it is a problem. People have the Warlord classes they want, through 3rd parties. Apparently all those "Warlords" are good to perfect. If that were the case, the only thing WotC could do is make their own version that people will criticize as not as good as the third party offerings. Want proof? Reading the fans in the forums here, apparently LU is in every way better than D&D. No contest.

I wonder how many Warlord fans are also WotC fans and really trust WotC to do it right. I doubt that it is a large population.

WotC's heart is obviously not in it, so pushing them to make their own version of a warlord is pushing them to compete in an arena they aren't interested in, hence they would likely fail to pass muster for the warlord fans' expectations.

What I hope happens, is that a 3rd party that makes a perfect warlord could try to get it published in a book to purchase, and then then work with the fans to encourage Wizards to adopt that publication as a 3rd party DDB offering.

I want people to have their Warlord. Wizards doesn't have to be the ones to make it.

This is a great analysis. 3rd party in ddb would be a game changer.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

Where do those 90% come from?
So anyone who disagrees (except for the 10%) are no true warlord fans?

I was a warlord fan. I do disagree that the two examples you gave warrant their own class. One even has fighting styles like the fighter (and the paladin and the ranger).

Which could equally well belong to the core fighter.

Which is wrong. I wrote repeatedly that I don't think warlord should be a subclass of anything. This really a big problem with "true warlord" fans. They just want a warlord class that has elements the 4e warlord never had (lazylord/mascot was not a 4e design, it was a certain way of playing it, ignoring half the abilities of the actual warlord). No compromise. No taking of 5e designprinciples into account.

So stop telling me what my preference is, if you are incapable of reading.

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."

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There is a significant portion of players, maybe even a majority, that will not accept anything non WotC.

Then they can’t want it that much.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

There is a significant portion of players, maybe even a majority, that will not accept anything non WotC.

But I doubt those are the purist Warlord fans, who are the ones Wizards left behind with 5E.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

And the name is like the least important aspect.

Words are the MOST important part of rules and stories. Names DEFINE things. And if they don't define a thing correctly, people will not be happy.

 

[Clint_L]

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.

To me this seems like a false dichotomy. Battle masters are widely regarded as one of the best sub-classes in 5e, and are highly effective at all levels. They definitely play nothing like wizards, but they are a very popular choice and every party is happy to have one.

And their maneuvers do scale, because they are designed to offer situational advantages to abilities that scale. For example, when you use maneuver dice to grab the rogue an off-turn attack, a pretty classic BM maneuver, the rogue gets an extra sneak attack. Which scales. When you grant your ally advantage on their next attack, that scales. And so on.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I find this absolute resistance to the Warlord class very interesting. The class itself is conceptually uninteresting to me, but I can imagine people want it. Especially since PF2 is just play testing their own attempt at this class.

I really don't understand the hostility to a D&D implementation.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

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.

Don't maneuvers and weapon masteries automatically scale as Fighters get higher level and get more attacks? The multiple attacks are the power increase. The maneuvers and masteries are the tactical option increase.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I really don't understand the hostility to a D&D implementation.

The hostility is more to the “I want this therefore WotC has to make it for me” entitled attitude. D&D has always been a do it yourself game, and as has been pointed out that that there are plenty of 3pp versions which are “perfectly good”.

 

[Minigiant]

There is a significant portion of players, maybe even a majority, that will not accept anything non WotC.

DMs

There is a significant amount of DMs who will add home rew of their choosing but will not accept homebrew of the players choosing.

Which is understandable as there is a TON of busted homebrew stuff out there and so little time to vet it

Content creators make money laughing at busted house rules and homebrew