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

[Undrave]

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.

Okay then, find a better name, I don't care.

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.

The Battlemaster is closer to the 4e Fighter than the Warlord, as there's like 2-3 maneuvers top that work for a Warlord flavour. It's a pinch of Warlord Spice on a patty of Fighter meat.

The problem is that while they scale in damage and (poorly) scale in usage, they don't scale in scope. They don't adapt to the challenges of higher levels. You do the same thing at level 20 you did at level 3 but with bigger numbers (that's also a problem with the Fighter in general), but not you get to pick all the maneuvers you didn't care about at level 3, ain't that wonderful?

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”.

Pfff... Please. You can't suggest 'It would be cool if WotC did a Warlord' without twenty people jumping you with 'You got the Battlemaster!' 'It's just a Fighter!' 'We don't need it!' and other platitudes.

 

[Undrave]

I think its because I never see people saying "hey, here's my homebrew <insert class name here>, what y'all think of it?" They're saying "Why hasn't WotC made this yet!?" or "This concept is missing from the game!"

I made SEVEN versions of my own Warlord before giving up?

 

[Mephista]

As a side note....

Final Fantasy 14 has a tactician class. Its called the Scholar, which is a "magic" healer class (but all the classes use magic in some way, so its a moot point), but its core set of moves involve things like tactical positioning of shields, bombardment abilities, etc. Its class quests involve people being tacticians.

I'm playing a ttrpg called Fabula Ulitma right now, and it has a Commander class that fills the same niche. By the same token, however, it doesn't have a Fighter equivalent either. Classes are... weird in that game.

Anyways. Call it what you will - scholar, tactician, commander, marshal, warlord... its definitely popular enough of a niche to exist as a fantasy concept.

I made SEVEN versions of my own Warlord before giving up?

Cool. I never seen them. Did they fall off the page really fast from a lack of responses by any chance? Or when Warlord was its own subthread here ( I avoided that one like the plague - it was so toxic you could feel the poison seeping in through the computer screen).

I tend to see a lot of positive threads getting ignored more often than posts that are designed to build animosity, as people don't engage with positive as much. Which leads us into a death spirial of no one wanting to post positive things.
Its funny, really. There are people out there that deliberately make dummy accounts that only serve one purpose - to respond with bad answers or advice to posts for the real account. Ask an honest question, little interest. Ask an honest question, then dummy post a wrong answer? SWARMS OF PEOPLE WITH THE SOLE GOAL OF PROVING THAT DUMMY WRONG!

 

[Minigiant]

That’s a highly cynical attitude. I’m certain the vast majority of content creators work very hard to make content as good as possible. Harder than WotC, the people who gave us the twilight cleric

You misunderstand me.

I mean there is a lot of niche or heavily skewed or bad homebrew content out there.

I can understand a DM banning their players or certain players from random homebrew off the Internet.

 

[SteveC]

I don't even care about the darned class myself. It's just baffling to me that people are opposed to having it. There has to be some kind of underlying reason for why this thing always becomes a debate.

My understanding (and this is 10-year-old information so it has drifted through the vicissitudes of time) but during the D&D Next playtest, there was a designer who didn't like the Warlord class. So it didn't get in.

Since then there has been a tremendous emphasis on not adding any new classes, but rather doing things through sub-classes. I think the assessment is that the Battle Master is "good enough."

The fact that this discussion is still a thing (and I remember the Warlord sub-forum) indicates to me that taking a serious stab at the class would be a good idea. As soon as I'm able to, I'm going to be playing a Commander as my primary Pathfinder Society character, so you might say I'm excited about it.

I have zero expectation that we will see the class as anything but a UA experiment, but even that would be an awesome start.

 

[Reynard]

Which is covered by Subclasses.

This statement is so wrong I have to wonder if you know what I mean when I write "prestige class."

 

[Staffan]

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.

That's just numbers going up.

At 5th level, a wizard gets to fly, deal damage in enormous AOEs, turn friend against friend, make a whole group of enemies stand around dumbfounded until they're attacked, deny enemies access to parts of the battlefield, or create shelter for the night that is perfectly safe. At 11th level, they can petrify enemies, possess them, teleport whole groups of people wherever they want, or see through any illusion.

At 5th level, the fighter gets to attack twice per round. At 11th level, thrice. Even the Battlemaster, who is the Fighter That Gets To Do Cool Stuff, doesn't get to do cooler stuff at higher levels. It's a bit like an 11th level wizard only being able to cast 1st level spells. Upcast into higher slots, sure, but still doing the piddly kind of stuff they do at 1st level.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't even care about the darned class myself. It's just baffling to me that people are opposed to having it. There has to be some kind of underlying reason for why this thing always becomes a debate.

Because adding a class, any class, is a proxy for more central disagreements about the nature of D&D. Like "Is the game better with more crunch or less crunch?" or "How much continuous mechanical support should WotC provide?" or "What's the right balance of important for official material versus DIY/3pp material?"

 

[Mephista]

My understanding (and this is 10-year-old information so it has drifted through the vicissitudes of time) but during the D&D Next playtest, there was a designer who didn't like the Warlord class. So it didn't get in.

Another aside - Mike Mearls doesn't hate the warlord. There might have been some politics going on in the background where people were gently encouraged from including 4e's poster class, and Mearls definitely is part of the "warlord should be part of Fighter" crowd. But its a bit strong to say he HATES the warlord.

Here's a link to an old design he made up, which I think is fairly cool -Warlord by

 

[Minigiant]

Another aside - Mike Mearls doesn't hate the warlord. There might have been some politics going on in the background where people were gently encouraged from including 4e's poster class, and Mearls definitely is part of the "warlord should be part of Fighter" crowd. But its a bit strong to say he HATES the warlord.

Here's a link to an old design he made up, which I think is fairly cool -Warlord by

The issue of course is many on the design team were adamant that the fighter also support the easy mode Champion. That was top priority

And this is why the Battlemaster falls to provide the Warlord fantasy