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

Mecheon said:

Yeah I'ma just. Doubt that one significantly. I know Bladesinger is an uncannily good tank but, you can't draw a tank out of every class.

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Clerics in Heavy Armor and Druids are born to tank.

Warlocks go Hexblade, max strength and Constitution, Variant Human and start with heavy armor proficiency, Heavy Armor Master at 4th level. Armor of Agathys, then Blur at 3rd level, Shadow of Moil art 7th. Pick up Feindish Vigor and Tomb of Levistus as an Invocations.

Rogues play Arcane Trickster, get Medium Armor through a Race then pick up heavy armor or alternatively medium armor master through a feat at 4th level. You can do this either with a dex build or a stength build. If you do it dex you probably want to start as Variant Human or Custom so you have shield proficiency.

Sorcerer you play a Mountain Dwarf, Divine soul. Max strength, Con and 14 Dex, Greatsword or Maul. Heavy Armor at level 4, Heavy Armor Master at level 8. Shield spell and Shield of Faith, false life, absorb elements. You aren't using a shield in this build but your AC is still plenty high and you have a bag of hit points because you are using highest level slots on false life.

Bard is really the most difficult, but it is doable even there. Start Variant Human or Custom with Medium Armor and shield. Go Valor Bard. This is really the weakest and this character by using spell slots for healing word as a bonus action. You are also going to leverage the combination of Defensive Flourish and Silvery Barbs.

To tank, those casters are going to run a low casting stat and they are going to use spells for defensive options, temp hit points or healing, but they are all workable as a tank.

Mecheon said:

Plus, with healer out? The only roles left are... DPS and tank, which, yeah, the other classes are doing, but not well

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

Mecheon said:

If we're using "Can't be a tank" to exclude classes then we'd be kicking the rogue out of the game

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Rogue is doable as a tank. There are actually two ways to do it on point buy:

1. Mountain Dwarf. S17 D10 C17 I14 Level 4 Heavily Armored, Level 8 Heavy Armor Master, Level 10 ASI (20 STR/18Con), Level 12 Tough ... Arcane Trickster for Blade cantrips, shield, blur - AC 18 (23 with shield), HAM and uncanny dodge to reduce damage

2. Variant Human-Moderately Armored. S10 D17 C16 I14 Level 4 Medium Armor Master, level 8 tough, level 10 Con ASI, Level 12 Con ASI. Arcane Trickster for blade cantrips, PEG, Blur. AC 20, uncanny dodge to reduce damage

With cunning action dash I think either of these Rogues will tank better than most Barbarians at most levels.

Undrave said:

Hot take: Design class to be able to stand on their own is why they all feel a little flat. I much rather they interact more. I don't think classes should be designed for solo play. That said, a 4e Warlord was still a Martial Class capable of wielding martial weapons and wearing armor and could thus buff each other very well. A party of Warlord would actually be extremely efficient.

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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.

MuhVerisimilitude said:

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.

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If there's hostility, it's probably because it's a fundamentally 4e concept, not just in terms of the fact that it was a 4e class, but a class specifically designed for 4e mechanics that emphasized distinct party roles that many have expressed disliking in terms of the traditional D&D aesthetic. Trying to frame that as diplomatically as possible.

But I think most are not so much hostile to the concept as unsure of how to translate it to 5e's very different design principles, where each class is intended to work autonomously.

Edit: thinking about it, the concept of having a "warlord" in the party telling my character what to do would definitely bug me, but I don't really see warlords that way, and in my limited 4e experience they were generally treated more as a support class than a "leader" class, despite their title. I don't feel hostile to the warlord concept, but I do feel unsure why it is needed and how it would fit in 5e.

ECMO3 said:

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.

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Hiring them was standard. Hirelings (or followers) were much more integral to the game back then. They're one of the reasons that old school dungeons weren't as deadly as often represented. At least, not as deadly to the PCs. We had hirelings to do a lot of the boring and deadly stuff.

Vaalingrade said:

But then came the Champion. The Champion is the simple, newbie friendly class that can't have interesting choices or abilities; it's got to be all passives. And a subclass can never replace or override class features for whatever design philosophy reason (the demon 'Simplicity', probably).

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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.

What is easy to play is an Invocation Wizard. Not saying it has to be easy, or that it is easy to build but it can be very easy to play - Stay away from the front, take these spells, cast this one when you get hit, this one to damage a bunch of enemies, this one to damage one enemy and shoot your crossbow when you don't want to cast a spell.

Casters have complex choices but in the case of Wizard and Sorcerer they are complex build choices, not complex playing choices and where new players have difficulty is with in game playing choices.

The absolute best classes for a newbie is a Draconic Sorcerer because they are the easiest and most straightforward to play.

Undrave said:

No DM I ever played with remembered Inspiration felt like a very underdeveloped concept compared to 4e Action Points. If it had a bit more 'oomph' mechanically and each class had a specific feature that keyed off it, I think it wouldn't be so forgettable.

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I agree. This was earlier days of 5e, and I had a DM who remembered it well, and I played my bard to the hilt to constantly role play those traits and flaws, and then avidly cheered for any other players who did the same or did something super cool in the game. If you have anyone at the table actively working to make those things meaningful, they become meaningful to the table.

My fellow players loved me. I was encouraging their role playing, and I was also giving them a constant flow of mechanical bonuses for what they were doing. And nobody seemed to care my direct contribution to combat with my bard was mediocre. I made everyone else shine.

Mirrorrorrim said:

All a Fighter "Warlord" subclass needs is a broad "Maneuver/Exploit" system, similar to the Battle Master or Invocations, and a few support abilities at subclass levels. Many special ability concepts/ideas can exist, but individual Warlords don't get them all. They have to choose from the options at level-up. (This works similar to 4E because despite a Warlord having lots of options in character-building/progression, they didn't get access to all of them at any time.)

Warlord/Commander subclass:
L3: Exploit System based on an at-will to short-rest recharge. Run numbers to see if it needs a scaling die like the Battle Master's Combat Superiority, or if the scaling should work differently.
L3: Choose between 3 buffs, one for each Mental ability score. These can really cater to existing Warlord themes.
L7: Enhance Exploit access/options. Scaling die bump if that is needed?
L7: Get decent ability usable by any type of "Warlord" can use.
L10: Choose between 3 new great abilities tied to your preferred Mental ability score.
L15: Enhance Exploit access/options. Scaling die bump if that is needed?
L18: Choose between 3 capstone abilities for your preferred Mental ability score.

Just give lots of options to choose from at the appropriate levels, like a Warlock's invocations, Battle Master Fighter's maneuvers, or Totem (Wildheart) Barbarian's totem spirit options.

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Thats the lazy way, yeah. I want a class with subclasses tho.

Shardstone said:

You should actually olaytest it like me and many others have. You are far off the mark and way too confident in your casual analysis.

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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 and all spell slots going to healing word 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.

Yaarel said:

The 5e Warlock is AEDU. The cantrips are Atwill, the slots are Encounter, the Arcanums are Daily, any of them can be Utility, and the Invocations might be any of them.

Suppose mages (or some mage subclasses) have access to a nonmagic "Martial spell school". These are defacto spells, using the spell format, but called "maneuvers" (techniques, stances, exploits) when strictly nonmagical mechanics. This is an effective way to build a gish. It can even build a rigorously nonmagical Warlord.

If a Bard, Cleric, or Paladin serves as the chassis for the Warlord, it has Atwill maneuvers/cantrips, and Daily slots. Plus various class features. The Daily maneuver description can be anything. For example, its Duration can be a 24-hour always-on "stance". This stance can grant an Atwill benefit for the duration of the stance, and in addition, with "great exertion" a dramatic effect, which requires a Short Rest to do again.

Anything that 4e powers can do, 5e spells can do.

A "Martial spell school" can be a helpful design approach to achieve a "full" 5e Warlord.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of this approach is caster-martial balance. When gish players are using a same spell slot to choose between a Martial maneuver or an Arcane spell, it becomes crystal clear which option is more powerful and which options are about equal to each other. Designers can use this precise information to carefully fix any issues with Martial classes.

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I think you underestimate the AEDU system if you think it’s only about cool down timers. Keywords mattered, and powers often had bonus riders that were dependent on your class feature picks.

What’s the point of playing a non-caster if it uses the same damn spell slot system? I think it would be wiser to instead equate Superiority Dice to Spell Points, where you have higher level maneuvers that require you spending superiority dice equal to their level. I would even go as far as simply have the superiority dice entirely replace the weapon damage dice when rolling for a maneuver’s damage.

Shardstone said:

I've ran several of these in my games from levels 1-10 and 3-10 and they've never been OP. On top of that, it has been through well over 20 rounds of edits and a huge amount of playtesting from his patreon and other strangers on Reddit and discord. While it doesn't have 500K playtests behind it, I can assure you it is balanced and does nothing to disrupt the game.

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Yeah. I am familiar with LaserLlama Psion. His design is thoughtful, innovative, and balances robustly.