Attempts to emulate the 4e warlord

D&D 4e's warlord was arguably among the top four most mechanically powerful classes in the entire game. (Well, Intelligence warlords were, at least.) Warlords were popular among 4e players, and their mechanical concepts were novel. They were everything a party support class should have been.

Pathfinder's more recent archetypes and combat feats, a few of 5e's archetypes, and now, Starfinder's envoy (the weakest class in Starfinder) have been stumbling over themselves trying to emulate the warlord's mechanics for proactive, offense-enabling party support. All of their attempts have been lackluster at best and useless at worst.

Why is it so hard for 5e's designers, Pathfinder's designers, and Starfinder's designers to emulate the 4e warlord's tightly-written success? Why do they bother?

>Why is it so hard for 5e's designers, Pathfinder's designers, and Starfinder's designers to emulate the 4e warlord's tightly-written success?
They are shit.
People like Mike Mearls or, worse yet, the kind of people who write Pathfinder, couldn't write anything good if their life depended on it.

Mearls won't do it, because he hates the very idea. He made Purple Dragon Knight as a mockery of warlord fans, and is on the record of saying he's "very satisfied" with it.

Warlord is a martial class.
Need I say more?

Making a 5e Warlord would be easy. You basically need to take them maneuvers of a battlemaster, give them twice as many maneuver dice at half the size, give them all the features of the Purple Dragon Knight, and then put that on a fighter-Esau class, but without Fighting styles and capped at 2 attacks.

4e is just a much, much better system, mechanically speaking.

5e's battlemaster is ESSENTIALLY the warlord, but for some reason they just didn't give it any more maneuvers. Pathfinder's Inquisitor and Cavalier actually have a couple sort of warlordy archetypes and abilities I get a kick out of.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best non 5e warlord is the warlord from 13th age.

People who sperg on about the 4e warlord clearly never played the 5e bard, where the party basically didn't have to do any of their own planning, to such a point where you would just fucking force them around wherever the fuck you wanted.

Also there was literally no flavor you could give the warlord you couldn't give the bard. I played a literal battlefield commander who fought from the front lines, using his force of will and advice to literally bend reality and inspire his troops.

4e* bard

>non 5e
Nigger are you implying that the battlemaster is better than 13th age's commander?

Because those are some spicy fucking opinions right there

Non 4e*, I'm fucking up all sorts of edition numbers today

Two things the warlord had that the bard didn't:
>granting allies attacks as a core aspect
>the ability to explicitly not be a spellcaster without extensive refluffing

Proportionality. The Warlord of 4e kept up with the Strikers in terms of attacks he got, when he didn't he got some really great bonuses (ranging from +Charisma modifier to hit and to damage with movement on top to guaranteeing crits). On top of that, 4e's tight emphasis on action economy and positioning made him much more vital.

The War Chanter Paragon Path would've fit the Warlord perfectly; the fact that it also fit the Bard perfectly is just a show of similarities between that style of Bard and the Warlord. Unfortunately, most people don't think of the Bard as a swashbuckling leader inspiring his troops and wrecking shit up through tactics, they think of him as that guy that insults people and then they die.

5e and 13th age can't do warlords right, because warlords rely on positioning (de-emphasized in both) and are sorta defined by their battlefield role which is a bit too meta for 5e.

Paizo is just shit at everything but making money. I think 3rd party Path of War/Psionics stuff actually covers warlords pretty well, though.

>granting allies attacks as a core aspect

The Bard was the only one that rivaled the Warlord in terms of enabling. It was very much a core feature of the Bard.

It also required you to hit.

Bard might've been second best at enabling, but Warlord had it at-will from level 1.

Admittedly, that degree of enabling is something you could roll into the bard's class without much difficulty, but in terms of attack granting in 4e the Warlord has a pretty clear niche.

Why the flying fuck did games drift so far away from actual grid combat again? Like, I understand making your game relatively compatible with theater of the mind games, but don't do it in such a way that people who want to play with grids can't do anything fun with them anymore. Have you played games like 13th age and FATE during combat? It's either everyone is engaged so tightly that you can smell each other's earwax or the game is a constant cacophony of people griping over how they can get into X range of X without going through X and the GM just pulling an answer out of their ass.

5e made movement fun and interesting.

I always found that at-will hilarious.

Just the idea of this guy fighting next to my Ranger or whatever, screaming at him so hard that he develops a burst of superhuman speed with which to make a second attack. My dude just nervously eyeing the Warlord in case he's about to explode from overshouting or something, trying to position so that he doesn't catch a burst of cartilage shrapnel when it finally happens.

If you want find out enter your nearest LCS when they have a D&D play night.

Chances are nobody in the entire store has purchased literally anything other than to PHB.

Bard actually does have an attack granting at-will, staggering note (which is amazing for Mark of the Storm builds)

Not always, but you're right in that the Warlord was basically free from that. That said, the Warlord also had a fair share of powers where he HAD TO hit.

So had the Ardent, the Bard and the Shaman (Ire Strike, Staggering Note, Claws of the Eagle/Spirit Infusion). The Warlord was ahead on all of them because his kit was designed around granting attacks, but the Bard (and to a lesser extent, the Shaman) could rival him. The Warlord's thing was that he could do it in way more different ways. The others just granted, the Warlord granted them and in some cases they nearly became normal attacks.

4e's metaphorical crucifiction made everyone hesitant to lean towards the game side of the Role Playing Game. 4e was already a massive game to begin with, emulating it is seen as basically impossible by /4eg/ folks due to the sheer volume of material. And it "lost" the edition war. Most just kind of go "well, if fucking D&D couldn't make it, we can't either" when that happens. Also, it means that you have to bring maps for every section, and while 4e helped a lot for DMing on the fly, that bit was a bit hard unless you had graph paper and pencils.

There is another one which is screaming FROM FAR AWAY, which manages to be even more hilarious.

Personally, the grid is the thing I like least about 4e. It makes combat longer and, in my experience, plays a huge part in pulling the players out of character and into more of a gamist headspace. I've talked to others with similar experiences, so I've got a hunch that might be part of the reason.

Fuck me sideways. I'm less in touch with the 4e power list than I thought.

One day I'm going to write a extremely detailed explanation of how Wizards listening to their player base ran 4e of a cliff edge because apparently Veeky Forums has forgotten how a bunch of White Wolf Vampire LARPers insisted on the changes like removing multiclassing, talent trees and pre-defined roles and Hasbro thought they spoke for the majority.

Please do, it sounds like a great storytime.

Which system are you looking to emulate a Warlord in?

3.5's Warblade and Crusader both had the nascent concept of "Warrior who helps other warriors warrior better" in the form of the White Raven discipline of maneuvers. They ranged from options to weaken enemies for allies to take advantage of (+4 to hit target you've struck, target struck must save or be flat-footed, take additional damage,) to options to protect and maneuver allies for advantageous positioning or strategic withdrawal (If you hit with this maneuver, adjacent ally may move a certain distance without provoking reprisal, move ally's turn from the order to directly after yours) and even offensive options centered around leading your team into the fray (Charge as part of this maneuver, deal +10 or +35 damage if you hit, no attacks of opportunity for this movement). It culminates in the Battlemaster's Charge maneuver, in which you and all nearby allies may make a charge action provoking no AOOs, and your allies deal +25 damage if they hit with this action while the initiator deals +50 if they hit.

Paizo doesn't follow up on this, but Dreamscarred Press's Path of War includes the Golden Lion discipline with a very similar move-set and opportunity-providing setup.

Because they're not actually designers, they're hacks.

As such, all their work is hacky.

True.

5e Mystic class, Order of the Avatar subclass. The Mantle of Command is more like the Int Warlords, while the Aura of Courage and Fury are more like the Cha Warlords. Just make sure to get the Psionic Restoration discipline as well so that you can actually heal people rather than just giving them temporary HP.

They don't really make all that good 4e-style warlords.

That's excellent. totally stealing it.