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Monday, March 11, 2013

The Fighter is dead, long live the Warlord! (aka The #dndnext Fighter..!)


Yes sirs, this is my Provocative Order of the week (let's see who gets this).

I didn't even want to hear the podcast that was incriminated for the "killing of the Warlord in D&D Next", because reading a few comments already made the situation quite clear to me.

Let's state some fundamental points first, about what I disapprove:

  1. I don't approve arguments against "martial healing": HPs are abstract in the inner workings of the game already, such as their recovery during rests. So yes, Warlords should heal HPs at some point. Or at the very least prevent HP loss pro-actively and/or reactively (which is actually something stronger than healing).
  2. I don't approve the use of Feats to build a Warlord type of character: it kills differentiation among Warlords. So a Warlord should be viable by selecting in-class options only.
Apart from this, as you may have noticed, I would be quite happy if the Warlord became part of the Fighter class, but my whole point about this matter is that, in my view, it's more the Warlord taking a rightfully earned commanding position between the two classes, and actually BECOMING the new Fighter. Because true, it will be called Fighter on the class entry, BUT:

Which class concept is more heroic:
  1. A fighting man, who excels at fighting?
  2. A master of warfare, who excels at fighting, and is knowledgeable about tactics and strategies, and who can command and lead by example other men into battle from the front line?
Yes, what I'm saying is that the Fighter as it has always been, is a derelict idea. D&D was originally a miniature wargame. The "Fighting Man" class from which the Fighter derives is nothing but the most basic representation of what it says in the title. A fighting man. The troops.

Note that I'm not denying at all the possible heroic factor and story potential of a plain, combat-focused warrior (I wish the class would be called like that) aka Fighter. What I'm saying is that the Warlord archetype already INCLUDES the Fighter archetype. I would simply see the combat-focused Fighter as a Warlord that doesn't lead others but uses warfare knowledge to better his/her skills and fight first-handedly always, without leading anybody. A Fighter class that could permit specialization as a classic Fighter or as a Warlord, is thus, IMO, a Warlord first and foremost, because if it includes the possibility to become a true leading Warlord, it must also embed the "flavor and story" of the Warlord as a de-facto standard even for the NON-Warlord Fighter. Which is exactly what I always wanted for D&D Fighters, since I was like eight years old.

Note that I thought they had saved the Fighter some weeks ago (all this post is about the Fighter class being "saved", flavor-wise, by the contribution of the Warlord). Because some weeks ago, in a Q&A, they said something wonderful about the Fighter. Which was that the Fighter was no mere fighting man, but someone who lived following "The Way Of The Warrior" (another of the countless reasons for which I ask myself why the hell they want to call the class Fighter and not Warrior, but I digress).

See, the Way Of The Warrior is a broad concept that in Fantasy tries to engulf real-world concepts such as Bushido, Chivalry, and so on. Well, all these "higher ways" of warfare include and sometimes emphasize KNOWLEDGE over just force or skill. And many of these also include the leading and commanding skills as part of the whole "Warrior Way", among many obvious reasons also because no warrior can be a soldier forever, if not by being dead (or undead, better yet), but especially because difficult battles can only be won through good strategies, tactics, and troops' morale: they're won through good leaders. So what I say is that a class that follows the Way Of The Warrior is actually much more akin to the 4e Warlord than to the Fighter of any edition of D&D.

See, another fact is that Fighter and Warlord share exactly the same "thematic niche". Which we could summarize as the "army niche". And in this army niche, the Fighter represents the Soldier, while the Warlord represents the Officer. But people, things like these are or should be covered by Backgrounds, not Classes.
Classes exist to differentiate characters that accomplish things in different ways, and coming from different thematic niches. A Fighter and a Warlord not only come from the very same thematic niche, but even if they don't do the same things, they accomplish these different things IN THE SAME WAYS: they fight in the front lines, armed and armored, knowing about warfare, tactics and weapons. So what differentiates them is JUST their actions, and as cause or consequence of this, perhaps their personal inclination. But that's actually the same difference you can find between a protective sword-and-board Fighter and a deadly fullblade-wielding slayer Fighter: they perform different actions, achieve different effects, but they come from the same niche, and do their thing in the same way: the way of the warrior. Well I say the 4e Warlord is simply one of the paths that the Fighter can follow, or better yet, that all the possible types of Fighters actually stem from the much richer Warlord archetype, just most of the times focusing on direct combat and not leading.

Whichever way you want to see this matter, if the Warlord becomes an in-class path of the Fighter, without requiring expenditure of Feats to reach the desired archetype, it will be far from dead. Because then the same phenomenon could stem from Ranger, Rogue, Paladin, Barbarian... And we'll finally, truly, have many and awesome types of Warlords, those that the people wanting a Warlord class are calling loudly for.

UPDATE: The missing "grunt feel".

A point that @Evil Gnome rightly brings up is that this "updated concept" of Way-of-the-Warrior-master Fighter with leading capabilities wouldn't have the necessary "grunt feel" to satisfy the people who want that feel.
I'd like to clarify that to me, the "grunt feel" is all-important and is a very big part of the Way of the Warrior that the Fighter embodies. Perhaps even its whole underlying spirit. And I say the Fighter "embodies" it, because other martial classes follow The Way too, but don't commit their whole lives to it like the Fighter, because a Paladin commits first and foremost to an ideal, a Ranger to the wilderness, a Rogue to selfishness, and a Barbarian to the power of his/her emotions.

Rightly because the Fighter is or should be a true embodiment of the warrior ideals, even the most leading-focused Fighter, aka Warlord, is or should be a true beacon of "grunt feel". Take King Leonidas in 300: would you say he is low on "grunt feel"..? I would dare you to state that in front of him..! :) But he's a warlord first and foremost. And this doesn't at all make him less of a true Warrior/Fighter, on the contrary, it makes him an example for other Warriors/Fighters.

So to wrap these thoughts up, I think that the Fighter shouldn't be "a grunt class", in the sense of "just being a grunt", like a common soldier or town guard. But it should be "THE grunt class", in the sense of consciously and completely committing to the Way Of The Warrior, which actually teaches how being a "grunt" is something very noble, useful, and necessary, both in warfare and in the warrior's everyday life. So I'd argue that this new take on the Fighter actually "ups the grunt-ness level", quite as much as the 300 movie did to the world's idea of "perfect warrior". :)

8 comments:

  1. Good article with solid reasoning. We'll have to see how the playtest continues to change and what will happen. Never having playing the Warlord in 4E, I can't say much about it, but it's good to see intelligent blog posts like this talking about it. Good job! :)

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  2. This is a great idea! The Cleric was never a Leader in 4E anyways, it was a support class. The Warrior should be the Leader.

    A couple of concerns though. My first concern is that a class that fights and inspires others has existed in D&D for decades, as the Bard. In 1E Fighter levels were a requirement for the class. Maybe there's a way to combine the two and make the Bard a prestige class of the Fighter?

    My other concern is that they won't do it because it doesn't have the "grunt" feel of the old-school fighter.

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  3. @Karl: thanks a lot! :)

    @Evil Gnome: actually, I don't think only one class should be the leader, on the contrary, at the end of the post I also propose a similar treatment for many martial classes, and I didn't talk about the Bard just because I think it is already very well defined as a leader/supporter, and I don't think it needs something more to be awesome than it already is as a concept. Plus, as I said, I think that classes are ok to represent concepts that differentiate thematically, and the Bard is thematically different from basically anything else: it's the only true "accomplishes things through art" class, so it needs to stay a class.

    What I think is that basically any martial class can be a leader, because the "Way of the Warrior" (which absolutely includes the "grunt feel" IMO, as a path inside the path), is something that already includes leading. As such, the Fighter being THE Warrior class, should include THE Warlord class.
    Other martial classes would instead lead their own (unconventional) way. A Rogue that focuses on leading makes the whole party more stealthy and cunning. A Paladin that focuses on leading makes the whole party more resistant to corrupting magical effects and more imposing. A Barbarian that focuses on leading makes the whole party more resilient and reckless. A Ranger that focuses on leading makes the whole party more at home in the wild and prone to guerrilla tactics.
    But the Fighter which focuses on leading is THE martial leader. The commander, the marshal, the beacon of martial prowess, and also beacon of "gruntness", maybe. ;)

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  4. I like the reasoning you used here. The idea of the fighter being a warlord, rather than the other way around, is interesting. AD&D seemed to present the fighter evolving into a leader of fighters (building a castle, attracting followers), but initially being a singular fellow. And pretty much all editions need to have a little asterisk next to the class saying "but this is the weird person that decides to be an adventurer". (After all, any wizard should just perform services for a town and use the money to hire out adventurers to reclaim necessary stuff, using the spare time to research and craft stuff).

    My issue with what was discussed on the podcast is focused on the experience. The experience is a combination of flavor and mechanics. We can make a fighter and call them a musketeer or pirate or duelist and pretty easily carry the concept, because at the core all of those can apply a role-playing layer to their attacks. Add in a few maneuvers, a background, or specialty, and you have the concept nailed down.

    With the Warlord, the class really lept forward from the 3E Marshal days into something robust. You fought up front, but even with non-"lazy" builds it was never about your blows. It was all about how what the warlord did changed the tide of battle through the rest of the party. While we can role-play issuing commands, that really has no teeth in the gaming experience. The warlord's bonuses, healing, movement, etc. really felt like the PC was commanding and leading others. That feel isn't properly achieved by spamming a maneuver. It isn't about giving up your attack every round or giving a +x bonus to hit (or advantage). It was far deeper than that in 4E and is unlikely to be sufficiently deep in D&D Next if the tools are maneuvers.

    While I like what you wrote, my assessment is that the 'problem with warlords' is really D&D Next's 'problem with leaders'. By focusing so much on a pre-4E cleric, the D&D Next team seems to have lost touch with the advances for leader gameplay made in 4E. Because those don't exist, the warlord doesn't quite fit. If the class feature is "grant an attack," it will fall flat. And if it is "heal like a cleric", the gameplay hasn't advanced and the cleric loses uniqueness. Another problem is that the gameplay before 4E forced players to sacrifice to be the cleric, whether they wanted that role or not, because the role worked in a very narrow way (cast healing spells on affected/hurt PCs). 4E changed that, creating a multi-faceted approach. The warlord shows that brilliantly: You can prevent damage, cure damage, cause damage, tactically change things to create or prevent damage, bolster defenses, weaken foes, etc. This had far broader appeal and reduced the number of players that would not want to play the role.

    It doesn't have to be that way. I think what we need is a different approach to leaders (including the cleric) in Next. A better vision could likely bring the changes that would make the warlord (and other leaders, including the bard) fit well in D&D Next. More importantly, it would probably improve the game at a very fundamental level.

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  5. @Teos Abadia: I didn't touch the mechanical aspects, but I must say I agree with you. With the Warlorf+Fighter merge I call for (that is, the merge at a conceptual level), the leader mechanics must not come out "flat" as you well say. The "Warlord path" within the Fighter should be mechanically more complex than the classic fighting styles, at least in its purest form. Why? Because it's actually needed. The ability to enact a strategic plan is something complex, possibly even a multi-turn "power", and the current D&D Next maneuvers probably won't suffice, although they could still be used for leading, and thus to represent at least a "Leading Fighter", if not a true 4e-style Warlord. I guess that the true 4e style Warlord, or even better a true evolution of it, will belong in subsequent modules, or at the very least belong in the "Advanced rules", actually even just because of its mechanical complexity.
    I still hope that even the "Basic rules" will offer "sprinkles" of Warlord capabilities in our Fighters, that we might choose or not, or perhaps even just a pre-made "Warlord package" that in the Standard rules would reveal itself to be part of the options that any Fighter could select in-class.

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  6. When you say, "The ability to enact a strategic plan is something complex, possibly even a multi-turn "power"" , I don't really agree. Even in mapless combat we can have simple things that give a tactical feel along the lines of the 4E warlord. For example, forcing a target to attack a specific target within x' of it could be highly tactical, but works without a map. Giving an ally the ability to move its speed (or the whole party to move some amount or gain a bonus to speed) has a big tactical effect even without a map. Giving up movement (or even an action) to grant re-rolling a save (or getting advantage on the next save/skill check/etc) would work well.

    I think this could all still work in Next, and can remain simple. BUT, it can't be just one thing (like grant an attack). It could be a menu/set of options that capture that leader feel.

    The issue with combining classes is that it dilutes the experience. Having the set of options be a class feature is what give the class true presence, vs creating a situation where the experience is just a single trait that is warlordish. While that is fun (players get to choose what they want), the dilution means we don't recognize a PC as being a warlord or a fighter and over time the community of players stops seeing that iconic representation. Imagine the warlock as a build choice within wizard... it would become lost, as would bard within rogue (every rogue might dip a bit into songs now, and you cease to have bards). It can all work mechanically, but may not be a good idea for the game.

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  7. Yes well, I said "strategic plan", not "tactical plan"... ;) I differentiate the two things. Strategy is, in D&D terms, multi-turn by definition. I was actually thinking about a possible evolution beyond the Warlord we knew in 4e, speaking about multi-turn "powers".
    Anyway.

    I see exactly what you mean and I see it all very doable, but I don't agree completely when you propose the Warlock/Wizard or Bard/Rogue analogues. Sure, combining classes dilutes the flavor of one or the other class in some way. What I'm proposing here is that the one class whose flavor gets kicked is the Fighter's, mainly because its flavor is already so bland compared to the Warlord's, which actually always included the Fighter's identity within it.

    I don't agree with the analogues, or better yet, don't think they're analogues, because as I said in a comment above, a Bard is one of those classes which accomplishes perhaps not-so-unique things (Clerics can do similar things, talking about Support), but in completely unique ways. And their "thematic niche", even if perhaps near to that of the Rogue, is completely differentiated by the focus on "art as magic".

    Same for the Warlock. First of all, I don't see the Warlock as being able to cast Wizard spells, nor the Wizard able to cast Warlock spells, and then their methods are completely different. I don't even see their kinds of magic as part of the same, even if they're classified Arcane. I talk about this here: http://lord-archaon.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-arcane-triad-addendum.html - So basically, again, I see a different thematic niche.

    The true analogue that I'd see for the Warlord/Fighter dichotomy is that of Illusionists/Evokers. Same thematic niche, same methods, but one focuses on supporting and tactical effects, the other on dealing damage. And both can "borrow" the capabilities of one-another. And as we all know, Illusionists and Evokers are all Wizards...

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