This whole bit of the convo started because I said that martial exploits and magical spells aren't actually mechanically very distinct and that a lot of spells could work pretty easily as martial exploits. Showing that to be true means showing that, for instance, the distance between circle of power (the paladin spell) and circle of power (the warlord exploit) is a matter of a few largely aesthetic choices that are easy enough to change. So, it sounds like you basically agree with my point: that the distinction between a daily martial exploit and a daily magical spell is mostly that one is not described as magic and the other is.
I do not at all agree with you on that.
Actual martial exploits are not like that. What is the "circle of power" Warlord exploit? My sources indicate no such power ever existed in 4e--so unless you've got some hidden source I don't have access to (exceedingly unlikely), you're just making a circular argument. You've
declared that the 5e spell
circle of power is already a Warlord exploit, without actually justifying why it should be one. You've said it is by fiat, but that fiat declaration does not make it so.
So you can see why I'd disagree with this:
It sounds like you agree that essentially writing "it's not magic" next to a spell doesn't mean changing it so significantly it would be barely recognizable.
I certainly do agree that that doesn't change it so that it is barely recognizable. In fact, such a change is completely irrelevant. It's still a spell. Your writeup even explicitly says it is: "For you, spells are called exploits". Your Warlord
is a spellcaster. They're just spells that have been made easier to cast and immune to most of the counters to spells, which is exactly what others in this thread complained about as Warlord fans wanting: being full-fledged spellcasters with few to none of the drawbacks. I reject that pathway completely.
I mean, we can define whatever "should" we want, but this all increases the barrier to "official creation." Maybe that's not really the goal, in which case, let's go HAM
It is the goal. But making something that wears the skin-suit of the Warlord, while in actuality being in no way a Warlord and indeed being precisely the "spellcaster pretending to be martial with no downsides," would be
worse than the situation we have now. At least the situation we have now does not validate the haters.
Further, I deeply disagree that this would ever be acceptable. The designers would look at it and say, "Why don't you just play a Bard then...like we already told you to?" And, as noted, the fans would look at it and say, "Wow, that's stupidly broken, no, not at all acceptable." I think your method is doomed to failure right out the gate.
Is part of the answer, "Because a true warlord equivalent would require a separate class?" Because then we can talk about why 5e just doesn't want to add new classes in general and why the warlord is required to be one and why the Fighter, Rogue, and Cleric are eating everyone's lunches and making more classes difficult to implement because of their conceptual broadness.
I mean, yes, both of those things are problems. WotC's refusal to consider the possibility that 13 classes is not sufficient to cover the space of character concepts that the braod spectrum of D&D fans are passionate about, and the annoying "so broad it can be asserted to cover everything, so narrow that it can't be reworked to cover anything new" nature of several of 5e's classes.
I had understood the conversation to have moved on from that, which was answered almost immediately, and to "okay, well, (a) what would actually qualify as a Warlord to the folks who want one, and (b) what, among those things, would be workable within 5e and recognizing the preferences of the fanbase at large?"
My Warlock-inspired proposal is an attempt to thread that needle. I can ensure that it clears (a) by, y'know, being a Warlord fan myself and sharing my ideas with others who are such (which, in general, such folks have responded positively to the concept, that's part of why I have kept it!) My task then is to work on it so that it passes both aspects of (b): it is palatable to at least a reasonable slice of folks who aren't necessarily Warlord fans, and it preserves the
spirit of the 4e roots while speaking in the language of 5e. Hence why I refer so frequently to "translating" mechanics; a good translation does what it can to capture the meaning of the text and the feelings it evokes, even if that sometimes means minor deviations from a perfect translation. "Non-magical" spells (again, as distinct from non-magical "spells," because these
are spells, you've just fiat declared that these spells are somehow not magic) are not a minor deviation, they're a complete abandonment of the meaning of the text. It would be like claiming that Wonder Woman is a translation of Homeric hymns. There's an inspiration there, but it's absolutely not the same text presented in a new tongue.
Aragorn calls upon a ghost army. It's not exactly out of pocket.
And literary sources are not the best to copy 1:1 for game design, no? Because if we're copying LotR for our classes, every Wizard should be Gandalf, an angelic demigod in humanoid form holding back the majority of his strength because his divine superiors have told him not to use it, as the time of divine intervention in mortal affairs is coming to an end. Just because Aragorn does a thing does not mean it's reasonable as a class feature. It's also a thing he does exactly once, in a way that is explicitly called out as unique and distinctive and--you guessed it--
magical. It's a mystically binding oath. In 5e terms, that would be some kind of "Other Reward," most likely falling under Mark of Prestige (specifically, him being the scion of Isildur and bearing the reforged sword Narsil, and thus able to call in the oath that the men of the mountain swore to his ancestor) or possibly a Blessing.
Such things are best understood as a collaboration between DM and player. They
certainly don't justify a random level 9 drill sergeant being able to summon angels to his side.
We just had a whole thread about how we should allow martial characters remarkable powers, too. It's also not intrinsically magical on the part of the warlord. We don't have to limit warlords to "shout heal good" any more than rogues need to be limited to "skill check good."
I would not want to limit them so, but that doesn't really answer the question. "Support" means a lot of things. It's quite possible to make a supportive character who rarely heals (though, IMO, every Warlord needs to at least have the option to do so, or at least the ability to take or ignore the option to do so.)
But I think you're smart enough to see that the idea of "I summon these angels with divine magic" and "I summon these angels because I am a legendary commander of armies and the hosts of heaven are glad to serve at my call" are very similar effects, mechanically, which is the meat of the point - that the mechanical distinction between magical and not magical is not all that deep of a valley, and can be crossed fairly trivially, even when it comes to summoning angels.
They're similar effects because they are literally the same effect. You're just pretending that the latter is somehow not magical. Nothing you have said, at all, actually
makes them not-magical. That's why it's so hilarious to have the "It's Not Magic" disclaimer. The disclaimer is in
blatant contradiction with the actual thing being done.
I am far,
far from wanting to limit the utility and effectiveness of a Warlord class, or martial classes in general. I'm sure you've seen me go off on a tear about that more than once. But the solution isn't to literally carbon-copy actual straight-up magic with a little label-maker sticker put on it declaring "Not Magic! No Magic Here! We Pinky Swear!"
Like...your point is that they're similar. They are similar. Because they're essentially the same. You haven't taken the magic out. You've just pretended that the magic
that is still there is somehow gone now, because you declared it gone. It isn't. It's right there for all to see.
