Disaster Barbarian subclass – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

April 18, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

hello everyone and welcome back to the mic myrtles happy fun hour I am your host Mike Murrells and I am the franchise creative director on Dungeons & Dragons and each week we spend an hour together custom building a unique element for the fifth edition of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game this week we’re gonna take a look at a new barbarian subclass the it started as the Marauder barbarian it kind of transformed into like a 2 weapon fighting barbarian and now we’ve got a volcano barbarian and you know I thought you know this is actually kind of yeah and don’t forget handy dandy dandy beyond which is like it took our sidekick on our journey it’s the the Chewbacca to our Han Solo the handy dandy Mike Merle’s yeah I hope I’m dandy dandy and helping you out but I’m gonna give you a little taste now of something which people who work with me maybe have to put up with and now you get to put up with it I tend to like when I design I find that I like to just do the work and let the work inspire me rather than like just do a lot of just kind of hanging out and thinking about it so we’re gonna take a bit of a detour we’ve got the volcano barbarian he’s not going anywhere don’t worry about it but if you played fourth edition D&D you might have remembered there was a character class called the warden and the warden was a I thought it was a really fun class I really liked it the idea behind the warden was you were like this warrior who could transform into like different not creatures like you weren’t turning into like a bear but you’d like take on some sort of like aspect of nature and use that to channel power to defend your your your to defend your allies you were a tanky kind of character so I was thinking about that because I always I really liked the warden was one of my favorite classes of all like all the new classes we added to the game with fourth edition the warden was probably one of my favorites because I just loved the the flavor of it and I loved the the idea that you could like transform to something really like literally like Hulk oh the so it’s it’s not bad fourth right I’m not here to try to convince you that if you didn’t like fourth edition I’m not here to change your mind but I’m saying this is a cool character class I really like playing it so just focus on the story layer if you didn’t like the fourth issue mechanics let’s just focus on the story layer which is basically you played the Incredible Hulk all right like you turned into stuff right like a big you know big burly thing and I was thinking about what the bulk of the volcano barbarian because last week I for some reason said as we’re working on it and like I don’t want this guy to be supernatural and I thought wait why you’re a volcano barbarian like why say yeah super saiyan northland kyla right like exactly right the what why limit ourselves that way we can take a more sort of mundane approach to a barbarian if you want but as i thought about like the volcano barbarian and i started thinking like wait why am i saying no like overtly supernatural abilities and then like I was thinking the twin fighting thing and thought does that really fit with volcano maybe that fit with like a whirlwind barbarian and I thought that’s actually kind of cool we got like these kind of like yeah like this idea of a barbarian who literally becomes like a whirlwind like a storm and then like that’s when I started thinking okay we’ve gotten the players handbook we already have one subclass of the Barbarian the totem warrior and I thought totems are cool like who doesn’t like bears Eagles and wolves right like like I’m not gonna bag on bears Eagles and wolves right there’s some like the very very fine products of nature like why be a bear when you can be a volcano or like a hurricane right the like well I’d be kind of a cool path right at least you know I hope so I mean if you guys hate that go ahead and like no spam chat but you know I think it might be kind of fun to build something around this idea of like disasters right now right and that’s the thing a storm Harold and the kitten hugs you’re one step ahead of me because the first thing I thought was wait a sec let’s make sure we had we’re not reinventing the wheel so let’s slide over to Zanna thar’s guide to everything which had the path of the storm hurled now a path that storm held is similar to the path of the totem in that you have a number of subsets of things you’ve desert sea and tundra um now I’ve said this a billion times and I’ll say it for 1 billion plus 1 times now that this class is going to disaster yeah cue me yeah hopefully not but as Astrid a good way we’ll see maybe I won’t do this we’ll see like this is live right you’re seeing pure game design happening right in front of your eyes so let’s take a peek at the the storm herald features we don’t balance against books be on The Player’s Handbook like we don’t try to worry too much about likability comps but we do want to make sure we’re not reinventing concepts we already have and I think that is good when you think of the whirlwind like we don’t want to just go ahead and say look it’s the that’s just the storm or right and looking to the storm or here the basic idea behind the storm Harold was to really create this more supernatural feeling barbarian and you can see some of this essentially with the storm Harold when you rage you create an aura extends 10 feet around you in every direction but not through total cover so not through walls and it’s each one desert sea and tundra creates a different effect in that aura desert does fire damage not aura it’s all other creatures so can hurt your friends see is let’s see when you activate it you choose an off someone in your aura they have to make a saving Thoreau taking some damage this is a good example as a quick aside you look at desert and see desert is small amount of auto damage to everything sea is a bit more damage but it’s directed and this is one of those things which is like an interesting thing to balance it’s a good example some it kind of requires play test desert hoses your friends so it’s just a natural thing of like how comfortable the people feel with that C is less damage to add up the amount of damage does overall but it’s directed it because if you notice it here at sea it only happens once when this effect is activated choose one creature it makes a dexterity saving throw or takes two intakes damage and then Tundras is defensive so creatures of your choice getting to temporary hit points good example of something that’s a buff we typically once a every creature because the tundra guy if you’re buffing people you want to be near your near your friends but since you’re a barbarian you’re gonna be probably engaging enemies so just really for playability it would just be really irritating to give you friends temporary hitpoints and your enemies potatoes what we’re saying here something that’s its aura based so what this tells me is if I want to do something more magical with the volcano guy and potentially a world wouldn’t a character I don’t want a peon aura it’s good and this is kind of what pushed me toward thinking something much more transformative something that is more I am changing as the barbarian rather than I’m changed in the environment around my around me pop because I just I want to make sure conceptually these two things are very separate it also means I can’t take the cheesy way out and say well you transform into a fire thing and everything near you takes damage because that’s just an aura right so and then we can see here at with storm soul a similar pattern we’ve seen some of the other ones at this level we were getting a buff these are just benefits even when your aura isn’t active so resistance looks like each of them is getting a type of resistance and some other minor effect tenth level the your granting the damage resistance you get from your six sub level ability to creatures allies in your aura again giving buffs to enemies doing damage to friends is we kind of see this being okay cuz especially for very offensive character you don’t mind being a bit on your own but granting benefits to friends to ACTU enemies we try to avoid that because it’s just it gets sticky and you feel like you’re just you’re losing ground typically in play test those abilities just end up not getting used people just feel very very wary of giving a benefit to the to the bad guys and then xiv level your r grows more powerful so let’s see immediately after creature for desert after creature and the or hits you you can use a reaction to do some damage to it with see when you hit a creature in your aura you can use your reaction to potentially knock it prone and in tundra you’re granting you temporary hit points you choose one creature in your aura you can really reduce its speed to zero so that’s a good example you know of this these auras and the idea that it’s changing as you gain levels and you gain some other flavorful effects the interesting thing about this one is if you notice the we talked yes time but having four features and trying to make two of them usable with your rage and two two of them not this one is using three of them is stacking them all up on top of your age um but you know what play doesn’t seem to work out fine I think what helps it is storm soul it’s pretty useful getting a resistance especially against something like fire that’s great you know that you’re gonna face a lot of fire creatures breathing underwater in a swim speed foresee this is a good example of something where we design it assuming you’re gonna be playing a nautical campaign like you can Mike might just take this for flavor but we figure you know what since it’s one option amongst three inside of a subclass we’re more okay with it getting more niche all right so this is what we’re doing we’ve got ourselves a interesting potential place I haven’t seen a riot in chat and and Jeremy my producer every here is not like you know grab me and stop me from speaking so I think I think we’re okay maybe going in this direction excited uh I don’t see like a massive protest against it but I do think what we’ve seen is we’ve kind of established our design space we’ve said okay well I’ve said Chad hasn’t objected that maybe doing this transformational approach might be interesting we see something to make you know so a danger sign we don’t want to go with an AR effect so that kind of reinforces that initial idea I had for something transformational the I think I think that’s where we want to go so what it means is because I want to do this sometimes when your designer you get to do stuff because you just want right and cross sex fire I’m trained in writing oh I would watch it if you start writing I’ll keep an eye on you make sure you don’t you don’t leave things up the okay so what it means is we’re going to recon something just a little bit we’re gonna do something more transformational in our rage and we’re gonna do some subtypes like we’d have here with our path of the storm herald barbarian and our totem barbarian so let’s pop back use our handy dandy D&D Beyond website to go back to the Player’s Handbook because it’s gonna remember conceptually we’ll look at other books but for balance we want to make sure we stick stick with the players handbook don’t venture too far from there we will go down to the Barbarian and let’s start building our class so I liked it I liked a disaster totem or something like that I’m just quit disaster breviary ran again hopefully this doesn’t describe our design efforts it’s more what’s going on here and I’m gonna keep this text here but I think what I want is transformational Hulk oh you change not the environment and something that we built on last week this idea that a lot of your features oh our Tomatoes Derick yeah this does reopen the possibility of the Marauder cuz I think what we’re saying is this guy’s not gonna as much about weapons you know I think that idea that weapon fighting barbarian is just something people think of a barbarian with two axes if you played Diablo like that just seems natural and so I think that means it probably isn’t good at manifested here maybe it will we’re not sure yet but I think that means that that’s probably another a niche to play with so you change not the environment and it’s you know disaster themed so its destructive right we want something that is like it literally feels like The Incredible Hulk right like you want something it feels like a force of nature and that’s what I liked about the warden I like the idea that when you transformed as a warden you really started affecting you know now the warden had some AR effect so I don’t want to go there but I just like the idea like you take on a form like this really mythic form I mean played Magic the Gathering I think it was at the Forgotten ancient pull up some art here like this is kind of what now this is the more the warden this idea transformed into like this like woodland creature but yeah I just like the idea that you were humanoid but look very different you know and this may be kind of inspark maybe inspired me to think of the Hulk the I’m not sure and I’m like nervous about just starting to Google because I don’t know we’re gonna get any icon not safe for work results but so I’m not just start googling images but that is part of the design step for me I’ll often just type in a few descriptive phrases in Google and see what comes up I’ll go through things like Magic the Gathering cards right and just look at some of the art and let some of that inspire me so the I think the original if you’re curious if you played for the addition the original concept for the warden there is a it was onslaught block and had this idea of the as the block went on is there released more sets that the creatures and it started to transform and the elves became more and more like woodland creatures and I really like that feel to it so the yeah that’s something that I think would be that that was really inspiring for the ward and it’s kind of inspiring me here so the disaster theme destructive means we’re gonna have this AC we’re gonna build out our our futures and I have three options under each that tie into different sort of disastrous elements of nature volcano being one of them so I think the defining ability is you know we had it when you raid you turn into our tornado of attacks you know we had this idea back to the Marauder so essentially what we want is a transformational element when raging you get stuff and I think what we want is volcano I’m gonna say hurricane instead of whirlwind because it’s more of a natural disaster and oh look share DVI both earthquake like it let’s do it earthquake boom I like how you think my friend so there we go so we’ve got three we got kind of a fire themed air theme the elements coming back right I don’t know what the if that’s air or we need water we’ll get the one out we’ll do that later soon a V yeah I’ll guess I don’t to be like so on the nose with the elements but we’ll see if I’m inspired maybe what we’ll go for like title waivers or tsunami the okay Erin’s asking for it so I’ll just put it in there we go you asked I you ask I deliver if I am fickle enough to feel like I want to do it so I think we wanted to volcano is this idea of heat destruction through fire probably the most like of the four volcanoes probably the most just boom I just I just hurt you right hurricane you know Harkonnen tsunami gonna be interesting to differentiate because I think of both of them as like forces of nature that come at you you know heating with a lot of force moving stuff around let’s skip that one real quick so I think earthquake is me pretty simple to meet the UH knocking people prone right you’re gonna be every step you take it makes the ground move yeah eruption that might be a good way to think of it is idiots the eruption it’s a smoldering anger the hurricane yield the idea of winds that Buffett I kinda like the idea of the student the tsunami being something like you know the maybe a middle ground conceptually between the volcano and the hurricane there is that eruption aspect to it you think of a hurricane it hits over a long period of time so that might be something to do with the to its of enduring with the other three happen than the end tsunami hits I mean it’s a disaster they’re all disasters but there’s one event so I think that might be something to differentiate the hurricane and I’m sure if they’re in water that buffets because that’ll just give us a conceptual concept I’m gonna put higher peak than hurricane just so we kind of remember that we see the hurricane is maybe something that’s gonna kind of stick around a little bit more alright I’m not gonna worry about these notes I’m gonna actually save them for later I’ll just dump them to the end of my file and whatever I’m working inward the end of my file always ass ends up being like a graveyard of like sentence fragments that maybe I’ll use maybe I won’t this is kind of more for what they had the cons of the Marauders let’s jump this back here into our word graveyard and here we go okay so this is a mere transformational element normally this stage I just start working on the third level one if you see me work but what I want to do really quickly because we’re doing four of them in parallel I find it helps to go through and build the structure across all the levels first because kind of forces me to think ahead a little bit what I don’t want to do is end up like of these four I’m really happy with it but then I find like oh the sixth level slot I’m having trouble with two or even three of them so what we have here something it’s more utility we have – as a bonus action what I really want here is some utility outside of rage and if we see here we’ll go down here and take a look at the totem at six level you know this is one thing we do I do find these kind of week now see I’m allowed to like speak ill of the game cuz I worked on it right but one of the things it’s like okay you can see mama these are really super flavourful I don’t know if they’re necessary the best template but we don’t want to go too far from where we are what I’ll probably do is a tenth bubble here we’ve got like commune with nature that you can cast as a ritual that’s rectally really useful so I’m probably the kind of blending these two to try to get like two things that feel a little more exciting the there’s a lot of these these three here very high berries they’re pretty situational I know I like in my own games I very rarely even care about carrying capacity the so what whoa so what I want to do throw you here is throw another yeah you know I’ll keep that because I mean I want to use that but now they’re you know useful utility and I think at 14th we want to make upgrade our rage because I think if you’re if you’re transforming into something you want to get a real sense of it’s getting better you get a level up we can deal with some of that in the core ability but I think having somebody to look forward to like that that new level of power it’s maybe like what keeps you playing a character up through high levels I’ll be on obviously the story alright so I think we’ve got a pretty good structure here the rage upgrade should be pretty simple I’ll just remember when I build these that I just want to have leave room for it to add something which that that’s pretty simple and I think six and ten I think not only do I want to make these utility I might have like one of them also do a give you a utility benefit when you’re aging to get that real sense like maybe we can put a movement mode or something in the 10 all right so here’s what I want to do for volcano I love this idea of the eruption like going Nova so let’s say this you are a volcano I’m gonna give you a few bullet that’s just throwing some bullet points here so an immediate thing would be fire damage we do other desert doing that in an RSO maybe fire damage if you are hit you can use your reaction and then you know what I’m kind of thinking is that you get say immune to fire while raging your rage damage can be fire and maybe we do something we play with that rage damage how about this the once per rage you get to go Nova and you can triple your damage bonus once per rage the funny thing about that is remember way back when we were talking about having a to up and fighting barbarian this section might be something which is pretty good for two weapon fighting guy cuz if you’re tripling that damage bonus you want to get as many to tax out there as possible this might be broken it might not be who knows oh so many I’m Remy drew let to hope I’m bouncing that right resistant fire not immune yeah I think actually it’s a good point because I think immunes a little too good third level that’s make e resistant I don’t want to just ignore the dragon’s breath that feels a little little too over-the-top the O cross very much the Nova at the end of rage one thing that’s tricky with that we’ve tried to play tested mechanics like that I think one of the forms we tried one of the ones we tried was a look at the very end of the rage something happens would often what we found was the players would feel like oh we won we won and my rage isn’t over yet you’d feel a little a little bit of a letdown we also had something which to rate us a sage helm our we had ones let you rate and your anger rage early and what we found was players felt like it just was turning rage into another spell what often would happen is like the ideal form is you rage you’re using a rage for a couple rounds then you’re like oh I need to I need something to really take us over the top I’ll use our use my rage power what often would happen is people would rage and then immediately end the rage to use the boost because I just kind of viewed it as oh I get let’s say they’ll let you cast fireball I join a cast fireball I rage in the rage fireball or whatever it was so I’m a little leery of going that direction it’s something which you know that that’s a case where our playtesting has shown that so far there might be a way to solve for that the I don’t want to go there quite yet though I think that what I’d what I’d want to do is go through and build out the class and then see is there a way we could add something like that in or find so it implement it that that’s works but a little house in the past but it’s a good example of you know just because it hasn’t worked in the past it doesn’t mean like we just wouldn’t try it again it just means we always want to learn from it like we know just implementing it the way it was we tried in play test that’s not gonna work right we need to find some of their other flourish to it the who love emote store fire damages you take hits her up on your foe that’s not the path we could go looking at to um and you know I’d like that let that feel right I’ll actually put a question mark there maybe that’s a way you can you can trigger you know I you know that’s an interesting approach because what that means is you want to get attacked but it also has a nice thing of if it doesn’t end your rage but something you can trigger if you’re really outnumbered you feel like oh this is good like what a lot of games are call a comeback mechanic and a lot of games it has to be competitive games if one person starts losing ah they just start losing more because maybe you know you’re playing and someone let’s say in a strategy game you lose a battle which maybe means you lose resources and your ne is gang resources and now there’s a you know each loss means the divide is growing wider what this would kind of fun here is if it’s like if you’re really outnumbered this actually gets better you know this idea that rather than the loss necessarily making the gap wider like it is widening but there might all be abilities that kick in only when a gap is it a certain thing a classic example would be imagine a spell in a competitive game that was like deal one damage to every enemy one damage might not be a lot in your game system but since it’s every enemy if there’s a lot of enemies on the board especially if they’re units that are left over from prior fights the mayor do you have damage on them you can use this pretty simple spell and take out a lot of enemy units at once and close that gap a spell that in a close match might not be useful or in effect in a match where someone’s starting to pull ahead might actually be a good catch up anyway it’s a very long way of saying that the cool thing about this is a character being outnumbered and likes taking on big hoards of guys um the yeah and uh Gaius Octavian mentioned there is a lot of bookkeeping so that’s one thing with a look at well there are some tricks that we can do to simplify that that cognitive load the let’s hop down to the hurricane so I like the idea of the hurricane being enduring I like the idea that compared to the other ones this is maybe something that does have this sense that there’s an effect rather than is happening once it just continues so I think what we want to do here oh yeah maybe that’s sitting compared to the tsunami but do something with movement like you move around and can move foes around when you hit them sorry I may be a limited fly effect that will really tie this into study of the storm and maybe that’s something which would be fun to compare it to the volcano guy who’s like okay I’m gonna really take on a large group of people in erupt and yeah distro uh lemur a been a hurricane could should disrupt missile attack so that’s another good way to to differentiate the tsunami from the hurricane so let’s do something like that some defensive powers defensive upgrade which maybe means like this guy is pretty good at getting into areas and rather than dealing lots of damage to lots of guys he’s pretty good at tanking them so let’s do something like that because if you’ve got like some defensive upgrades that’s pretty good that’s a nice really distinct feel from the volcano now let’s take a look at earthquake so this is a pretty simple one that you know I think maybe look at more of a control element compared to the other two so I’m gonna put you know control here which would really fit in with this idea of seismic waves knock enemies prone you might also get some sort of liking or earthy aspect tougher to hurt so I like the idea of the hurricane is tougher to hit and the earthquake is tougher to hurt I think it’s one of those things that’s simple but we really get this feel architect Eric mentioned limited fly on 14th level totem barbarian yeah I think what’s the eagle while ranging of a fly speed equals your current walking speed oh that’s oh that’s a good point so we should probably make sure that if we’re doing something with the hurricane that’s flying that’s more it is more limited so I will underline this to make sure we don’t lose track of that um so we’ve got our guy who’s really good at dealing damage we’ve got our guy who’s pretty good at moving around and is harder to hit so our mobile character our earthquake character so far is looking at someone who is tougher to hurt and tinker in the sense that like knocking enemies prone means it’s harder for them to move away so you know you can smash people maybe also three and something here like you know good at demolishing objects not sure and that might just be like the the siege monster ability we see on some creatures where they do extra damage to buildings but maybe that would be a good thing for the ER and remember these now keep in mind these are like four or five bullet points under each so we’re not gonna implement all of these we’re just looking forward directional abilities and again this is something I like to do when we have like four options under one subclass it you really want to make sure that conceptually not only you’re not touching the other subclasses but that these four things feel very distinct when you give someone four options you want to push them as far apart as you can you don’t want it to come down to it’s kind of a design directive and fifth we don’t want people to really puzzle over well I could be across I could be a longbow expert or shortbow expert and there’s actually like a difference there so I think one of the things about the tsunami is that this idea of overwhelming force I need some sort of charge effect sweeping things away you might move around and like knock people out of the way control water small share DVI to check that out as we do some research so we poke at things and flush out our abilities the actually you know what I’ll take a look at that right now why not we have that ability to do a handy-dandy DME beyond right let’s look at our official spells and let’s just take a look at control water not control water under our control water control water I know one thing maybe is inspiring to you is how terrible my spelling is and my typing if you’re writing it to be a good game is a game designer I would say good that’s really judge not for me to decide but the that that’s not something necessary to have the let’s hear some flood effects part water oh cool okay yes this might be something and maybe this is something we have we find spells for all of the the sort of disasters and maybe this is something we could drop in that they can use uh once per day or some like that once for long rest so D&D characters don’t don’t they don’t have days they have rests what did you do last long rest or before your long rest the all right so sweeping things away and I do think you know higher peak lower its Kota call a cruising altitude compared to hurricane so I just want to make sure we’re not they don’t feel too much alike if they’re moving people around but I think if we have this idea of sweeping things away that’ll feel a lot different than the hurricane in fact this might be something pretty simple like knock people away and keep people close I like the idea the hurricane kind of like you get trapped in it the tsunami noxious sends you flying alright so let’s take a pass at actually designing one of these so we’re gonna head back to our barbarians there we go rules again Player’s Handbook I’m gonna go to our and now one thing we’re gonna do if you member last week I was doing a lot of comparisons to the Berserker I’m not gonna do that as much this week because I think when you have two subclasses that have a similar structure it makes sense to just use those as your comparisons so let’s take a look at alright so actually to try to write this right so I like to do my sort of subclass ability names that sound like the names of heavy metal albums will call this avatar the disaster that sounds like something like definite like you could see like the latest album from jackal with hawai avatars aster so um let’s see starting at third level ah the superscript we don’t superscript in D&D but word always wants to do that like as a default stop automatically doing that thank you yeah game developer challenge is getting ms word to do exactly what I want it to do so starting a third level when you rage you undergo a not just any transformation you want to see some like serious like this is game designer startling or Sartre Ling see this is the kind of thing where you’ve got like I can admit you and I when I’m you know writing I will sometimes like I don’t let’s let’s lay on the cheese let’s like get people to go like oh this is like it’s exciting I’m gonna tell you it’s exciting that’s how you know it’s exciting I’ll tell you this is exciting believe me the I’m gonna start the transformation let’s see there’s probably language in here that I have to write about how to pick one of these but I don’t care I’ll just let you figure I will do that I’ll let Jeremy Crawford deal with that he’s coming on the next hour anyways to tell you how he actually fixes this stuff up and this something you can actually use in a game so we’ll go bow he know while raging do you transform into a creature of rock and fire let’s say obsidian and fire obsidian the official mineral of heavy metal the transformed a creature of obsidian in fire when you are hit as a reaction when you’re hit by as a reaction when you are hit by an attack you can well maybe we do the reaction that’s like kind of what Stokes your own fire that’s oh that might be kind of funny it dairy crackers porygon fun no be kind of funny right like you’ve had fun and now you have to like have the fun drained out of you so I was thinking like as a reaction when you’re hit by an attack you can like sort of stoke your inner flame and I don’t want to do an aura because I know a fire bub belches Oddie like no no but like could it be that every time you when you get hit we’ll tie it to a reaction just some maybe avoid some of that bookkeeping so it’s not just you’re surrounded by a bunch of guys the and it’s you know kind of scaling up endlessly maybe it’s as a reaction you’re hit by an attack you can ink you can double I’m gonna put double I know that’s a bad idea I know it’s a terrible idea the and I don’t I kidnapped I don’t want to do a hellish rebuke effect because I think I want this guy to really feel like I am doing this stuff rather than it’s kind of happening passively but maybe this is a horrible idea I’m gonna ride this out and then you chat you can tell me if this is a bad idea you can double your in the make sure I get it right we always look stuff up because I will get it wrong I was about to call it your rage a bonus rage damage okay but what is it and the rage ability what do we call it oh it’s just a show so yeah okay your your bonus to damage roles from raging until the end of your next turn okay so yes it’s because it’s real you want to make sure this is this is what I’m gonna be very careful about so this is this is fun right so I’m gonna tell you why this is fun if they if you if has not occurred to you’re looking at this as a reaction when you’re hit by an attack you can double your damage but your bonus to damage roles from raging until the end of your next turn you could in theory on your turn run around in circles you know go up your foe and I jump in and out of there their reach to get them to APPA you and then hopefully hit you and then use your reaction aha I’ve doubled my damage to the end of my next turn then you hack at them with all your weapons and then next year next before your next turn maybe your enemy makes mistake of attacking you again and hitting you again and then you double it I think we would want to make sure we’re capping this so you can’t so we probably don’t want to say double I’m just gonna leave it here cuz I know I have to go back and fix us up but essentially we don’t want this funny thing of your fighting the volcano barbarian so what he does so he does this funny dance where like he jumps in and out of your reach hoping you hit him then he hits you then you attack him like a reasonable person in the battle does and then like you know that it’s just this kind of funny pattern that we probably don’t want to be in of this is how and I think if I remember right Shaq correct me if I’m wrong but I think this would just make it tripled or quadrupled constantly right because you would just keep triggering it on your turn that effect is still in effect and then you’ve triggered it again it’s only due your opportunity attacks that wouldn’t get quadrupled so the one thing I leave I’m out the reaction is what this is limiting it so I think I kind but I also does shut down your opportunity attacks so I think what we’re just going to say you know what maybe this was the best way let’s just let you triple it once per rage I don’t want to attach an action again cuz I don’t I don’t like the tax of like you can’t two up and fight as a barbarian so let’s do this you transfer motorcades so your rage bonus damage ah not able to type today and this is this is all pseudocode so I’m not exactly sure how in the game we should refer to that rage damage bonus so we’re gonna make it fire damage that’s really simple you know there’s probably apply also will let you shut it off but again I’ll just well clean that up very well we’ll bury that in editing the UM and let’s do this once during your rage you can triple this damage bonus that benefit lasts until next so I’ll give you two rounds of just dealing massive amounts of damage to people the Oh tight reckless attack all that’s actually yeah well let’s do that you can double this damage bonus understand that you can double this damage bonus or triple it pit when using reckless attack oh that’s fun alright and so that’s so that’s not a nice like a basic thing I’m a little leery of doing more cuz I think that’s actually really nice doubling that damage is that’s really good but you know what it’s kind of in line with the other things we’ve seen the nice thing is it doesn’t incentivize you if you want to do two up and fighting you’re getting more tax that damage applies to them so yeah I kind of like that I think we’re gonna put that now here’s here’s a secret I’ve learned we when we’re actually working using this template we never use these buttons you’ve seen me using them but I shouldn’t be using them we instead use our styles and in this case we’re going to go to bold serif no wait no incorrect inline sub-header boom there we go that’s some what we should be using alright so let’s see let’s go over to hurricane so as you can see I had a lot of these things down here some of them might still migrate up like maybe we should give you the fire resistance will see the put manna just increased damage that’s well that’s only yeah your bridge bonus damage your rage bonus damages fire damage and one string rage you can double it that’s a good starting point let build up the other three in comparison I kind of feel like it might be still be missing something I think I don’t know if that necessary feels transformative enough to me so but you know I’m just gonna jump ahead enter a future of what’s the official mineral of storms I thought we Trevon say lightning and wind or lighting and wind you bet you’re very good at picking out like oh this is the lay up and go perfect in here no lightning you’re a barbarian not an interior decorator I mean you could be an interior decorator that could be a background we build but it’s not in the game yet okay you’re worried oh yeah you’re so this is your rage bonus damages look let’s just do this as lightning there we go there’s that and once during your rage I really like this pattern too so once during your rage we said over here in hurricane that you get a defensive upgrade taking a lot Sonny’s capable close hmm the I think we want to do something we talked about this this guy keeps people close so once during your rage yeah but I like the idea of the reckless attack this is that the the here let’s let’s not do this because that’s just the same thing we’ve changed the damage type we talked about hurricane winds that Buffett and enduring things so you know we don’t want to run stirring rage that’s right that’s what’s throwing me off we want this to be something that that’s constant so you’re rated your your rage bonus damage is lightning damage your speed let’s do this increases by 10 feet when you hit a melee attack let’s see you know kind of when I picture a hurricane and it son picturing more that that’s circular you know the winds around it the eye of the storm that you are kind of the eye of the storm the yeah so maybe it’s something where you can suck people into the attack you can reduce their speed so let’s do oh yeah but let’s do this let’s just say when that creature there’s a I’m just gonna put a big number in here – 28 I don’t think speed there we go so you gonna really slow people down they can’t get away from you there they’re caught you know and maybe hurricane isn’t the right one maybe we want like tornado or something like that or oh we could we could even do something like like a vortex that might actually get to get the flavor a bit more the nice thing is yes sucking people in because I think then the nice thing is it feels very different from the tsunami so there we go and we have two things that start with letter V which is why not none of these get used in the game now earthquake now I’m gonna say right now I’m designing these I’m not 100 I’m happy because I think we need someone want something it’s a little more transformative but I’m gonna charge ahead cuz finished is its own argument use creature of earthen stone because stone is the official mineral of earth you know it’s funny I’d say these things and I have no idea if any of these jokes are landing because I can’t completely watch trap Oh force damage yes very good called Eve I’m out let’s change that from lightning damage to force damage and then this is one thing that always irritates me about whatever you do earth elemental thing we don’t have an earth damage type right like I want to go so you originally is earth damage which doesn’t exist because getting hit with a rock is just bludgeoning the image right but we don’t need it right that’s just me being like I like parallelism which humans we naturally like but we don’t necessarily need so um I’m gonna say here check this out chat I’m going crazy your AC increases by 10 yeah by one and feet like my AC is 10 feet better I have no idea what that means say your AC increases that one keep it simple right and this is probably gonna go back to once during your age once during a rage you you can cause your melee weapon attacks to knock creatures thrown that’s not done we’ll throw in the the save DC and you know save and activations put a question mark there and again same thing kind of like our volcano guy except you’re just clobbering dudes knocking them prone really good probably combo with a rogue I can knock punch people prone the road can come in and start sneak attacking I just want to shut down the abilities you know for one round they can’t really move they’re gonna waste a lot to move standing up again really control the kind of like new tanki kind of things you guys are sticking near me the vortex with that that speed penalty is kind of going there to that being constant would have to take a look to make sure these two things aren’t stepping on each other too much the big difference is that a speed penalty is not you know I’m now not getting advantage for free just by walking up next to you which is a pretty big difference you also generally will find that it does take some sort of tactical sort of planning on the party’s part to take real advantage of a speed penalty a lot of times you’re the barbarians next to the monster and that’s why they all want to be right that’s that that minus 20 the Oh mad hatter him putting up over here mock does forced image so it’s probably they’re just get aside that overwhelming force of boom an AC increasing by ranged damage Archmage dere it’s probably a little too good especially at higher levels were + – yeah but I’d be a little worried this +4 might just get to the point where you’re just not getting hit sent me to think of typically +1 bonuses are for AC because it’s constant but yeah maybe we’ll see we’ll see let me meditate on that doesn’t which we definitely have to I mean obviously that’s something play test but you know what yeah I forget it I don’t go crazy I’m gonna do it here increases you get a bonus Stacey let’s do it well let someone else tell us we can’t have fun I won’t stop the fun I’m the very permissive do whatever you want night that spells at first level and it’s a story justification it’s fine you can get it doesn’t break anything too badly we’ll just blame it all on diem skill what you can’t handle complains casting meteor smart first leveled cut a damn are you right oh yeah and I’m JP cotton we could also do it by half so oh no sorry reduced damage by oh that’s d ours a bit tricky sorry ed z9x one was the one range damage JC run it up we could have it we do that dr is a little tricky cuz often players will forget to track it especially higher levels if you’re getting smacked around just like 20-25 damage the four might not feel big even though we know over the every round it’s actually really really good there’s it’s one of those funny effects where if you really know the math of the game and like optimizing dr can look really good you do the math and you really realize i’m saving so much damage but for players who aren’t thinking of it mathematically they just think of in terms of like oh i transformed especially when that tens digit doesn’t shift i went from 25 to 21 it doesn’t feel good and that’s one of the really interesting areas of D&D designed feel versus effectiveness and trying to bring them both into a damage threshold the one trick there is a lot of our creatures just baked in like getting that number right is really tricky it’s like imagine you’re balancing something and it’s either way way way way way too good you always taking zero damage or it’s never comes up you’re never taking any damage at all getting that thing right in the middle with a damage threshold it’s really tricky i know in testing we have yet to really get a good value especially over levels tracking it again like if some report does it mean we won’t try it it’s just something where it’s gonna require them what kind of a breakthrough that aha moment we’re like wait this is actual make this work I’m not necessarily a fan of damage to our soul to myself I’ll have to admit we’ve been play testing some rules for our vehicles just fleshing them out and the thresholds that currently sit on vehicles which we’re keeping in place we’re not getting rid of but um it does lead sometimes some funny things I was designing an encounter and I realized oh like if this like you if if the crack had lifts the ship up and drops it the damage threshold on I think the the sailing ship I think was 15 or 20 it wouldn’t take any damage from the fall you know now IV sec I just I can just sort of hand wave that but it just kind of it’s it’s it’s tricky because what you’re really what you want to say is one-handed like melee weapons like swords and daggers can’t really hurt a ship but if you take the I almost want to want to say the threshold is a based on weapon size or type but anyway getting way further afield let’s focus a little bit the on our tzunami so we said by the tsunami was overlaying force and knocking people away so while raging you transform into a creature of let’s see what’s the official is it coral the official mineral of the sea and I’ll say seawater none of this lake water or tap water it’s seawater for us but that’ll get my change um let’s see here and we have semi it’s overwhelming a higher peak so let’s do this one stirring you can consummate it male have taps to knock creatures I’m gonna say like somewhere between like 20 to 30 feet away I wanted to be really like boom like you know they go flying away the you know for flavor-wise you might want to say they’re all in the same direction I think naturally be kind of picture in your head like everyone’s kind of flying out from our Burien so maybe it’s oh you know actually something we could do here is it doesn’t have to be an attack this could actually be a magical effect once during your age why don’t we do this you can do a cone let’s do something similar a cone effect con cone effect similar to thunder wave we could just do that where basically you can get essentially what a spell like effect I just focus in boom setting when flying away from me and doing some damage to them so that that feels pretty good and okay so we kind of have our starting thing here this is another good example too of why I like to just go through and do all four rather than trying to like get one perfect in the blonde to the next because after walking through these through these we found a couple things that started to merge at least you know when I was writing them I thought oh that’s fun like what can i play with this I like the idea of reckless attack having a higher benefit that kind of what I really want you to feel is that you have transformed and I think when I can take an effect and then have it flow into your other abilities that really feels like my characters options are really changing but I didn’t see anything that popped out immediately for these other ones but maybe it’s just for lack of trying this you know I’m a little leery about making it too complicated but I think I think right now we’re not getting really that that transformative effect what I think I want on each of these is a constant thing you get I think we want a once per rage effect with the exception of vortex because that’s one which is more constant for the other three and then so we have a constant thing a thing that you activate once and then maybe something tied to reckless attack that augments that and somebody may be the constant effect gets augmented that might actually kind of fun so let’s do this we got volcano so your rage bonus damage inspired image once I don’t think we need to make this requirement simply because again earth you can make a forest damage but I don’t want to force the issue so so your age when it says fire damage once during your age you can double this this damage once or triple it when using reckless attack this benefit lasts into the enemy next turns let’s remodel this a little bit right is doubled when using reckless attack once during your age you can double this or triple it when using earth at that benefit last so there I think that’s pretty solid your age damage is gonna be fire you’re probably gonna just say hey I want a reckless attack that feels pretty good for a no tv-shows Cleveland yes we’re crazy there’s always gonna be a pun lurking in there somewhere the the wandering pun table does not include a no pun found entry the so this feels like I think this feels solid up to start with I still kind of feel like the volcano might be missing something but dealing fire damage the rage bonus is pretty useful now it can get shut down so maybe we need to let you turn that off if you want double been using reckless attack I actually really like that because it really does feel it’s speaking to that transform development if you’re a volcano barbarian you’re gonna reckless attack you’re just gonna go crazy and that feels that feels pretty good it might also set up at higher levels we might give you something we’re getting it does help you once during your age double this damage or triple when using reckless attack that benefit lasts till any my next term so then you can do a big damage spike so you probably raged use this immediately like you just want to hack down enemies as quickly as you can and that feels kind of like the blocking like boom right and then you start fighting okay so vortex your rage bonus damage is forced damage yeah we might still be able to say lightning damage here because then I don’t feel so bad about earthquake being for you but then or tsunamis talking before us two forces like our generic damage right it’s like generic damage its force damage sure right it’s like the universe just if it detects damage it can identify just calls a forest damage so but I think I’m gonna keep this as lightning damage because I kind of liked it it’s not just the vortexes like if it’s a storm you know it’s stormy clouds and lightning that feels cool your speed increases by 10 feet so I kind of I like that feel of something that’s just happening you’re faster now and the we wanted this to be constant why don’t we do this why don’t we also tie this to reckless attack the let’s do this when you use reckless attack features new hitch their speed reduced to zero until the end of your next turn then we’re probably put a savings there there and then once Turing let’s let’s make us a bonus action so I when I’m to give it some more weight once doing ages bonus action and they’ll be a saving throw attached to this by just say I trap creatures next to you will just throw that in there boom so basically this is the vortex you know the the other way we do is we don’t the necessary and go through reckless attack with us we could just say the yeah but they don’t want to make a difficult terrain around you because then it’s just feels starting to feel like more like an aura this one is kind of drifting a bit toward the the other barbarian subclass but I think it’s fine for now okay earthquake wind raging you transform into a creature of earth and stone you get a bonus to AC equal to half let’s do with the half thing right have you rated him is bonus that a seed bonus increases to your well this is totally not what we put in the book but I’m just gonna read it because we’re running at a time that babies when it’s going to full when you use reckless attack oh there we go so now I want to use reckless attack because I get a in higher AC and I think once during a rage you can use you can knock people prone I think that actually works pretty well too because this is really nice you’re attacking with the bandage but I’m getting a really nice AC boost that’s pretty cool I’m not as worried with to up and fighting here on this one I think something some just pointed that out I’m Draco because I think the earthquake guy being more control Eid offensive he might actually carrying a shield like in my head I would definitely not want the fire guy though I want the volcano gotta feel pretty good using two weapons to get as much as possible out of that thing now let’s just double check this reckless attack use it once action no you can just decide to do it okay good the so I’m okay if two of these point to two I’ve been fighting and one doesn’t especially the more defensive one because I think it’s okay if the AC boost is sort of trending you toward even wanting to make your AC go higher or to use a bigger weapon all right and let’s knock out our tzunami here so well transforming Royden you transform your creature of coral and sea water so once during your age you get a cone effect similar to thunder wave I think that’s cool when you reckless attack let’s say you knock people knock target away in a straight line we’ll just put that down annex we’ve got about oh let’s lit over one minute to go till I get I get out of here so I think let’s see you wreck this tactic do we want let’s see yeah well we need a what’s our constant effect if you’re the tsunami guy you know maybe it’s something like while raging I want to see something like you could just go anywhere you want the Oh wasn’t whirling so sweet weapon yeah well it’s we started Lee uh Lee Moorabbin but like we end up with volcano being that way the see this is the winding twisty road that but maybe we’ll end up you don’t I’ll give it some thought this week what happened it’s a good example though we started with this idea of like the hurricane like the the whirlwind but then we end up with a vortex so much more control the character and a lot of that is getting driven by looking at these four we want to make them all feel distinct so yeah it’s kind of funny like as I designed I just ended up the vortex being the control the guy earthquake being tanky and volcano being our DPS or DPR in Dungeons and Dragons terms what I think I’d like to something with the tsunami is a movement effect and my first pass would be through anyone’s space because I like the idea of the implacable nature like a tsunami you just move through no one can stop you so the yeah avoid the opportunity text engaging with like water I was thinking like like that I just did again but a little more offensive where I want to use it to move in so I’m okay with you taking opportunity attacks cuz you’re raging you’re gonna have your resistance up so I’m okay with that rather than making it feel more finesse to me that it just it I want to have a real brute feeling like I’m just gonna walk right into the middle the group of enemies and then just start smashing into them or send them all flying away with my attacks okay well here we go I think I’m not gonna promise you anything because you never know like this has been the most like roller coaster ride of a sub class we’ve ever done but I think I’m feeling really good about this it’s hitting that note I think the transformation is just about there I’m gonna ruminate on this over the week and maybe tinker with it a bit more to maybe play up I still wanna up I like that the warden was one of my favorite classes I loved that tree like really hulking out feel like I’m changing right the we did kind of capture that with the giant sorcerer a couple weeks ago but I think this is in a pretty good place now so I think what we’ll do we’re gonna call it there hope you enjoyed the show about our 56 minutes together we’ll next week we’ll do some more work on the Barbarian hopefully finish it off with the four features I think we’ll probably spend all the next week finishing it up because essentially have to do four things for each slot if not maybe we’ll take a look at you I’ve been doing some thing about backgrounds maybe we’ll do we’ll take a break from subclasses and talk a bit about backgrounds and the role they play in the game but anyways okay so until next week I hope you had fun I keep designing keep playing keep DMing and keep creating and I will see you next Tuesday take it easy everyone

The @mikemearls Happy Fun Hour starts in one hour at at 1pm PT! Watch Mike's #DnD design process before @JeremyECrawford guests on Dragon+ at 2pm PT to explain the development process that happens afterwards. Watch on https://t.co/2KBortFoc5! pic.twitter.com/YXwALp5qrG

— Dungeons & Dragons (@Wizards_DnD) April 17, 2018

Order Domain UA, Order’s Wrath uses the verbiage Does the damage apply on each ally’s turn?

April 18, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

From the Order Domain UA, Order’s Wrath uses the verbiage ‘… creature takes an extra 2d8 force damage the first time each turn that any ally of yours hits it … ‘ Does the damage apply on each ally’s turn, or a total of once per combat round? Thx! Each turn

— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) April 11, 2018

Volcano Barbarian subclass – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

April 11, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

I had a lot of fun on the Happy Fun Hour stream today. I think I'm starting to get a handle on managing the work and interacting with chat. Plus, who doesn't love volcano barbarians?

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) April 10, 2018

The Warlord Fighter subclass pt3 – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

March 21, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

hello everyone and welcome back to the mic murrells happy fun hour I’m your host Mike miles and this week we’re going to continue our exploration of the warlord subclass for the fighter so last week in the in the prior week we talked about the concept for the warlord how we saw that subclass as distinct from other subclasses for the fighter and we also settle on essentially the the mechanic that we want to use to capture the the warlords thought process how does the warlord the character approach and look at the world and then how does the warlord player the person playing the warlord how do they look at the rules and how can we make those two things as similar as possible so when you’re playing a warlord even when you’re thinking about the rules the mechanics you’re kind of thinking like how a warlord would approach a situation so we settled on a mechanic where the warlord would have an area of focus the warlord could survey the battlefield pick out a spot that looked important to the combat and then give allies benefits or enemies drawbacks for being in that area so this week I want to go through and talk about and create some of the specific abilities we’re gonna give to the warlord to give it the things it does with that that idea like what are the benefits and drawbacks that a warlord can bestow so the I decided to start with that since we’re building the warlord off of the eldritch night and the eldritch night gets spells of up to fourth level that an easy starting point would be to look at what are some of things that spells do from 1st to 4th level now I didn’t want to go through and just look at every single spell I wanted to take a look at spells that felt similar to the effect we described for the warlord spells that essentially take a portion of them of a combat area and mess with it put a barrier in the way or maybe grant a benefit to the characters now I didn’t look at the cleric yet though right now I just looked at the wizard spell list so we don’t see too many things yet that necessarily provide a benefit to other characters that is something you’ll find more often in the cleric and to a lesser extent druid spell lists also with the bard spell list wizard is more about messing people up rather than necessarily helping others the wizard sort of buff spells are usually self buffs they’re protective in nature to make up for that lack of armor and low hitpoints but I fell let’s think what how we want to mess with your enemies first to start with seemed like a good starting point so let’s dive in take a look at my screen right above my head is the list of spells I thought this is a good good starting point let’s take a look at what the Wizards doing and let’s think about how we really want the warlord in action I’m gonna be honest I want the warlord to feel better than the wizard at this sure wizards can conjure stinking clouds and lightning bolts and all this other stuff but we’re talking about this is our tactical expert so I’m gonna be okay if the wizard spells don’t feel quite as good as some of the warm the warlord effects because that’s something where you know this is what those characters focused on the yes they need an ability to conjure me griddles I agree if you haven’t watched the stream I have a well documented love of McReynolds McDonald’s so the the so yes if I could get that personal ability that’d be pretty useful the I guess I do I can just drive through the drive through but all right so I’ve got my handy-dandy D&E be on window up and I’m just gonna take a look at some of these spells so let’s start with fog cloud it’s one I picked out very early on it creates a sphere 20-foot radius I believe or let’s see for radius yeah 24 radius sphere of fog so fog in the game it’s heavily obscured but rides heavy obscure me now immediately when I think of this if I cast fog cloud that hurts both my friends and my enemies and that’s not really what we want the warlord to do so that’s kind of nice to see right off the bat my first comparison spell I pretty quickly have a sense of like okay here’s how I can make this bed for the warlord it’s long in effect one side or the other it’s always gonna be beneficial to the Warlord’s side again this is our master strategist and tactician this character isn’t good to do things that hurt both sides of the fight this characters gonna be helping one side sometimes we make a note here that just says ok and you know the other thing to look at too is the size right we want to make sure that the warlords area focus feels that that it’s big enough that it’s really affecting things so now 20-foot radius might be a little too big I’m sure when this spell was designed since it hurts both sides look it afford to make it bigger than we might otherwise but I’m just gonna note that 24 tre Deus Sphere a be obscure me I need to see me miss spell yeah there are certain words I will always misspell all right so that’s our fog cloud now let’s take a look at Greece Greece is another area useful spell for controlling an area yeah let’s go here and let’s expand our definition so let’s first take a look at this Greece is a 10 foot square ok so smaller and any creature that area has to make a dexterity saving thorough or fall prone and if you enter that area or your and your turn there you have to make another dexterity saving through or again fall prone this is an interesting one it’s a smaller area a 10 foot square so not as big as fog cloud so interestingly enough it does have drawbacks for anyone who enters you could cast a Greece spell then walk into it and slip so similar to fog cloud it’s hurting both sides what I think is interesting and this is probably something if you’re wondering like why is the area of Greece so much smaller than the fog cloud since you have to move into the Greece spell there are a lot of creatures that could ignore it it’s much easier for the party for instance to make this something that really only hurts one side for instance imagine you’re in a dungeon you’re going down a ten-foot-wide hallway you might cast Greece right in front of the characters who are in the front of the party so that the monsters have to move the Greece and stay there since if they end their turn there they can also fall prone my fighter or barbarian or anyone similar could just stand on the edge of that Greece and for the monsters to stay within it or risk provoking opportunity attacks so that’s why it’s smaller so we’ll go ten foot square deck saver prone you end or move into space or are there when spell cast I doubt we’re gonna have effects that the the warlord is using an ability and it forces a saving throw like Greece but maybe we’ll see I think you know based on the past two weeks we really want the warlord to be enabling others to act in some way especially as a team but we’ll see well we’ll figure out where we specifically end up the we might find that uh based on the effects we want to create there could be some immediate damage effect we may be out but I suspect we be filled in through an attack of some sort so okay so we got fog cloud we have grease these are both pretty reasonable for simple spells a little situational and that’s also where I think we want the warlord to have effects that are just strictly good for the group so but right off the bat we can see that knocking people prone in an area and essentially giving an armor class buff you’re making it harder to hit people making it easy to hide these are things that are well within what we want to do so we can build off of that I want to take a quick look at second level then I want to start thinking about and I’ll kind of talk about what I mean now at first and second level what does that actually mean for these tactics so let’s take a quick look at cloud of daggers this is another one that I sort of felt this is kind of if I remember right sneer control spell the let’s see we got here five foot cube creature takes forty four slash when it enters the first time on a turn or it starts its turn there so this is a similar type of spell now in our theoretical ten-foot-wide dungeon carter where we cast grease you could imagine cloud of daggers being very useful for the similar reason you’d put the cloud of daggers right next to the party where the monsters want to go the drawback here is this is only a five-foot cube so if it’s a ten-foot wide hallway I can’t fill the hallway with this spell there’s going to be space there’s gonna be a gap and so now you could are you that if you’re not using the grid you’d put the five foot cube in the middle of the hallway dungeon master using miniatures is probably gonna just have everything snap to grid just for ease of play so we can assume that while this is a very useful barrier it’s not it is smaller because of the damage it’s offering I mean this is a spell that could last for a minute 40 for slashing in theory that could be 40 D for slashing every creature managed to spend you know couldn’t get out of it for some reason that’s a kunai in blender the other thing notice is there is there is no saving throw so this is damage that happens automatically Greece gave us a dexterity save for arguably in arguably a lesser effect going prone is in terms of the game is not as powerful as taking or is you know as strong as dealing 44 damage you could argue lying prone setting up advantage but we try not to think too much about like make things too dependent on well what if the group acts together we account for it but it’s not it’s not as powerful as just dealing damage potentially taking some out of the fight immediately so I’m you know five foot cube 44 all right that’s pretty easy darkness is another interesting one in that it’s essentially an upgraded version of fog cloud let’s take a peek here let’s see we’ve got a 15 foot radius so smaller spell it does block dark vision so this basically shuts down all site where fog cloud just provides heavy obscure meant the other nice thing about this the point you choose is on an object you’re holding the darkness eminates on that object okay that’s something it’s just cool it’s very supernatural though I don’t think we want to do something where I mean the warlord can already move the focus we talked about it last week we had this idea that the warlord would focus on an area and the warlord on their turn could then move the area so I’m not really worried about picking up that but this is basically it another thing I’m just gonna kind of note this is 15 foot radius block line-of-sight and it sits and there’s a lot of just kind of spells specific stuff it’s 10 minute duration I don’t believe this a concentration spell I don’t believe it is so that’s probably other balancing factor of it’s pretty useful but it’s not useful enough to necessarily require concentration I’m not seeing it and I don’t think it’s there so now finally flaming spear this one might be a little bit a funny one to look at but I was just thinking the idea that the sphere since it does take up space it’s worth looking at right so let’s take a look what we got here for flaming spear and this is our 5 foot diameter sphere fire so fills up one square for using nature’s now if you remember if you’re here last week we kind of assume we’re designing the warlord that you’re probably using miniatures we’re not going to phrase the rules in a way that requires them like in the sense that we would refer to squares or or build it out assuming that you’re looking at a grid but we’re okay with things being a little more complicated because this is a very a subclass ain’t a very specific type of player someone who’d enjoy his tactical play we’re okay with it being a little more finicky so anyways we’ve got our 5 foot diameter sphere fire if you end your turn within 5 feet of it you must make a dexterity saving throw or take do to 6 fire damage half as much on a successful one now if you compare this spell to cloud of daggers the damage is lower a little bit 44 averages out to about 10 to d6 averages out to be about 7 these spheres is it since it’s within 5 feet of this sphere this can potentially deal more damage because it’s hitting more creatures now the one drawback to it is you can’t just put this next to the fighter unless they’re a tiefling or someone who didn’t or fire damage so there’s a little bit of a drawback there the very nice thing that is a bonus action you can move the sphere up to 30 feet so again something which we’re already kind of capturing with the warlord so I’m gonna note this down it’s to d6 fire damage but really it’s a 15 by 15 area alright so I’ve looked at these spells I’ve seen some that maybe start pointing towards some good comparisons I’m not seeing things though in actually this is kind of a good thing I’m not seeing things that are really like completely blocking movement and stuff like that so I kind of feel looking at this list we have a lot of room to make interesting things the warlord that can compete well with similar spells we don’t want the warlord to feel that the wizard could just cast a spell and be a better tactician than me that this is selling the the classes abilities short especially as in its identity so so let’s see okay let’s say I’m trying to check the look in chats anything that’s come up yeah the so Caleb would mentions you know so far this is trying to do what an elder tonight can accomplish and that’s exactly where trying to avoid so we want to do is take a look at these spells because that’s actually the better comparison is think of the elder tonight they can take many of these spells I can’t my roughed up my head which spells the election I can get but in terms of power all first level spells are in theory equal so even if the elder tonight doesn’t get grease and fog cloud the idea is this is the general box that those spells will live in so we need to do things that feel dramatically better and especially or dramatically more on point for flavor so with these things in mind now we know would we have to beat these things we can’t we can’t have grease look better than a warlord tactic so my thinking here was for the warlord tactics what we would do is and this is gonna get interesting but bear with me cuz I think I think this path might actually work out pretty well I’m gonna pop up in our spreadsheet if it were from last week I went through and showed how we could just using the dungeon master Dungeon Master’s guides rules for spell creation all rules guidelines we could have said we could convert a spell slot into its rough damage equivalent we could then figure out given the number of spell slots and Elder tonight got because that’s our comparison it’s neither fighter subclass that uses magic how many dice of damage it should a warlord be able to throw out during the course of a day and if you take a look at this table here I bill we’re starting at third level that’s when your subclass comes in as a fighter the and this is just a rough approximation so this was the the total column here starts at twenty two ends up at two hundred and nine that’s the total number of 10-sided dice worth of damage oh I’m sorry that’s the total damage the dice the dice column that’s the total number of 10-sided dice and then I just came up with this uses and peruse columns this is just a quick approximation of if I wanted to make a mechanic that felt easy to use the table in terms of number of dice and then how often you use it this is a good first cut now if you remember from last week we talked about giving the warlord just a basic ability to heal someone or grant them a damage bonus and that really capturing that idea of the tactical insight the warlord could give and I think I really want to try to keep of this ability these numbers these dice fuelling those abilities the other thing to keep in mind is last week we talked about how the Warlord’s healing while the warlord can’t really deal with conditions like a cleric could like if you’re poisoned the warlord doesn’t necessarily have a class feature that can deal with that their benefit is if your warlord provides healing that is an excess of your maximum that excess healing becomes temporary hit points so you could with a fully healed up character give them if this math holds up seventy ten temporary hit points at the start of a fight which is pretty good and it’s something that differentiates this this character from the cleric in terms of how that healing works and it helps conceptually balance the idea that the warlord is not as good at dealing with with conditions but it’s pretty good at dealing with just damage which felt right for a fighter you know essentially healer type okay so this is what we’ve got here what I’d like to do is try to keep these benefits purely for that healing and damage boost I don’t want to require them in order to use the warlord tactics and that’s because I really want the warlord tactics to feel like something you’re just always getting I want them to have a dramatic effect on the fight but I want that to feel because the warlord is a great tactician not necessarily because I’m always just expending something that area of focus ability is pretty it seemed to go over pretty well and I want to be something that feels like you’re always thinking about because as a tactical genius we don’t want the warlord to be a genius like for three rounds a day right that should be something where the world always has a plan it is always ready to to help pull the party together to execute a clever maneuver the so if that’s the case what does it mean for our special abilities here let’s take a look over here well I think what we want to do if we take a look at these abilities look at the first two levels of them cloud a daggers in flaming sphere dealing damage the others aren’t when I get up to stinking cloud and sleetstorm I’m going to start seeing more damage but the ability to control an area is not necessarily something I have to worry about in terms of damage because if I let the warlord do this and attack or also deal out that extra damage I’m capturing the damage that you’re going to be doing that round I can really just focus on the special effect you’re gonna create so for instance you could imagine that fog cloud could create in here of heavy obscure man and do damage as a spell well it doesn’t do that but I’m letting the warlord essentially do that by saying you can attack and then use a tactic that’s gonna be the equivalent of a first level spell so that means I don’t have to worry about putting damage in these and I think that’s actually going to make my design a lot more interesting and a lot more fun because I’m not trying to like okay not to account for the damage and where’s that’s coming in I can just assume you’re using this in addition to an attack all right so I’m gonna make a note of that so used in addition to an attack slash heal slash damage buff and potentially all of them depending on where we end up with the damage buff stuff so that’s the case it makes these comparisons pretty simple and we get down here I don’t have to worry about the damage the damage is already low enough for these effects because they’re ongoing effects does that actually is another thing that makes my life a little easier I don’t have to worry about trying to figure out well how long will this effect stick around the damage it’s doing now you’re just you’re attacking so that makes my life a bit easier the alright so let’s take a look at some pretty simple things we could do at first level so we know knocking people prone should be something we can definitely do and it feels pretty thematic so I’m just going to put knocking prone you know targets in your area of focus are knocked from the wind hey that’s pretty simple one now there are other effects in the game let you’d let you knock people prone so it might not be the most useful one but that’s a good starting point I am also going to point out this is when hit so this and it’s also targets yeah sorry hostile targets so to me I want to put this one down here it might not be someone we end up with I kind of feel it’s pretty straight forward I mean chat let me know do you think this is an ability that you’d find useful in a fight especially we could use it almost all the time I think maybe using this whole time might be too good we’ll see but I kind of want you to use it all the time because I really feel like I’m being pretty tactically clever but compared to Greece this is just better right doesn’t hurt my friends and it doesn’t require saving throw because I just have to hit you and knock you prone oh and someone mentioned in chat who was it Northland Kyle yes that’s one thing we mentioned last week using concentration yes we want concentration because that’s a nice little barrier we can put in here so that you’re not stacking these up it also gives the enemy away to try to shut it down so the so we’re gonna throw this one in here people seem to think like it might be it’s pretty good it’s always advantage in melee maybe at a size limit the oh the narrative explanation Ibanez rock star yeah what I imagine here is this is and we will mix way this flavor right but I imagine as warlord is providing oops more laud world Lord is providing insight on where to strike so we’d want to capture the name and then obviously give some description so if I was actually know what I’m going to try I’ll show you kind of how we can wrap that it might be kind of interesting we might call this well here let’s do something here this is an easy way if you have to name something what I like to do is forget hey the people of the world of D&D are naming these things and so let’s go to our monsters oh wait no monsters are over here and here’s here’s a very easy thing you can do right let’s go to who’s are awake and search for prone I don’t think that you know I’m trying to search the wolf came up the wolf knocks people prone that’s if it does direwolf do you knock people prone yes it does so this is something where we did this lot in 4th edition actually the idea that people in the world of D&D they would no direwolves are dangerous because they pull you down when they attack you so an easy thing we would do here now you run the risk of some of my not they have the player by know that but you can imagine some like dire wolf tactics when a hostile creature in your area of focus is hit oh here’s one thing we could do too well I don’t know I was about to write as a reaction I don’t know if I want to turn off the Warlord’s opportunity attacks [Music] that’s something that limits it you know but but just popped in my head like a that’s an easy way to limit this mmm mmm I’m gonna say no cuz it’s more fun to always get it but it might be too good especially when you were in this stage like we’re not gonna like this is something we would play test internally so I like to go crazy because then you have other designers going well this is nuts right that we could just throw it’s easy to add limits afterward but you might find in play that actually works and it’s great like oh this does work it’s balanced whatever reason it’s working out perfect so so when a hostile creature your focus is hit it is not prone and I’m gonna just say hit I don’t happen I’d think of just by an attack I don’t care it’s um I don’t care what the spell attack go up an attack I just care that you get hit because I want the wizard or the warlock to also get benefits from this like why not you know tactically in the world of D&D you know how to make spells work well with your your weapon fighters the the okay so the I’m turning key I’m trying to keep an eye on chat choose if I see things come up so if I’m a little bit like scattered I’m like looking right now people saying anything the trying to sort of see how this thing is going and kind of take the temperature so we got dire wolf tactics that’s a good thing to give some flavor and so as your allies struggle against the enemy you direct their attacks to their most whatever this is this is fake flavor because this is so generic but their most vulnerable points that’s terrible flavor because it could be in anything but this is where that first sentence we want to capture what’s going on what I imagine is you’re directing attacks two legs the limbs so we might say you make direct attacks to point yeah you know this feels really just kind of cheesy or whatever then their legs or I almost type wheels I guess you’re fretting a bunch of cars whatever this is not portable flavor text this is another great example of with flavor text you want to get get across the spirit but you don’t also want even imposition of like hey wait what if you’re attacking like a centipede or a serpent or some like that the rules for knocking stuff prone will capture that anyways in d and v we’re okay with you knocking a snake prone cuz the snake actually flipped on its back is not happy but so this is some pretty low hey this is this is the flavor texture you get live on stream it’s not all that great but it gets across this is what we want to do the you’d want to get a sense of like hey what’s happening that movie in your mind is important it helps put the player in the same mindset as the character it also helps makes things just easier to understand so but the this is apply to flying creatures oh yeah that does the area of focus extend into the air great question Abel hawk and actually makes sense for the Abel Hawk to ask what a hawk would think right yeah I’m gonna just put a quick note up here area of focus should be a cube and that’s just now you talked about having being more specific and how you want to say might be four squares but I’m just gonna say cube doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s gonna end up as a cube but just reminds me that I need to remember oh yeah this can go up and yeah that would be a very interesting one because oh so now this is a really good point Abel hawk I’m glad you brought this up what happens to a flying creature when it’s not prone it crashes so something that lets you automatically knock people prone if you hit them with any sort of attack is really good if I put my area of focus up in the air right I can knock creatures out of the air pretty easily now I’m going to say I like that it might again this might be too good and I think what we’re going to see is how does the frequency of this ability with things I want the warlord to always feel like the Warlord’s being clever but something like knocking prone if I’m always knocking everyone prone is that too good so I’m just gonna make a note down here I’m gonna put reaction save there are ways we can limit this but like I said earlier it’s much easier to put your limits on afterward if people say hey in our internal test it just feels too good so Oh Abel Hawk you mentioned it’s only a ten-foot cube it won’t crash too hard but remember I can put my cube up in the air right there’s nothing in so far that says this has to be on the ground now we may want to finesse that but what we’re seeing is that see and this is why we play test right because you can already see me thinking here I’m thinking Oh what is the name of this how do I make my flavor you know I’m working on one track in shat everyone else is working on their own tracks that’s like you know parallel processing and people start thinking of well how does this work in my game how would my players use it what happened my game last night what are some of the other options so this is why play testing is critical because it’s really it’s very difficult for one person to see all the possibilities but you give this concept of like a 100 500 people suddenly everything starts becoming more apparent so we know now we’re starting to hit some of those limits the things that are gonna turn this character subclass from hey wow isn’t it fun to Oz a DM I hate this thing all my monsters are constantly getting knocked prone but we know knocking is I’m one problem that’s a first level spell I’ve got to give us to you right like we said it’s ok for a spell so I’m gonna I want to be committed to this idea that this character has to be able to top what a spell can do it’s just to the extent to which that can happen the nice thing about spells is they are limited you can only use them so often so what I’m running into is my desire to have the warlord always have these abilities on so that might be something that’s going to require some finesse but again my feeling is start with not necessarily super obviously broken but start with something that feels like it might be too good then rein it in rather than try to self edit because you really want that first test to feel you want people you want to be able to quickly identify what your actual problems are a play test initial play test that shows no real problems is your probably didn’t actually do any really new design or you were just manage to get hit it perfectly which not very likely it’s probably much more likely that you might not be pushing things far enough all right so here we go this one comparison to Greece really just brought into focus some real issues we need to think of but right now I’m not gonna worry about them too much I want to take a look at some other benefits I could give you we have prone is a pretty simple condition we can throw around at first level notice we didn’t really have any other conditions coming in so we know magic wise mmm it’s probably something which we want to take a look at figure out when we start doing things like restrained if ever there might be too good to throw on all the time restraints very punishing condition but what we’ll figure out where we are from there now a very simple one is we kind of look at here with fog cloud have you obscure ‘men typically using that to get a defensive benefit or to let people hide so let’s go to here to our remember what do we always do we look everything up because we know we’re gonna get it wrong so let’s just go here just go to index let that load up I have you know there’s gonna be this should be in the basic rule so I’m just going to go there it’s kind of nice to have it all in one place all right so adventuring and let’s see could be under I think it’s either under the environment or it’s in let’s see it’s either under combat so let’s just pop over at the environment real quick because we have vision and light that’s we got here having a skirt area a heavily obscured area such as darkness opaque fog fog cloud are dense foliage blocks vision entirely a creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area so what that means is look under blinding a blinded creature can’t see it automatically fails on the ability to check the requires site attack rolls against the creature of advantage and the creatures attack girls have disadvantage okay so it’s very hard to see stuff and that also would allow us to make stealth checks to hide because I can’t see the person there they just need to focus on being quiet okay cool so we’ve got with fog clouds something that’s letting you hide and it is blocking vision what’s interesting is that that’s darkness has a similar effect the so that’s kind of we’re kind of putting those under the same roof kind of think of this as like here here’s our defensive benefit we’re gonna look at so let’s go back with our tactics um let’s see so a pretty simple thing here would be some sort of defensive bonus right so we call the shield wall and say allies in your area of focus gain a bonus to AC and saves maybe +1 it’s a little irritating so now you have to track that out there and now I can imagine now I’m gonna have to always remind players hey +1 AC remember your +1 AC but it’s also pretty generically useful and it feels like that’s something useful you know I’m always gonna want to use that I wouldn’t say no to pulse I’m honest AC and I think I’d also want to put it on saves because I think that is something again that when I look at the spell fog cloud well if I throw a fireball into a fog cloud of fog cloud does nothing for me but if my warlord is giving me a bonus to both AC and saves okay it helps against spells to helps against the broader range of effects and again I want the war load effects to feel better than the equivalent effect the wizard throws around now the scoby task what about advantage or disadvantage I’m a little leery of throwing those around they’re pretty big effects and they can also come from other sources so my feeling was if I was to give say disadvantage and all attacks against my allies here that’s really good but it also steps on a lot of other effects characters might be toting around which we’ve attached typically to using an action of some sort the classic example we’ll go right up here let’s go back to the top and let’s go to our let’s see let’s go to our classes and actually we look at the fighter itself it’s a great example here in the under our class features your fighting style so with protection I can grant disadvantage that is requiring me to use my reaction now there’s must be within five feet must be wearing a shield but essentially it’s saying a character can use a reaction so essentially once per round to grant disadvantage putting that on all attacks it’s probably a little too good whereas plus when you see you know that’s something where you could give that the party it’s useful essentially one out of twenty attacks is gonna miss because that plus one bonus but if everyone’s getting it pretty consistently you’re gonna notice that you know if it’s a three characters are getting that benefit or four if your old clumped up together you’re going to get that probably like once per encounter there’s it you’re gonna turn to hit into a Miss it doesn’t sound super good but it feels pretty good at the table we’d also made me consider going to plus two but I feel like that might be a little too good but we’ll put that there but I think the other thing also is I did disadvantage would also make it much harder to score quick so you have to roll two twenties rather than just one so the but that’s something which is pretty simple and straightforward it’s got good you utility and it’s good defensive element then again it’s something compared just to spells are being thrown around actually I will take a quick segue over to the cleric if I go to the cleric we look at shield of faith that’s our first level spell it’s a bonus action does require concentration gives plus two bonus Tacey so I think plus one bonus to the entire party versus plus two bonus one character it’s a little bit different but it also means I can protect if Ganon and that sort of if I’m if I need to have a ten-foot-wide Carter I’m giving the bonus to both characters so rather than just one so I think I think it’s a pretty good comp and you know it might be plus one versus plus two I’ll think I’m at a little bit but that’s why I put the plus one and plus two if you can see it put those in question marks I’m gonna kind of think of that and especially as we test we might sort of go well let’s try it’s try one try the other how does it feel this is also another area where I’ve talked about how balance so much of it is the feel you might be the mathematically prove the plus one is the right number but if players just don’t feel like it’s worth tracking like yes you turned one hit into a Miss and that’s a nice swing but players just don’t feel like it’s having a big impact so it’s always something to keep in mind now that doesn’t mean we could say make these if we found the eight plus two bonus are just too good we’d have to keep in mind well the field might be good but it just might be too it’s just shutting down too many attacks so so that’s a pretty good one there question it would it stack the oh yeah these abilities oh that’s a that’s a great question these abilities will probably assume that the same ability so if I have to world to warlords in the party they probably shouldn’t stack that we would probably draw on language view some spells of the same spell cast multiple times doesn’t build up unless it specifically says otherwise so it would stack there with other benefits like from Schule faith because those are two separate sources all right so we’ve got some basic defensive ability we have a basic offensive ability direwolf tactics might be too good let’s think of something that’s a little more has a little more utility and I camera if I talked about this one last week but it’s one that I liked because it’s not really useful until you realize wait I really need this so reorder ranks and I’m just gonna do this in kind of very quick spend 10 feet of movement to swamp position with any other ally in the area of focus so this is what I was thinking about in terms of if you have a group of characters defending a single point I can quickly swap people around and essentially now we’d probably to make sure make it clear like where are they moving all this other stuff but essentially it means if you have back rank in front rank you can quickly reorganize them it means for instance a rogue could swap places with one character make an attack then swap places with another character and then get away from the fight so we might even want to say swapping does not provoke but I put a question mark there because another immediate other one would be you know it’s gonna call clever movement very lame name but the allies don’t provoke in the area that might be too weak but Woolsey that’s another one which is pretty straightforward these two might get a combined but again the idea is if I’m defending a point it gives me a lot of flexibility that the characters who want to attack only have to be exposed to danger as long as they want to or if the enemies try to surround you you could the party can quickly reorganize this is also one that if we if we think the area of focus is gonna grow with level it be gets more and more useful as you go up in level so so yeah it might also make sense pen half movement we’ll figure it out this is also another one we’d want to test to make sure if the area gets really big it doesn’t now feel like you’re teleporting you can imagine if the area is large enough that there’s space between the characters and they’re swapping positions all the time like does that feel real so but that’s you again we’re just going across the the gist of the ability is you can reorder your ranks normally you can’t do that right so this is gonna let us maneuver the party around in reaction to threats much much quicker the alright now let’s talk about some other abilities so far we’ve talked about abilities that say hey your carrot your allies already occupy a spot how can you give them benefits last week we talked about the idea that you could have an area focus that essentially acts like a magnet it pulls your allies into it the example being imagine you’re fighting some monsters in a doorway the wizards in the back suddenly a secret door opens up and a werewolf bounce into the room to attack the wizard well what if the warlord had the ability to quickly move the party to the new threatened area so I’m gonna give this one the very flavourful name of charge magnet and what it just means is allies can use a well let’s see I don’t know if I want to use their reactions I think I want you to do it you’re actually gonna stay here you can use your action or reaction to move allies into the area focus that means you get to keep your opportunity attack up it also kind of makes you wonder if this reaction business if the Warlord’s the warlord come using reactions to make opportunity attacks mmm I’m gonna throw this up here as a question because now we work another one where it’s like light I don’t want the character that the ally to use the reaction because it’s moving you across the battlefield might not be too useful if you can can’t actually defend this pot you’ve gone to you’re like Hello The Fighter the barbarian is no next to the werewolf any waves as the werewolf just keeps going because the Barbarian used the reaction so so that’s another easy one what the forget what’s happening now is we starting to build our content we’re starting to see where it’s pushing against the framework we built you said we want you to use these all the time we want to make them manageable but now we’re starting to pop out some of the stuff of like well this might not really fit right does it is this fitting in the space we’ve set aside for it and that’s kind of like it’s kind of how I think about design for this content I gave a box and a ninth double spells you know the boxer 9/9 all spells huge you can fit a lot in there the box where a can trip is a lot smaller um these are kind of contra e but I also want to compare them to Wizard spells and make sure that the warlord feels so you can kind of see that tension right I have a can trip sized box but now I’m comparing it to much of bigger boxes I stripped out the damage so those boxes got smaller but they still might be bigger now I’ll do you know if this one might be getting much bigger in comparison to this so it’s always a give and take so let’s see what we got here how about blinding tactic is a reaction from hulking 73 how about blinding tactic is a reaction he blindsides target enemy to Allah ally to move the proton an opportunity attack oh that’s pretty yeah that sounds kind of interesting like what if the that’s not something I necessarily thought of what if we attach some of these things to our warlords attacks that could be pretty useful I’m gonna throw this in here just as a note but attack buffs on targets and area of focus triggered on warlord attack so I’m just gonna put that down here I’m gonna put it in bold because why not it’ll just make it stand out a little bit more but that’s another interesting model I hadn’t really thought of that could be a pretty nifty way to channel some these attacks so for instance the direwolf tag this might be I hit someone and if the next person hit them also knocks on pro so that might be another way to kind of channel that so I thought that that’s an it that’s an interesting way to look at that because then we can bring in more more effects and more control elements that are nested in conditions but I don’t want them to get out of control there the nice thing is as the warlord gets a second attack now you can tag two people so that’s another that’s an interesting to look at it also gets across the teamwork benefit now it does require some tracking you have to remember hey I as the warlord hit that creature I hit the werewolf the next time the werewolf gets hit then this thing is gonna trigger but it’s definitely worth exploring and it’s always good to have a lot of sort of at this stage of the design a lot of tricks up your sleeve because then as things get complicated you kind of already have a few ways to to mitigate some of that you know the box is not the right size we’re going to do so the okay and then so we’ve got that stuff here so we’ve got something that live allows for movement we got some jointed defensive abilities I also want to take a look and think okay what did what happens when we’re not fighting the warlord is a tactician but there should be some sort of benefit you can get like I think if you’re not in a fight let’s say the party for some reason has to build a fence the world Lords probably pretty good at organizing that too so you know one of the things we could look at doing is let’s call it help boost right you know when the warlord uses the help action it applies to everyone in the area of focus so now I’m gonna take a quick look at my help action make sure I’m not completely hosing that mechanic but if I go back home and I go over to my real strontium it’s bending the basic rules I just like to have the basic rules for this stuff cuz a lot of times the core element it’s it’s smaller right I’m gonna go down to combat go to actions in combat and let’s take a look at help okay you come in your age another creature in the equation of a task okay when you take the help action the creature you aid gains advantage and the next ability check it makes perform the task you’re helping with provided that it makes the check for the start of your next turn okay cool so the the other alternately you can eat a friendly creature and attacking a creature within 5 feet of you you faint distract the target or in some way so so this is also another thing I can so I think both of these are great now and here’s why the attack version is actually strictly worse than what the mastermind row can get kind of the mastermind road can choose one person as a bonus action one person gets the benefit of the help action so it’s pretty good I get still attack I can still sneak attacks this is saying a bunch of people could get a benefit there might be times there’s a warlord I might decide I’m gonna forgo my attacks most likely at low level once I get my second attack it’s not as useful but I might use this to give everyone advantage because let’s say I have the rogue is up next I whatever they want to make sure they hit but I also know the the warlock is gonna throw an attack spell but else wanna make sure it can hit so that can be useful but I do like the skill thing and I think that using this for the skill for instance we’re all trying to climb a wall I make my air focus the whole base of the wall wherever it’s standing I can aide and everyone gets advantage now on their checks to climb not as useful if time isn’t an issue because we can assume that if like we have an hour to climb this wall each character can just you know take the action eight everyone’s aiding and moving it back and forth but during a fight this could be really useful or anything any situation in which time is of the essence it’s the kind of thing where it’s simple enough that this might almost become a it’s just something all warlords get now put a question mark maybe they shouldn’t but it’s just very simple it’s very flexible right I don’t need to try to start predicting what you might want I can just give you look you can give everyone advantage people like advantage there are plenty of times when outside of a fight this is gonna be useful I mean you can even imagine in social encounters the parties trying to talk their way past the barbarian patrol that stopped them the warlord could use this to like sort of buff up everyone else and so if everyone has to make separate charisma checks or if the group is trying to accomplish multiple things so and it really kind of hits home that idea of the Warlord’s smart the Warlord’s cunning it’s not just during a fight warlord is also good in areas outside of combat and I always like that field the more we can make these things crossover the better so the so chat what do you guys think about that hunt I see people like that or the yes yeah Keith I’m on I agree especially a were lurch lead from the front while the mastermind does is working back yeah that’s that’s probably good feel what we’d want here the world’s gonna get up in that area of focus everyone’s around him or behind them is gonna say okay hey we’re gonna do this we’re gonna build this this we’re gonna paint this fence and everything they do a great job the okay cool people seem to like that so cool alright so what will keep that there and I think there might be something which is just a core thing the nice thing about it is we don’t now have to start coming up with a specific ones for climbing or jumping like okay I just named climb like jumping which might be because that’s not usually a check but there are a lot of areas with the our ability checks are gonna take up so much space that this feels more liberating than it does confining in the sense of I can think of a lot of ways to use this so cool the let’s see so what else we got here so this is like a decent starting point we’ve identified our pain points like we just worried that to give you really fun abilities it’s gonna have to come to cost you know the more I think about this I don’t know if I can just let you knock people prone all the time so we’ll have to figure out is that too good let’s take a quick look I think though what we are doing is about to compare this to things like darkness fog caught in grease I kind of feel like what we’re talking about here is already it’s more useful and it’s it’sit’s more on point on it quite a Jacob and 144 what do you think the level 20 ability would be I have no idea we’ll get to that when we get to that cuz I’ve been feeling we’re gonna do maybe one more week on the warlord now because we’ve made some half-decent progress here with these abilities prior to the point now I can write a few up but yeah it is interesting to think like how can we extend this like what does a capstone ability look like for the warlord I don’t want to do something like on your turn as long as you’re conscious I think I’d say something like everyone within every day my area of focus gets an action so that is super good it’s super broken which means yeah it’s probably a level 20 ability that might work right you can imagine you get your focus on the wizard the cleric the rogue the barbarian all of them get to do something and you get your turn I would not want that to take up your turn because that’s like I mean it’s cool that you got to watch every ounce do something awesome but I also want the warlord leading from the front as chat pointed out earlier so it should feel like I know I’m in there attacking so the wizard and the cleric and combo up a spell it might be too good it’s probably something we’d say once per day you know it just kind of kind of floating out there’s your thing but I think that would really feel like finish them right you’re fighting the tower ask and it’s almost yeah it’s on its last thing or when you do the combo right like you know and you could also imagine in non-combat situations right where it’s like we need to you know smash the you know the vial the demons essence in it then someone needs to set it on fire then something needs to throw it down the pit okay the warlord can make us do that in a snap right so the okay so that’s I’m gonna just make a note of that make sure they don’t lose that and I put it in quotes I came over the exact level the does is it at level 20 I can’t remember shout we’ll take a look later but allies in your area of focus you use an action boom so that’s a pretty good so we just jumped ahead but that but it’s kind of actually what’s used to what doing that it gives us a sense of like what’s the most powerful thing we can think that a warlord could do letting the entire party take an entire turn like rounds worth of actions that’s really good not a lot of creatures unless they’re much more powerful than you would want to cope with that so let’s take a look once we get to third and fourth level I’m gonna zero in on wall of fire because that to me that’s where I’m like okay I wanna make sure the wizard isn’t just a better tactician I want to respect the Wizards Lane but I don’t want to I don’t want to cross over into it too directly but I want to make sure that the wizard again just through the use of high level slots does not just feel like a better tactician so let’s go over to our spells let’s go to all spells and let’s take a peek at wall of fire fun spell I actually quite I’d like I always like the wall spells are fun alright so we’ve got a concentration spell the last one minute it’s gonna if I remember right it’s 60 feet long so that’s pretty big the useful thing here for us to think our tactical focus is probably at the start maybe approaching this size now how wide is it’s one foot thick but still that’s essentially 12 squares so we can also make it a ring we’re just well some pretty good to for trapping things or keeping a bunch of enemies at bay ah the walls opaque so that’s pretty interesting that means we’re getting a lot of those benefits just fold it in of those lower level spells like fog cloud this is just baked into its blocking line-of-sight it’s also essentially it’s like fireball Junior it’s 5 D 8 fire damaged half on a successful save that’s anyone within the walled area so if I make the wall on you wish you get roasted and the nice thing about the wall spell is since I can essentially make a path I can thread this through a group of enemies you know my friends don’t have to get hurt by this my foes can one side of the wall selected by you and you cast the spell deals 5 D 8 fire damage to each creature that ends it’s turned within 10 feet of that side or inside the wall creature takes the same damage when it enters the wall the first time on a turn or ends its turn there the other side of the wall deals no damage so this is a great spell for blocking off an area it is blocking out of sight so it’s not so useful for our fighter types if they’re next to the wall as a DM I would judge if you attack through the wall you wouldn’t take the damage because you aren’t going through it but we kind of let up at the dungeon master if you’re if you’re playing with me you’re probably even though the walls only one foot wide you’re probably feeling the square with the wall so unless you ever reach weapon you can’t attack through it but you still can’t see so you’re probably a disadvantage so but the interesting thing here is now but here’s the one nice thing this spell is just dealing lots of damage I’m not worrying about damage because I’ve already decided upfront I want to just put that into my generic healing and damage boost ability so what this is really showing me is just this idea of more the size what I should be looking for I’ve just gotta sumed that my damage you know I figured out what those dice those spell slots are worth I’m just gonna ride that unless unless playtesting starts showing it’s just doesn’t feel powerful enough so but it’s kind of good that I’m looking a wall afire and feeling okay this is pretty good this is just a lot of extra damage in some ways you know again it’s showing me that what I’m seeing consistently from spells is they lack the precision I want to give the warlord this is a very useful spell but it has drawbacks I can easily if I’m not paying attention if the fight changes I can easily position this where it’s actually hurting the party more than its helping I actually had this I’ll tell you a story about one of my campaigns I actually had this happen with the players used a wall of fire to protect themselves and with fire fighting a giant horde of bug bears and they’re using it to control a doorway that led into a very big room they were in so the face of the bug Bears were hosed that they couldn’t get at the party but what happened was when the way that the wizard dropped the wall there was a secret door in the room that when the bugbears opened the door they were actually able to hide behind the wall and move in and ambush the wizard which then dropped the wall so it’s a good example of it was very useful but because in this case the players didn’t know about this secret door it actually ended up working against them the bug bears are able to open the door and then able to hide because since the party couldn’t see through the wall of fire the bugbears could hide and then move along the wall and it’s believed it where they were they were safe in the wall the fire the way is positioned they did have to take damage from it and then launch an ambush I wouldn’t want a warlord ability to offer that the more led ability should again just feel like okay this is tilting way toward favoring us and it’s tilting towards holding back the enemy so that’s a good sign that these fourth double spells while they’re dealing a lot of damage let’s take another look I’m gonna throw any bards black tentacles is another example I think it’s gonna have something similar where if you go into the area that’s bad news for you wherever you are so draw a 20-foot square on the ground when a creature enters the affected area the first time in a turn or starts its turn their decks save or 3d6 damage and restrains so again this is very good for keeping enemies at bay but you and your allies don’t want to go into this area you could imagine in effect where the monsters managed to escape and it’s actually making it more difficult now for the party to engage so it does require a bit more precision to make sure it’s tilting to pure benefit and now I do see the restrained condition coming in so I’ve got to keep in mind restraints pretty good that is my main concern is I want to make sure that the warlord can compete on those sort of condition benefits that spells just aren’t aren’t overshadowing it so but again since now the warlord is just pure benefit it does make those conditions more powerful alright so but I feel like to start with we have a pretty good foundation here I think that what’s nice about this is we have a pretty clear vision of where we want these abilities to end up we so far have managed to keep damage and healing out of them so that can be a separate track we do see some pressure though for even a condition as simple as prone we already kind of feel you know chat I saw you know you guys talking I’m thinking of this too it might be too good right especially when we start talking on flying creatures and where I can put this it just might be too much of a shutdown ability so we want to think about some ways to elegantly limit these but we’ll try playing first and we’ll see what happens and then we’ll start putting some limits on this but otherwise you know it wasn’t too hard to come up with some new what new new concepts and what’s nice is looking at the spells or comparing to I think we do have some nice space here I think we can create effects that just feel like oh yeah I’d rather when it comes to tactical benefits the warlord can outclass the wizard the Wizards probably that on going the image element obviously like wall of fire that can be hard to top especially since the wizard can also still cast spells though not a concentration spell so but I don’t think it’s so far that it feels like oh that’s a real drawback you know I’d feel comfortable as a designer thinking well that’s the benefit the wizard spells hose everybody so the benefit is there is like you can get more damage thrown in on them if you are able to tilt it actually what ideally what you’d have is the warlord is working with the wizard to turn those spells into just strict benefit that there’s something in the tactics you’re using you know I want to try to find a me I don’t think of some ways to like create tactics that they feel like they they dovetail well it’s like a wall with fire so again we’re creating that sense of teamwork so and we also have our art our capstone ability let the the party gets to basically take an entire round of actions and the enemy just sits and watches and takes the punishment so that’s where we are we’re just sort of 2 o’clock so we’re gonna call that a session here next week without what I’ll do is a walk through the warlord how it’s all coming together and really importantly to one of the things we’ll have to resolve and I’ll talk through this is okay we have all this stuff that’s going on how do we manage it can the warlord attack heal someone and use a tactical ability all in one turn and also make an opportunity attack so starting to see there’s a lot getting packed into again they’ve that idea that it’s like a box okay your turn is like a box what can we fit in it we may have too much there especially we’re thinking you’re doing it all the time now the nice thing is without those heal and damage bonuses going back to our spreadsheet we were looking at somewhere between like starting at two uses at level three tapping it at six at level 20 those might not be the right numbers but they’re probably in the right zip code or right neighborhood so maybe we don’t have to worry so much about the damage bonus and heal being something you use all the time maybe use that in place of your tactical benefit yeah we’ll see I’ll start putting some thoughts into it and start building out some prototype characters and lay out the skeleton for the subclass right well thanks everyone for joining in thanks for your comments in chat and next week we’ll take a look at sort of the the foundation of the class we’ll have something actually that’s fully playable so looking forward to sharing that talk through how it all comes together and then we’ll have something you can check out and maybe using your own games thanks everyone I will see you next Tuesday 1 p.m. Pacific time

A little over 40 minutes until we go live. https://t.co/aAQduFPaVK

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) March 20, 2018

The Warlord Fighter subclass pt2 – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

March 14, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

hello everyone and welcome to the mic
Merrill’s happy fun hour I’m your host
Mike Murrells I am the franchise
creative director on Dungeons & Dragons
and we’re here this week to talk about
the warlord subclass for the fighter
surfer with us last week we started
talking about the warlord and came up
with some basic concepts what we wanted
to do with it
we spent basically most of our time
talking that through and luckily I was
on a plane coming back from Lake Geneva
Wisconsin coming home from Gary Cohn so
I had plenty of time to sit on a plane
with my iPad open to mull over some
thoughts about how to execute this
character class
well this character subclass you know
having that time it always helps and I
think I talked about last week it always
helps to put a lot of thought into what
you want to do right it lets you kind of
work through some ideas so you come to
the table when you look at a sheet of
paper you’re not unarmed you’ve got some
ideas of where you want to go or even
maybe you you know where you don’t want
to go either of those two can help so
last week we talked about this idea of
we really wanted to make this a fighter
subclass that felt like the master
tactician the fighter who could see
advantages in the battlefield and take
advantage of them I kind of abused a
chess metaphor about what the warlords
all about being a sort of chess master
who sees the board and sees the moves
that are ahead of his opponents moves
and really wanted to build from there a
subclass that felt very distinct maybe
one that dealt more with intelligence
and that idea of cunning and it was one
in which I thought I really wanted to
take a design approach that this was
built off the chassis of the eldritch
knight the fighter who uses spell slots
and therefore is cazza a power economy
that recharges on a long rest so with
all that mind away we go a good place to
start would be with our notes from last
week which are over here on my right
okay blow these up a bit so you can see
a bit more what we talked about so this
is a reading that we went
went down last week and a lot of this
you know essentially stayed in place but
we’re gonna see you know actually I
haven’t looked at this since last week
so I did a lot of my thing my my
ruminating and now let’s take a quick
review I know what I want to talk about
so I put some lot of thought into it
so let’s see what we’re gonna stick with
and maybe things that have fallen to the
wayside so what we looked at was this
idea that the warlord if you can take a
look at our first paragraph here we want
a system of tactical gambits that
capture the idea of a cunning warlord
who leads the party to victory through
smart tactics so now I congratulated
myself by putting an exclamation point
on the end of the sentence that’s a good
idea
because I was very happy with it but
that’s essentially something that I
think is pretty key and after putting
about a week’s worth of thought into it
we want to keep that we want to get that
idea of tactics smart tactics and then
this idea of following for benefit the
warlord makes others better in a
tactical combat way this was important
because we already have the battle
master with the ability to hand out
extra attacks to other characters we
didn’t want this just to be purely
increasing the group’s firepower we
wanted to approach this in the sense
that you felt like the warlord had a
cunning plan that if you followed it
you’d get a benefit it would help turn
the tide against your enemy so we wanted
to decide the end that the warlord would
you know set up this idea of like this
is how we’re gonna do it and you’d
follow through and then this final point
here insight helps with teamwork and I
think that’s something which is well
you’ll see I had this idea and what
we’ll see where it goes I don’t know if
this is necessarily gonna stick around
but what we’ll see so let’s take a quick
look at our bullet points here we had
this idea of the warlord as an expert
tactician that teaming up attacks are
better this is something where you know
I don’t think we really kept this but
we’ll see my idea of thinking here was
that if the warlord could essentially
move the entire party as a group the
warlord could mess with initiative to
set up combos that this idea that you
could almost like a spell break the
rules like do things and otherwise
you wouldn’t be able to but this this
game you’ll see where we ended up but
this fell by the wayside a little bit
cuz I didn’t I felt like it would get
too predictable or too scripted for the
other players if it was very much like
you take control of their characters in
some way wanted to avoid buffs didn’t
want these things to feel like spells
didn’t want it just like okay you’re
throwing around numbers now this one is
again is one which it’s a little bit
hard to avoid because you really do want
to make people feel better for following
your plan but I didn’t want to just be
the warlord just gives an attack those I
wanted to have real strong flavor and
have it be something that really made
you feel like oh this is the warlord
feels like the tactical the tactically
cunning or insightful character but we
do want it to be spell like in that we
want it to do unique things so that’s my
next bullet point that you’re doing
things that no other character can do if
this was back to why I wanted to avoid
buffs I didn’t wanted to say you get +2
day see you get +1 d4 in your attacks
and saving throws because if I wanted to
do that as a player I could just play a
cleric I could just play I could you
know bard alright I can just grab spells
that do that
why am i playing a warlord and then this
idea that you know we want you to feel
like a commander you know that you feel
like the chess master you feel like
you’re setting up the board and in an
advantageous way now one thing about the
spell like element that I did like I
kind of capture you might see it in the
fourth the third bullet point here it’s
okay for these effects to be a little
more unique I’m sorry a little more
complex and that ties into my next point
was I thought about the warlord I wanted
to really think about the player who
would embrace this option and that’s a
very important part of your design
because if you understand who you’re
aiming us at that’ll help shed some
light when you’re making design
decisions which way do you want to go
what do you want to emphasize this helps
give you some answers there and as I
thought about it I thought this is this
is really a player who wants to use
miniatures to use a grid because that’s
part of like having a very deep tactical
experience it’s a player who likes the
idea of
tactical puzzle how can we use our
enemy’s numbers against them how can we
come up with a cunning plan to take down
a superior enemy how can we work
together as a team to win and focusing
on that and coming up with this idea and
saying oh I have a plan of an idea guys
here’s what I’m gonna do follow my lead
and really making that payoff and that
made me feel like we could go a little
more a little more complexity we could
go a little more tactical because I
think if you if you felt like I want to
play a fighter who’s attacked the
insightful guy but I really just care
for the story end of it I don’t care so
much about the actual tactics of
fighting you could just play the battle
master with a couple of the appropriate
maneuvers you could take a high
intelligence fighter and just roleplay
that you know nothing stops you I mean
something weird so they keep in mind
nothing stops me from just role playing
a character you want what we’re doing
when we design something and give it
this very definitive place in the game
is we’re saying this is big enough that
someone wants to play this and someone
wants to be this character and for me
what that means and I’ve talked about
this in relation to the Acrobat subclass
for the rogue it means to me that you as
a player want to engage with the rules
and with the game and your characters
mindset you don’t want to just portray a
tactician you want to be a tactician you
want to think like one you want to look
at the game and say here’s something I
can do that that pushes me to think like
someone who’s tactically planning things
out and so I put a lot of thought into
that like how could I make you feel that
and one thing that occurred to me you
know we’re building this on the elder
the eldritch knight chassis and yeah
I’ll call it up our handy-dandy DD
beyond Paige if we take a look at the
marshal archetypes and go down to the
Eldridge tonight we can see this is a
character who is meant to feel like a
spellcaster you know right at third
level when you take this choice you’re
getting a couple can trips you get two
can trips at third level two first level
spells this is what your characters
about this is gonna make you very
dramatically different from other
fighters and just like giving you access
to spells you didn’t start thinking like
spell caster which is a distinct way to
think when compared to thinking purely
as
a battle master and on top of that when
you look at some of the class features
here you know when we take a look at war
magic beginning its seventh level when
you use your action to cast a can trip
you can make one weapon attack as a
bonus action in my mind I love this
class feature because it is literally
telling you think like a wizard
cast like a wizard swing your sword like
a fighter you can do them both at once
and then higher level not just a can
triple then you can eventually do this
with a spell so I really like that
because it really makes you think like a
spell caster but a warrior mage you’re
going to use spells that let you get up
close and mix it up as opposed to other
wizards you may want to stay back so
it’s very important to me the subclass
really gives you this way of looking at
the world of looking at the game that is
really smoothly transitions into your
role-playing and your character’s
mindset so what I thought of was that
the warlord warlords aren’t geniuses for
a few moments a day they’re always smart
they’re always tactically cunning they
always have a plan they don’t just you
know fight like fighters and
occasionally say wait is that guy
suddenly had this bolt of inspiration
this is what we can do that just doesn’t
feel like the cunning general to me I
feel like a cunning general is always
coming she’s always thinking she’s
always seeing the opportunity she’s
always seizing it so that came down to
what I see is the three pillars the
three mechanics we’re going to use for
the warlord now keep in mind three
mechanics that’s a lot but this is also
something where I’m comfortable with
this class subclass being a little more
complicated because it’s aimed at
players who I think want some of that
mechanical complexity to play with
because you’re depicting a character’s
probably high intelligence so taking a
look at our notes here I’m just gonna go
well here’s what I’m gonna do I want to
put this over to here bring up oh you
see is an Excel spreadsheet hiding back
there we’ll get to that later I want to
take a look at the eldritch Knight and
sort of show you what are the class
features that we’re gonna build it for
the warlord so the three main ones as I
thought about okay what does this
tactical cunning person I’ll do the easy
one first we’re gonna give you some sort
of you know inspiring or
insightful he’ll and so I’m just gonna
call it you know you’re the tactical
cunning person we want to be able to
heal because that feels like as a
commander that’s how you keep your
troops in the fight now this kind of
strays a little bit toward more charisma
but I thought about you know just in
terms of I’m inspiring but then I
thought well what if instead of healing
this was healing or damage so I can
either give you a heal or I can give you
a big boost of damage to your next
attack so this idea is I’m giving you
may be defensive inside maybe I am just
like being an inspiring figure even the
most insightful intelligent leader has
to at times be that inspiring person so
it’s a feature but it’s not the main
piece and then the other idea I had and
I figured you know it if we’re gonna
have this idea of the fighter who heals
how do I make this sit alongside the
clerk cuz I don’t think this replaces
the cleric
you’re still a fighter but what I
thought was over healing which means
basically I healed you above maximum
that becomes temporary hitpoints so what
this means is if a cleric in the party
this is pretty cool because I can give
you a bunch of temporary hit points in
addition to the healing you’re
eventually going to get if I don’t have
a cleric in the party I don’t have to
worry about if I’m using a bigger effect
on you that’s not gonna come they may be
completely heal you and then some you’re
gonna get temporary hit points now the
drawback here is rather than say now go
through and say okay now I need to give
you a lesser restoration ability I need
to give you a raise dead ability you
don’t get that as the warlord because
that’s really more the purview of a
character who’s more focused on healing
and support you are still a frontline
fighter but it does mean that in the
course of a typical battle if you just
read your swords on swords this is a
huge advantage like you can give your
allies big pools of temporary hit points
essentially preemptively heal which can
be a very useful advantage it lets you
save actions that you’re using in battle
you can use those before the fight give
a bunch of temporary hit points and then
go charging in it does mean against
something that’s throwing spells you’re
not quite as well prepared because you
don’t deal as well with conditions but I
felt like that made sense that when I
thought of this character I think it’s
useful for every character to have that
gap
in their skills because DNA is all about
teamwork and we’re still talking about a
character who’s a fighter just like the
eldritch Knight doesn’t replace the
wizard or the sorcerer or the warlock
the warlord shouldn’t replace the cleric
they should really augment that cleric
and so that’s why I felt like condition
removal just isn’t part of this unlike
say the paladin who does have some
element of it but this character as
you’ll see when we open that spreadsheet
delivers a lot more healing than the
paladin coming to the table unless the
paladin’s willing to sacrifice a bunch
of eldritch smites a knight Eldridge
divine smites which they probably aren’t
knowing how most paladin’s are played so
I’m giving you some really nice healing
some very efficient healing because you
never wasted but the cost of your not so
good at removing conditions from people
you can give them that buffer but the
things that really just take them out
you’re not so good at but we’ll get to
and then the next sort of element of
this class how you might be able get
around that all right so that’s piece
number one piece number two your own
fighting ability we see the eldritch
Knight can cast as cantrip and then make
an attack we see the other fighter
subclasses all get some sort of
essentially damage boost this is kind of
a brute-force I’m just putting this here
for now maybe it’ll work maybe it won’t
but we’ll see is this it’s really this
this mechanic isn’t as important as the
other ones but I still want the warlord
to feel like an effective fighter so I’m
just gonna put tactical smarts and just
add you’re in bonus to your weapon
damage roles that might be a little too
good but that’s just the entire intent
behind this ability is you’re the smart
fighter so when you’re fighting an
opponent this is just represents your
constant back background tactical acumen
you’re good at spotting the points on
someone’s armor where there’s a gap
you’re good at seeing while you’re there
using this fighting style or they’re a
wild animal here’s what I expect this is
how you take advantage of that use your
intelligence to pick out your opponent’s
weakness and so that translates into a
damage bonus it could’ve been an
accuracy bonus but you know I wasn’t as
excited about that because being
consistent but lower damage especially
at the higher levels you really your
damage role is what’s really important
there are enough other things flying
around where
and as you’ll see in the abilities of
the warlord starts to get big one coming
up that’s where we get start getting
some more accuracy okay so these two
abilities are here to kind of just help
you keep up now tactical smarts might
come in at a higher level – I’m not what
it did this as being the first thing you
get but your healing ability you need
that at third level it’s important so
what is your your main thing well by
request we’re gonna call a cutting plan
for now and here’s what I thought of I
really wanted to start with this idea
that you are the tactically cunning
character and the way I thought about
applying that was what if you could
essentially create terrain effects now
before you think I’m gone crazy I may
have gone crazy but not for that reason
what I really thought it was I had a
roommate years ago who really loved
JRPGs and he really loved the tactical
games you know this the grid based
combat a lot of them have and a lot of
those characters could do things like
mess around with the terrain just sort
of you know stop enemies or incentivize
you know attacks so what if what if
but the warlord has was this idea of a
tactical focus so it’s how you have a
tactical focus November I’m assuming
using miniatures or if you’re dam is
okay with it you don’t need miniatures
but it helps you pick four squares for
five by five squares each must share a
side with one other without with one
other and that is your area of tactical
focus what that means is during the
battle you only have so much attention
to go around you’re taking a look around
keeping your eye out for enemies but
this is the spot where you’re like hey
that’s this is the key part of the
battlefield like a good general you’re
aware of the Train and you aware of the
disposition of your enemies and so
that’s like okay I got a plan for this
spot in a dungeon it might be the
dungeon doorway and the area around it
and an outdoor fight it might be hey
here’s our exposed flank I’m gonna keep
an eye on that there it might be or
where you expect your enemies to go so
you’ve picked up this area and then this
is where we start to kind of have some
parallel design between yourself as the
warlord and that eldritch Knight chassis
we’re building you essentially get some
can triple
ladies and these are your always on
tactical insight so these could be
things like and I have my notes here I
did take notes in the flight I’m not
trying to fit it all up in his head
because you know as the hair comes out
more mayor more more memories leak so
the yeah but here’s a very simple one
right enemies can’t copy characters
moving out of those squares simple thing
right you’re keeping an eye on area
shutting warnings to your companions
watching your enemies so you know just
the right time to shout a warning
provide a quick distraction now the
thing about these squares is they can be
now I didn’t write this up make a note
of this so this is any square you can
see let’s say let’s say with an under
feet and allies need to hear you to gain
benefit
so we’ll just that’s kind of our basic
physics engine stuff but yeah so you if
you want to have a retreat you can pick
out a few squares that make a path to
the enemy your friends can just walk
right down there and they’re safe
another example ability we had was this
idea that let’s see hit an enemy enemy
in that space move them five feet kind
of the opposite ability we have an area
we need to clear out you know monsters
are in the doorway we need to escape the
ogres blocking the way the warlord
focuses says hit him in the knee right
or he’s just giving them that tactical
insight every time you hit it foe in
those areas you bounce them out just
happens and that’s why I said hit I’m
not gonna bother with a saving throw
because you hit congratulations you hit
I don’t need to then make it make you
throw saving throw on top of that the
let’s see what are some of the other
ideas I had here oh the this could also
be some basic trigger things so an
ambush right reaction when enemy enters
a square move half your speed so you
have your ambush set up in the dungeon
room or in the alleyway the warlord
keeps an eye out the enemy walks in get
them right suddenly all your allies can
hop in and surround that guy now the
important thing remember here is it’s
using your reaction so if you
taking a turn yet it’s not as useful so
this is something that you might use the
middle of a fight and you might use it
when you’re setting up a fight you might
use it when you know hey we have an
exposed flank there’s some goblins
coming on the side okay well in case the
goblins start closing in on with the
wizard if that happens then I can use
this ability and suddenly the fighter or
the barbarian or even the warlord can
make a quick move to block that now you
are using your reaction so maybe that’s
blocking the way or maybe we’d say maybe
we need to put something in here let’s
you still op B I just wanna make sure
you’re not moving infinite squares but
we’ll take care of that in the ability
the idea here though is to give you some
basic gambits
that let you cover your ground and make
you feel like you’re planning something
that’s the important thing for me was as
the warlord I wanted you to think I am I
have a plan and it’s not something just
as simple as hey you know like the
battle master does where I can let the
robe make another attack you know things
like that it’s a little bit more
intricate than that and it can involve
the entire party so I’m basically making
this zone of opportunity where it once
this happens the other players maybe get
to make a choice you know hey do I want
to move over and help block off access
to the wizard or am I gonna stay over
here it’s my choice I still as a player
as the person playing with the warlord
now have new options opening up by it’s
not shutting down my ability to maybe if
I just want to do my own thing
I’m the rogue hiding over here I don’t
want to make an attack yet I’m moving
the position you know I’m playing you
know the sort of lone wolf I can still
do that I just have a new option I just
choose to not use it the let me see you
take a bit of safe in my notes I had a
couple other ideas but I think that I
think that those three give us some
ideas of the scope of what we’re looking
at these are things that are essentially
cantrip level bonus damage because they
are taking place in addition to your
attacks I’ve really tried to keep the
damage down and I think maybe this is
even something like this might be the
Warlord’s reaction you know what that
might be a good way to you know move you
know allies of your choice or you know
allow other choice may
something like that we need to clear
that up so you can still make an
opportunity attack but any case this is
the idea that the opportunity attack you
know the important thing there is it’s
extra damage only if the Goblin keeps
moving so and this is important to keep
in mind for our balance we don’t want
this to generate extra attacks because
I’m assuming you’re doing this on top of
your regular attacks and I would
probably go so far as to say you know
use these as part of the attack action
so it might say something like whenever
you take the attack action I have to go
back in the text make sure I’m getting
the words right but I don’t want this to
be a rider on top of your attacks and
what I would like to do is to say okay
when it’s your turn at some point party
to turn not a bonus action because I
don’t want to shut down to up and
fighting but you get to pick your space
you get to move it can you get to pick
the effect you want to add to it
this is adding a lot to the game right
this is something that’s gonna affect
potentially every character every player
so I am adding to your company overall
complexity load but keep in mind this is
something where I’ve decided hey this
player wants that complexity they’re
okay with it I wouldn’t make this the
fighter that’s the default you know in
the basic PDF we make available it’s a
little more tactical ideally it’s
something where up that player I mean
there’s always the element of the player
who actually isn’t very good at complex
rules choosing this and trying to use it
but what I’m hoping is like if we can
get the mechanics right that kind of
solves itself by that player just
forgetting to remind the other players
hey you can do this you know things like
that which is disappointing but like in
general if complexity is ignored and you
lose an opportunity to do something
that’s better than complexity that’s
always present and is getting in the way
so hopefully it’s just what it does get
executed it’s very quick or for that
player who has mastered it it’s just a
fun extra part of the game the other
players are excited they get to get to
do more stuff that’s fun so it’s kind of
were aiming for especially these cantrip
level abilities because they are going
to be present in every round of the
fight all right so that’s our starting
point we have our strategists we have
our warlord the warlord says this is the
important part of the battlefield and
here’s I want to deal with it maybe I
need to set an ambush to Brent to flank
maybe I need to clear the path maybe I
need to get my friends the ability to
move around and safety that’s how I’m
going to handle this
but that’s our camp trips what about are
boosted attacks well I’m glad you asked
or at least maybe I asked on your behalf
so this is where we actually get to have
fun because now this is essentially
where we start getting we start diving
into the what is essentially spell
design surfer Murr from last week we
took the look and I was told there was
just a they did an update to the
database though there was a slight bug
in the system where this table wasn’t
showing up it’s back now we get to take
a look at the number of spell slots that
the Eldridge site gets access to at each
level and then say hey this is raw fuel
for our warlords power we can keep these
two classes on balance ground by saying
hey what’s two first double spell slots
worth what does that translate to into
the warlord and the nice thing is since
the warlord is always getting those
cantrip level abilities I can just make
these pure bonuses I don’t have to worry
about well this is happening every round
so I need to sort of account for that in
the power and you need to curl it back I
can give you tactical things that are
just as good as these spells if not
better so what does that what does that
look like well here we go I’m about to
open a spreadsheet and here it is I’m
gonna boost this up so you guys can see
it and you get to see I have done some
real violence to the math so this is
fake math this is not where we’d end up
this is just us playing around but the
starting point is if you remember in the
Dungeon Master’s guide there is a table
that shows you what’s the raw damage
value of a spell slot well we take a
look and say – first of all spells each
first level spell with a single target
and I chose the single target damage
because I’m assuming you’re using a
weapon so that’s equivalent of a weapon
attack it’s worth living points of
damage I get two of those I’m getting 22
damage worth of effect off of my spell
slots I did that for all of the spell
slots at all levels and I slide that all
together into what the total damage is
for the deck now if you can see here
that’s it’s fussing at me I’m just gonna
no Kay yes thank you excel please do
that no no no I was what we ignore the
error whatever it’s getting everywhere
excels convinced we’re making a mistake
maybe we are maybe knows more than we do
I hope not and so yeah the course of the
venturing game 22 extra damage to my
spells great
now this is where we start getting into
very suspect territory this is just me
this is what I like to do when I take a
look at all these big numbers I mean xx
have all 209 points you can imagine this
could be some ability where I spend one
point at a time to create an effect so
at xx level you have a pool of 209
points you’re spending one point at a
time you might like that I am NOT gonna
bag on you bag on you if you like that
but I think most players would just get
frustrated and irritated so what I did
here is I just converted that all back
and I could have saved a step probably
by just treating these as D tens because
that’s what it was I decided now okay in
terms of D tens I did all this math and
realize this is nonsense I just care
about the number of dice you’re getting
and then I just took a pretty basic and
you know I think it may have had to do
some rounding here I shouldn’t have
because these are all D tens but any
case I ended up with a number of dice D
tens this represents and then I just
looked for you know what can I buy us
down to smaller number of uses that had
gives you a reasonable consistent number
of dice per use now keep in mind again
this is fake math this might be a
completely wrong headed path but it
starts to give us some sense of like
what is the profile this ability look
like and so what we end up with is just
a pretty simple progression of uses
progression of dice but this is
something which very common when you’re
dealing with this subclass that’s being
built off of a spell casting one you’re
just looking for a way how do i bridge
from spell casting the power of that
into some other mechanic or some other
ability this doesn’t line up perfectly
nicely if you crunch this math I think
somewhere in here it starts to diverge
so again this is just a starting point
the idea here is really just to get a
sense of how many uses per data I want
to give you of this and what’s the
magnitude of those uses I like the idea
of just making it all one pool because
that would make our tactical ability a
little more flexible like you just get
an ability than you fuel it
it also means we don’t have to kill
ourselves by coming up with a billion
different stratagems and how they might
change so it’s a good starting point and
it’s the kind of thing where this might
be the first pass in the design this
might end up working really well it may
end up being that there’s enough space
that we want to be more precise and have
more of a spell like you know first
level
tactical plans to fourth level will see
we’re even bigger range we don’t know
yet we haven’t tried to actually
designing it yet but this is a good step
where you can get a sense of what’s the
size what I’m dealing with and if I was
just to try to really simplify this what
would it look like and so what that does
mean though if we go back here to our
warlord notes and here all this handy
dandy thing shrink this down a little
bit so we can kind of see a bit more
what we’re looking at that’s still
readable in fact you know what I’ll do
here I’ll just hide these you get to
watch me use Excel and forget here we go
hi this is all we really care about is
your level and this just very simple
shorthand uses per day and what I use is
worth in terms of detents what I do know
is I probably want to tie this to the
same pool of affect as the healing or
damaged ability and I also want to tie
it to that tactical cunning the one nice
thing is I have three very different
mechanics one of which that intelligence
bonus to damage is just kind it’s own
thing the other two the healing and the
tactical abilities if I can fuse those
together in some way that can be very
useful and so my thing on this is that
when I want to heal someone or inspire
them or whatnot I have to do that
against someone who’s standing in my
area of tactical focus and then I can
give them a damage bonus and a heal and
then you know maybe I didn’t want to say
that this activates some flashy effect
so I can kind of capture this all at
once the drawback to doing it that way
is that the mechanical effect on top of
that rod dice output has to be kind of
small because I’m already accounting for
the dice so that’s one way I could do it
another way I could do it is it cost so
many dice and that starts to get a
little complicated so I’m not gonna
worry about that right now instead what
I want to do is take a look at what
could my more powerful powerful spell
like abilities look like and I think
once I get a sense of a few of those
that will help give me a sense of how
does the healing and damage boost you
know I need to translate these dice that
represent the spell slots the Elder
tonight is getting I need a change
transfer those into effectiveness how
exactly I’m going to move that from the
character to the battlefield in a way
that makes me feel like I’m the
tactical genius so let’s give I hide a
bunch of ideas I went through so I’m
gonna throw some of these out there and
we’ll see some of these might actually
end up being like oh actually these are
more cantrip level we don’t we actually
need to you know and if that’s where we
end up and that’s an argument in favor
of making this just its own thing I put
it on top of these cancer of style
abilities rather than being it’s being
its own thing so what I wanted here was
these are you know effects that oh sorry
I don’t think that what I wanted to say
is that the actual abilities so let’s
say one thing right here I had let’s see
where was overs my list
oh here get down right so characters can
move out of an AoE this one since is
preventing damage potentially someone
fireballs an area then you’re actually
able to move out of that area completely
and ignore the damage this is something
we need to account for so that starts
moving more into the it’s like expending
a spell slot rather than being that
freak and Contra bubble effect so I
imagine here was an AoE you’re in the
tactical focus you get caught in AO e
you can move up to let’s say half or
even your full speed as a reaction
then we see are you still in the AoE do
you take the damage so this idea of like
ever to get down move out of the way so
but again it’s mitigating damage
potentially a lot of damage so we need
to charge you something for it a very
simple one would be in a help I call
this call down death basically a bonus
on damage against targets in area so
this starts to say hey yeah we’re kind
of is this just the generic one am i
giving you a damage bonus am i spreading
it out maybe our uses over here like
starting at to scaling up to six dice
going from two to 70 10 does this clash
against this maybe maybe not we’ll see
let’s throw down some more ideas and
let’s the start start seeing what the
color on the shape of it is on the
screen
oh the we also can put in some control
effects so it could be force movement
you could charm someone right the idea
being that you can confuse an enemy and
get them to treat you as charm because
you’ve confused them they’re not sure
which way the attacks coming from my
enemies are swarming around me so I get
confused maybe I attack and and one of
my allies maybe I forget to attack an
enemy because the group has done some
sort of maneuver
that throws me off for a moment and this
might be something would give you a
wisdom save because it’s just something
is just happening then we’re okay with
that it’s forced movements a very common
thing we’d also restrict movement you
just can’t move into the area now again
because this is something that might
completely block off attacks we do have
to again charge you a spell slot for it
if we just said look enemies can’t move
into those squares and their sentence
well what’s the thing you do you take
your range characters the freighting
against a size medium enemies you put
those squares right in front of them
your enemies can’t move up and attack so
we have to make sure we’re counting for
that since essentially we’re denying
attacks contrast that with shutting down
opportunity attacks that’s something
you’re opting into a player doesn’t you
know character doesn’t need to move they
might want to move but when we design
monsters we don’t assume that they’re
making opportunity attacks we don’t say
well this guy is obviously you’re gonna
make is it this orc warrior will attack
with his spear and then obviously make
an opportunity attack cuz players love
running around we don’t we don’t assume
that so we actually you’re gaining some
flexibility but it’s very situational
and it’s not at the cost of any of the
assumed power of a monster same thing
with a 5-foot move it’s useful but again
the nice thing about this is it’s really
useful if you plan well and turn it into
a big advantage but by default it’s not
necessarily gonna help you too much and
again same thing with the ambush this is
just well the system doesn’t know if the
Barbarian is overextended or no one’s
protecting the wizard we kind of assume
you are so in some ways this is like
letting you either make a mistake or be
very aggressive then quickly respond to
block off an avenue of effect but in all
these cases we’re shutting down things
that could happen not things we assume
happen so for instance the ambush
ability is a great good example the
goblins are moving in to attack the
wizard the warlord uses this the paladin
swings around to block off the attack
well now the goblins are attacking the
Paladin monsters are still getting their
chance to fight nothing is just shutting
that down all right so so that’s the
main thing to think of like why is
Abaddon ability in one category as a
canned trip as I pose to these spell
like abilities so the another one could
be like some sort of spot weakness
ability
you know it could drop AC against
targets are in there or our give
accuracy let’s see oh we could also we
could we could negate cover even say
like not total cover cover to the point
where you just can’t attack but cover to
the point where I’d like maybe like you
shoot back through arrow slits you know
the your enemies are in the castle
firing down through murder holes and you
are able to still hit them the so these
are all things where you know and that’s
what would be a big swing right you’re
turning misses to hits so again we want
to account for that so let’s see what
else we got here outside I’m getting
some direction we can’t see oh we can’t
see him like what my head sorry my big
melons right there thank you
learning as we go right there AHA now
you can see all right there we go seeing
it was like what what’s going on so okay
there we go
learning as we go right yeah it’s all
about Damon sign you take feedback and
you improve all right so so negating
cover let’s see what else we got down
here no cover you know I had this idea
of maybe shifting positions but maybe
this could be right here in place of
move swap positions in the area of focus
so or in place of say 10 feet of
movement so this you can imagine be
something where you have the doorway
blocked off and you want to keep that
really defensive fighter up front but
you want the someone else get an attack
they can spend some movement swap places
make their attack then spend moving in
swap places again again the system
that’s not really changing anything
because also you are gonna take an
opportunity attack for that because you
are moving unless you have something
that otherwise shuts that down but it
does let you maybe pull off a tactical
gambit like ideally you’re doing this
with the rogue who at least the rogue
doesn’t have to worry about opportunity
attacks and maybe you’re doing with a
character with a really nice AC who
doesn’t mind taking an extra attack so
that’s another one I thought I would add
but that really goes again to cantrip
level cuz that’s not that’s not denying
damage it’s not generating extra
like you know the road could always just
make a ranged attack in that case though
presumably the enemy might have a cover
it’s a doorway let’s see what else we
got here oh and then we could also do
just something simple as you know
defensive formation has gained AC bonus
while in the area so again that’s
another thing which we’d have to account
for because that is turning hits into
misses again mitigating damage so this
is to me is like a kind of a good
starting point and because what I’m
really trying to do here is get a sense
of how are my resources over here on the
right going to interact with the
abilities I’m building on the left the
cantrip ones are pretty simple you’re
just always gonna get those and what I
imagine is the spell like ones like
you’re healing you’ll choose to activate
it ideally it’s something that’s pretty
straightforward it you might instantly
you resolve it or it might be something
which is a bonus that you just thought
the track over the course of one round
maybe for the course of the rest of the
battle you know that’s another
interesting thing to think of too I mean
that might be where we add a
concentration
you know the spell mechanic use that
here to say look one when you pick one
of these it’s an ongoing benefit and I
kind of like that because I think the
more I think about it the more I think
we’d wanted decoupling we don’t want to
say you use this you heal someone and
get this benefit there are some game
mechanics I know in 4th edition we did
some of that where you kill someone they
get a benefit in addition to the heal I
think we want to keep these heals
separate and I think I want you as the
warlord to kind of think do I want to
heal some on do I want to get them a
generic damage bonus or do I want to do
something a little fancier but it also
makes me feel like maybe I don’t want to
roll these through the spell slots you
know isn’t kind of thinking about it if
I had a way to regulate these you know
maybe I just want I’m gonna write this
down and I don’t know exactly how we’re
gonna do it but we’re just gonna say it
once per battle
maybe these are abilities that just once
per battle it gives you some nice damage
mitigation or gives you an advantage and
oh that’s it like that’s essentially
kind of the measure like you’re smart
you’re smart you’re pretty smart all the
time we get those contra
benefits but you’re not so smart you’re
getting these big benefits and maybe
this dice pool you know maybe that just
is really the really simple benefit of
you can give people a damage boost or
you can give them some healing I could
go either way you know this is something
where it’ll take some more design time
to figure out what feels right cuz this
is really new you know we haven’t really
done something like this before the but
I think that giving it that extra
benefit yeah yeah I mean I’m kind of
struggling with that a little bit I’m
not exactly sure because I don’t think I
want these to compete with your healing
resource because then you’re just you
can have a lot of pressure from the rest
of the party to just heal people like
healing or you’re gonna say look I can
throw out a big damage benefit to a
character I really want to do that to
finish off a monster like it’s kind of
cute shutting down a ohi’s and things
like that but it’s very hard to compete
with just putting down a monster so this
might be something where you get your
can’t chip level abilities and then at
some rate let’s say once per battle
we’ll figure out what that looks like
you can do this special enhancement to
it or you know at some point you get to
kick this in and that sits on top of it
does it sit on top of it maybe again
it’s good now getting a little more
complicated I have two effects sitting
on top of my area of tactical focus I
might instead want to say it lasts for
around I think that feels right to me
it’s that moment where you can give the
team that boost they need to seize an
advantage so it feels like it should sit
on top of it but it shouldn’t overstay
its welcome you know I feel like having
two effects there would just be too much
to track I think would really slow the
game down so I think that’s we’re gonna
look at right now
you know tentatively let’s say these
smell like abilities you get you pick
one and you apply it and it lasts for
one round I already have a lot going on
up here are these cantrip level
abilities so I don’t think I want you
like throwing out tons of extra things I
kind of like the idea that the warlord
can build up a sort of typical bag of
tricks one of the nice things complexity
wise is it means as you play the
character you’ll learn these the other
players will learn them and it’ll be
those those will get faster as you go
because once you understand
three or four options that the warlord
and your party can use you can learn
those over time and if new ones come in
slowly enough that you could absorb
what’s gone before and then absorb the
new one and have it down really well
before the next one comes in that’ll
help us manage our complexity and if
these things are special I like I like
that if yelling get down and like boom
right I get to do that once and for the
next round or it’s a reaction you know
some really cool thing happens and maybe
that’s one thing we should look at to
like maybe these are reactions maybe
that’s not the way to make them very
distinct we talked earlier especially in
the rogue of really wanting to silo
these things so that they are separate
you know the silo our abilities so each
one Maps is something different and the
Rogues case knowing that you’re using
cunning action with your bonus action
you’re using sneak attack with your
regular action and you’re using your
dodge effect on Canada what the one that
cuts damage in half with your reaction
don’t really have an action left to put
stuff on top of so that’s why you solve
the Acrobat we attach it to your
movement it’s a different part plus it
worked well with your on your your
cutting action options so maybe this is
a reaction we are then saying that this
is a fighter who doesn’t make a lot of
opportunity attacks so there’s that but
maybe these are more defensive so you
feel like well I could op e or I could
do this thing that also would really
really help save my team so that’s
something which we’ll have to think of
as we go forward I want to take a look
though at let’s question this right is
it we said earlier we want to avoid
buffs I wrote it down over here if you
can’t read that it’s what’s highlighted
avoid buffs then I buffed you is this
design underselling what we can do my my
inclination is to say no that I really
think that this fighter needs to be able
to heal it needs to be healed really
well because I think otherwise you know
I want this character to feel like they
can bali support a cleric and that if
you don’t have a cleric this is an
option you know for that can help fill
that gap not as well and not to the same
full depth because in that case you’re
just you’re duplicating the cleric like
what the spiders as good as a cleric and
as a fighter that might be too good but
I think that our our avoid buffs thing
why
I think we’re doing a good enough job
with it like these things over here
aren’t I think just the fact we have
this terrain based effect field doesn’t
feel like a buff it feels like this is a
plan right I like the idea that it feels
like go to this spot to get your AC
bonus because that’s where the warlord
is you know has put their plan down that
doesn’t feel like a buff to me in play
that feels like a Smart Plan I feel like
the warlord is shouting something like a
former shield wall or watch out for each
other you know things like that you
stand here stand there watch out you
know watch your flank you know things
like that it feels more like that’s
that’s that’s our defensive formation
rather than necessarily just we just
have plus two AC does matter where we’re
standing that’s more of a magical effect
so I think this is okay this is
something though again we would this is
one of the things where playtesting is
important yeah we can get these numbers
exactly right it might just not feel
satisfying it might not feel right to
players they just might feel too much
like yeah I’m just throwing around lots
of dice that might be fun but remember
go back to one of the keys of subclass
design does that make me feel like the
person that this subclass is trying to
portray so I think we need this but I’m
not sure if we have exactly the right
flavor for it yeah another way to look
at it might be to with those dice so I’m
gonna be this is something here you know
maybe you can spread dice across
tactical focus so I might say look let’s
say if we took these numbers is true so
at forth level I have three uses of my
inspiring or insightful heal whatever
ability each one is worth to D 10 maybe
I can break those dice out so I have two
allies in the air my area of tactical
focus I give one at one be ten heal I
give the other one a one D ten bonus to
damage not to you know maybe their next
damage role or whatever it is the now
another thing immediately as I describe
that do I just want this to be a flat
number that’s another thing we could
look at too rolling a d-10 for healing
can be well ten percent of the time it’s
really irritating timber so no time
you’re really happy so maybe this is
something that translates to a flat
bonus too it could be a die for damage
and a flat number of hit points if it’s
used as healing and again with the XS
turning into temporary hit points so
that’s another thing to look at – but I
kind of feel like if we tie the
we tie that into our area of tactical
focus and I do kind of feel like this is
the warlord keeping an eye on the
battlefield barking commands giving
insight lending advice inspiring people
and then obviously this would work here
at certain points I can you know give a
shout in a quick kick and get you up you
know pull you off from the edge of being
conscious but yeah I do you know the
other interesting thing about that too
if you’re the tactical player that does
mean that if the wizard in the back gets
hit and you need to heal them you’re
pulling your tactical focus from the
front line to the back where the wizard
is that might be something that is a
tactical player is now a fun puzzle to
solve that might be where you say okay
guys you know I was using this ability
where we can’t Oppie so we can move
around and keep that door covered but
the wizard just got skewered by a thrown
spear so I’ve got to put my tactical
focus back here so I’m swapping the
ambush so if a monster gets through at
least we know someone can pop over there
and try to keep that wizard protected I
have to admit this might be really bad I
get really nervous when I feel this
excited about something I just said
myself cuz it’s probably maybe something
that just really appeals to me and no
one else or maybe I just did say
something that’s interesting but I think
that yeah you you know applies only to
area of focus so you’ll notice something
to that as we’re talking through this I
started making references to rules we
haven’t written down yet like you can
move your tactical focus once per turn I
need to make sure I write that down
because that’s just something that feels
like if I let you move it as often as
you can
I’ve undermined a puzzle that the player
might want to solve so move once per
turn
that feels important to me because he
and that’s what you know the warlord is
a tactically cunning character but
they’re not invincible they don’t get to
just throw their weight around
everywhere there could be cases where
that lucky crit from the ogres thrown
spear the secret door that opens and a
goblin comes bounding through it turns
out that the the villager that you’re
escorting to the forest was a werewolf
right so when you’re dealing with the
enter cap Ambler suddenly he Wolf’s out
and what do we do now is the where
can attack the party is the word I was
gonna go bounding out into the woods who
knows but we have to be ready so now is
the warlord I’m I have to make what
could be a really interesting choice and
I think that’s what I’m aiming for for
this player interesting choices
interesting choices I don’t think are
right for every player some players just
want to bash a monster over the head
with the biggest weapon they can find
some players just I want the highest
armor class and I’m going to stand at
the front and protect the rest of the
party others are I just want to throw
the biggest heels those players aren’t
really interested in in interesting
choices they want fun choices they want
to have make a big impact on the game by
throwing that fireball or bringing that
paladin up from two hit points back up
to 98 in one action they feel like yeah
that’s how I feel like I’m a hero and
I’m contributing all the players want to
puzzle right it’s not just okay get to
my turn and throw that heal I’ve been
waiting all game to make the difference
they want to have the feeling of wait a
sec I saw something that other people
didn’t see I want to spend that time
when it’s not my turn really thinking
and analyzing what’s going on in the
game and coming up with a smart plan so
this is a sub class which is aims to be
interesting in that sense that you’re
gonna make up you’re gonna weigh a few
factors then make your decision in some
ways you could think of it as the
difference between an option that has a
low skill scene ceiling versus one that
is a high skill ceiling something with
the low skill ceiling we’re saying is
it’s just here to be fun pretty obvious
how to use the abilities go out and
enjoy a high skill ceiling says if you
play this poorly you’re not gonna have
good results but if you start to see the
possibilities and start to make those
connections you could have a really
powerful character and so I think it’s
keeping in mind I think when we’re
talking about the warlord we’re talking
about that kind of player who wants to
think I want to work at this I want to
play this character and feel like I’m
getting better at this character as I go
up in levels because that to that player
is why I’ve solved a puzzle and now
dungeon master give me give me more
puzzles right give me more tactical
situations and that’s something that
gets that player to feel really happy
and engage with the game and then best
of all we’re doing this ready because
we’ve pitched the warlord as like the
hey I have a cunning plan it’s making
everyone else at the table feel like
they’re having more fun too it’s not
just hey I had the most powerful
character in the party and I just stomp
on everything it’s AI have a really
powerful character and
really what it’s doing is making
everyone else feel really powerful but
the Barbarian who if we use this ambush
ability who scoots across the
battlefield and then Wallops the you
know the orcs that tried to make the
ambush the warlord gets feel like the
hero cuz I had that idea the Barbarian
players like haha I did it I was the one
who moved over there and block that off
teamwork go right you have two players
feeling happy with that expertise rather
than just saying hey here’s the
Barbarian who deals lots of damage and
then here’s another higher skill ceiling
damage character who’s just dealing more
damage because this player solved the
game we want to try to avoid that you
know we’re thinking of low skill ceiling
versus high skill ceiling characters we
want to try to give them different
niches we want to make them feel
distinct we don’t want to just double
them up because this isn’t a competitive
game competitive game all bets are off
in that case right what we want to say
is hey you just started playing grab
that low skill see ceiling character
build that low ceiling deck because
right now you’re in the lower ranks of
skill your skilling up but as you get
your skills as they improve and you
start to feel like hey I’m kind of
bumping against my skill ceiling here
okay now’s the time I want to play
something that’s more tactical has more
options more moving parts and I’m gonna
slowly expand my ceiling and add in more
difficult options I mean I think that’s
why games like Magic the Gathering work
very well you can build your deck and
then all through deck as you play or opt
for a different type of deck team-based
games do this all the time you see there
are some characters that are great
dinners characters that are better for
more advanced players it’s to me it’s
great design because when a designer can
pull it off because you’re building a
nice roadmap for your players and you’re
letting them settle in at the point
where they feel like they’re having the
most fun and so yeah this is skin
especially as Dede ages right it’s um
where we’re approaching the 4th
anniversary of the launch of the game
the relaunch of the game so yeah I think
at this point people are starting to get
that those legs under them they wants to
be a bit more challenging doesn’t mean
we want to leave new players behind but
doesn’t mean we need to keep we need to
pay a little more attention to the
higher end of things while ensuring that
we’re not doing anything that shuts off
the lower skill levels of the game in
terms of mechanical mastery because we
know it’s all about keeping all the
categories
players happy and making everyone feel
like they’re getting fun stuff to play
with so that is where we are so you’ve
got essentially we’ve got our warlord we
have a few ideas we got this had this
idea of the the tactical focus always
another side to it expect the the the
tactical focus should grow with level so
it’s a good way to make you feel more
powerful plus gives you more flexibility
so I feel like that would make sense as
we become more skilled you come more
flexible and let’s see the I’m gonna
take a quick load over your chat if
we’re gonna see any questions that
popped up I may have missed one or two
but the yeah I think overall I’m happy
enough where we are with this that I
think I I’m gonna take a pass on doing
some more abilities and do a full
write-up and we can talk about next week
and kind of see where we end up the now
I think what’ll happen is as we design
more abilities that’ll give us real
insight into like are we on the right
path the proof really isn’t in the
design can you make stuff like we’ve
kind of built our structure we know
where our poles are where we get to put
stuff it’s like we just build our
shelves now do the books we’re going to
put in those shelves do they fit and are
we happy with them so yeah the other
capstone hundred 400 foot radius around
you counts through tattoo the area yeah
that’s that’s when now we go to like a
little school age that happens right
it’s everywhere the so yeah I think
that’s where we are with the warlord I
hope that was interesting I hope really
I hope this is a class that feels
interesting like I said this is really
what we’re aiming for some a it feels
interesting and is a puzzle to play and
yeah I’ll write this up for next week
and we’ll walk through a little bit more
detail on those special abilities see
where we ended up and see how is this
playing with our healing effect and are
we happy with how all these pieces are
working together yeah so that’s what
we’ll see so I’ll see you next week I’ll
have some more completed design probably
flesh out some of these abilities just
enough so I can start building out some
more specific tactical though these
cantrip level abilities and spell like
abilities and we’ll see what we ended up
with and we’ll see how it’ll works too
other so that was Mike Merrill’s happy
fun hour or happy fun 55 minutes as we
have 5 minutes to make our transition to
the next show I hope you enjoyed it I
know in the past I’ve asked if you have
suggestions for classes and subclasses
hold off on those right now I’m locked
into doing the warlord again for next
week
the following week then we’ll reopen it
to request we’ll see what comes in and
otherwise I keep designing keep gaming
and I’ll see everyone else I’ll see you
all next week
Turns out this flight was exactly what I needed to crack the warlord. It’ll be fun to talk about tomorrow on the Happy Fun Hour.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) March 13, 2018

For the curious, one of the moments I live for in game design was captured today when I talked about the warlord needing to move their tactical focus to heal the back rank wizard. Struck me something that might meld player and character thinking together in an elegant way.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) March 14, 2018

The Warlord Fighter subclass pt1 – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

March 7, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

hello everyone and welcome back to the mic Merle’s happy fun hour I’m your host Mike Merrill’s I am the creative director the franchise creative director on Dungeons & Dragons and today we’re gonna walk through the creation of yet another subclass so sit down pour yourself a beverage and here we go on our wild journey to the land of as you can see on the left side of my screen at least as far as I’m looking at it the fighter so I like the fighter it’s one of my favorite character classes you know it’s funny when I popped open these pages on D&D Beyond and saw this fighter art to me that’s like yes that’s a fighter you know we’ve got this character here this guy here he’s got his sword he’s got his Spears got a shield he’s got his armor and he’s got these two like curved daggers you know EJ he’s ready to go and so it’s always been and it’s always been a favorite class of mine and we also know it’s one of the most popular classes overall I think a lot of that is because when people think like hero like when you think of movies or comics or you know almost any type of story you think of the hero you think of the person of action versus the person who dives in this swinging or you know fists or sword the expert Archer the character who’s handy with a weapon who can save the day I think a lot of people like playing that character and I think when they think of that they think of the fighter so it’s really a class that is for me is a lot of fun to play with because within that realm there are a lot of possibilities there are a lot of things you can do and in design even though the fighters subclass doesn’t come in until third level the class itself allows for fairly meaty subclass design so I always really like working on it so this week we’re going to take a look at the fighter and if you played fourth edition D&D you might be familiar with the character class called the warlord now the warlord in fourth was a character class so today I’m going to tackle making a subclass for the fighter that captures what makes the war distinct I’m gonna talk a little bit about why the warlord is subclass might work better than warlord is character class and I’m also going to try to do something very important chat I am going to try to not sneeze I thought I was coming down with a cold but it seems to me maybe an allergy type thing and here we go in a coffee I try not to cough try not to sneeze but I’ve just got something coming in I hope it’s not a cold cuz I am going to Gary Khan leaving tomorrow I don’t think it is it doesn’t feel that way if he does compost more like an allergy thing so I promised by if I sneeze I will try not to sneeze directly into the microphone and destroy all of your eardrums so and also not gunk up the microphone for her rescues next but we’ll see I can’t promise anything I’ve already got one cough logged but we’ll see what we end up going it’s also very hard to take a drink off my beverage here because we’re not allowed to show logos when they’re companies on stream and so I should probably should have just duct tape this can of an unidentified soft drink before trying to bring it on stream but hey we live and learn right alright so let’s start with the idea of the warlord what is a warlord so the first thing is the warlord is it’s not some person who’s ruling a you know who’s seized a country by force or something like that no it’s our it’s our it’s our tactical fighter it’s our fighter who makes the rest of the team better it’s our fighter who is the leader of the group now I wanted to go out a little bit aside here leader is to my mind a word that is fraught with peril and dungeons and dragons we think of leader we think of person who tells us what to do I don’t think many of us play Dungeons & Dragons because we want people to tell us what to do I mean the dungeon master setting it aside the DM maybe tells us what to do we should probably listen if we want our character just arrived if you want to have a fun game but the you know we really do these a game about each character being an expert in whatever it is they focus on you might be playing in evoke your wizard your who’s really good at blowing stuff up or the crafty rogue who’s very good at charming people into doing almost anything but players generally and this ties back to when I talked about broken within the context of D&D Player’s don’t like it when someone it’s always upstaging them or making them feel like my character just isn’t important to this game or the story so when we say the leader it can get a little bit tricky we don’t want to create a character that makes the rest of the party feel like they’re getting bossed around you saw that a little bit last week when we did the the cleric subclass the cleric of order where that cleric was you know as I kind of think I turned him to get him cleric that wasn’t really something that I talked about but it did influence some of my design this idea that you want to feel like this character is buffing the party and making us feel like hey thanks for making me better at what I do but still letting me shine rather than overshadowing what I do or really specifically telling me what to do so it’s always something that’s a little bit in the group dynamic we have to watch out for for you know for all those reasons the other side of the coin is in fourth edition we hate behead the warlord as a character class so why not make it as a full-blown character class here and that’s something that we’ve talked about a lot internally and a lot of it comes down to you know is there enough conceptual space in this character class our theoretical character class to support like 10 years of sub class growth like could you play this character in year 1 and then in year 3 when we do like as an authority book where we add 2 to 4 new subclasses do those feel a real meaty and distinct do they each feel like really unique fictional characters and you know and then imagine carrying that on every additional three or four years or whatever the pace is you have new new options coming in for the fighter it’s very easy to imagine that for something like the wizard not only do you have different concepts of magic but you also have an each setting often D&D settings will have their unique take on how does arcane magic work in this world for the cleric it’s also very easy for the warlord it’s a bit more of a challenge though because you’re already taking a character who looks a lot like a fighter someone who’s up the front line with their weapons and they’re not using magic they’re using their their mundane for lack of a better term abilities how else can you slice them up it starts to get specific enough to the point where that distinction might not be resonating as a very fully fleshed out character now that doesn’t mean it’s impossible and you never know where things might go you never know where design can take you that’s and I think I’ve mentioned this a few times now on stream that’s just where I thinking is today the way we think about things today might not reflect how things are tomorrow because we know the world changes the audience changes everyone playing the indie may have different tastes so that’s just where we are today but you never know where we may end up tomorrow and trying to be agile and be flexible it’s always been a big part of what we are trying to do with fifth edition and how we’re trying to treat the game so that we can give you know this version the game can last a decade plus two decades right that’d be fantastic that’s really what we’re aiming for and so that all kind of goes into that if we’re adding a new character class it has to be something what we think is can encompass a lot of different character types to really allow for a robust and but steady but measured growth and what it can contain I could I imagine some day there might come a point where we’re just not adding subclasses anymore simply because we just have enough and we don’t think there are any more arc types we need to hit you know I could definitely see that potentially happening if the game goes on long enough I suspect they’ll always be something new a new type of character people want to play something whether it’s from a movie or comic or a TV show or whatever some type of character people want to emulate will come along that’ll capture people’s imagination if you’re an old-timey Deane deer like me playing back in the 80s the idea of playing a drow character you know no one really thought of that until Bob Salvatore wrote the the crystal shard and introduced tryst and now suddenly playing a drow sounds great right and on the unearthed Arcana game book by Gary Gygax introduced that as an option you could play so you know we never say never but we do have to kind of look at how things are working today so that’s kind of the rundown of how we ended up the where we are with the warlord and how I’m approaching it so let’s take a step back you see before you and now I feel like I’m Dungeon Master in you see before you to open web browser windows the one to the left that’s my Dean my it’s my deed DM voice right I got to go a little deeper is if I’m like narrating a commercial for like a very high-end automobile maybe the but anyways let’s take the left we got the fighter here which as I’ve said time and time again because it’s a lesson I’ve had to learn time and time again is when you’re working with something that already exists in the game be sure to read it as you’re working with it because you a have not memorized it and B if you think you have you have it wrong that’s just always a given so we’ve got our fighter open here and we can take a look this like the rogue is a character class whose subclass choice comes in at third level and as I talked about with the rogue that means that we believe the class the class itself has a strong enough core identity that the subclass alters that identity rather than provides it warlock and cleric are both great examples of character classes where that choice comes in at first level we’re playing a cleric of the God of War should feel different right from the beginning compared to playing a cleric of the god of let’s say the weather house storms or things like that but this is one that comes in at third level but you’ll notice that if you’re playing a fighter your first and second level class features are a fighting style second wind in action surge these are all things that we very specifically designed to be useful regardless of what type of fighter you were playing in some ways to fight the the design of the fighter really helped design how the subclass how the subclasses ended up being wedded to the character classes so we take a quick look at them if we go down to fighting style look did I here we go we’re at down here I’ll just okay we go so fighting style is essentially your choice of weapon we figure every type of fighter is gonna have some basic approach to combat they want to take so the style helps encompass that basically it’s you saying here’s what my fighter does and we generally wanted to keep these pretty simple but the idea being that this is meaty enough that you don’t necessarily need your subclass at this stage to define what your fighter is like if you’re playing a very defensive fighter you could go for the AC bonus or if you wanted to play a fighter who’s more I’m here to tank for the group you could say take protection second wing is another thing it’s a self heal ability every fighter wants that and it’s not really so defining that that you could imagine a fighter who wouldn’t have this and same goes for action surge taking an additional action especially on top of the additional attacks you get at higher levels is this great for every fighter basically it says you as a fighter here’s what you do now you do more of it so this was really important for us to make you feel like regardless of what type of fighter you wanted to play you were able to portray that character without having of abilities come in that maybe you’d stopped using or that you felt weren’t relevant or that you felt really went against what your character did now the drawback to that is if we’re gonna make our warlord it means the first couple levels you’re not really doing anything that makes you feel like a tactical commander the we also have to keep in mind – I think I saw someone on chat mentioned you know the bard being kind of a similar role we’ve got to make sure that this character feels distinct from the bard and maybe in some ways having this delayed a third level might help us there yeah we’ll see now one thing I would look at doing I’m not gonna do it today in fact I think this one is probably gonna take us a couple weeks because it’s gonna be a little bit more there’s a lot more to develop here because essentially as you’ll see we’re gonna be building something almost its own little subsystem for this subclass subsystem for subclass huh there’s probably some sort of joke I could make there but I won’t the but you could imagine under fighting style we might create something that’s like a tactical insight or inspiring presence or something that lets you go you know what I want to play the tactical leader here’s the fighting style I can take that helps feed that it may be a fighting style if we if we hit the right notes even characters who maybe aren’t going to become warlords but might think of themselves as hey I’m an inspiring character or this feels right for my character they might also pick that up too but again we’ll get to that we’ll do the warlord first and then we’ll talk about where we’re going from there so now this is where we get into the fun apart because there is a limit of a secret of game design and now I’m gonna let you in on when I work on five subclasses for the fighter now this doesn’t apply to all of them but it applies to this one remember before when we work on the other the other classes we I would generally pick out a single subclass and say this is kind of the foundational reference one like the the sorcerer the the dragon right that was like that that’s our reference point wild Magic’s a little wacky a little more fringy we don’t want to use that one as our core example well what the fighter we actually have a lot of flexibility I think of all three as carrying equal weight in terms of using as being foundational it really comes down to what kind of design do I want to do and the design choices are essentially tied into how often do you get stuff back so the battle master for instance gets superiority dice and you get those back with a short or long rest so if I have a fighter who I want to have the bill abilities that come back with a short rest I’m gonna match that fighter against the battle master if I have a fighter who is say looking at stuff that’s more consistent I’m gonna scroll we’re past the brute cuz I know your blades SP back in the room was pretty negative we’re not using that one this week we’re gonna scroll down and look at the champion the champion is a good comparison for the fighter who doesn’t have those spikes hey the fighter this fighter is not getting things back and a short or long rest they just have their thing and they do it so that leaves us with one final model the fighter who gets stuff back with the long rest and that is the eldritch Knight ljust Knight is our combination basically warrior mage it was really put in here like we designed it because we know a lot of people like playing that type of character so rather than force you to multi class which remember the multi classroom rules were optional we don’t assume you’re using them this left you with one choice of class then one choice of subclass play that warrior mage and that means we can build a character whose abilities are all coming back with a long rest and that’s where you know as I thought about the warlord you know I want the warlord to be able to heal the flavor of the healing is gonna be more inspirational and mundane rather than like I’m waving my arm and making your wounds close so but I I think healing generally works best if it’s a daily resource because otherwise too often you may end up with an ability where the party is too easily or too often healing up completely between fights now this is another interesting point of the game design of fifth edition D&D we actually assume you start every fight with bullet points we assume between rests spells potions whatever you’re gonna heal fully up we didn’t try to get so finesse II with the game that we were trying to track well here’s how many hit points we expect you’ve lost by this stage and here’s how many we expect you’ve lost by this fight we just treated hit points spell slots everything is just a a blob of resources and just assume that you Whittle through those resources as you go through fights based on their difficulty so we you might be a full hit points but have it be down a few spell slots you might be at full hit points but be done a few potions or what-have-you so now what that means is while we’re okay with you healing up we have found that in terms of feedback Dungeon Master’s especially feel a bit frustrated and the players are healing up too easily it makes fights feel not quite consequential enough there was a spell from Zenith ARS guide that allowed for a lot of out of combat healing and that’s a good example of something where when we eventually when we should be like in the next month or so I mean maybe two months the timing I don’t know exactly I’ll top my head we should be soon pushing out a survey on on Zenith ARS and that’s one of the spells we’ll be taking a look at to see is it disrupting things at the table do people feel like it’s not working out I think it’s healing spirit I might have the name wrong but that’s a Jeremy Crawford problem it’s not a Mike morels problem so the but I know he’s been looking at it and so I think that we’re gonna it’s part of our are sort of feedback on that product take a look at that spell and see what dm’s and players are thinking about it so that just naturally means we like to push healing toward being a daily resource because and as I mentioned before one of the the challenges of game design is to think what’s my failed state look like if this goes haywire what happens to the game if I’m giving a damage bonus like what what’s the absolute most and I’m not you know what’s the most punishing thing that could happen with this and I’m not saying about actually going through the books and trying to figure out what’s the actual Birkin combo just assume there’s something broken what would it look like and with daily resources the one nice thing about that is they tend to happen once then they kind of go away there’s a natural half-life to them so it’s one of the things that’s that helps keep that in check and it’s why we generally try to avoid giving you encounter style healing powers also because in a lot of ways on a short rest you think you’ve taken a short rest you’re healing there really should be getting using your hit dice rather than necessarily getting back your healing spells to then use again now that’s not an ironclad rule but that’s just generally our design direction the celestial pact warlock for instance does break that a bit but that’s something that’s unique to warlocks we didn’t want to just have no healing warlock in order to obey that sort of meta rule of the game’s design so what does this mean for our warlord subclass and why oh why do I have this tab open on the right side about creating a spell glad you asked or I’m glad I asked myself because if you’ve read the Dungeon Master’s guide which I highly recommend you do a lot of people I meet a lot of people who don’t realize how much of the game’s underlying architecture is spelled out in the dmg if you read the dmg it tells you in a handy table what a spell slot is worth in terms of damage a first level spell that targets one creature is worth two d-10 damage if it targets multiple creatures it’s worth to d6 damage this is essentially from first to ninth level and including can trips though can trips or look funny cuz those scale up so it’s the the can trip it’s listed as one d-10 for one target 1 d6 for multiple that’s kind of a lie but we’re not designing can’t trip so this class subclass so we’re good for now but everything here just lays down what you’d expect in terms of damage whatta spells output should look like what that means is if we come along to our here let’s see oh you know what I’m just poking around now does the eldritch Knight have its spells progression here you know what I did not think to take a look to see what’s presented here it might be on the character sheet ooh here you know I’m gonna try an beginnings I know the layout shifts a bit it’s now you had to see me instead of going through the list of spells you get to see me scroll through text to see where is our spell progression for the Elder tonight I actually don’t see it here that is a little okay well we don’t actually need it because I’ll just well I’ll walk you through what this actually means what and what this actually means is you know I’m big in this oops today is the day of me messing around with web laugh here we go so what it means is we can take at any given level for the the eldritch nice eldritch nice eldritch tonight and just sum up the value of its spell slots at any given level in terms of 10-sided dice that means we’ve essentially figured out the raw firepower potential of that eldritch knight character and that then means we have a measure by which we can then start creating the warlords output of its abilities so that’s a really handy way to handle those sort of daily versus daily comparisons taking an existing concept within the system and then translating into something new now I’m gonna be honest this this is kind of the easy part because this is just the numbers the numbers don’t mean anything without context and they don’t mean anything without what they with what their meaning is in the game like what am I doing with this output and that’s the big question we would have for the warlord so I’m gonna go here to my handy-dandy words blank word template then I come back over here to my fighter and I do using the magic of Microsoft Windows put both those tables there and let’s take a look at we want our comparison to be the Eldridge Knight which I’m scrolling to here we go and we want to compare to the warlord so the first thing I’ll do is I know the spell casting feature is really the biggest piece of the other tonight that’s where I’m gonna drop some sort of like tactical insight cunning plan you know some ability that we’re the represents what the Warlord’s doing as that that tactical genius but what I want to do first is maybe take a look at the other class features that the eldritch knight gets and figure out is there anything really load-bearing here any I need to take a look at so spell casting I’m just going to skip right now and we see that we get a weapon bond at third level so if they’re level you learn a ritual that creates a magical bond which in yourself in one weapon essentially once you have a weapon bonded to yourself you can’t be disarmed of that weapon unless you’re incapacitated it’s on the same plane of existence you can summon it as a bonus action this is pure flavor i and this is not something where when we crunch the numbers to go well you can make a great sword teleport to your hand and that’s worth now this is just purely we’re making it flavorful this is this is this is this is an ability that’s a ribbon now you can imagine some some cases where this would would be very useful for instance you’re taken prisoner and you want your weapon to appear you want to go into a situation and say hey I’m unarmed you can trust me and then being an adventurer you summon a great sword and chop the guy in half right that’s just what happens right but overall many of those things you could accomplish with a good skill check with a clever plan we don’t worry about that so I don’t need to worry about the weapon bond is something that a lot the warlord needs something similar no I could just give the warlord weapon bond which would make no sense but then I could least say well it’s balanced the now here’s though where things get interesting under war magic beginning its seventh level when you use your axe to cast a can trip you can make one weapon attack as a bonus action that’s really good that’s letting you both well you might want to flick green flame blade with this if I don’t know actually don’t believe you get access to those can trip some scag so you wish you could because I’d be two attacks plus the magic effect on top of it but it does let you feel like hey I’m a warrior mage I’m throwing a spell and I’m taking that make an attack with my weapon this is deceptively good because since can’t trips scale with level you’re getting a lot of damage output from that and then you’re also making the attack and there’s also you always have to consider this probably can trips out there that throw d buffs on people so that this weapon attack is gonna be getting some sort of benefit at tenth level we get Eldred strike when you hit a creature with your weapon attack that creature has disadvantage and the next saving throw it makes against the spell you cast that’s pretty good that’s very and again that’s getting past this idea of the the elders Knight really combining this idea of fighting and using magic at the same time now that’s relevant here because I think when we talk about a warlord we want you to make you want to make it feel like you can fight and lead because after all you are a fighter that’s also important to me because I think when you think of the character who’s just staying at the back not mixing it up but it’s still feeling like someone who’s either leading or putting buffs on people I think that starts to feel a little bit more like a bard now there’s the valor bard you can be a bard who mixes it up but I think that’s you know that’s one type of bard other bars are a little bit more ranged a little bit more staying near the back of the party but still providing some support so I think we want to lean into this idea that the warlord leads from the front so I think there’s gonna be mechanics that we can scavenge from here I especially like how this stuff is working with spell casting and then still letting you fight so there’s probably something interesting there it also the really nice thing about this too is since this is a class feature that this sits on top of the spells what I’m seeing here is I don’t have to worry about tinkering with these effects to account for the spell power my spells exist and then there’s a whole separate bucket of class features that I can just do a comparison featured a feature and then spell verses my clever tactics abilities whatever those are going to look like the O and I before I forget arcane charge you can teleport up to 30 feet when use your action surge that’s nice it’s not super power level driven but it’s not a pure ribbon but it’s really not something that necessarily has a big effect on your power in terms of your damage per round and then improved war magic when use your action to cast a spell you make one weapon attack as a bonus action so that’s an upgrade over war magic where you went from cantrip in bonus an action attack to spell and bonus act an attack that’s pretty good again you’re probably going to throw a buff on yourself or a debuff on your enemy that’s kind of like the ideal use case for this you know to let you maximize his potential see so that’s what we’re looking at here for class features and this tells me that what I want to do is really work on what what does this tactical option system look like this is the sub system and how does it interact with these class features so let’s take a look at the the spell casting and you know I feel a little bad here I’m showing off Dini beyond but I can’t let’s see is the spells its byssus probably still lists here yeah so you know I’m gonna do I’m gonna kind of cheat now I could I could make an eldritch tonight because I don’t have my players handbook with me oh but you know what it’s actually not too important because I know that we’re gonna be doing comparison of spell to spell so what we want to do first is say okay we want a system of tactical I’m gonna call them gambits because of the superhero gambit of course right but we’ll see with if that name sticks so you want to system of tattle gambits that capture the idea of a cunning warlord who leads the party to victory through smart tactics now this is an important set of words right because right here I’m laying down my flavor this is a fighter who’s intelligent and I want to use that very consciously because I think the charismatic character again I feel like that’s pushing us to the Bard bards use charisma as their spell casting ability I think abouts to use charisma here I’m starting to see characters who can look similar so instead I want to focus on this idea of intelligence the warlord isn’t necessarily someone who people go hey like you know I believe in you right it’s more like they come up with the plan that other people go wow okay that’s a good idea I want to follow that and I’m gonna capture that hey that’s a good idea this is what I’m you know following for benefit warlord makes others better in a tactical combat way and I also want to emphasize teamwork because I think that’s why this idea of the warlord is a leader it’s not just that he’s an inspiring person you know and that they are standing there and making everyone else feel motivated it’s that they have that insight and I think that insight needs to come from teamwork whenever possible so the warlord is most comfortable when they can work with the group as a whole now that might be a little truck tough to pull off balance wise if we go back and take a look at our our spells we can see that you do a first level spell is worth two d-10 damage so right off the bat one of the things we have to look out for is there’s be a very natural tendency to say look this character just like the warlord from fourth edition wants to hand out extra attacks to the rest of the party and it’s very sensible it makes it totally works but a little bit of a challenge here is that this two d-10 as a first level ability could quickly get out of hand because you have to always assume the players are gonna play this intelligently and they’re not gonna pick the wizard with the dagger and they have the eleven dexterity to make the extra attack they’re gonna pick that raging barbarian or that paladin or that rogue who’s lining up a sneak attack now this is where we get to probably one the most difficult parts of dde balance on one hand we could say look let’s balance this and assume it’s always a rogue getting a sneak attack now the rogue with the sneak attack is a very important character to consider because in the design of the rogue character class we always assume that the rogue only received one attack per action and to sort of safeguard against a rogue getting multiple attacks safe to multi classing we specify that sneak attack takes place only once per turn now that might go great so it’s the rogues turn they’re what makes an attack on a hit Stieg attack damage hooray but we said per turn so it means that if the rogue could attack is a reaction that’s another sneak attack that’s the chance to double the rogues damage output it’s already a fairly considerable damage output now classes like the fighter they rely on a multiple attacks so giving a fighter one extra attack while handy doesn’t have the same magnitude of effect because we assume the fighter is getting their damage output by two or three attacks at higher levels the rogue continues to get it through that one single attack so but there is one issue there what if the party doesn’t have a rogue if we balance this assuming it’s a rogue making a sneak attack every time the warlord gives out an extra attack that works fine if the party has a rogue it doesn’t work so well if the party doesn’t have a rogue in fact it might end up feeling like well I could give someone an extra attack but why don’t I just swing my weapon because what’s the point right I you can imagine a party with two identical fighters ah but one’s a warlord and one is let’s just say a battle master the the sake of argument the if both of their melee attacks look similar why would the warlord who’s the tactically cunning character gives someone else a bonus attack which is just their attack so this is probably the most difficult thing to balance here and it’s probably something we’re gonna you know sort of have maybe even talk about the rest of this half hour but wow we’ll see but I think resolving it is the key to gate making this sub class work so conceptually in fifth edition we’ve kind of kind of accepted a few things one of the most important things is to say we don’t balance for the best we balance for that character who might be third best and that’s because we want the character who feels like hey I’m the best I am the rogue I’m really I’m the best single attack unless you know paladin smiting and things like that but round after round is a rogue I can deliver really big damaging hits once per round we’re saying that’s okay that’s fine the Rogue is the most potent character and lending that one single attack if you’re playing a warlord you probably should be trying to get your rogue to make as many extra attacks as possible and you’re going to be doing more damage than the typical group and that’s okay you’ve either optimized your playing smart and you should be rewarded I mean that’s part of the game is understanding that if we just assume the best and balance everything around that then the best isn’t the best the best is now just average and since we made the best average that means everyone else is below average which isn’t really all that great of a design path for a game that’s predicated predicated on the idea of heroic fantasy adventure right so you know what it does is it creates a scenario where if you make one incorrect choice one suboptimal choice your character feels weak and that’s not what we want right that’s you know the it thinks something is broken then but in the opposite sense it’s it’s you know I built a character who hey I want to play the character who’s really stealthy I made the choices that look like to make me stealthy and I’m not stealthy because you assumed instead if I want to be the stealthiest character I would you know now I’m just making something up but you choose monk and you choose the subclass and you choose this feat and now that is actually the stealthiest character who we’ve calibrated as being the target for stealth as the average character yeah you end up not feeling all that great you know you can Majan that world although the passive perception scores rolled our monsters are jacked up high because they’re there to foil that character whom we feel is the level best rather than the average character so that’s an important lesson when you’re thinking about your design for D&D is while you want to be aware of that powerful combo you don’t want to assume it you want to take it a couple notches lower to let that player who is opted into that character to let them shine and then more importantly let if the players are optimizing and they’ve built that up make them feel like hey we made the decision that our characters are a wrecking crew we’re really good at fighting the DM has to just pull in more powerful monsters and if that’s the way the group wants to play that’s great you know we know if for instance you’re playing curse estrade there are groups out there who look at stradun think we can take him at third level and that’s ok because that’s where that group has chosen to play that’s their style of game it’s no different than another group who might decide we’re really storytelling and it’s kind of silly and wacky and we’re gonna kind of behave like it’s like you know Monty Python meets you know Strad bonds Arabic and that’s just how we play and the DM rolls with it and makes it work it makes it enjoyable that’s great too right we don’t mandate that you have to be you know you must provide three units of funny per session now your character receives no XP right we don’t say that right we assume that that’s just the way your group wants to roll and the dungeon master will adjust the game as they see fit to suit the day of the group’s playing style twice it’s no different than if you’re modifying an adventure right if you decide that we’re playing the humor campaign everything’s kind of funny and wacky so you know when you bust into Castle into Castle Ravenloft Strad challenges challenges you to a dance-off you know because that’s just the way your group rolls cool go for it right it’s your game that’s why it’s there so it’s a very long that’s and it’s important though you know because it’s important for the sahbihi to understand that that’s how we see things that you might feel sometimes like you’re breaking the game and it might be we’re okay with that because you decided to play that character who’s just my character is really lethal I’m going to deal the most damage I’m gonna be the most eloquent character imaginable that’s okay we want you to feel powerful so what it means is if I was going to take a look at this character I probably would say I want if the Warlord’s giving out some bonus attacks to the rest of the party I need to give you an element where as a warlord you feel like that’s the smart plan because going back to our little text here as I wrote we want a system of tactical gambits that capture the idea of a cunning warlord who leads the party to victory through smart tactics so it’s it’s you know if you’re giving these attacks to another fighter there should be elements there that make it feel like okay we’re being rewarded for doing this you know this is not a case where I should just use my attacks right I’m a warlord I just beat down the monsters I’m not acting any different from any other fighter now a path you could take and but you would take a lot of convincing to get me to do this would be to make the Warlord’s attacks worse but I just I think that whenever you’re talking about gimping something to encourage something else I think it’s a really bad design path you know because it really cuts down on the flexibility of character creation and it cuts down on the idea that you can kind of play what you want we don’t do that really often in v like here’s another kind of secret of the game’s design while wizards have a d6 hit die and other characters have a d12 we have the Barbarian we don’t put a lot of weight on that we don’t really look at and go wow the Wizards getting a d6 you know that’s like that’s like three hit points fewer per level we really need to like give there wasn’t a bunch of extra stuff to make up for that it’s something we think of but it’s not something that we overwhelmingly design around it so so why if you multi-class we don’t say you know it doesn’t matter what your class was you just you get the hit points and hit dive the class are going into it’s also getting the final reason it’s also why we we encourage people to use the average hit point you go ahead and roll like that’s cool like the game going back to if you want a challenge straw to a dance-off we’re not going to stop you but we do try we do feel that if you use the average high points it helps preserve that hit point distinction but also ensures if you’re that d6 hit point character you don’t get hosed by rolling a one so and then just feeling like my character is more vulnerable than I expect for some players that’s fun it’s a challenge it gives that character a nice texture that you might not otherwise have but for again going that back the idea that a lot of D&D is about hey I’m playing a hero I want to be effective you know the idea of the random die roll just making you feel less effective strategically over the course that character’s life time it’s not something by default that we want to bake into the game so we typically try to avoid restrictions and if there are restrictions they are typically things that are more you don’t get this thing but if the people get but you might have a way to get it if you try for it so through a feat multi classing or whatnot alright so that summarizes the entire approach to the warlord handing out extra tax we are not gonna worry about the rogue we’re gonna say the rogue is really cool and the barbarians cool but we’re gonna balance this assuming that it’s the fighter making those extra attacks and we want the world of those still to feel like a fully effective fighter so it just signed up and you wrote down fighter on your character sheet or picked it from your drop-down menu or whatever we don’t want to make you feel like oh I’m not as good of a fighter as other fighters want you instead feel like well the samurai gets this ability I don’t get that ability but I get my abilities over here and that’s what makes me distinct I might love the samurais abilities and realize I made a grave error and going for warlord or Samurai but that’s an entire different kettle of fish the so let’s see what we can do though now design wise to bring some of this to life what I’ll do at this stage I talked earlier about the spells and what those slots are worth but what I like to do with this start is rather than focus on the numbers I like to just come up with concepts of what I expect this character to do so we’ve settled on this idea of this character smart they have good tactile insight they’re kind of what you’d expect have you said this characters are expert tactician what does that look like so what does that mean well and we also settled this idea of teamwork so we probably want something where you know teaming up attacks are better so something about if I can get the group to coordinate or I can give the ability to the team to coordinate that’s good and so and this is what I like to do is I kind of create these categories and I’ll just throw concepts under them this is gonna get really messy at the LAN notes but I’m just gonna do it so it might be someone like a group move to a better place I’m gonna put this in quotes if you played chess this is this idea of castling and I get this wrong because I haven’t played chess since I cross swords with Chessmaster 2000 like 20 years ago but there was this idea that if you move your pawns in a specific way you can like hide your King behind the castle piece the rook I’m not a chess player but um and I know I just butchered that that’s probably some very salty chess players in chat right now who aren’t yelling yet but I’m sure they will be the but the idea being that if you manipulate the board in a certain way you can you can establish a nice defensive position essentially more efficiently you can move a couple pieces maybe differently or further so what I just want to say is you know take moves that are otherwise illegal there is something funny about initiative I don’t know if there’s anything here because initiative is just it’s the order in which you go but maybe we let you mess with it to build a combo I mean combos are very much when you’re talking team tactics it’s off about combos so maybe there’s something there with calm you mess with it to make a combo to make a combo that sounds like a something we should be doing in a live stream the okay so teaming up to make attacks better I want to try to avoid so I’m gonna put I’m gonna I want to try to avoid buffs I want to try to avoid stuff that just says look I’m gonna say this I’m gonna say this and next week I’m probably gonna show you a sheet that has a bunch of buffs on it because it’s always hard to to really you know not just give out the plus bonus to damage and all that stuff but I want to try to avoid that cuz that really feels like what spells do right right now there are plenty of spells like bless that just say have some bonuses I want this to feel distinct you know it’s kind of like my reach for the stars you know aspirational design we might not get there but let’s try to shoot for it so these things should not feel like spells and sometimes defining your negative space helps define your actual space building some of those walls might be what you need to create a concept that feels really distinct it’s not a tool we use too often usually if building something I have like here is my vision of that thing but we talk with the warlord you know leadership and tactical cunning are both very flexible things if for instance were to say fire mage you’re like what does a fire mage do they set things on fire okay that’s pretty consistent I think if I asked 10 people what a fire mage did they would say they create fire or set things on fire same basic thing but if I was to ask someone what is the tactically brilliant character do we my mind at least and I suspect others would too tends to two specific examples like Oh what about that really you know during you know pulling an idea from a historical battle of you know like the Greeks fighting the Persians at Thermopylae like making them attack through the narrow pass so they couldn’t bring all their numbers to bear like okay yeah that was tackling hunting you think of the Battle of Midway where the US Navy tricked the Japanese Navy into attacking Midway and without suspecting that the American carriers were already nearby to launch their counter-attack like oh that was really that was cutting it was tactically smart strategically smart but it tends to be more specific things rather than just here’s the general thing the general thing for me in a lot of cases just boils down to be smart which is not necessarily something that like oh then here’s the ability you get be smart like you you know you should be smart okay that’s great life advice but how do i implement that so by trying to cordon off some elements that what might happen is a more distinctive piece emerges that really lets the warlord stand out on its own is something really distinct so we want to avoid buffs right we don’t want to just throw around numbers because you know that that that feels too much like spells so I’m gonna use blasts and similar spells as examples of what not to do and like I promised you chat you guys can hold this hold this hold me to this if it next week I come in and I have a bunch of buffs because that’ll just mean what try this and it just didn’t quite work out it’s a pretty high now that I’m trying to say I’m shooting really high it’s why I’m so great no it’s more just this idea that it buffs are just so simple and obvious but since we’re design something that’s like after Zanna thar’s we don’t necessarily need to be simple and obvious and everything we do we should do that when it’s appropriate but in this case what might happen is this is the stage where nothing is simple and obvious but then we’ll find our solution and if we’re doing it well a week or three from now when we have this subclass bill they go that seems simple and obvious well we got there by doing we’ll deal with a lot of uncertainty and this is also a case where when you’re thinking about your own work you know it’s not always gonna be easy but if it’s not easy that means you’re stretching yourself you know if you think about we just have the Winter Olympics right you know if you’re a speed skater and he said oh I I trained all week and it was easy you know I just kind of kept cruising around the track I don’t think you’d think that that person has a really good chance of winning an Olympic gold medal unless they’re just some like insanely talented person who’s just like twice as fast as anyone else like no I’d expect that you’re really pushing yourself because we know in order to grow in order to do new things in order to beat your personal bests that’s where you need to live is isn’t that place where you’re really uncomfortable and I know is for a lot of writers a lot of designers when you’re starting out that can be uncomfortable because I think we’re really conditioned as people as humans to to see who the EES if we can make hard things look easy that means we’re doing it well and I say no no no it doesn’t matter how talented you are it’s always hard right it’s always hard whether you’re starting out or they been doing over 20 years it’s always hard if it’s not hard you might be kind of selling yourself short you know the like I said the the world’s best speed skater never hits a point where they’re like oh yeah this is easy now I just get on the ice and break World Records they’re training themselves as hard as possible every time they go out there so don’t shy away from this kind of design we’re like well I’m not really sure what I’m gonna do and I got a little uncertainty and I might totally fail and I may be doing the live streaming I’m gonna take an aside and talk about general philosophy to cover the fact I don’t have a third bullet point as I think about it furiously yeah but that’s just part of it right so you know don’t let that discourage you if anything if you’re feeling you’re hitting a wall that’s a good sign it you’re pushing yourself past the stuff that’s easy for you and you’re hitting the hard stuff so don’t let any writer’s blocks or any think that’s slowed you down if you’re hitting that it means you’re on the right track because there’s plenty of writer’s blocks in the way between you and success and I’ve been through it myself okay so we want to get players to team we want the characters to team up because that feels like a leader we don’t want to just throw it buffs we just say hey you get +2 to attack that just feels too much like a spell another thing we want to do is though I am gonna say something here though we want to be spell like in that we want to do unique things and I’m gonna talk us for a second about that you know when we talk about magic spells especially new ones there’s a little bit of an element Thera we’ve done the basics we’ve done fireball we’ve done magic missle we’ve done a bunch of healing spells if we’re gonna do another area of effect fire spell it’s gonna be something really interesting you can’t just be another fireball now the interesting mortal enemy but also evil twin brother is complexity interesting often comes with complexity I’ll give an example fireballs fun their level spell blow stuff up well what if we give you hell ball it’s a seventh double spell it opens the gate to hell causes a big burst of fire damage and then devils start crawling out to attack or I transform that section of the world into a fragment of the nine hells and it creates an ongoing environmental effect might be cool spell might be great for a warlock but what we’ve done there is we’ve also increased the spells complexity we went from I’m gonna measure off my radius figure out who’s in it make some saving throws roll some damage add that up and apply it then done move on to the next spell that one’s done it’s resolved to I’m gonna do all those things then I’m gonna say this area of the battlefield there’s something still going on I have to check me beyond every creatures turn is something happening I have to ever if there’s any penalties or bonuses there’s a lot more going on so one thing we have to look out here for look out for here is complexity now that said while traditionally you know lots of people play fighters it’s the most popular class I’m not worried about keeping this simple just for the sake just cuz it’s a fighter the simple fighter is a solved issue so this one I can afford to be a little more complicated and I have to make sure that if I’m gonna add complexity it’s worth it so that’s gonna be something like really unique and you know I’m not gonna say left field but distinctive abilities the things that are happening have to feel like they haven’t been found elsewhere I also think I’m gonna do something here with a concentration mechanic concentration is nice not only because it throttles the number of spells a character can throw at any given moment but concentration is also an important cap on complexity if you’re not familiar the concentration mechanic some spells require concentration if I cast a spell that requires concentration any other spells that I cast that also required concentration come to an end what that means is that each character each caster typically only has to track one of those potentially very complex ongoing effects at a time and that really speeds up gameplay it then also has the nice effect of I can’t drop three area of effect ongoing spells on one spot and let them stack up unless I have three different characters doing it and in that case we’re okay with that because three characters it might be three quarters maybe the entire party might be half the party we’re all working together to do something that’s fine that’s cool that’s teamwork that’s what DeeDee what other things makes DND really fun we don’t want that happening if it’s one character doing that though that feels that’s taking a lot of spotlight time away from the characters it means one person’s trying to track all these different effects we also know the typical party might be only one wizard or you know and maybe a cleric so at most you’re probably only stacking up two of those spells which helps control the sort of their ability to just shut things down but I do think I want these abilities to be good enough that they might require concentration because that means they can be powerful and they can be complex now when I say complex it doesn’t mean I’m just gonna gratuitous you make these really intricate but it does mean that I can afford to have ongoing effects things that require a little bit of tracking especially if the players doing that because I think that feels like on the commander and that’s the most final and most important thing when you use these you need to feel like a commander I want you to feel like that that Chessmaster right be a chess master mm or chess master you know whatever dáil reckoning it is right the we want you to feel like as a player I’ve talked about this with the Acrobat where you’re really using the mechanics to get inside your character’s head remember the Acrobat we said look the Acrobat has a fly speed it’s just equal to your speed well does that make me feel like an acrobat or what if I said when you move you get two short flights each equal to half your speed now do I feel like I’m kind of bouncing off things I’m trying to plot up my move how am I going to get to the top of that that wall no one I can fly 15 feet then I can find another 15 feet I need to land somewhere along the way like okay I’m gonna fly 15 feet land on the Etten’s head then fly another 15 feet now I feel like I’m an acrobat now I feel like I’m a bat parkour expert right and of course I will yell parkour as I jump off the one of the ends to heads of course right this is what you do so really and I’m gonna use because I’ve abused chess enough today I’m gonna say look but let’s umbrella and brace our inner chess master and use that Lord I want you to feel a bit like a chess master that the other players are your pieces now you’re probably if you’re a smart warlord maybe your charisma is 10 or higher you’re not gonna tell the rest of the party that in going back to this idea of I don’t want you to feel like the other players are just pawns of the warlord that was a pun and it wasn’t bad you have to admit that chat I want yeah a little love the the pawn pun to be totally fine to see here the that you know you don’t want the players to feel like they have no agency but you want the warlord there’s a little bit of a competition some some tension there which we can have to watch and play testing let’s make the chess master feel like oh I’m you know I’m maneuvering the party around and the party feels like yeah cool totally right I want to feel like Hannibal you know it’s Hannibal for me a team coming up with a great plan that’s gonna come together rather than the guy who’s like yelling at me like to go over here and do this like oh you know if you played a co-op board game we all have the friend who’d you’re playing the co-op board game and they know exactly what you’re supposed to do and if you don’t do it they’re gonna just tut tut you all night cuz you’re the one responsible for letting a plague destroy Chicago because you didn’t move the cube to where it shouldn’t be instead you decided to fly to the Azores like come on right like it’s a co-op game it’s not a we all just do what you tell us game and if that sounds like it’s coming from a personal place yeah it probably is so that’s where you want to make sure that we are we are not making this character feel like just the rest of the party other playthings so it’s you know this to me is really fun design because it’s hard right there’s a lot of things we have to keep in mind here to get this right and some of them are self-imposed but I think if we want this to be distinct you know I’ll be blunt we could have just taken I am sure there’d be people out there who’d be fun we just took our handy-dandy spell slot by damage thing which for some reason keeps resizing huh how did I get here thanks fella we could just take this and say look you get candy you can transform these spell slots and damage bonuses or healing go ahead throw them around that’s functional right but I just said that now we can just do that that’s easy if we have to do that we can always do that but if you don’t challenge ourselves to do something that takes ourselves out of our comfort level just like that speed skater trading the Olympics right we’re not pushing ourselves we’re not improving their skills we’re not blazing new trails that get people really excited so we’re at about five of I’m gonna call up there I have my notes I’m gonna step back ruminate on this stuff while I’m at Gary Khan flying out tomorrow figure out the convention come by say hello and well next week we’ll take a look at what some of these abilities might look like and then we’ll start translating some of them to what they look like in terms of how it intersects with this damage per spell slot chart and what the actual practical design what shape it can take right so until then take care um if you have suggestions new subclasses I’ll hold off on those because we are gonna be working on the warlord again next week so they’ll likely get lost in the ether but keep piling them up alright and take care and hopefully this has helped as helpful and inspiring for your own game design and I’ll check you guys out see everyone in a week

We're live now with the @mikemearls Happy Fun Hour on https://t.co/2KBortFoc5! Watch Mike design #DnD content on @Twitch! pic.twitter.com/EMolu4FqCU

— Dungeons & Dragons (@Wizards_DnD) March 6, 2018

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