[WIP] The Marshal - a 4e Warlord Essentials variant

[GPuzzle]

"Onwards! The fight is ours!"


HP at level 1: 12+Constitution score

HP per level: 5

Healing Surges/Day: 7+Constitution modifier

Bonus to Defenses:

Armor Proficiencies: Cloth, Leather, Hide, Chain, Light Shield, Heavy Shield

Weapon Proficiencies: Simple Melee, Simple Ranged, Military Melee, Military Ranged

Class Skills: Choose 4 of them at Level 1: Athletics, Bluff, Diplomacy, Endurance, Heal, History, Intimidate, Streetwise

As for the Class Features, I'm working on them. A few highlights:

- General's Aura. Much like the Skald's Aura, the General's Aura has less healing, but provides when a healing surge is used, whoever is the recipient of the healing gains +2 to hit until the end of the next turn.

- Tactical Strike. A No Action bonus, like the Power Strike. Its damage increase is heavily reduced, however, thanks to a few other bonuses in another section.

- Weapon Tactics. The ability to make Basic Attacks with either Charisma or Intelligence, your choice.

- Schools of Thought. Available in Tactical, Inspiring, Bravura or Skirmishing, it carries a different focus for each, including the bonuses your Basic Attacks give. Tactical revolves around bonuses to-hit, Inspiring revolves around healing and damage, Bravura revolves around being offensive, with a slight Strikery bend, and Skirmishing is all about movement. It also affects your Tactical Strike.

[Yakk]

Weapon Tactics:
Something I've been doing when playing with essentials-style classes is divorcing attributes from attack rolls as a class feature.

Something like:

Weapon Tactics: When making a weapon attack, you can replace your attack bonus with (3+Proficiency+Level). No other bonuses from feats, enhancements, level, attributes, etc, apply if you do so. Any temporary bonuses (like combat advantage) or penalties (like from marking) still apply. And some other bonus.

Aura of Command: Aura 10. Twice per encounter, an ally who can see or hear you can spend their second wind as a minor action (and gets some bonus).

Rally: Close Burst 10. As a minor action, an ally who has spend their second wind recovers it (and gets some bonus).

Tactical Strike: We could make this an immediate action, a boost on an allies attack.

...

For two more layers, Stances and Schools of Thought. Call these "Options", and the above "Pillars".

Take those 4 pillars above -- Weapon Tactics, Aura of Command, Rally and Tactical Strike -- and divide them into 2 and 2. Your Stance would modify 2 of them, and your School of Thought another 2.

We could even do the same to attributes. Suppose we break attributes down into two groups of 3 (physical, mental?). Stances might get Physical, while Schools of Thought would get the Mental attributes.

Each "Option" would have kickers based on *two* stats in their stat group.

So now we have a class that is decoupled from their stats to attack or AC (in heavy armor at least), and each build uses 4 stats (hopefully in interesting ways). A break from traditional 4e mechanics.

[GPuzzle]

This is late, but I found the ideas very interesting.

Well, if we're going with that plan, we can have a few options:

Stances are broken into a ranged stance (Dexterity), a stand-your-ground stance (Constitution), and an into-the-fray stance (Strength), probably, while Schools of Thought could be broken down into Tactictian (Intelligence), Skirmisher (Wisdom) and Inspirationist (Charisma).

For example, a Strength Inspirationist would be an unstoppable juggernaut that leads purely by example, bringing his men to victory by rallying their spirits, while a Dexterity Skirmisher could be an elven commander with pin-point precision that allows his men to move quickly and swiftly through the enemy ranks, but he would be radically different from the Constitution Skirmisher in gameplay as he holds the line to allow his allies to move around the enemy. A Dexterity Inspirationist could be shouting orders left and right as he fires arrows into the fray, and in comparison a Constituion Tactician could be going slowly and surely, relying on maneuvers and proper positioning to help his team succeed.

That could be interesting.