Warlord

The Warlord is a Dungeons & Dragons character class introduced to the game in Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. Appearing in the first Player's Handbook, it was a flagship for the new design style of character classes in 4e, which in many ways makes it amongst the most skubtastic class of an already skubby edition.

In a nutshell

The Warlord represents various "commander" archetypes, from a tactical genius to a charismatic gangboss to a grizzled veteran to a former army official. In the terminology of 4e, the Warlord is a Leader class of the Martial power source. This means it has the tactical role of "Leader", a secondary combatant focused primarily on augmenting the abilities of other party members, and it belongs to the "Martial" power source, which means its skills derive from basic training and combat savvy, rather than anything supernatural.

How's that work?

All Leaders are designed with the intent of supporting the party as a whole, but each Leader has its own way of doing so. Being a Martial class, the Warlord is a subpar healer, because it relies heavily on the tradition of hit points "abstractly" representing the health of a character. A Warlord's healing is not so much "magic somebody's arm back on" as "shout at somebody to stop being such a wuss and get back in there, Drill Sergeant style". Healing is left to its traditional master, the Cleric.

Where the Warlord excels as a Leader is in its tactical boosting. The Warlord specializes in handing out initiative bonuses, extra moves and extra attacks to the rest of the party like candy. A popular theoretical build, affectionately nicknamed "the Lazylord", actually has no direct attacking powers whatsoever; all of its powers revolve around maneuvering the rest of the party to counter threats. Hence the saying "A barbarian hits you with his axe; a warlord hits you with his barbarian.'"

Although this is directly handled by the various Warlord exploits (special attacks), it's also influenced by the class features. Keymost to these is the Commanding Presence feature, which gives a different bonus to allies who spend an action point within its area of effect: a Bravura Presence gives them increased attack options, an Insightful Presence grants a defense boost, an Inspiring Presence grants free healing, a Resourceful Presence grants either a damage buff or free healing depending on the situation, a Skirmishing Presence lets them take a free move, and a Tactical Presence grants increased attack.

The Warlord isn't good for players who want to be "The Hero", but then, the Leader role as a whole doesn't fit that goal very well. No, the Warlord is for players who want to be useful to the team as the whole. The player who has the most fun with the Warlord is generally somebody who likes the idea of not only getting to play a flavorful character, but also to help the team as a whole succeed.

And make no mistake, the Warlord can be pretty fun. Want to get your Drill Sergeant on? Warlord works wonders for that. Want to be a grizzled dwarf longbeard grumbling about how kids today don't realize how good they got it and generously sharing your wisdom so they don't screw up quite as often? Warlord can do that. Haughty nobleman or knight? Warlord. Napoleon? William Wallace? Both Warlords.

Hey, in playtesting, they had a power that let the rest of your party get a free shooting attack against a designated target called "Feather Me Yon Oaf". That's got to count for something!

Player Reaction

Warlords, as mentioned above, are pretty much the most controversial class in 4e, because they were brand new. Their fans absolutely adore them for the flavor they bring and because they were the first ever real attempt at a fully non-magic healer/buffer class. Others mocked them, and often were mocked in turn because their arguments tended to be repetitive ("how does it heal without magic? what if my PC doesn't want to take orders from anybody?") and usually pretty easy to shoot down.

5e Fate

The Warlord has essentially been lost with the changing of editions. The Battlemaster and Banneret subclasses for the Fighter arguably touch upon the same themes, and the Oath of the Crown Paladin and College of Valor Bard can both make decent..ish... substitutes, but for most Warlord fans, they're just not good enough, and the Warlord remains a surprisingly common request from WoTC despite how hated 4e was during its lifetime. (This is probably due to the same reason Dragonborn aren't hated anymore: They both scratched an itch D&D roleplayers didn't know they had; in this case, "Officer" as distinct from "Warrior".)