How does the champion fighter actually hold up?

[Klorox]

When comparing this class to the other fighter archetypes, when the number crunchers start crunching, how does this class actually hold up?

Throw terms like “boring” and “limited” out the window and concentrate purely on damage at the end of the day.

How does this character class hold up against other fighters?

Make him a half orc too, because that synergy is just too easy.

[GeoffWatson]

How many 19s do you expect to roll per short rest?

The Battlemaster can use his maneuvers for extra damage (and other benefits) whenever he wants (four per short rest), but the Champion's bonuses are random.

[Eldariel]

Poorly. It's a decent 3-level dip in a critfisher build but that's about it (even there, you can just go Hexblade 1 instead). If we compare it to the most obvious point of comparison, Battlemaster, Battlemaster can generate advantage, turn a miss into a hit, add extra damage onto any attack and produce a number of harder-to-quantify advantages. Comparatively Champion just gets Improved Critical and nothing else. It's nice against enemies with AC off the bounded accuracy (since you autohit on 19) but that practically never comes up. Other than that, Champion is a bad class at utilising critical so you need to multiclass to get extra dice to roll. Otherwise it's at best +7 average damage (with a Greatsword equivalent), which is certainly not worth as much as any other class.

Maneuvers and Fighting Spirit (Samurai) alike are much better. Both are controllable: you can deploy them when needed. Both also do way more. Hell, Fighting Spirit almost gives you the same crit chance as a champion at will (plus higher hit chance) and combines incredibly well with Elven Accuracy. Maneuvers actually give you extra damage at will while also CCing enemies, helping allies, gaining you extra attacks or whatever. Tactically way superior, and more powerful too in fact.

Also, 3rd level ability is the best part of Champion. Remarkable Athlete is largely terrible: you'll be proficient in the stuff you most wanna use anyways. The second fighting style is pretty minor; you could get it much earlier via dip if you wanted it. Mostly it's gonna be whatever you didn't pick out of Defensive and the appropriate damage one. So the less useful/important one: diminishing returns. Superior Crit is nice but comes in way too late to be of much use. Compare that to Samurai getting Will-save proficiencies instead for example. BM has a rather poor 7th level ability too (though surprisingly useful socially) but anything is better than Remarkable Athlete.


Overall, crit as a focus has problems. It:
- wants extra damage dice (Champion gets none)
- relies on random chance (Champion can't control it and has to work for Advantage)
- easily overflows (so you can crit a low HP enemy and waste most of the damage)

It just isn't worth that much. Crits in general are pretty weak unless you're a Rogue, or at least a Wizard Magic Jar'd into some NPC class with lots of bonus damage. Gloom Stalker Ranger, many Warlocks, some Barbarians, and so on are also decent crit users but Fighter isn't it.

I'd almost say a single-classed Champion almost has no subclass features.

[Ashrym]

As far as damage the crit fishers can grab a few levels. I like the extra fighting style and survivor is a good ability but it takes forever to get. The subclass tends to work better for defense than damage that blooms late.

[Anymage]

Going to give the champion more benefit of the doubt here than he deserves. Best case scenario he has 10% more crit than anybody else. Assuming half orc with a greataxe, that's an average of 1.3 damage on a hit more than someone not using their subclass. Great weapon style (assuming you took defense as your style for your class) earns you one more damage per dice hit, so you get around two and a half damage per hit in the best case scenario with no easy way to gain advantage or disadvantage your enemies. I guess you could shove, but champions don't get special bonuses there that somebody else wouldn't.

In its defense, champion isn't meant to be competitive. It's meant to be the class you give to somebody who hasn't bothered to read the rules in depth and wants something simple to play. If "I attack" with some passive bonuses could do competitive damage with someone who actually had to mind resources, the passive option would seem op in practice a lot of the time. I'm okay with it being the new player entry class instead of a serious competitor.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

It is really good with a way to generate advantage(if you consider building a character for a party, not for solo).
From my experience in most fights in a party you will get advantage to attacks.

It is really good with extra dice for damage(stuff like buffs, magic weapons, smites, SA and more).

[Jerrykhor]

There are DPR charts that show how poorly the Champion fares compared to BM, if you google it you can find it. But even using simple logic, its easy to show how bad they are.

Improved Critical is basically a 5% extra chance to crit, which means 5% extra average damage overall.

If a BM uses a d8 weapon, he can basically 'crit' whenever he wants, and on top of having extra effects/benefits from the Maneuvers. If the BM crits, he can quadruple the damage dice.

Also, If the level3 Champion never rolled a 19, he basically have no subclass, because everyone can crit on a 20.

[Zhorn]

It holds up better than what many posters give it credit for.
Is it the best? No, but most Fighter subclasses look lacking if you are comparing them to a Battle Master. While I don't think Battle Masters are overpowered at all, they still cast a big shadow over the other subclasses.

The biggest strength a Champion has is it being tied to the Fighter's chassis, which is a pretty solid class even without a subclass features. More ASIs, more attacks, Action Surge.
Make use of these to get in as many attacks per round as possible and the Improved/Superior Critical abilities will pay off.
Pick a build with a weapon+feat combination that supports making more attack rolls (using your bonus action, and/or having more reliable triggers for your reaction).

It's a little bland since the subclass features are all passives with little additional choices or changes in options each turn, as most round will just be "I attack", but as long as the adventuring day isn't just single encounters, those nova classes will start to slow down and you'll still be jogging along with a more consistent above average damage per round.
Take this for dungeon crawls where rests are rare and far between.

[Chronic]

The number crunchers did start crunching.... Five years ago. On paper it's the highest dpt subclass. In reality you'll get more from a battle Master since most people have a number of encounter per short rest significantly lower that what's intended, which means they have more than enough ressource to use during fights, and their superiority dice is way more versatile, and allow you to both do more things and nova more effectively.

[Neoh]

Battlemaster and Champion are both good dips for multiclass, but they don't get much after level 3.

Battlemaster gets new maneuveur choice at level 7, 10 and 15, which seems great but it's kinda meh, people most often use like 4-5 maneuvers, of which 2-3 are really great, so having a total of 9 maneuvers at level 15 is a bit of a waste.

Superiority Dices are D8, D10 at level 10 and D12 at level 18, takes way too much time to evolve in my opinion.
You get 4 dices at level 3, 5 at level 7 and 6 at level 15, once again it takes a while to get.

Not excellent features but not bad either, they just progress too slowly to be really good.
The other Battlemaster features are bad though.


Champion gets a crit on a 19, so 10% chance to crit per attack, 19% with advantage and 27% with Elven Accuracy.

Remarkable Athlete is... Something I guess? Not bad, not great.

One more Fighting Style is ok.

At level 15 you crit on an 18. That's late, but you get 15% chance to crit, 28% with advantage and 38% with Elven Accuracy.

Level 18 gets you some health regen at the start of your turns, which is great.

Now, Champion is particular, it synergizes pretty well with 2 races : (Half)Elves and Half-Orcs.
Elves for the Elven Accuracy feat, though generating advantage might be harder.
Half-Orc because 1 more damage dice on a crit, and the Relentless Endurance feature so you don't die at 0HP, goes well with the health regen at the start of your turn.

The Champion might be very competitive if you play a Half-Orc with a Greataxe and the Great Weapon Master feat (If you crit, you can make a bonus action to attack again, so one more chance to crit).

The thing with Battlemaster is that it's really good in early levels, and Champion becomes better the latter you are in the game. See, 15% chance to crit might not seem like much, but at level 15 you can attack 3 times. That's 38% chance to crit per turn, which means one more attack as a bonus action, so 4 attacks this turn. With advantage, it becomes 62% chance to crit per turn.
At level 20, you have 48% chance to crit per turn and with advantage 73%. If you crit, you can make 5 attacks in a single turn.
Of course getting a bonus action attack and a reaction attack increase your chances to get a crit each round even more.

Champion is luck based though, you can crit 3 times a turn as much as you can not get any crit for multiple turns, while Battlemasters can choose to use their maneuveur whenever they want.
Battlemasters need a short rest to use their maneuvers, whereas Champions is a passive that's always on, so in a particularly long fight, a Battlemaster might end up running out of ressources.

If you can get a sure way to get advantage, like dipping 2 levels in Barbarian for Reckless Attack, or you have a Wolf Totem Barbarian friend, Champion ends up being quite good actually.

Battlemaster is of course way more versatile and doesn't really need many conditions to shine.

[Chaos Jackal]

Let's make the most basic comparison. Champion vs battle master.

We have a pair of half-orcs, one for each subclass. The champion uses a greataxe. The battle master uses a greatsword. Excuse the occassional rounding up or down for simplification.
Both have the Great Weapon Fighting style. On average, the style adds 0.83 damage per d12 and 0.66 per d6 rolled on each attack. For the purposes of this test, we'll say that the extra dice from criticals are weapon dice and can be rerolled with the style, Savage Critical included. Superiority dice can't be rerolled by the style, as they're part of the attack's overall damage, not the weapon's specific damage dice. For the same reason, they won't be increased by the half-orc's Savage Critical.
We'll model an adventuring day of 6 encounters with an average length of 3 rounds, and two short rests. With a +6 on the attack roll, even the tarrasque is hit on a 19, so we'll assume equal hit chance.

Here are a few scenarios.

Without Extra Attack: Let's assume lv4, 18 Str. Let's say the average enemy AC is 15, meaning the fighters hit 60% of the time.
With a +4 on damage and GWF, the average for a greataxe is 1d12+4+0.83=11.33 damage on a normal roll, and 3d12+4+3*0.83=26 (well, 25.99) on a crit. The average for a greatsword is 2d6+4+2*0.66=12.32 for a normal roll and 5d6+4+5*0.66=24.8 on a crit.
6 encounters of 3 rounds at one attack per round is 18 attacks in one day. Additionally, there's a total of 3 Action Surge uses, so another 3 attacks, for a total of 21. 13 of those attacks hit.
A champion can expect to crit twice in those 21 attacks (no, 2.1 wont't make that much of a difference). So his damage output for one day is going to be 11*11.33+2*26=176.63.
Unlike the champion, a battle master can only expect to crit once. However, he gets to roll 4d8 additional damage per short rest, and he gets to add them after he sees the attack roll. So they're always gonna be added, and he's always saving one for his crit. That's a total of 13d8, or 58.5 damage. So the battle master's damage output is going to be 12*12.32+24.8+58.5=231.14.
That... didn't work out so well. Even if the champion crits a third time. This is about 30% more damage for the battle master.

With Extra Attack: The fighters have now gained their first Extra Attack, and also their lv6 ASI, bringing their Str to 20. However, given how the last one turned out, they're not lv7 yet, so the battle master doesn't have his additional superiority die; he's still at 4.
Lv6, 20 Str. That's a +8 on the attack roll. The enemies have grown slightly tougher, with their average AC now being 16. This means the fighters hit 65% of the time.
With Extra Attack, each fighter is now expected to make 36 attacks per day. With three Action Surges added in, that's a total of 42. 27 of those attacks hit. The damage values for all attacks increase by 1, following the Strength increase. So the greataxe deals 12.33 and 27 damage for normal and crit rolls, and the greatsword is at 13.32 and 25.8.
A champion can expect to crit 4 times in those 42 attacks. So his damage output for one day is 23*12.33+4*27=391.59.
Conversely, a battle master will crit twice. So that's one more crit with superiority dice, bringing the total of additional d8s to 14, or 63 damage. Thus, the total damage output is 25*13.32+2*25.8+63=447.6.
Battle master is still ahead. This time by about 15%.

With two Extra Attacks: The fighters are now lv11. Their DM is stingy, so none of them has a magic weapon yet, but at least they can now attack 3 times on every action. The battle master also has 5 superiority dice now, and they're d10s.
The average enemy AC has increased again, and is now 17. However, thanks to their increased proficiency bonus, both fighters still hit 65% of the time. Damage values for attacks remain the same.
Two Extra Attacks and three Action Surges, that's a whopping 63 attacks in those eighteen rounds. Let's say 41 attacks hit.
The champion crits 6 times. That's 35*12.33+6*27=593.55 damage.
The battle master crits 3 times. He also has a total of 5d10 superiority dice per short rest, so 15 in total. He's still using one of his dice every time he crits, that means he'll be rolling an additional 18d10=99 damage. The total output is 38*13.32+3*25.8+99=682.56.
Whelp. Seems the gap doesn't want to close anymore.

With three Extra Attacks: The fighters are now pretty much monsters. Their DM has proven to be very nasty, as still they can't seem to find a magic weapon, but that's OK. Each now has 4 attacks per action, the champion crits on an 18, or 15% of the time, and the battle master has 6d12 superiority dice. Also, they can Action Surge twice. Enemies beware.
The average monster AC is now 19, the game is getting rough. But with a proficiency bonus of +6, the fighters still manage to hit on 65% of attacks.
Three Extra Attacks, six Action Surges. 96 attacks in total. Technically, none of them hit, because by now enemies see the fighters and get the hell out of Dodge, but we found some dumb enemies to test. Of those 96 attacks, we can expect 62 hits.
The champion crits 15 times, because he deserves a tiny bit of luck after losing the previous three rounds. So his damage is 47*12.33+15*27=984.51.
The battle master crits 4 times. He got a bit unlucky there. Since he still adds his superiority dice to crits, and has 6 dice per short rest (we're not gonna factor any additional dice regained outside of rest), the total damage they add is 22d12=143. The battle master makes his attacks, for 58*13.32+4*25.8+143=1018.76.
That was close at least. Too bad there's no more levels to look forward to.

Excuse any errors, because that was a lot of calculations. Rest assured that, however few or many they are, they won't cause much of a swing for either side.

These comparisons are solely for damage, and a champion will generally be limited to doing just that. However, a battle master has ways to debuff enemies or do some minor battlefield control, block attacks, etc..

Keep in mind too, that any secondary effects of the superiority dice used in the examples aren't even considered. If you Feint or Trip Attack, for example, you'll probably end up with more hits total, further increasing the damage. If you Riposte, that's an additional attack in the mix, for yet more damage. If you replace an attack with Commander's Strike and have a rogue hit outside their turn, you've essentially just added another crit to your total.

Factoring those bonuses in, it's easy to see that a day needs to get quite rough for the champion to catch up to the battle master. The battle master not only stays ahead on damage, but simultaneously offers more than just that damage. The champion has better initiative I guess.

You can give them both greatswords for bigger GWF returns, but that means weaker Savage Criticals. Overall, it doesn't change much. The adventure needs to be a meat grinder for the champion to break even or pull ahead, requiring long combats or very little rest, or both. Generally speaking, even if all you want is damage, the battle master pulls ahead.

Disclaimer: these are by no means exhaustive. Draw your own conclusions. Feats can shake things up, as can magic items. On average, remember that anything which adds damage dice favors the champion, while anything that adds raw damage favors the battle master, owing to the nature of 5e crits. Trying different styles, like sword and board, also favors the battle master. Smaller damage dice mean smaller crits, reducing the champion's potential even more.

GWM is a bit weird here; the damage buff will favor the battle master, especially since they can generate advantage or increase their attack rolls on their own, but the bonus action attack on a crit will theoretically proc more often for a champion because they can crit more easily. There's a lot of variables though, like number of enemies, their positioning, whether or not you get killing blows, and of course whether or not you have a bonus action available.

In most levels and styles of play, however, don't expect the champion to compete.

[AvatarVecna]

Let's assume that combat generally takes three round's worth of actions, that a party has three fights per short rest, and two short rests per day. This equates to 27 rounds of combat per day, 3 action surges per day (6 at lv 17), and thus 30 actions worth of attacks per day (or 33 actions worth of attacks at lvl 17). We'll also be assuming that monsters are hit on an 8 on average (that is, against most monsters appropriate to fight, the fighter needs an 8 on the die to hit).

In one version of the universe, our no-feat half-orc greataxe fighter is a champion; in the other, they are a battlemaster. They start with Str 17, it becomes Str 19 at lvl 4 and Str 20 at lvl 6. Let's assume the battlemaster spends maneuver dice on the first few hits of the day until they're all out, and that coincidentally this never happens to be on a crit, even if they're lvl 20 and making 8 attacks with advantage. Finally let's assume that Great Weapon style applies to bonus damage dice. Let's also just totally discount any other benefits the maneuver might have - the BM either picked one that's basically useless for anything other than direct extra damage, or the additional benefit just happens to never come up across 18 levels of play.

It gets a bit more complicated at lvl 15 when they start regenerating them unreliably outside of rests. But at that point...12 attacks in the first combat after a rest, probably 4-5 misses and 7-8 hits/crits...yeah we can assume they burned through up to 6 dice in that first encounter without any going on crits. So 1 die at the start of the next two combats that happen before a rest. Champion damage will be relatively easy to figure out, since there's not really decisions to be made, it's all luck of the dice.

(all damage is averaged) (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11LtC6ZBdMQ_ldaL-r97Wovm78-qr3FW1dI2YMPif2Kw/edit?usp=sharing)

...yeah.

Even with a race that favors champion. Even with a weapon that favors champion. Even discounting the additional benefits/options maneuvers present. Even with a constant situation that favors champion (3 encounters per rest? 9 encounters per day???), Champion only pulls ahead at lvl 20 through sheer number of attacks. Until then, champion's worse for overall damage. The battlemaster here would be better served using a greatsword instead of a greataxe. The battlemaster here would be better served using maneuvers to turn near-misses into hits, rather than just upgrading damage - that way, instead of +1d8/+1d10/+1d12, it's +1d12+3 at minimum that each die gains the BM.

Champion proponents will then point to feats, how Heavy Weapon Master's attack generation favors Champion - and this is true, Champion is more likely to trigger extra attacks, and gains more from an extra attack per crit than battlemaster does. But similarly, as part of the accuracy statement I just mentioned, Battlemaster gains more from the tradeoff - when you're able to turn near-misses into hits, taking a -5 to attack for +10 damage is an easier trade to make...and now instead of +1d8/+1d10/+1d12 damage per die, you're looking at potentially 1d12+13 at minimum. Plus, if we're bringing feats into things, the Battlemaster can take Martial Adept for another 6 dice per day. Such a feat is useful for a Champion as well, but significantly less so. And there aren't other feats that enhance damage output for Champion quite the way that Martial Adept does for Battlemaster.

The next point brought up will be advantage. Yes, if you're in a part with two fighters (one of each subclass here), you'll obviously work to give the Champion advantage more than the Battlemaster, but that's not a common situation. More likely, there are two identical parties save one has a Champion and the other a Battlemaster, and in both situations, the rest of the party will be working to give the fighter advantage frequently because fighters are freaking terrifying and advantage is always making them just so much worse. And the more attacks champion has advantage on, the easier it is for Champion to close the damage gap with Battlemaster, or even to widely overtake them. If the two fighters get advantage on 1 attack per attack action, Battlemaster still does more damage per day than Champion until lvl 20. If it's 2, 3, or 4 advantage attacks per attack action, Champion is winning the damage game at 10/18 levels instead of 1/18 levels. Yes, even if both Battlemaster and Champion have advantage on all attacks, Battlemaster is still dealing more damage at 8/18 levels (specifically lvls 3, 4, 10, and 15-19). And I'm betting if I made the greatsword/feats/accuracy maneuver changes previously mentioned, a couple levels might shift back to favoring battlemaster's per-day damage.

The final point brought up will be bonus damage from other sources, and this is one I can't really argue against per se. This is what the "Bonus Dice" columns are about, incidentally. The "Requirement" is how much the average roll would need to be on the bonus damage for the better damager to shift at that level. For the vast majority of your career, +2d6 will shift some levels just barely towards champion (and others much more strongly), although Battlemaster still controls the earliest levels regardless of what you do.

These points are generally presented in this order because it's the order in which they can be relied on. Feats are almost certainly going to be allowed; advantage-spam is gonna be easier to get sometimes than all the time, and that's kinda DM/party dependent; meanwhile, magic items that give bonus damage to the one member of the party who needs it the least tend to be...well it's not that they don't exist and don't get handed out, but generally fighter has problems magic items can help solve, and "dealing enough damage" is basically never a problem fighters have.

TL;DR

Even weighing things pretty liberally in champions favor, battlemaster will not only have more burst damage, but more per-day damage, than Champion will at several levels over the course of their respective careers (and at least by default, will probably have more burst/per-day damage than champion at all levels but 20th).

...and it doesn't matter. Because Champion Fighter is still a ****ing fighter and will by default outdamage most other builds in the game over the course of any adventuring day longer than 15 minutes. Even what I've shown here, the greatest the BM's damage advantage gets is 50 damage per day...but that's at a level where Champion is dealing 570 per day and BM is dealing 620. Yeah, sure, Battlemaster is better than Champion at the thing Champion is supposed to be better at. It doesn't matter. Champion is a Fighter, and Fighters of all stripes pump out reliable damage like nobody's business.

EDIT: This gap can get a lot wider if the scenario/builds get shaken up. But that's the Battlemaster shooting off like a rocket, and the champion shooting up less fast with similar buffs. They're both still ****ing ridiculous.

[fbelanger]

Champion do just enough well for someone who don’t want to bother with tracking of encounter power usage and DPR.

[KorvinStarmast]

My Half Orc Champion, Sword and Board, Shield Master, Medium Armor Master, did just fine. He was at level 14 when the campaign was suspended. I had some "pre" Shield Master fun with knocking things down and attacking them with advantage, and some "post" Shield Master fun (after that foolish ruling, but our DM bought it) where I had to be a bit more clever in using that feature. Fighting styles were dueling and then defense.

As I only played a Battle Master up to 7, and since the Battle Master's Spear/Shield schtick was after the PoleArm mastery change came to include spear, I can say that Battle Master had a different feel.

[loki_ragnarock]

Champion synergizes well with the fighter chassis; a basic enhancement to attacks becomes more relevant as you increase the number of attacks coming out. It complements extra attack and action surge in a way that only the samurai can come close to. It's a slow burn ability, sure, but it just gets better over time as you become a fighter. It is probably the best single class fighter as a result, which accounts for a good bit of the optimizer's disdain.

Battlemaster compares favorably at lower levels. More consistent, performs when he needs to, etc. Unless he took the abilities that don't work against things greater than large size, in which case it feels as much like lacking a subclass as a champion who didn't roll a 19. I know; a battlemaster multi-class character in the game I run picked those options and suddenly found that levels 14-16 where the party was fighting nothing but giants felt a little off. Had he been a champion, that sudden loss of agency wouldn't have existed and I wouldn't have had to introduce a magic item to let him overcome that particular hurdle.

It comes down to the specific cases. Champion can pull ahead when using a flame tongue, or a dragonslayer while specifically fighting dragons. Any magic item or enhancing spell that adds extra damage dice to an attack(elemental weapon, holy weapon, etc.) pays greater dividends when in the hands of a champion. And while a samurai can crit fish effectively, a champion can crit fish even more effectively in a team play environment; anyone who works to give the champion advantage will make him a wrecking ball. He's less effective in isolation, but in team play with a giving party he in no way falls behind.

So a half-orc champion weilding a giantslayer greataxe that the forge cleric cast elemental weapon on attacking a group of giants who were lit up by the bards faerie fire fares extremely well.
That'll outperform most other fighters. It's an edge case, sure, but its a pretty easy edge case to set up. And there are other, similar, edge cases that are also easy to set up. Advantage isn't actually that hard to provide when the party works together; you don't *have* to be a reckless attacking barbarian, it's just helpful.

Champions are fine. You just have to, you know, play to your strengths as a party. The battlemaster might be a better option for wading in without thinking about it, but the champion requires much more thoughtful collective tactics. Not as good as the other fighters without them, pulling stiffly ahead with them, the Champion isn't a champion without a group to, you know, champion.

[Chaos Jackal]

Battlemaster compares favorably at lower levels. More consistent, performs when he needs to, etc. Unless he took the abilities that don't work against things greater than large size, in which case it feels as much like lacking a subclass as a champion who didn't roll a 19. I know; a battlemaster multi-class character in the game I run picked those options and suddenly found that levels 14-16 where the party was fighting nothing but giants felt a little off. Had he been a champion, that sudden loss of agency wouldn't have existed and I wouldn't have had to introduce a magic item to let him overcome that particular hurdle.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can only recall two maneuvers that are limited by size. Trip Attack and Pushing Attack. Given that a battle master starts with three maneuvers, has five by lv7 and nine by level 15, it takes some really dreadful picks early on to feel like you lack a subclass, and later on you've got so many options it's nearly impossible for you to not have something. How can a battle master feel off against giants?


Champions are fine. You just have to, you know, play to your strengths as a party. The battlemaster might be a better option for wading in without thinking about it, but the champion requires much more thoughtful collective tactics. Not as good as the other fighters without them, pulling stiffly ahead with them, the Champion isn't a champion without a group to, you know, champion.
Unlike a champion, a battle master can benefit from the party as well as benefit the party. A champion is a pile of meat with a stick that you can buff. A battle master is a meatier pile of meat with a stick that you can buff and it buffs you in return. Requiring party resources to be comparative to another fighter subclass while offering the party little more than more damage in return doesn't make the champion someone who shines in teamwork, it makes the champion someone who hogs resources to stay relevant. A battle master can also give good returns from buffs, can offer the group more than standing and hitting, and can function better with less support.

Champions are easy to play and pretty effective when it comes to damage because the fighter chassis is good at dealing damage. Otherwise, an improved crit range is a small damage boost, and you offer basically 0 utility in or out of combat.

Champions are fine overall. But not compared to most other fighter subclasses. And definitely not when compared to battle masters.

[LudicSavant]

Champions have a lot of disadvantages to overcome. I suspect others will talk a lot about DPR, so I'll focus on other factors.

1) They're squishy for a Fighter, lacking the crippling debuffs or control of the Battle Master, the potent spell defenses of the Eldritch Knight, or the temp HP generation or extra save proficiency of the Samurai. What few defensive abilities they do have come online late (ex: The slow regen comes online at level 18)

They also lack the ability to go nova as hard as the others in those situations where doing so would be less costly than letting the enemy act freely.

2) They have basically the worst mobility in the game, and lack the control options to slow down their enemy too. This is a big deal when you're a martial. It's an especially big deal if they choose to be melee instead of ranged.

Anything that GWM critfisher gains in DPR is going to go right out the window if they even occasionally miss a round due to not getting in range. Unlike, say, a Paladin, they can't just decide to use that round to cast a buff spell or something. They really suffer from having their "walk into range and attack" option blocked.

3) Champion advocates might be thinking at this point "well what about when (insert competitor) runs out of resources?" Well, here's the thing if they're only better without resources. During every fight before the competitor runs out of resources, the Champion is racking up debt, and they're going to have to pay it back if they want to "catch up."

That competitor was spending those resources to resolve their encounters more efficiently than the Champion would have, which means that they (or their party) took less damage (or other debilitating effects), and had to use less resources to recover.

So when the competitor runs out of resources, the Champion has to play catch up. The Champion not only needs to outperform them in future encounters, but has to do so by enough that they're making up for doing worse in previous encounters. And need to manage to pay back that debt before the party needs to rest in order to actually have performed "better."

Before someone says "but a Champion never needs to rest!" that's not actually true. For example, if they (or their party members) lose hit points, they need to rest or use party resources to recover them, or eventually die from attrition.

Anyways, the end result is that I haven't seen Champions actually lasting for more encounters before resting in my campaigns, as unintuitive as that result might seem to some.

4) They don't have much going for them as far as non-combat abilities go. Remarkable Athlete is basically it. Mind, neither does a Battle Master, but still.



Mind, I don't think that the Champion necessarily needs to have an optimization ceiling as high as a BM, EK, or the like. It just needs to be simple and good enough for an introductory game, because that's basically the niche it was designed for. As the MTG designers might put it, the Champion isn't a Spike card.

That said, if you want something that combines simplicity with a bit more oomph, I recommend the Samurai archer.


When comparing this class to the other fighter archetypes, when the number crunchers start crunching, how does this class actually hold up?

Throw terms like “boring” and “limited” out the window and concentrate purely on damage at the end of the day.

How does this character class hold up against other fighters?

Make him a half orc too, because that synergy is just too easy.

If you're a Half-Orc Champion, then you're probably a Strength-based melee Champion.

The trouble with melee Champions is that they are highly reliant on getting into melee range (since they can't just decide to cast a buff or something if they don't, like a Paladin would).

That's a real problem when you have some of the worst mobility and control in the game, and no good ways to counter control, difficult terrain, etc.

It takes an enormous DPR advantage to make up for even occasionally losing a turn to being stuck out of range.

Another issue is that they're Strength-based. One of the things that people often forget about (since we're all in the habit of talking about output per round) is that if you win initiative you effectively have more rounds than the other guy, and do concurrently more damage (as well as giving them less chance to use things that could mitigate your damage).

Overall I just don't think they're very good. Passable if you just want a simple experience, but they're not going to keep up with hardcore optimizers.

[loki_ragnarock]

How can a battle master feel off against giants?
By picking those specific maneuvers. It turns out the argument that people present for wizards having the exact tool in their kit is often trotted out for discussions about battlemasters, too. Except it's even less valid, because there isn't a mechanic for switching their maneuvers out for other maneuvers at the start of the day.

In terms of the utility you get from playing one, you've mostly peaked at 3rd level. It's why it's a favorite of optimizers; you only really need a handful of maneuvers to get to the core tactic you'd like to rely on. After that is increasingly diminishing returns; you picked the ones you actually wanted at level three... after that, you have more tools in the kit, just second, third, and fourth tier ones that you'll probably ignore as they gather dust. Wanna use Rally? Now the Champion starts running ahead in damage. Wanna use Evasive Footwork? Now the champion starts running ahead in damage.

It's a *great* subclass that can do all kinds of cool things, but it's oversold.

Champion is also a great subclass, but it's undersold. The ease of play is a feature, not a bug, and it leans into dealing damage in a way that a battlemaster can effectively match if they're also leaning into doing damage... thus losing some of the versatility that makes them appealing.



My larger point though was this; the champion can basically keep up with damage once they level up, but their damage potential explodes under a couple of narrower circumstances that are relatively easy to conceive. You can buff a battlemaster; it'll never be a bad idea to cast elemental weapon on a high level fighter's gear of choice, and it's never a bad idea to enable the damage dealers to attack with advantage. But when you buff a champion just so, the rewards have the potential to be far greater than the rewards for the other fighter subclasses.
It's not that they soak up resources; it's that they pay greater dividends for the resources expended.
They both are badasses when armed with Flame Tongue or a Frost Brand or a Dwarven Thrower or a Dragon Slayer or a Giant Slayer or a Mace of Disruption or a Nine Lives Stealer or an Oathbow or a Sunblade, but the Champion juices a little extra out of those particular fruit.
"The game isn't balanced around magic items." Well, clearly not; some of them definitely gain higher weight when used by a champion.

Edge cases favor the champion, but they're edge cases that aren't that hard to pull off. Half orc is an edge case. Frost Brand is an edge case. Wolf Totem Barbarian Buddy is an edge case. But if you add up all the edge cases, you'll find that it adds up to an edge for the Champion that isn't well addressed by most numeric comparisons. The trough is lower, sure; they're underwhelming at level 3. But the peak is actually higher.
Albeit, modestly higher; chasing more damage than "just play a fighter" is an exercise in diminishing returns.

But Champion's fine. Any kind of fighter will probably be able to kill Tiamat once they're 20th level. Not alone, but with some help from their friends.

[Chaos Jackal]

By picking those specific maneuvers. It turns out the argument that people present for wizards having the exact tool in their kit is often trotted out for discussions about battlemasters, too. Except it's even less valid, because there isn't a mechanic for switching their maneuvers out for other maneuvers at the start of the day.
They have seven more at the levels you describe. Five more at earlier levels. If you end up attacking with a battle master, have superiority dice and no way to apply them meaningfully, then that's not a weakness of the battle master. It's someone who built a very bad battle master. And with the number of maneuvers battle masters get, you'd have to actually try in order to not have options at higher levels. You'll pick up some general purpose maneuvers, even if you have no idea what you're doing.

Champion isn't undersold. It's billed as a simple subclass, straightforward and without bookkeeping, with a ceiling very close to its floor. And it's exactly that. It's the "I attack, period" subclass that deals damage. It doesn't, however, excel at it, because 5e and critfishing just don't make an effective combo without a smite's worth of extra dice. And outside of dealing damage, it offers pretty much nothing else.

The "edge cases" that favor them don't actually favor them, they just make up for their deficits. Not even that. Seriously, critfishing in 5e is bad. A champion with Flame Tongue deals 7 more damage every 20 attacks, or 14 at lv18. That's abysmal. Plug that in the situations described in mine and Vecna's posts, and you'll see that usually it's not enough to break even. You need rare weapons and a couple of buffs just to catch up in 80% of levels; pulling ahead is even harder. In practice, you never pull ahead, because even if you somehow manage more DPR through your attacks than a battle master, the fact that the battle master tripped a few enemies means that basically all attacks that end up hitting due to advantage are indirectly battle master damage. And no rare or legendary weapon is ever gonna make up for that.

And the whole "Champion gets more mileage out of certain buffs" is counterintuitive. The subclass which supposedly has no resources, which never needs to rest, the subclass that can always keep going, actually ends up draining resources faster, because it needs those resources to come fully online, while another fighter subclass wouldn't deplete said party resources as fast because they can do on their own what the champion does with help. Besides, spells and concentration are much more valuable and hard to replenish resources than maneuvers. Like LudicSavant said, the champion is playing catch-up and paying off debt. And not very successfully.

And all the above is just covering DPR. But the champion also comes up short in other fields. See Ludic's post.

Champion just can't compare to most fighter subclasses. It's not there to compare with other fighter subclasses. It's there for the new player's first character, so that the new player can focus on getting used to the system without worrying about forgetting or mismanaging resources they haven't yet grasped. It's there for someone who doesn't want to bother with any bookkeeping or doesn't care about effectiveness much, they just want to contribute somewhat decently with little effort. It's not there to be a winner, and it can't be a winner.

[stoutstien]

For tables that want more PCs and have a lack of players, something that I think is increasingly common lately, it makes a good second character. Even the newest player can handle a champion Patsy.

[MaxWilson]

For tables that want more PCs and have a lack of players, something that I think is increasingly common lately, it makes a good second character. Even the newest player can handle a champion Patsy.

So does a Cavalier.

[stoutstien]

So does a Cavalier.

They have a few more buttons and toggles to handle but yes I agree. I would add most fighters onto the list honestly. Champion is just the easiest one run as a sidekick.

[Sherlockpwns]

I for one love the champion's design, even though I have admittedly never played one. It actually strikes an incredible balance between two things and people focus WAY too much on one of them.

Item 1: It's for D&D noobs because you don't have to do anything.

This is what makes it great. It'll keep up just fine with anyone. You never have to fret over resources (other than second wind and action surge) and the fighter chasis gives you plenty of ASIs and feats to mess with. It's just.. good, and that is fine. But too many people focus on it!

Item 2: If you build SPECIFICALLY to abuse the crit range, it's as good as any front line fighter and quite likely better. The big drawback, and it IS a big drawback, is you are at the whim of the dice gods. Critting on a goblin vs. critting on the BBEG is a huge difference and you don't get to pick when it happens. Still, it's fun to be a little random!

The first thing to note, as others have, is any ability, spell, or feature that adds either extra attacks or extra dice gets a bigger benefit from being a champion (Diviniation wizards love you). Additionally, if your DM is cruel and likes to make it difficult to rest, the Champion shines brighter. There's a TON of multiclass options, not including the decision to go H-Orc vs. Elf or even (gasp) Kobold. It's all about rolling more dice, afterall. Ideally, what you're after, are extra dice you can choose after rolling, but any extra dice help.

Some immediate options include Paladin (Smite). Whispers Bard (2d6 at level 3 at least). You can even do both. You'll certainly be the target of choice for Haste and other buffs.

So, for instance if we're aiming at the level 11 "break point", you can go Champion Fighter 6, Paladin 2, Whispers Bard 3. I honestly haven't done the math, but now you have a pool of supercharged crit dice every long rest that will fire off 2x more often than if you were a BM Fighter 6. You lose 1 attack per round but in addition to some nice to have features of Paladin and Bard, you've got this super fun crit that will deal you regular weapon die x2 + stat + 6d8 (or 4d8 if you are out of 2nd level slots) + 4d6. That sounds like a good time to me! It can happen up to 7 times per long rest, though you'll likely use some spells for other handy things.

It's not the most min/max winner character or anything, and there's PLENTY of ways to build this differently, but to suggest the champion is just a ****ty version of a BM... that's nonsense. It will be fun though. Every now and then you get to really NUKE something, when the dice gods smile on you. All kinds of fun flavor go with this... wildmagic sorcerer + champion just for that added chaos? Quicken a BB/GFB here and there and use some shadow weapons? Just find a way to add dice to your damage rolls and make as many attacks as you can and "everything will works its self out."

Of course you can also run some full party chaos too. A divination wizard + A grave cleric = fungasms! Yes, it works with anyone. Divination wizard will eventually roll a 20 and then its just waiting for the right time to auto-crit someone who's vulnerable and pile on damage. However, the champion makes this happen on a 19 OR 20. Just in case you ever wanted to see someone do 200 damage in a single hit, you'll get to see it twice as often! :P

Anyway, the point of my now far too long-winded reply is that the Champion is great because it works fine for someone brand new, or for someone who wants to spend some time building something crazy, the extra crit range opens up some really fun mechanics. In the end no D&D game is about who can build a character with the best DPR. If it were, we'd all just play level 20 wizards casting Wish at eachother, mostly wishing for a more fun game. It's about building something fun, and while the champion "I stand here and attack" may be boring, it's only boring if that is all you're doing with it. And if it is your first game, I stand "here" vs "there" may be all someone wants to be thinking about while trying to juggle initiative and saves and all those other weird boxes on my sheet.

[LudicSavant]

So, for instance if we're aiming at the level 11 "break point", you can go Champion Fighter 6, Paladin 2, Whispers Bard 3. I honestly haven't done the math, but now you have a pool of supercharged crit dice every long rest that will fire off 2x more often than if you were a BM Fighter 6.

You could have just been a straight Battle Master Fighter 11 and had 3 attacks, an extra ASI, plus a pool of 15d10 (82.5) superiority dice over the course of a DMG standard 2 short rest adventuring day, plus all their lovely riders.

Champ6/Pal2/Whispers3 will give you 17d8 + 4d6 (90.5) worth of Smites and Psychic Blades (assuming 14 Charisma). You won't even crit twice as often, because you'll have fewer attacks and fewer ways to get Advantage.

[loki_ragnarock]

A champion with Flame Tongue deals 7 more damage every 20 attacks, or 14 at lv18. That's abysmal.
Which, because of the fighter chassis, is many, many fewer rounds of fighting than it is for others in a battle. 20 attacks is, what, about 5 rounds once you've hit 11th? 20 attacks is, what, 3 rounds once you hit 20th? The round countdown also becomes significantly lower if the Champion is attacking with advantage, something that is almost trivial for a team oriented party to provide. The countdown for which also becomes lower once the champion reaches 15th level and doubles the range where he's getting that extra damage; you can math it as doubling the damage bonus for every 20 attacks, I suppose, even if what it really does is increase the frequency with which it happens; something that makes attacking with advantage more complicated to model than just doubling the stated damage.
But that extra damage is happening within a handful of rounds, fairly consistently.

And that's one edge case. Add in an additional edge case and it peaks pretty high. Add in Holy Weapon, for instance, and that damage spike becomes something like 15 extra damage every couple of rounds. Or 30 extra damage every couple of rounds once he hits 15th; this is where Champion can take off and leave the battlemaster behind for raw damage. Holy Weapon isn't a short term buff, either; it's an hour long spell and thus can last most of dungeon. A fairly low investment for what is easily enormous returns for the person who cast it on any kind of fighter, it's also a fairly low investment that pays even greater dividends for the caster if that fighter is a Champion.

It's only at high level play that things start to come together for the Champion; the nature of the magic items can complement them, the nature of the buffs can compliment them, and the team can compliment them. That's sort of the nature of their mechanic, though; it synergizes with the fighter becoming higher level. The trough is lower. The peak is higher.

[LudicSavant]

Edge cases favor the champion, but they're edge cases that aren't that hard to pull off. Half orc is an edge case. Frost Brand is an edge case. Wolf Totem Barbarian Buddy is an edge case. But if you add up all the edge cases, you'll find that it adds up to an edge for the Champion that isn't well addressed by most numeric comparisons. The trough is lower, sure; they're underwhelming at level 3. But the peak is actually higher.
Albeit, modestly higher; chasing more damage than "just play a fighter" is an exercise in diminishing returns.

It's only at high level play that things start to come together for the Champion

So fun fact I just learned when checking this: a Samurai with a Frost Brand Longsword, Wolf Totem Barbarian Buddy, and the Half-Orc race at level 15 still does more DPR with just Rapid Strike (ignoring all of their other advantages) than a Champion with the same stuff and Superior Critical.

(Might be possible to change this up with feats, but it'd also change up a lot if I actually picked options that synergized with the Samurai. Or if there were ever a single round where the Wolf Totem Buddy wasn't in place so that Fighting Spirit would apply).

[Misterwhisper]

The issue with champion is the same issue with multiple classes or subclasses.

They built and balanced the game for much longer fights and adventuring days than the game actually uses.

They "expect" 2 short rests per long rest.
That almost never happens, far more tables use the 15 min adventuring day than the supposed 2 short rests paternities.

Combat does not tend to last long enough for people to fight without resources.

Very, very rarely do I ever see real games go more than MAYBE 10 rounds between rests, and most of the times those are long rests.

As for the battlemaster versatility, Precision attack alone is easily enough to eclipse the damage bonus a champion will get out of their crit range.

The issue is not completely on the champion, however, the issue is that in 5e Critical hits don't really mean much unless you have sneak attack or can smite.

A battle master turning misses into hits is much more efficient and a bigger damage boost than the champion critical hitting a little more.

[MaxWilson]

So fun fact I just learned when checking this: a Samurai with a Frost Brand Longsword, Wolf Totem Barbarian Buddy, and the Half-Orc race at level 15 still does more DPR with just Rapid Strike (ignoring all of their other advantages) than a Champion with the same stuff and Superior Critical.

Oy vey! That's hilarious in an horrifying sort of way.

I think WotC neglected to do the math on Improved Critical and so overestimated its potency. A lot of the Champion's issues can be fixed just by doubling the crit range to 17-20.

[Misterwhisper]

Oy vey! That's hilarious in an horrifying sort of way.

I think WotC neglected to do the math on Improved Critical and so overestimated its potency. A lot of the Champion's issues can be fixed just by doubling the crit range to 17-20.

The problem is that crits don't do enough damage.

If critical hits multiplied static bonuses too it might help more.

[Yakmala]

A Champion does quite well if you are in a campaign where you are having a half dozen or more encounters between each short rest. When everyone else's bag of tricks is empty, you'll still be chugging along just fine.

Unfortunately, I've yet to encounter such a campaign.

[MaxWilson]

A Champion does quite well if you are in a campaign where you are having a half dozen or more encounters between each short rest. When everyone else's bag of tricks is empty, you'll still be chugging along just fine.

Except that this just isn't true. Even just counting at-will powers, Cavaliers, Eldritch Knights, high-level Samurais, and even Arcane Archers still have more interesting features than the Champion. I'd rather e.g. get a bonus action attack every time I miss than turn an extra 5% of my attacks from hits into crits.

Let's not even talk about warlocks and their invocations.


Unfortunately, I've yet to encounter such a campaign.

I've seen and/or played plenty of games where PCs hoard their limited-use abilities like precious gems and rely primarily on at-will abilities.

[LudicSavant]

Unfortunately, I've yet to encounter such a campaign.

I have.

I suggest you check out post #17 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24481932&postcount=17), as well as the posts of folks like Chaos Jackal, Avatar Vecna, and MaxWilson.

[Sherlockpwns]

You could have just been a straight Battle Master Fighter 11 and had 3 attacks, an extra ASI, plus a pool of 15d10 (82.5) superiority dice over the course of a DMG standard 2 short rest adventuring day, plus all their lovely riders.

Champ6/Pal2/Whispers3 will give you 17d8 + 4d6 (90.5) worth of Smites and Psychic Blades (assuming 14 Charisma). You won't even crit twice as often, because you'll have fewer attacks and fewer ways to get Advantage.

A lot of weird assumptions here, but my point was like most things in D&D, you could probably make a character that did nothing but fire off at-will abilities and do just fine. You could make a fighter and skip your level 3 specialty entirely. Will you be the OP god of battle? No. But I imagine you'd get by just fine. The difference in "DPR output" just isn't that much between doing things different ways. The only thing that actually matters is if it is interesting to you.

If you want to make someone who's going to crit as often and hard as possible, Champion is a likely candidate. If that is what you find fun and the build you enjoy, the random chaos of rolling a die and seeing that crit number hit and getting to describe the way you eviscerate someone... it's just not worth trying to math out how you're missing out on 5.3 DPR (just making up number).

My point is simply: Champion is not so bad off that it is unplayable. It is playable, and if that is what someone wants to play, they can play it and do just fine. You can do it with almost no understanding of the rules or you can cheese it a bit and make it do something flashy (granted its a one-trick pony that has to do with critting). I mean, you can't argue that if you're trying to build a munchkin powergamed guy that you would avoid Champion, but the original question was basically how viable is it? I'd give it a 6/10 if you're building towards it, 5/10 if you're brand new. That's viable to me.

Again, I am with you that *I* wouldn't play one because I don't find the fun part of the game hoping to roll a 19 and get to describe some heroic feat. But I can totally see other players loving the randomness and describing what you do to a poor goblin when you smash it down to -40hp (if only we still had negative HP). Is that an optimal use of your damage? No way! Is it fun? Hell yes. Which is more important?

[MaxWilson]

My point is simply: Champion is not so bad off that it is unplayable. It is playable, and if that is what someone wants to play, they can play it and do just fine.

This is true, but it's also true of a Fighter with no subclass, just because the base Fighter chassis is excellent (as long as feats are allowed). Champion is bad enough to be almost indistinguishable from the null subclass.



Again, I am with you that *I* wouldn't play one because I don't find the fun part of the game hoping to roll a 19 and get to describe some heroic feat. But I can totally see other players loving the randomness and describing what you do to a poor goblin when you smash it down to -40hp (if only we still had negative HP).

The promise of the Champion is "Come here and play this simple, consistent fighter with good damage output all the time and awesome crits!" To people who excel at math and who have internalized the 5e crit rules already (despite them not being described until later in the PHB) it's obviously nothing of the sort, but to other people it's not until they get deeper into the campaign and realize that the Paladin is doing awesome stuff and the Barbarian in the other campaign is doing awesome stuff and the Fighter... is okay but feels outclassed. And then they think there's a problem with the Fighter chassis but it's really just because Improved Critical, the Champion's iconic feature that comes online earliest and has the most design attention devoted to it, does basically nothing.

For a solid, simple at-will experience, play a Cavalier instead.

[LudicSavant]

My point is simply: Champion is not so bad off that it is unplayable.

I mean, you can't argue that if you're trying to build a munchkin powergamed guy that you would avoid Champion

Ah, so now it's just "it is a class you can play" instead of statements like:


If you build SPECIFICALLY to abuse the crit range, it's as good as any front line fighter and quite likely better.

to suggest the champion is just a ****ty version of a BM... that's nonsense.

That position sure de-escalated quickly. :smallbiggrin:

[SLOTHRPG95]

Champions have a lot of disadvantages to overcome. I suspect others will talk a lot about DPR, so I'll focus on other factors.

1) They're squishy for a Fighter, lacking the crippling debuffs or control of the Battle Master, the potent spell defenses of the Eldritch Knight, or the temp HP generation or extra save proficiency of the Samurai. What few defensive abilities they do have come online late (ex: The slow regen comes online at level 18)

[snip]

If you're a Half-Orc Champion, then you're probably a Strength-based melee Champion.

[snip]

Another issue is that they're Strength-based. One of the things that people often forget about (since we're all in the habit of talking about output per round) is that if you win initiative you effectively have more rounds than the other guy, and do concurrently more damage (as well as giving them less chance to use things that could mitigate your damage).

Overall I just don't think they're very good. Passable if you just want a simple experience, but they're not going to keep up with hardcore optimizers.

I'm not going to argue with your overall analysis, and I'm definitely on-board with your conclusion that for hardcore optimizers, Champion falls seriously short. I just want to mention two things that you've overlooked, for the sake of completion: the second fighting style, and the initiative boost. The second fighting style effectively means you can grab great weapon/archery/dueling, and still get a free point of AC from Defense at 10th. It's not huge, but an extra point of AC on an already high-AC character is nice, and it's definitely a defensive boost that happens sooner than 18th level. As for initiative, I always thought that was the big draw to Remarkable Athlete: it's a discount Jack of All Trades, but rounded up. So even as a Str-based Champion, you've got an extra +2 to Initiative (relative to a Str-based BM) starting at 7th, which increases to +3 at 13th.


Except that this just isn't true. Even just counting at-will powers, Cavaliers, Eldritch Knights, high-level Samurais, and even Arcane Archers still have more interesting features than the Champion. I'd rather e.g. get a bonus action attack every time I miss than turn an extra 5% of my attacks from hits into crits.

Let's not even talk about warlocks and their invocations.

[internal quote omitted]

I've seen and/or played plenty of games where PCs hoard their limited-use abilities like precious gems and rely primarily on at-will abilities.

Yeah, I've seen players who are loath to use any limited-use abilities even if they're long-rest full casters with basically nothing else but cantrips. If you're always saving your spell slots/maneuvers/whatever "just in case" and (almost) never using them, you might as well not have them. They're wasted if they go unused before the next short/long rest. With that said, I'd agree that if you're that kind of player, then there are others archetypes or even classes with better at-will goodies than a Champion. Even getting Prestidigitation/Druidcraft plus Curving Shot seems more interesting to me than better critting and a flat bonus to initiative, and of course I could just build a agonizing repelling/grasp lethargy EB "archer" for a solid at-will ranged attacker.

[FabulousFizban]

champion is just a crit fisher and you get everything you want from the class by level five. After that, multiclass into rogue for sneak attack dice. The goal of crit fishing is to roll as many dice as possible when you get that auto-hit.

[Chaos Jackal]

Which, because of the fighter chassis, is many, many fewer rounds of fighting than it is for others in a battle. 20 attacks is, what, about 5 rounds once you've hit 11th? 20 attacks is, what, 3 rounds once you hit 20th? The round countdown also becomes significantly lower if the Champion is attacking with advantage, something that is almost trivial for a team oriented party to provide.
Did you actually bother to add that damage in the scenarios described in mine and Vecna's posts? You're not likely to have more than 100 attacks a day at max level, even going by the suggested number of encounters in the DMG. At earlier levels, the attacks are of course less. A Flame Tongue before tier 4 will add a bit more than 20 damage to a champion, except the champion deals 15% lower damage to start and increasing that by 25 isn't gonna make up for the gap. As for advantage, the battle master or the samurai were already getting it in many of their attacks, and without the team's help.


The countdown for which also becomes lower once the champion reaches 15th level and doubles the range where he's getting that extra damage; you can math it as doubling the damage bonus for every 20 attacks, I suppose, even if what it really does is increase the frequency with which it happens; something that makes attacking with advantage more complicated to model than just doubling the stated damage.
But that extra damage is happening within a handful of rounds, fairly consistently.

And that's one edge case. Add in an additional edge case and it peaks pretty high. Add in Holy Weapon, for instance, and that damage spike becomes something like 15 extra damage every couple of rounds. Or 30 extra damage every couple of rounds once he hits 15th; this is where Champion can take off and leave the battlemaster behind for raw damage. Holy Weapon isn't a short term buff, either; it's an hour long spell and thus can last most of dungeon. A fairly low investment for what is easily enormous returns for the person who cast it on any kind of fighter, it's also a fairly low investment that pays even greater dividends for the caster if that fighter is a Champion.

It's only at high level play that things start to come together for the Champion; the nature of the magic items can complement them, the nature of the buffs can compliment them, and the team can compliment them. That's sort of the nature of their mechanic, though; it synergizes with the fighter becoming higher level. The trough is lower. The peak is higher.

So, let me see if I get this straight.

If I wait for tier 4, and my table is using the DMG guidelines of 6-8 encounters and 2-3 rests, and I get some pretty strong magic items, and I have my party sink a bunch of their resources on me, then I can hope that the champion will manage to beat another fighter in DPR, by a margin which at this point is a lot more negligible, while still offering nothing besides damage and an HP bar.

And that's with plenty of assumptions too. Most tables don't get to tier 4. Many tables play with far fewer encounters. Many tables aren't gonna hand players the strong magic items in the DMG, even if they do get to tier 4. If they do, there's the issue of getting the item you want, because instead of a dwarven thrower you could get a defender. And there's no guarantee that you'll have a wizard, a cleric and a paladin in the party who are willing to pile their buffs and use their concentration on you. There's no guarantee you'll have a wizard, a cleric and a paladin in the first place. It's more than possible that you'll wind up with, say, a cleric or a bard trying to support you and the rogue, and a gish focused on self buffing and some minor control.

That's... not an argument about the champion peaking higher. That's an argument that the champion needs both resources and luck to fulfill its one schtick, that of dealing damage. That's not a favorable comparison.

Is it workable? Yes. Hooray for fighter chassis. But we're not discussing how the fighter chassis holds up compared to other classes here, we're not discussing which subclasses are the best for starting players, we're discussing how champion compares to other fighter subclasses. And with the more popular and effective ones, namely eldritch knight, battle master and samurai? It doesn't compare.

[loki_ragnarock]

If I wait for tier 4, and my table is using the DMG guidelines of 6-8 encounters and 2-3 rests, and I get some pretty strong magic items, and I have my party sink a bunch of their resources on me, then I can hope that the champion will manage to beat another fighter in DPR, by a margin which at this point is a lot more negligible, while still offering nothing besides damage and an HP bar.


Throw terms like “boring” and “limited” out the window and concentrate purely on damage at the end of the day.

How does this character class hold up against other fighters?
Concentrating purely on damage at the end of the day, there you have it.


They fit the OPs terms, comparing favorably to the other subclasses in the metric they provided. Under specific circumstances, they exceed others in that metric. Under other circumstances, others exceed them.

Moving the goal posts to "exciting" or "interesting" or even "consistent" is outside the scope of the original query. Come the end of the day, on the average, there are instances in which the Champion can out perform the Battlemaster. They aren't outlandish circumstances, either, despite the hyperbole provided; if the wizard, paladin, cleric, and the Champion himself casting hex because he took that feat and all of them pile it on, then he's outperforming by a more noticeable level, sure.
But when all it takes is a magic sword and some basic teamwork? That's not an outlandish scenario in the least.

Though, thinking about it, my claim that the troughs are lower isn't actually valid; in adventuring days where short rests are hard to come by, the Champion limps into first. And... adventuring days like that happen. So the trough is actually higher in edge cases, and the peak is higher in edge cases. It overperforms in worst case and best case scenarios; it's the stuff in between where it doesn't compare as well. But edge cases are where the Champion shines; there's a bunch of spells and monster features that don't call for saves, but ability checks, and the Remarkable Athlete ability fires off then in favorable ways. Which isn't part of the OPs metric, but part of how the quirky way rules interact mean the Champion does better than given credit for.
So... for the OPs metric, it compares pretty favorably. Either is fine.


So fun fact I just learned when checking this: a Samurai with a Frost Brand Longsword, Wolf Totem Barbarian Buddy, and the Half-Orc race at level 15 still does more DPR with just Rapid Strike (ignoring all of their other advantages) than a Champion with the same stuff and Superior Critical.
Samurai isn't oversold at all. It's probably the best fighter archetype for the same reason the Champion is close to my heart; it gets meaningfully better at fighting by continuing to be a fighter, and it's abilities synergize with the fighter chassis. They are a touch overtuned, I think (looking at you Tireless Spirit), but powercreep in a splat book is why we all buy them... and it's not like it's as egregious as hexblade.

I suspect it gets *closer* if you factor in GWM and a greatsword - thanks to the bonus action attack on a crit - but beating rapid strike in any circumstances is a tall ask. I think you'll also find that the Battlemaster is being left behind in such a scenario, as is the Arcane Archer, Eldritch Knight, and Cavalier.

Which doesn't invalidate that the Champion still compares favorably to other subclasses on the claimed metric, but does mean it's not the top of the heap. Samurai is the damage king. Thanks to Tireless Spirit, their troughs are actually quite high, and their peaks are the highest by a meaningful margin thanks to Rapid Strike.

[KorvinStarmast]

A Champion does quite well if you are in a campaign where you are having a half dozen or more encounters between each short rest. When everyone else's bag of tricks is empty, you'll still be chugging along just fine.

Unfortunately, I've yet to encounter such a campaign. I have played in two, and I am currently running one. My friend who plays a dwarf Champion in both of them is thriving. I want all classes to use all features; so I don't do the 15 minute adventure day. Some days it's one or two grand battles and some days its two, and occasionally three, short rests.

Depends. I vary the situation a lot.

Also, in one of those games each player was responsible for buying their own healing kit. The cleric took the Healer Feat. That's a short rest resource that is somewhat underappreciated.

champion is just a crit fisher and you get everything you want from the class by level five. After that, multiclass into rogue for sneak attack dice. The goal of crit fishing is to roll as many dice as possible when you get that auto-hit.
Nope. My half orc champion was a bit more flexible than that. By taking the medium armor master feat and using half plate he could also accompany the scout sometimes to avoid losing the rogue(those elven boots helped) ... during scouting duties; he had shield master so he set up attacks for our barbarian with some frequency by knocking things over; that way barb didn't need reckless attack to get advantage on attacks. He could jump over and across stuff thanks to the remarkable athlete ability and look, no spell slot spent; his + to initiative was free thanks to that ability.

Third attack was really nice once we found that frost brand (level 11)

Champion: very useful guy to have in your party.

I think Max Wilson is on to something with Cavalier; that's a neat sub class, a pretty good package overall.
When our party was formed, Xanathar's had not yet come out. We varied between 4 and 5 members over the course of two and a half years. (Played about twice per month)

[MaxWilson]

Yeah, I've seen players who are loath to use any limited-use abilities even if they're long-rest full casters with basically nothing else but cantrips. If you're always saving your spell slots/maneuvers/whatever "just in case" and (almost) never using them, you might as well not have them. They're wasted if they go unused before the next short/long rest.

In a sandboxy game, where you may run into an arbitrarily huge wilderness threat:

If you fail to use a key limited-use ability when it's needed to survive, somebody dies (or some other failure occurs). That's a waste of life (or opportunity).

If you use a key limited-use ability when it isn't needed and then don't have it available when you need it, somebody dies or some other failure occurs.

If you don't use a key limited-use ability because it was never needed, nothing was wasted except perhaps time, and for combat abilities only a few seconds of time.

Anyway the point is, I've played plenty of games that the Champion would theoretically be suited for, if it had better at-will benefits. But really it's terrible, as written.


With that said, I'd agree that if you're that kind of player, then there are others archetypes or even classes with better at-will goodies than a Champion. Even getting Prestidigitation/Druidcraft plus Curving Shot seems more interesting to me than better critting and a flat bonus to initiative, and of course I could just build a agonizing repelling/grasp lethargy EB "archer" for a solid at-will ranged attacker.

Exactly. There's a lot of competition for the at-will role.

If you want an at-will Fighter, Cavaliers are fun.

[Chaos Jackal]

Moving the goal posts to "exciting" or "interesting" or even "consistent" is outside the scope of the original query. Come the end of the day, on the average, there are instances in which the Champion can out perform the Battlemaster. They aren't outlandish circumstances, either, despite the hyperbole provided; if the wizard, paladin, cleric, and the Champion himself casting hex because he took that feat and all of them pile it on, then he's outperforming by a more noticeable level, sure.
But when all it takes is a magic sword and some basic teamwork? That's not an outlandish scenario in the least.
I'm not sure where excitement, interest, or even consistency was mentioned in a post of mine. Maybe they have been alluded to, but as little more than gravy. The focus always was on the damage, with everything else coming as an afterthought. I believe the goal posts are exactly where they started.

Anyway, it takes more than a magic sword and basic teamwork.


If I wait for tier 4, and my table is using the DMG guidelines of 6-8 encounters and 2-3 rests, and I get some pretty strong magic items, and I have my party sink a bunch of their resources on me, then I can hope that the champion will manage to beat another fighter in DPR, by a margin which at this point is a lot more negligible, while still offering nothing besides damage and an HP bar.

Note that even under these circumstances, the champion winning in DPR is a big maybe. Basic calculations are already not favoring the champion and show there's ground to be covered because the champion doesn't start equal, it starts behind. And that ground grows massively if Feinting Attack or Trip Attack or Precision Attack or Riposte factor in, to the point where one can easily argue that there's just no way for a champion to beat a battle master in DPR, and it wouldn't be an unsound argument.

If, instead of not bothering with listing a specific maneuver, every superiority in the scenarios I have in my post was used on Riposte, basically sacrificing some of the safety of the superiority dice but instead getting as many extra attacks as the number of superiority dice available, do you know how much the gap would widen? It gets to the point where the edge cases you mention favor the battle master, because while the champion gets more dice to double in his few crits, the battle master gets a lot more attacks using those same extra dice. Flame Tongue for a champion adds 14 damage every twenty attacks with Superior Critical. Make 96 attacks at the lv20 scenario, that's 70. In the meantime, the battle master makes an additional 18 attacks thanks to Riposte. If 65% of them hit that's 11 successful attacks. Since they have a Flame Tongue too, this means they just pulled out an additional 77 damage thanks to it. And the more damage dice you add, the greater the difference. I guess the party would be better off investing those elemental and holy weapons on the battle master. Better get the feat for Hex too.

If the superiority dice were split between Feinting Attack and Riposte, do you know where the differences would get, or how much more it would end up favoring a battle master if he had a weapon that dealt bonus damage dice and a couple buffs to accompany it?

Or maybe Precision Attack? Precision Attack doesn't add to the damage, but every time it turns a miss into a hit, that means you just exchanged the damage of a superiority die for the basic damage of your attack, which is a lot higher than the damage of even a d12 superiority die. If you add extra damage dice here too, then the value of each superiority die really takes off.

So where's the edge case favoring the champion? Even after multiple assumptions and ideal scenarios, champions come up short, even in edge cases where looking at the surface would make it seem like they're favored. And of course, in the majority of situations and levels, it's very clear that the battle master wins.

If somebody comes to me and asks me whether the champion he's building is gonna beat his buddy's battle master or samurai in damage, or if he should just play a battle master or samurai himself, and my reply is "Maybe, at lv17 or so, if your DM gives you some specific items, the battle master never Ripostes, and you have ten encounters with one rest", you think that somebody is gonna take my reply as an indication that they should stick to it?

If you think that just the existence of a possibility, no matter how unlikely that possibility is, translates into a favorable comparison, then the disagreement between us lies in our definition of favorable. Because "champion can beat battle master in a low % of games" doesn't strike me as a favorable comparison. Quite the opposite.

You've been given the math. See many of my posts and that of AvatarVecna. You've been given examples and opinions. You've been told that, even where champions should shine, they don't. See MaxWilson and LudicSavant. People have noted from very early on in 5e's life that a champion's damage compared to a battle master's is lacking.

If the miniscule chance of coming out on top after very specific circumstances strikes you as champions comparing favorably, then I guess we can agree to disagree.

[MaxWilson]

If, instead of not bothering with listing a specific maneuver, every superiority in the scenarios I have in my post was used on Riposte, basically sacrificing some of the safety of the superiority dice but instead getting as many extra attacks as the number of superiority dice available, do you know how much the gap would widen? It gets to the point where the edge cases you mention favor the battle master, because while the champion gets more dice to double in his few crits, the battle master gets a lot more attacks using those same extra dice. Flame Tongue for a champion adds 14 damage every twenty attacks with Superior Critical. Make 96 attacks at the lv20 scenario, that's 70. In the meantime, the battle master makes an additional 18 attacks thanks to Riposte. If 65% of them hit that's 11 successful attacks. Since they have a Flame Tongue too, this means they just pulled out an additional 77 damage thanks to it. And the more damage dice you add, the greater the difference. I guess the party would be better off investing those elemental and holy weapons on the battle master. Better get the feat for Hex too.

And that's not even counting the rest of the damage too. Even if the Battlemaster isn't specialized for melee with Dueling (maybe he's primarily an archer), his 11 Flame Tongue hits are going to do d8+2d6(Flame Tongue)+d12(superiority)+5(Dex) = 23 damage each x 11 hits = 253 damage each.

I know you made a similar point on your spreadsheet, I just wanted to call out explicitly that the Battlemaster Riposte is adding even more damage than just the Flame Tongue damage.

And it's possible for the Battlemaster to do significantly better than this by combining other maneuvers with Riposte (e.g. Precise Strike has a RoI approaching 100% instead of only 65%).


So where's the edge case favoring the champion? Even after multiple assumptions and ideal scenarios, champions come up short, even in edge cases where looking at the surface would make it seem like they're favored. And of course, in the majority of situations and levels, it's very clear that the battle master wins.

If somebody comes to me and asks me whether the champion he's building is gonna beat his buddy's battle master or samurai in damage, or if he should just play a battle master or samurai himself, and my reply is "Maybe, at lv17 or so, if your DM gives you some specific items, the battle master never Ripostes, and you have ten encounters with one rest", you think that somebody is gonna take my reply as an indication that they should stick to it?

If you think that just the existence of a possibility, no matter how unlikely that possibility is, translates into a favorable comparison, then the disagreement between us lies in our definition of favorable. Because "champion can beat battle master in a low % of games" doesn't strike me as a favorable comparison. Quite the opposite.

You've been given the math. See many of my posts and that of AvatarVecna. You've been given examples and opinions. You've been told that, even where champions should shine, they don't. See MaxWilson and LudicSavant. People have noted from very early on in 5e's life that a champion's damage compared to a battle master's is lacking.

If the miniscule chance of coming out on top after very specific circumstances strikes you as champions comparing favorably, then I guess we can agree to disagree.

To be fair, you are still leaving the Champion's initiative bonus out of the comparison. If the campaign consists of tunnel fighting where you have dozens of very short (1-round) combats against weak foes who are not mutually-supporting, like Captain America's special ops mission at the beginning of The Winter Soldier, that initiative bonus translates directly to a damage boost. Also in that kind of campaign, the 18th level Champion HP regen is at its most effective.

So I can at least imagine a scenario where I'd tell somebody to play a Champion, specifically: 18th+ level campaign, gritty, low-fantasy military campaign against armies of fantasy grunts where you spend days at a time in low-intensity combat.

[Segev]

So, here's a theoretical question for people: How much of a boost/bonus would the Champion need in order to keep up with Battlemaster under the following assumptions?

One encounter per day
2 encounters per day with no short rest between them
2 encounters per day with 1 short rest between them
3 encounters per day with no short rests between them
3 encounters per day with 1 short rest between any two of them
3 encounters per day with 2 short rests (one between each of them)
6 encounters per day with 3 short rests split roughly evenly between them
6 encounters per day with 5 short rests (one between each of them)

[Chaos Jackal]

To be fair, you are still leaving the Champion's initiative bonus out of the comparison. If the campaign consists of tunnel fighting where you have dozens of very short (1-round) combats against weak foes who are not mutually-supporting, like Captain America's special ops mission at the beginning of The Winter Soldier, that initiative bonus translates directly to a damage boost. Also in that kind of campaign, the 18th level Champion HP regen is at its most effective.

So I can at least imagine a scenario where I'd tell somebody to play a Champion, specifically: 18th+ level campaign, gritty, low-fantasy military campaign against armies of fantasy grunts where you spend days at a time in low-intensity combat.

Oh sure, there are scenarios. The possibility exists. It's just a rather unlikely possibility, as you note yourself.

[Daphne]

So, here's a theoretical question for people: How much of a boost/bonus would the Champion need in order to keep up with Battlemaster under the following assumptions?

All your examples inherently favor the Battle Master, default is 6 to 8 medium encounters with two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day.

More fair scenarios would be:
One very deadly encounter per day
3 deadly encounters per day with 2 short rests (one between each of them)
6 medium encounters per day with 2 short rests split roughly evenly between them

If the Champion is meant to be good at long adventure days, it should be better in circumstances like the following:
4 hard encounters with 1 short rest between them
6 medium encounters per day with 1 short rests between them or no rest at all

[Segev]

All your examples inherently favor the Battle Master, default is 6 to 8 medium encounters with two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day.

More fair scenarios would be:
One very deadly encounter per day
3 deadly encounters per day with 2 short rests (one between each of them)
6 medium encounters per day with 2 short rests split roughly evenly between them

If the Champion is meant to be good at long adventure days, it should be better in circumstances like the following:
4 hard encounters with 1 short rest between them
6 medium encounters per day with 1 short rests between them or no rest at all

6-8? Huh, I thought it was 4-6.

Regardless, my purpose is to favor the Battlemaster, and ask how much the Champion needs to "catch up" in each scenario. I'm pondering how much of a short- or long-rest resource he could get and how much it oculd do for him to have him "keep up" at shorter days while still being balanced for the longer ones.

[stoutstien]

6-8? Huh, I thought it was 4-6.

Regardless, my purpose is to favor the Battlemaster, and ask how much the Champion needs to "catch up" in each scenario. I'm pondering how much of a short- or long-rest resource he could get and how much it oculd do for him to have him "keep up" at shorter days while still being balanced for the longer ones.

Purely off the cuff, but maybe an extra action surge at some point? I'd think it take more than one for them to catch up to battlemaster but 1 more would be a big boon. Maybe give them a recharge of action surge like battlemaster gets a die back if they don't have any when they roll initiative.

[MaxWilson]

6-8? Huh, I thought it was 4-6.

It depends on the level, but if you divide adventuring day XP budget by the median cost of a Medium encounter you typically get about 5-6 encounters IIRC. For the median Hard encounter you get 3-4 encounters.

People who say 6-8 encounters are usually going off the fluff text in the Basic Rules/DMG, which was written before they changed the definition of Medium/Hard, before the DMG came out. What today is Easy used to be called Medium, and what today is Medium used to be called Hard, so what that really means is that you should be able to handle 6-8 Easy to Medium encounters per day or the equivalent in harder encounters, which does match with the DMG encounter math.

(What today is Deadly used to have no official name but Kobold.club referred to it as Ludicrous, which was cute.)

They updated the encounter difficulty table but apparently forgot to update the fluff text.

[Daphne]

It depends on the level, but if you divide adventuring day XP budget by the median cost of a Medium encounter you typically get about 5-6 encounters IIRC. For the median Hard encounter you get 3-4 encounters.

It aligns pretty well with 6 encoounters, with some levels requiring a bit more:



LVL
XP Medium Encounter
Budget Day
Budget/Encounter


1
50
300
6


2
100
600
6


3
150
1200
8


4
250
1700
6.8


5
500
3500
7


6
600
4000
6.666



These numbers do get lower as you get closer to the Hard threshold.

[MaxWilson]

It aligns pretty well with 6 encoounters, with some levels requiring a bit more:



LVL
XP Medium Encounter
Budget Day
Budget/Encounter


1
50
300
6


2
100
600
6


3
150
1200
8


4
250
1700
6.8


5
500
3500
7


6
600
4000
6.666



These numbers do get lower as you get closer to the Hard threshold.

That's the minimal Medium encounter, not the median. You're assuming an encounter which is right on the verge of becoming Easy.

If you take the value halfway between barely-Medium and almost-Hard you get IIRC as high as 6.5 for some levels and I think as low as 4.6 for others.

Corrected table:



LVL
XP Medium Encounter
Budget Day
Budget/Encounter


1
62.5
300
4.8


2
125
600
4.8


3
187.5
1200
6.4


4
312.5
1700
5.44


5
625
3500
5.6


6
750
4000
5.3

[Daphne]

That's the minimal Medium encounter, not the median. You're assuming an encounter which is right on the verge of becoming Easy.
I stand corrected.

Now, considering 5 to 6 medium encounters with two short rests between them, how much extra damage should the Champion get? One issue I see is that you can't make the Champion as good as the Battle Master at 3rd level, since it scales with your number of attacks and would become twice as good once you get Extra Attack. Because of that I think 5th-level is the best point of analysis.

[MaxWilson]

I stand corrected.

Now, considering 5 to 6 medium encounters with two short rests between them, how much extra damage should the Champion get? One issue I see is that you can't make the Champion as good as the Battle Master at 3rd level, since it scales with your number of attacks and would become twice as good once you get Extra Attack. Because of that I think 5th-level is the best point of analysis.

Since the Battlemaster gets extra utility (e.g. Trip Attack for advantage in melee + kiting, or Menacing for protection) it would probably be fair if the Champion got about as many extra crits over 18 rounds of combat as the Battlemaster gets maneuver dice in a day with two short rests. That implies 12 extra crits over 18 rounds = 36 attacks (not counting bonus action attacks or Action Surge attacks), and 36/12 is 3, so call it +3 to expanded crit range. 3rd level Champions could crit on 17-20 and it wouldn't be unfair.

AFB but I think my house rule is to give them 17-20 and also let them double all damage, including static mods like +Str and +Dueling. And I let Remarkable Athlete stack with proficiency. That way, Simple Offensive Fighter = Champion, Simple Tanky Fighter = Cavalier.

[djreynolds]

When comparing this class to the other fighter archetypes, when the number crunchers start crunching, how does this class actually hold up?

Throw terms like “boring” and “limited” out the window and concentrate purely on damage at the end of the day.

How does this character class hold up against other fighters?

Make him a half orc too, because that synergy is just too easy.

Honestly. This archetype is a love/hate relationship because it could be so much more.

The champion is either for 3 types of players.
Newbies, bored or.... obessed veteran players trying to see if they can make this archetype work.

It comes down to 2 thought processes assuming a single classed fighter.
1. Maximizing the crit fighter
2. Trying to maximize remarkable athlete.

For crit fishing...
You had shield master... which is really no longer viable.
Or you grab polearm master and a glaive or TWF and just roll.

With trying to maximize remarkable athlete you max strength and leave dex at least at 16... and select archery style at 1st... select other skills like history or insight or intimidation. Maybe go SS and GWM. Run around with a longbow and greatsword. Take a feat for the party like healer or ritual caster and just always be helpful...

I have played 6 real versions of the champion.
The first was a shield master and it was good until the reversal.
I've run a dex based archer.
I've a strength based TWF that uses the first attack to prone and then attacks with main and off hand... "A poor man's shield master" but it's viable
The last was a SS and GWM and mounted combatant... I felt like a wannabe Samurai.

Critical hits are random. Too random... survival should've come at 3rd level.

And advantage and critical hits really don't care if you maxed out strength and dexterity... you only have to roll an 18 or 19 or 20.

The cavalier gives you a bump for maxing constitution and strength. Arcane archer and EK gives something for a higher intelligence.

Champions IMO don't give you anything more than any other fighter does.

Champions are for the obsessed.... but it is a worthy challenge.

[Yuroch Kern]

Personally, Champion is hard mode. They gotta work for the advantages that are solved by Maneuvers and War Magic, and whatever Samurai brings (I don't have that book). But it is an opportunity to figure out all those little optional rules, like grappling, and it's abilities augment the existing chassis, without extra considerations clouding your mind. I recently did some work improving Remarkable Athlete, but a bonus to Initiative, Con checks, and basically Sleight of Hand and Stealth, aren't something to wave off at some tables, even if they come a little late. It kinda makes the Champion the skill monkey of the Fighters, and that is gloriously weird. The Champion tries harder, and pulls ahead because he lifts, bro.

[Man_Over_Game]

5% chance to crit for 100% of your dice damage basically balances out to a damage bonus equal to 5% ofyour dice damage.

Advantage almost doubles your crit chance, making it worth about 10%.

So if you want roughly the same value of +1 damage per attack, you'd need to have Advantage while dealing an average of 10 damage from dice.

The best basic weapon does 7 average dice damage, although using a Rapier as a level 3 Rogue would get you to 10.

Without Advantage, it'd be a level 7 Rogue, as (1d8 + 4d6) * 0.05 = ~1.

-------------------------------------------------

You could change how valuable crits are, but that increases randomness, which effectively lowers the effectiveness of strategy. This can be good if you want to close the gap between strategists and casuals.

Alternatively, you could probably just increase the crit range for each increment by +2. That is, you crit on a 17 at level 3 and a 15 at level 17. This would double the amount of damage the Champion features would net you while making it a lot more consistent. Without Advantage at level 3 and a weapon that deals 2d6 damage rolls, we are talking about a +0.7 damage per attack, or double that with Advantage (+1.4).

Personally, I just like making Champion lose the crit focus to add half his Dex bonus to his Strength modifier rolls, and vice-versa, minimum of +1. Make the minimum a +2 with no halving once you hit level 17. Gives the Champion his own identity as a Dex/Str hybrid, making him valuable out of combat, adding consistency, while continuing the trend of simplicity.

[djreynolds]

Personally, Champion is hard mode. They gotta work for the advantages that are solved by Maneuvers and War Magic, and whatever Samurai brings (I don't have that book). But it is an opportunity to figure out all those little optional rules, like grappling, and it's abilities augment the existing chassis, without extra considerations clouding your mind. I recently did some work improving Remarkable Athlete, but a bonus to Initiative, Con checks, and basically Sleight of Hand and Stealth, aren't something to wave off at some tables, even if they come a little late. It kinda makes the Champion the skill monkey of the Fighters, and that is gloriously weird. The Champion tries harder, and pulls ahead because he lifts, bro.

100% champion. you are playing hard mode.

That's it. A real challenge.

[Hael]

Incidentally, the math is a lot worse than it seems for the Champion. Not only does it fall behind in avg DpR, but the total damage it does is significantly overstated in those scenarios bc so much of a big crit is statistically wasted in overkill scenarios.

In order to rescue the class, you would need one of two things. An item/feat/multiclass that automatically improves crit range by 1 or items/feat/multiclass that improve damage multipliers on crit.

I mean it’s not completely terrible, we’re never talking about more than 20% straight dpr differentials (unless we include party wide damage boosts from things like trip), but still it’s somewhat upsetting that they can’t do simple math for a class that should have been clearly more potent. It’s now been power creeped somewhat, new subclasses like the Echo Knight are significantly more powerful.

[loki_ragnarock]

Being essential is going to screw up my ability to think about this stuff without interruption but:



If, instead of not bothering with listing a specific maneuver, every superiority in the scenarios I have in my post was used on Riposte, basically sacrificing some of the safety of the superiority dice but instead getting as many extra attacks as the number of superiority dice available, do you know how much the gap would widen?

Riposte isn’t a great argument for Battlemaster’s, as it frees someone making a counter argument to remind that opportunity attacks can happen as well; both are reactions that are dependent on enemy behaviors. Champion making a reaction based attack every round isn’t hard to conceive of given the resources available in the system - but as neither can react more than once per round – it’s a wash in that regard when comparing peak outcomes; both can make use of their reaction to make an additional attack. The Battlemaster can opt to have an extra set of conditions to do so… but isn’t actually generating an attack that can’t be duplicated through other fairly mundane means. The difference between the Champion and the Battlemaster isn’t the difference of free attacks; it’s the difference of a couple dice of bonus damage, and that’s all it’ll ever meaningfully be (edit: this is actually refuted later in the post); the margin to make up isn’t 20%, especially when you factor in how assumed reaction attacks will quicken the countdown for the crits.

What Riposte doesn’t do is meaningfully differentiate damage output the same way that that the Samurai does; that subclass generates an unanswerable additional attack out of thin air come 15th level. That’s what allows it to eclipse the champion come a party willing to juice a fighter.

So the easiest way to think about crits is that it’s like getting an extra attack every x number of attacks. With half orcs, it is basically exactly that; the extra dice of damage roughly substitutes for the static bonus you’d derive from your strength or dexterity. For everyone else, it’s like getting an extra off hand attack; there’s nothing to substitute for static bonuses. This extra attack is effectively meaningless from an overall damage perspective if your attacks aren’t already throwing impressive dice… but since enhancements to dice of damage only become easier as the game grows, this means that something low impact and subtle at level 3 can pay bigger dividends over time. A sufficiently dice juiced basic attack can lead to some executioner style damage on a crit, as any table with a paladin has adequately demonstrated. Regardless, it’s their unanswerable simulated additional attacks that the Champion can use to reach parity with and even exceed the Battlemaster.


And as a crit emulates an extra attack, maybe half-orc isn’t the poster child of the Champion after all. Maybe – and I say this through teeth so gritted that I might be spitting sand later – maybe, it’s the half-elf, as they can more readily gain these simulated attacks.

So lets assume a half-elf instead of a half-orc; he’s going to take elven accuracy. I know it, you know it, everyone knows it. This moves him away from big, two handed weapons and GWM and towards dual wielding rapiers. So a downgrade from the d12 to a d8, but an upgrade to being a type of sword and all the magic items that encompasses. No +10 damage, but greater accuracy from no -5 to hit. No bonus attack on a crit, just a bonus attack all the time. But I get ahead of myself, we’ll come back to the half-elf at a later date. I have distracted myself. Moving on.


See, the thing is, I don’t think that the effects that advantage generates for Champions has been adequately illustrated by your’s truly. I’ll do that now.
So everyone has a 5% chance to crit, with hexblades and Champions sporting a 10% crit chance. Groovy.
So lets move to a fairly googleable formula that reads something like this regarding advantage:
z=x+(1-x)x
x = your percent chance to hit expressed as a decimal. z = your new percent chance to hit post advantage. Since we’re interested specifically in crits rather than hits, that’d be .05 for normals, .10 for Champs, and .15 for Mega-champs.
Or, 9.75% chance to crit for normals, a 19% chance for Champs, and a 27.75% chance to crit for Mega-Champs. Still roughly twice as often, *but much more frequent as a whole.*
These are the numbers that get the Champion there; with a little help from their friends they crit roughly 1in 5 attacks, even at low levels. Which is important because they get that extra simulated attack about every other round come level 5, especially when we factor in things like reaction attacks. That’s a huge increase in the rate at which crit happens; advantage brings the countdown to a reasonable level. However at low level, the tools being brought to bear by the full party aren’t going to be enough to match the four extra d8 the battlemaster is getting from their maneuvers… even for a half orc using a great-axe, right? If it’s only two encounters per short rest, and we assume three rounds per encounter with a roughly similar hit rate, then the Battlemaster is getting about 18 extra damage per short rest at level five. Bazinga. Meanwhile, the Champion with a Great Axe is only netting, oh, (factoring in reaction attacks means 5 in the action surge round, 3 in the others, for 20 attacks total, divide by 5 for the expected crits) about 4 crits in that time. Or as expressed as damage… oh. Oh my.
The Champion with the Greataxe is netting a generic 12 extra damage per crit, for a total of 48 extra damage. My, oh my, how unexpected!
“Hey, what about the Battlemaster’s Crits!”
Well, factoring in reaction attacks means that he actually gets two, so that’s a fair point. We’ll deduct the Champion two crits because the battlemaster has parity on that one; advantage does give him a one in 10 chance to crit, so it makes sense. So it’s only 24 damage extra damage the Champion has going. And you know what? Lets assume the battlemaster is a savvy statistician who used his attacks to their best possible outcome and waited to use them on a crit, for an average of 9 extra damage between those two crits. 27. A three point difference at the lowest tier.
“Nah, man, you got it all wrong! The Battlemaster is using Precision Attack to turn power attack misses into hits!”
Okay. Fair enough; it’s the only mechanism the Battlemaster has to generate unanswerable hits, and thus the only Battlemaster mechanic that is truly meaningful when comparing peaks. But now we have to model the likelyhood of that mattering in an advantage bound scenario; when there’s about a 44% chance of rolling a 15 or higher, and a 75% chance of rolling greater than 10, the odds of a miss happening to begin with become pretty low. Ug. That sounds like a lot of work, though; setting it up against multiple AC points to see exactly where the boundary is to get a full four uses in twenty attacks. That’s… le sigh. But we’ll take a short cut and assume it’s an AC that requires greater than a 10 to hit, so the Battlemaster gets all 4 uses out of it. Keep it abstracted and moving along. Assuming it there are 4 misses to be had; because greater than 10, there’s also the fact that the lower end of the die has a boundary where the average of 4 (rounded down) from the superiority die is actually going to matter not at all. Is there enough room in there to get a full four uses in twenty attacks? The answer is, nope, not when aiming for a roll over 10. You can pull that particular big swing off at best 3ish times on the average, leaving your last superiority die to be 4.5 damage; this is because there is a 9% of rolling a 6 or worse, where the average superiority die result will not be sufficient to boost a failure into a success. At least over the 20 attacks modeled, with an 84% chance of precise strike not mattering, there isn’t room for four full attacks to be turned into hits when you need higher than a 10.
But there’s a 20 - 25% margin in there somewhere, right?
So it would have to require a roll of 14 or higher to miss? 14+ is a 57.75% and 1-10 is 20.25%. So there you go; targeting a roll of 14 to hit in these scenarios, just barely getting the four attacks out.
The problem is that because of the narrowness of that scale, there is not a lot of room for growth; extra dice will not, on the average, turn more misses into hits within a 20 attack sequence with only a 22% window. It’s going to take many, many more attacks to reach a point where the math is conveniently easy to model again. Fighters get plenty more attacks later, of course, so I’ll reassess this… and also, eh, just increase the ludicrousness of the AC over time and you can probably get in a few extra hits, regardless? And don’t dismiss that the effective range increases as the die increases in size. The Battlemaster hasn’t peaked, yet, but for now a target roll of 14 is enough to get the 4 misses to hits metric we're looking for.
Being able to turn a miss into a hit is a pretty big deal though; it puts the Battlemaster in a genuinely great position. Greataxe + GWM + str 16 is (6.5 + 10 + 3)4 = 78 damage. Bazinga! We have a winner! Real hits beat simulated hits! And all of that is damage that wouldn’t otherwise happen.
But if we’re going to give the Battlemaster the benefit of GWM, then we have to do the same for the Champion, who generated two extra bonus action attacks from his two extra crits. The amount of damage will be some proportion of whatever two hits would be; whatever the raw result, minus the accuracy penalty. Which should be substantial in this instance, as we’ve already established the AC being targeted is rather quite high; 57.75% chance to hit. Quite an accuracy tax; only 22.5 damage on top of their previous 24 for a total of 46. Ouchies.
But to say that the Champion is being outperformed by a high percentage margin might not be accurate, so lets model the actual damage.
24 (20 total +4 bonus from GWMcrits) freaking attacks over the two encounters at a hit rate of 57.75% and see what kind of total we’re looking at.
(19.5x24)0.5775=270.27 damage over the two encounters, +48 extra damage from the 4 crits = 318 total damage for the Champion before the first short rest.
Meanwhile, the Battlemaster has his 4 statistically guaranteed hits thanks to Precision attack for their full 78 damage. Quite a head start. His two crits will net him 24 bonus damage as we’re assuming they're both half orcs similarly armed, extending the head start to 102. Dayum. And he has a cap of 22 (20 attacks +2 bonus from GWM crits) attacks, minus the 4 already factored in, means 18 attacks that actually pay the tax. (19.5x18)0.5775 = 202.7 + 102 = 303.7

Huh.
Battlemaster: 303
Champion: 318

Before the first short rest, the Champion is ahead by 15 points. After the second long rest, the Champion is ahead 30 points. At the end of the day, he’s ahead by 45 points.
To be fair, 45 points doesn’t exactly amount to a meaningful percentage in the face of 900+damage both fighters are going to be able to do during the day in this scenario, but come the end of the day it's higher.

But to answer the OP:

Throw terms like “boring” and “limited” out the window and concentrate purely on damage at the end of the day.

How does this character class hold up against other fighters?


Advantage turns it around at level 5. By itself, no special weapons or dice adding spells needed. Isn’t probability fun?

See, the thing is, before I started working this out my intuition was that at level 5 the Battlemaster was actually still edging out a win even with a party working to help each other out. I assumed that I wouldn’t be seeing an eclipse until much, much later in the progression when certain other system tools start to emerge.

But all they actually need is advantage. And golly, there are so many, many, many ways to get advantage in 5e.

I'll think about this some more to get a better idea of how it compares at key transition points. For now, I must needs bed to be essential tomorrow, too.

[MaxWilson]

100% champion. you are playing hard mode.

That's it. A real challenge.

Naw, Champion is still a Fighter, so it's Medium Mode. Hard Mode is Elemental Monk. : )

[Segev]

Incidentally, the math is a lot worse than it seems for the Champion. Not only does it fall behind in avg DpR, but the total damage it does is significantly overstated in those scenarios bc so much of a big crit is statistically wasted in overkill scenarios.

In order to rescue the class, you would need one of two things. An item/feat/multiclass that automatically improves crit range by 1 or items/feat/multiclass that improve damage multipliers on crit.

I mean it’s not completely terrible, we’re never talking about more than 20% straight dpr differentials (unless we include party wide damage boosts from things like trip), but still it’s somewhat upsetting that they can’t do simple math for a class that should have been clearly more potent. It’s now been power creeped somewhat, new subclasses like the Echo Knight are significantly more powerful.

Doesn't the underlined proposed solution merely exacerbate the bolded stated problem?

[Satori01]

“I just want to mention two things that you've overlooked, for the sake of completion: the second fighting style, and the initiative boost. The second fighting style effectively means you can grab great weapon/archery/dueling, and still get a free point of AC from Defense at 10th. It's not huge, but an extra point of AC on an already high-AC character is nice, and it's definitely a defensive boost that happens sooner than 18th level. As for initiative, I always thought that was the big draw to Remarkable Athlete: it's a discount Jack of All Trades, but rounded up. “

Quoted for truth.

If your table uses the skill checks with different ability scores, then a clever player can make the Champion perform in areas outside combat.

A Champion asking for a Strength: Intimidate check while squeezing someone’s hand in a greeting for example.

Or Breaking down a door.
Or flexing one’s muscles to flirt
Or a drinking contest

etc, etc, etc.

Persons doing D&D math, often discount abilities that are useful in Real Game Conditions. They label said abilities as “ribbons” or externalities, because the math to model those abilities is very complex.

Yesterday I saw a Champion roll Five, Critical Hits from a roll of 19, in a 8 round combat encounter.

Of course it is rare, but it happened.

[loki_ragnarock]

Yesterday I saw a Champion roll Five, Critical Hits from a roll of 19, in a 8 round combat encounter.

Of course it is rare, but it happened.


Or, 9.75% chance to crit for normals, a 19% chance for Champs, and a 27.75% chance to crit for Mega-Champs. Still roughly twice as often, *but much more frequent as a whole.*

If that fighter has been granted advantage through some means or another, that's not outlandish that they would crit so many times; just weird that it'd be a 19 every time. It would mostly be a function of level, at that point; how many attacks were going out per round? For an 8 round combat, it wouldn't actually be that rare if the team was working together in the post extra attacks levels.

At level 3, though? Without a party working to each other's strengths? That's quite a run of luck. Praise be the Dice Gods; they are fickle masters.

[LudicSavant]

Good to see some analysis being done, even if I think that there are some flaws with said analysis.


If it’s only two encounters per short rest, and we assume three rounds per encounter with a roughly similar hit rate, then the Battlemaster is getting about 18 extra damage per short rest at level five. Bazinga. Meanwhile, the Champion with a Great Axe is only netting, oh, (factoring in reaction attacks means 5 in the action surge round, 3 in the others, for 20 attacks total, divide by 5 for the expected crits) about 4 crits in that time. Or as expressed as damage… oh. Oh my.
The Champion with the Greataxe is netting a generic 12 extra damage per crit, for a total of 48 extra damage. My, oh my, how unexpected!

In your quest to boost your "extra damage on crit" variable, you've lost sight of your overall output. Half-Orc GWF Greataxe Champion does ~7.33 per normal hit and 22 per crit. With a Greatsword, they'd do ~8.33 per normal hit and ~20.83 per crit. In other words, you've sacrificed 1 damage per normal hit and a usefully bell-curved distribution for just ~1.17 per crit.

Not a good deal, even for a Champion.


The difference between the Champion and the Battlemaster isn’t the difference of free attacks; it’s the difference of a couple dice of bonus damage, and that’s all it’ll ever meaningfully be
This is selling the Battle Master quite short. They don't get "a couple dice of bonus damage," they get 4-6 dice of unmissable damage per short rest, plus rider effects that are frequently worth more than said dice. These effects cannot be discounted if the BM is to have a proper showing. It's basically leaving out half of the value of the subclass (or more).


owever at low level, the tools being brought to bear by the full party aren’t going to be enough to match the four extra d8 the battlemaster is getting from their maneuvers… even for a half orc using a great-axe, right?

Why exactly are we comparing "the tools being brought to bear by the full party" to 4d8?

[MaxWilson]

Why exactly are we comparing "the tools being brought to bear by the full party" to 4d8?

I believe the intended claim is something along the lines of "Champions scale better than Battlemasters with unlimited party support."

I believe you've already shown that they don't scale better than Samurais, even with unlimited party support, and I suspect they don't scale better than EKs unless there is both unlimited party support and also a large number of fights to deplete the EK's self-buffs (and that scenario never happens of course).

[Hael]

Doesn't the underlined proposed solution merely exacerbate the bolded stated problem?

It certainly exacerbates the 'lost' damage issue, but it does significantly improve a Champions DPR and in particular it improves their scaling. (eg a champion can use the extra damage better than a battlemaster). From a game balance point of view you want the champion to have an avg DPR that is *higher* than another fighter subclass in order for the total damage output to be the same (assuming overkill damage) as well as if you wish to compensate the Champion for their loss of versatility...

In Pathfinder typical crit builds would try to get a crit range on the order of 18-20 and something like a *3 damage multipliers, and this would be competitive with builds that focused more on the flat damage side or extra attacks.

Anyway, in 5e, they've nerfed crit to the point where its only really useful if you're burning smites, or have some very specific set of circumstances, and that's ashame b/c it wouldn't take much to make critfishing builds viable (a single feat which alters the range or multiplier would instantly make a lot more builds viable). It would certainly help the Champion escape from his current mediocrity (I pull ahead if I fight 300 kobolds during a day!!!)

[Segev]

It certainly exacerbates the 'lost' damage issue, but it does significantly improve a Champions DPR and in particular it improves their scaling. (eg a champion can use the extra damage better than a battlemaster). From a game balance point of view you want the champion to have an avg DPR that is *higher* than another fighter subclass in order for the total damage output to be the same (assuming overkill damage) as well as if you wish to compensate the Champion for their loss of versatility...

In Pathfinder typical crit builds would try to get a crit range on the order of 18-20 and something like a *3 damage multipliers, and this would be competitive with builds that focused more on the flat damage side or extra attacks.

Anyway, in 5e, they've nerfed crit to the point where its only really useful if you're burning smites, or have some very specific set of circumstances, and that's ashame b/c it wouldn't take much to make critfishing builds viable (a single feat which alters the range or multiplier would instantly make a lot more builds viable). It would certainly help the Champion escape from his current mediocrity (I pull ahead if I fight 300 kobolds during a day!!!)

My impression is that the design thought was for barbarians to be the crit-mongers with swingy-damage, and fighters to be more consistent. The barbarian gets bigger dice to replicate. ...and, crud, I'm forgetting some specifics. There was something about the reroll mechanics for larger dice versus many smaller ones, too, and something else that made fighters better with the more smaller dice of a greatsword.

But champion gets improved critical, while barbarian does not. And barbarian rage doesn't multiply on a critical, but sneak attack of all things does. Notably, barbarian rage damage applies to off-hand weapons even without TWF, if that matters to anybody. But they're pushed to the big d12 weapon instead.

It makes me feel like Champion 3 is a highly-encouraged dip/multiclass for Barbarian.

[djreynolds]

Naw, Champion is still a Fighter, so it's Medium Mode. Hard Mode is Elemental Monk. : )

Very true.

I just on sage advice that champion is the most popular archetype for fighter... over 30% from poll.

Some players feel they can make this archetype work.

I see lots of elemental monks and champions and beastmasters played by very good players. It's for the challenge of it.

I saw an elemental monk from a roof top grabbing up foes with water whip and then dropping them.

And it's why I try to bash the champion as much as I do... some players can make a champion shine

[SLOTHRPG95]

My impression is that the design thought was for barbarians to be the crit-mongers with swingy-damage, and fighters to be more consistent. The barbarian gets bigger dice to replicate. ...and, crud, I'm forgetting some specifics. There was something about the reroll mechanics for larger dice versus many smaller ones, too, and something else that made fighters better with the more smaller dice of a greatsword.

But champion gets improved critical, while barbarian does not. And barbarian rage doesn't multiply on a critical, but sneak attack of all things does. Notably, barbarian rage damage applies to off-hand weapons even without TWF, if that matters to anybody. But they're pushed to the big d12 weapon instead.

It makes me feel like Champion 3 is a highly-encouraged dip/multiclass for Barbarian.

Barbarian doesn't get get Great Weapon Fighting, meaning that they're only losing 0.5 damage per non-critical hit by using a Greataxe instead of a Greatsword. With GWF, the difference is 1, and in both cases the difference is doubled on a crit. But if you have an extra damage die per crit, then you're doing 5.5 extra points of damage per crit w/ the Greataxe, or 5.33 with the fighting style. So while rerolling 1s and 2s is better for more smaller dice, adding extra dice is better for fewer, larger dice. Given that a Barbarian has an easy source of Advantage, with GWF you're better off using a Greataxe if you can hit on a 14; without GWF but still with Advantage you're always averaging more damage with the Greataxe, due to the larger ratio gained/lost (11:1 instead of 19:3).

If that's not what you meant when you brought up reroll mechanics, my only other thought is the Savage Attacker feat, which is less useful per attack the more attacks per round you have, making it next-to-useless on a Fighter. Looking just at Greataxe vs. Greatsword, however, we have almost exactly a 50% chance of getting 8 or less on 2d6 rolled twice keeping the higher total, versus a median of about 8.5 on 1d12 in the same conditions. And the higher end is even more slanted in favor of 1d12, much like how Advantage works. You have about a one in eighteen to get 12 on 2d6 rolled twice keep highest, vs. about one in six on 2d12k1.

If neither of these are what you meant, I'm interested in what you did mean, if you later remember. As to OP, single-classed Champion falls behind on damage compared to the BM as others have nicely calculated and explained, but not by so much as to render them useless. The bigger disadvantage IMO is losing the riders.

[Zhorn]

-snip-
Beaten to the punch.
Yeah, Great Weapon Fighting for Mauls and Greatswords for Fighters using multple smaller dice (d6's), Savage Attacker for Greataxe Barbarians stacking mass big dice (d12's) (though unless you rolled high stats, you'll probably be better off spending ASIs on raw stats as a Barbarian)

[MaxWilson]

Very true.

I just on sage advice that champion is the most popular archetype for fighter... over 30% from poll.

Some players feel they can make this archetype work.

I see lots of elemental monks and champions and beastmasters played by very good players. It's for the challenge of it.

Yeah, I'm not even saying elemental monk is bad, and it is fun, but you've got crummy built-in AC, no healing, mediocre saves before 14th level (Str and Dex is arguably the worst combination except for Bards' Dex and Int), and no summoning spells, and your only crowd control spells are blasty spells, which are only good in specific situations.

Playing an Elemonk well demands a fairly good grasp of both math and tactics, and I don't think I could describe at least one strong strategy to a newbie without using math. I can't think of very many other classes for which that is true. ("Barbarian: take PAM, Rage, and hit things a lot." "Druid: abuse Spike Growth and Conjured X, and use your wild shape to eke out your spells." "Wizard: take a level in cleric or fighter for AC, learn Shield, and use Hypnotic Pattern and Fireball whenever you see a bunch of monsters close together.")

[bid]

24 (20 total +4 bonus from GWMcrits) freaking attacks over the two encounters at a hit rate of 57.75% and see what kind of total we’re looking at.
(19.5x24)0.5775=270.27 damage over the two encounters, +48 extra damage from the 4 crits = 318 total damage for the Champion before the first short rest.
Meanwhile, the Battlemaster has his 4 statistically guaranteed hits thanks to Precision attack for their full 78 damage. Quite a head start. His two crits will net him 24 bonus damage as we’re assuming they're both half orcs similarly armed, extending the head start to 102. Dayum. And he has a cap of 22 (20 attacks +2 bonus from GWM crits) attacks, minus the 4 already factored in, means 18 attacks that actually pay the tax. (19.5x18)0.5775 = 202.7 + 102 = 303.7

Huh.
Battlemaster: 303
Champion: 318
Count again.

For a basic fighter:
20 attack rolls with advantage gets you 2 BA attacks (from GWM, on your turn) for a total of 22 attacks and 2 set of extra damage from crits.
fighter = 22 * 19.5 * .5775 + 2 * 12 = 271

For a champion:
20 attack rolls with advantage gets you 4 BA attacks for a total of 24 attacks and 4 set of extra damage from crits.
Champion = 24 * 19.5 * .5775 + 4 * 12 = 318

For a BM:
Same as fighter, but if you turn 4 misses into hits with precision strike, as you said, the numbers aren't what you believed.
BM = 22 * 19.5 * .5775 + 2 * 12 + 4 * 19.5 = 350


EDIT: just to note that crit damage should be an extra 6.5 and not 12. But maybe you play with the crit 1d12 rolled max damage.

[animewatcha]

One thing that I thought about while reading through the pages a bit. This requires UA since martials can't always get nice things in splat books. Hybrid dmg dealer and tank a bit. Not full on tank, but hybrid with a lean toward one or the other depending upon fighting style choices.

-sidenote- Previously, i didn't think of 'trip and wail away' build from an earlier post, but it is interesting to stay the least. Anyways

Valenar Elf/half-elf. Elven Accuracy, Revenant blade, double scimitar. one of the fighting styles being Interception. With sage ruling in the past about 'target you can see within 5 feet of you' including you as a possible target, you have a reaction-based dmg reduction. This in a way 'allowing' for 'bonus hitpoints' of a sort with conditions. More helpful if You have melee buddies or are guarding someone. Second fighting style is where the leaning part of hybrid comes into play. The Interception-reaction allows you to stay in melee for longer so you can get more attacks in over longer time. With double scimitar, Great Weapon fighting. If you rolled a 1 on the die, you having 75% chance of improving. Roll a 2, then 25% chance of losing out on 1 point of damage. This is before crit. Double scimitar is a two-handed weapon that lets you use bonus action extra attack while still using full mod for damage to attack. Take the feat and you can do dex mod. Defensive leaning.. If you use heavy armor, defense style. If not Mariner style from UA, you get the 1 AC bonus along with a climb and swim speed.

What do you guys think?

[MaxWilson]

-sidenote- Previously, i didn't think of 'trip and wail away' build from an earlier post, but it is interesting to stay the least.

I don't know if you noticed this, but knocking an enemy prone both impairs its movement (because it costs half your movement to stand back up again) and its opportunity attacks (they're at disadvantage for being prone). Therefore, one interesting thing you can do with the right feats [Prodigy, Crossbow Expert] and enough Extra Attacks is:

(1) Knock the enemy prone, at massive bonuses due to Prodigy (Athletics).

(2) Shoot them from 5' away at advantage (or tri-vantage if you've got Elven Accuracy). Because of Crossbow Expert you don't take disadvantage for having an enemy within 5' of you while making a ranged attack.

(3) Shoot them again at advantage as a bonus action because Crossbow Expert.

(4) Retreat 20' or so, ending your move 25' to 35' away from the prone enemy. You'll take an opportunity attack at disadvantage.

(5) Profit! The enemy spends 15' to get back up, and if they spend 15' move to chase you they'll still be 10' to 20' away from you and unable to attack. If they Dash to get in range of you anyway so they can threaten opportunity attacks, you just do it again. If they ignore you and go elsewhere, you can just shoot them with your crossbow anyway.

Note that you have to be a half-elf to get both Elven Accuracy and Prodigy, but you could also play an elven Fighter/Rogue for a similar effect and some sneak attack damage.

[Yakk]

I have a number of half-baked champion fixes.

The first thing to note is that Champions get _less worse_ compared to BMs at higher levels; the +X% damage scales as your baseline damage goes up. You never catch up.

The second thing to note is that Champions are _less worse_ in crit-fishing builds. As others have noted, Hexblade is usually a better plan, as it doesn't require 3 levels, and Warlocks come with some tasty crit fishing stuff as well. But the Champion isn't 1 encounter/day.

So any fix should seek to avoid scaling too much at higher levels, and should ideally have annoyances to stack with other crit-fishing builds.

---

Action Hero: Starting at level 3, a Champion may on the first turn of combat you may make an attack with a melee weapon as a bonus action. If you qualify for the two-weapon fighting bonus action attack, you may make an attack with both weapons as a bonus action.

This is front-loaded (it gets "worse" at higher levels), and has some interference with other crit-fishing optimization (which tend to be bonus-action starved).

It grants 1 extra attack/combat. At low levels this is strong, but by level 20 it is (percentage wise) weaker.

---

Comeback Hero: Starting at level 3, when a Champion uses her second wind, she can make an attack with a melee weapon as part of the action. In addition when reduced to 0 HP she can expend a reaction to use her second wind (even if she has already used her second wind); her HP become the amount healed instead of 0. This second ability can only be used once before completing a long rest.

This one is less offence and more defence. It gives you the Barbarian/Half Orc "no, I'm not dead" option as well.

The two uses (a) encourage using second wind before you drop, and (b) doesn't penalize you for using second wind "offensively".

It grants 1 extra attack/rest + 1 extra attack/long rest. So in an 8 encounter day with 2 short rests, 4 extra attacks (half as many as the one above).

[Zhorn]

Just throwing an idea out there before I pretend to go to sleep...

Thinking about the suggestions earlier in the thread about expanding the crit range 'almost' fixing the damage disparity, instead of doing a crit range + extra modifiers, how about having the crit range from Improved Critical expand at the same pace and Battle Master's Combat Superiority. Key levels being 3rd, 7th, 10th, and 15th.

At 3rd level: critical hit on 19-20
At 7th level: critical hit on 18-20
At 10th level: critical hit on 17-20
At 15th level: critical hit on 16-20

A buff, but the strong parts are still buried in deep enough to require investment

Replace Superior Critical at lv15 with something more inline with that whole no-rest-fighter-shtick

"At 15th level, you refresh your ability to use Second Wind when you roll initiative." (I did think Action Surge for a moment, but that seems a bit too strong)

[Master O'Laughs]

Just throwing an idea out there before I pretend to go to sleep...

Thinking about the suggestions earlier in the thread about expanding the crit range 'almost' fixing the damage disparity, instead of doing a crit range + extra modifiers, how about having the crit range from Improved Critical expand at the same pace and Battle Master's Combat Superiority. Key levels being 3rd, 7th, 10th, and 15th.

At 3rd level: critical hit on 19-20
At 7th level: critical hit on 18-20
At 10th level: critical hit on 17-20
At 15th level: critical hit on 16-20

A buff, but the strong parts are still berried in deep enough to require investment

Replace Improved Critical with something more inline with that whole no-rest-fighter-shtick

"At 15th level, you refresh your ability to use Second Wind when you roll initiative." (I did think Action Surge for a moment, but that seems a bit too strong)

I like the simplicity of just increasing the Crit threat range to keep pace with BM gaining more maneuvers/dice. @ 15th level A champion crits 5 times as likely while a BM gets to add 6d10 damage potentially with other effects, 6d12 @ lvl 18.

[Segev]

Just throwing an idea out there before I pretend to go to sleep...

Thinking about the suggestions earlier in the thread about expanding the crit range 'almost' fixing the damage disparity, instead of doing a crit range + extra modifiers, how about having the crit range from Improved Critical expand at the same pace and Battle Master's Combat Superiority. Key levels being 3rd, 7th, 10th, and 15th.

At 3rd level: critical hit on 19-20
At 7th level: critical hit on 18-20
At 10th level: critical hit on 17-20
At 15th level: critical hit on 16-20

A buff, but the strong parts are still berried in deep enough to require investment

Replace Improved Critical with something more inline with that whole no-rest-fighter-shtick

"At 15th level, you refresh your ability to use Second Wind when you roll initiative." (I did think Action Surge for a moment, but that seems a bit too strong)


I like the simplicity of just increasing the Crit threat range to keep pace with BM gaining more maneuvers/dice. @ 15th level A champion crits 5 times as likely while a BM gets to add 6d10 damage potentially with other effects, 6d12 @ lvl 18.

Since it's a full fighter, this probably won't matter, but it's noteworthy that this means that a 15th level or higher champion literally can't miss on a 16+ on the die. They have a minimum 25% chance to hit, no matter the target's AC. Again, admittedly, this probably isn't an issue - the 15th level Champion probably has enough bonus to hit that he's hitting even the highest-AC monsters on less than a 16. But you never know.... maybe he's using a weapon with which he's not proficient as a ranged weapon and is a strength build with dex tertiary, or something.

[Zhorn]

Since it's a full fighter, this probably won't matter, but it's noteworthy that this means that a 15th level or higher champion literally can't miss on a 16+ on the die. They have a minimum 25% chance to hit, no matter the target's AC. Again, admittedly, this probably isn't an issue - the 15th level Champion probably has enough bonus to hit that he's hitting even the highest-AC monsters on less than a 16.
If a fighter wasn't packing a +10 to hit at 15th level, I'd worry what that player was spending their extra ASI's on.


But you never know.... maybe he's using a weapon with which he's not proficient as a ranged weapon and is a strength build with dex tertiary, or something.
hmmm... weaponsa Fighter isn't proficient with...
heh!
Champion Fighters; Redefining the Tavern Brawler! Look out Barbarians, a new challenger approaches :smallbiggrin:

[Segev]

hmmm... weaponsa Fighter isn't proficient with...
heh!
Champion Fighters; Redefining the Tavern Brawler! Look out Barbarians, a new challenger approaches :smallbiggrin:

Well, I mean, not every champion fighter is going to take the Tavern Brawler feat. They may have other build ideas!

But yeah, anything that gets a high-level fighter missing on a 16 or higher on the dice (without the super-improved-critical, I mean) is a severe edge case, either due to the weird circumstances to get his bonus that low, or the sheer horrifyingly high AC of the target.


Let's see... 15th level fighter has +5 proficiency bonus, probably has +5 strength or dex bonus (whichever he uses to hit), and - for sake of argument - somehow doesn't have a magic weapon for additional bonuses, and isn't blessed or anything. If he also has been whammied by bane, he could have -1d4 to hit, and if his enemy has a 26 AC and casts shield, he would actually potentially be unable to hit on a 20. So now his super-critical-range of 16+ means he still has a 1/4 chance to hit!

Again, though, no magic weapon, no party support with bless or the like, and suffering bane is pretty stacked against him compared to normal circumstances, I think.

[Zalabim]

Champion could really use a feature to improve critical hits, so Half-orc isn't their only option. It doesn't even have to be purely about damage. It could also be hp recovery, or crowd control or action denial. A non-randomly-applied damage bonus would also help, even a modest +1d6 damage for "a powerful strike", once per turn. Smaller than maneuver dice, and without special effects, but unlimited uses over time.

Count again.


For a BM:
Same as fighter, but if you turn 4 misses into hits with precision strike, as you said, the numbers aren't what you believed.
BM = 22 * 19.5 * .5775 + 2 * 12 + 4 * 19.5 = 350


EDIT: just to note that crit damage should be an extra 6.5 and not 12. But maybe you play with the crit 1d12 rolled max damage.
I've covered this myself before, so I think Loki was trying to explain that you don't get to use precision attack four times. Or if you do use it four times, it doesn't mean you expect four extra hits. Unless you missed the AC by exactly one, there's a chance that you still miss. With advantage, the chance of missing by that exact amount changes with the number you need to roll, but it's definitely less than 9.75%. So there is no guaranteeing four extra hits with precision attack.

The extra critical damage should be 12.5 because they should be half-orcs, with GWF fighting style, wielding 2d6 damage dice weapons. There is a ratio where the greataxe's 1d12 is better, but it's around two or less hits per crit.

[Segev]

Champion could really use a feature to improve critical hits, so Half-orc isn't their only option. It doesn't even have to be purely about damage. It could also be hp recovery, or crowd control or action denial. A non-randomly-applied damage bonus would also help, even a modest +1d6 damage for "a powerful strike", once per turn. Smaller than maneuver dice, and without special effects, but unlimited uses over time.

I've covered this myself before, so I think Loki was trying to explain that you don't get to use precision attack four times. Or if you do use it four times, it doesn't mean you expect four extra hits. Unless you missed the AC by exactly one, there's a chance that you still miss. With advantage, the chance of missing by that exact amount changes with the number you need to roll, but it's definitely less than 9.75%. So there is no guaranteeing four extra hits with precision attack.

The extra critical damage should be 12.5 because they should be half-orcs, with GWF fighting style, wielding 2d6 damage dice weapons. There is a ratio where the greataxe's 1d12 is better, but it's around two or less hits per crit.

In a sense, they get better/cheaper access to something to improve their critical hits, but it is a feat that requires specific weapons. GWM means they get extra attacks when they crit, at least.

[bid]

So there is no guaranteeing four extra hits with precision attack.
Using 22 - 4 = 18, times .5775 is not what you are saying though.

It's the same as saying: "I'm not going to see if I hit before wasting my SD."
It's as if precision only had 0.4225 chance of turning a miss into a hit.
Because halving the precision damage is the only way for improved critical to pull ahead.

That's how the Church of Champion pulls you into their mistaken beliefs.

[Yakk]

Just throwing an idea out there before I pretend to go to sleep...

Thinking about the suggestions earlier in the thread about expanding the crit range 'almost' fixing the damage disparity, instead of doing a crit range + extra modifiers, how about having the crit range from Improved Critical expand at the same pace and Battle Master's Combat Superiority. Key levels being 3rd, 7th, 10th, and 15th.

At 3rd level: critical hit on 19-20
At 7th level: critical hit on 18-20
At 10th level: critical hit on 17-20
At 15th level: critical hit on 16-20

A buff, but the strong parts are still berried in deep enough to require investment

Replace Improved Critical with something more inline with that whole no-rest-fighter-shtick

"At 15th level, you refresh your ability to use Second Wind when you roll initiative." (I did think Action Surge for a moment, but that seems a bit too strong)
I've thought about that, but the problem is that Champions biggest problem (compared to BM and other (sub)classes) is from 3-10th level.

And your changes are least impactful at 3-10th level.

---

So I ran some numbers.

If you have an 8 encounter day with no short rests and give the characters 100% advantage and 0 feats, the half-orc champion matches the BM at level 3-4 and exceeds them by 80% starting at level 5.

As you relax that stuff the BM pulls ahead.

So here is a model.

In a scene of 3 encounters, each with 5 rounds, between short rests, and characters have advantage half of the time. The champion is a half-orc. The BM is a human with great weapon fighting. The BM only uses -5/+10 when they have advantage (which should be at least damage-neutral without subclass abilities).

They have 16 strength until level 4, where they get 18, then 20 at level 5. They get their +1 weapon at level 5.

They both use a greatsword.

Miss-by-1 has a 0.04 chance with advantage; miss-by-2 a 0.035 chance.

BM swing without advantage deals 10/11/12/13 damage at level 3/4/5/6. With advantage, it deals 20/21/22/23 damage.

The champion could choose to get GWM; I'm not giving the BM any credit for it, except on rolls where the BM would otherwise miss. (in reality, that GWM would boost DPS more; I'm biasing towards champion).

In the 16 actions of a scene, the champion gets 0.8 + 1.52 = 2.32 crits, each for +10.5 damage over a hit for +24.36 damage per scene.

In the 16 actions of a scene, the BM gets 0.4 + 0.78 = 1.18 crits, each for +7 over a hit for +8.26 damage per scene. On each crit the BM can afford to burn a die for +9 damage * 1.18.

In the 8 actions without advantage the BM misses by 1 0.4 times and misses by 2 0.04 times. These deal at least 10 damage on a hit. Accounting for misses, we get +7.5 damage.

In the 8 actions with advantage the BM misses by 1 0.32 times and misses by 2 0.28 times. These deal at least 20 damage on a hit. Accounting for misses, we get +11.3 damage.

Average of +37.68 damage in a scene, and no shortage of BM dice to do it with.

At level 5, the champion's swing count doubles; but so does the BM's. Over the 32 attacks, the BM gets 0.64 miss-by-1-with-advantage and 0.56 miss-by-2 with advantage and 0.48 miss-by-3s, or 1.68 miss-by-3-or-less.

A miss-by-1 with advantage die is worth 21 damage. A miss-by-2 with advantage is worth 18.4. A miss-by-3 is worth 15.75 damage. 31.304 damage from 1.68 dice (average of 18.6 per die).

We also use them on crits (worth 9 damage) and miss-by-one-no-advantage (worth 11 damage). You get .05*16+.0975*16 = 2.36 crits and 0.8 miss-by-1-no-advantage. These are worth 9-11 damage per die.

Hitting greater than 48 damage is pretty easy using them mostly blindly.

---

In reality, the BM starts using the human feat to use GWM more often than modeled above. GWM makes precision dice crazy good, even without advantage. With ~20 damage per swing and using it on a miss by 1-4, you can use 0.2 dice per attack and get back an average of 16 damage per die you burn. (and yes, on high AC foes GWM costs you baseline DPS; but it isn't that much, unless you are fighting an older dragon at level 3 or something similar).

[Belzique]

Crazy idea: What if the 3rd level feature made natural 2's crits instead of 19's? And 3's at 15th instead of 18's?

[Man_Over_Game]

Crazy idea: What if the 3rd level feature made natural 2's crits instead of 19's? And 3's at 15th instead of 18's?

It's not bad, but players can't really plan around getting Disadvantage, especially when a natural 1 could negate your "crit".

A good balance is allowing both 2 AND 19, then 3 AND 18. It allows the Champion to feel consistent whether he has Advantage or Disadvantage, but without stacking the odds too heavily for either.

For example, you won't be allowing an overpowered Vengeance Paladin Crit Fisher build since Advantage doesn't have any more of a higher crit chance than a normal Champion. It'd make a Champion the best at attacking normally, without any special Advantage buffs, which is exactly what we'd expect out of the Fighter subclass centered around simplicity.

Although I prefer 1/19 and 2/18, as it's easier to remember and implement, although I understand this would mean it wouldn't work with Halflings.

[Zalabim]

Using 22 - 4 = 18, times .5775 is not what you are saying though.

It's the same as saying: "I'm not going to see if I hit before wasting my SD."
It's as if precision only had 0.4225 chance of turning a miss into a hit.
Because halving the precision damage is the only way for improved critical to pull ahead.

That's how the Church of Champion pulls you into their mistaken beliefs.

What

...I know that the methods Loki used are prone to introducing errors, but it's also messier than anything I care to check for errors. I would personally figure out the average value of the rounds of attacks, then add in anything that goes on besides that. Fortunately I already have my own example to draw from to explain the important concept.

So, in order to model using precision attack, you have to decide when you will use precision attack. If you want the maximum damage benefit from spending a die, then you only use it when you miss by exactly 1, and for this example, that happens 6.25% of attacks. So in 22 attacks, you'd be using 1 and 3/8 dice on precision, and the rest on other abilities. If the rest are 4.5 damage, that's about 40 damage from superiority dice.

If you instead want to use all your dice on precision, you have to relax your standard a little bit. So in this case, for 22 attacks, to get 4 or more uses, you end up using precision attack on miss by 1-4, which is 22% of attacks. Now there's some chance your precision attack doesn't roll high enough. 0/8, 1/8, 2/8, and 3/8 respectively. The distribution of these slants towards the better, so there's 6.25/22*1+5.75/22*0.875+5.25/22*0.75+4.75/22*0.625. My calculator says that simplifies to 291/352, about 82.6%. At that rate, four uses of precision averages 70 damage.

If you're wrong about the enemy's AC, that value drops. If you wait to be sure of the enemy's AC, then you effectively have fewer attacks that might land in the range worth using precision attack, so you might have to expand your allowed miss range to still use all your dice, and that also lowers the average value.

So really, instead of 20-22-24 attacks, it should be 9 rounds, eight normal and one with action surge. Battle master gets at least 2.1855 attacks normally, 4.337 on action surge. Damage is 21 2/6 normally, 33 5/6 on a crit (giving me +12.5 as bonus crit damage). Accuracy I've been given as 0.5775 while having advantage. 21.82 attacks * 0.5775 hits for 21 1/3 damage + 21.82 attacks * 0.0975 crits for bonus 12.5 damage + four precision attack uses averaging 70 extra damage. BM total: 365.96 (295.42+70.54)

Champion gets at least 2.344 attacks normally, 4.57 attacks on action surge. Same normal and crit damage. Same accuracy. 0.19 for their crits instead of 0.0975. 23.32 attacks * 0.5775 hits for 21 1/3 damage + 23.32 attacks * 0.19 crits for bonus 12.5 damage. Champion total: 342.69.

And for those tuning in, that's level 5 fighters, half orc, GWF, GWM, greatsword (or maul), with advantage against AC 15, effectively infinite hp (since they never use the 0 hp trigger on GWM).

[Segev]

Crazy idea: What if the 3rd level feature made natural 2's crits instead of 19's? And 3's at 15th instead of 18's?


It's not bad, but players can't really plan around getting Disadvantage, especially when a natural 1 could negate your "crit".

A good balance is allowing both 2 AND 19, then 3 AND 18. It allows the Champion to feel consistent whether he has Advantage or Disadvantage, but without stacking the odds too heavily for either.

For example, you won't be allowing an overpowered Vengeance Paladin Crit Fisher build since Advantage doesn't have any more of a higher crit chance than a normal Champion. It'd make a Champion the best at attacking normally, without any special Advantage buffs, which is exactly what we'd expect out of the Fighter subclass centered around simplicity.

Although I prefer 1/19 and 2/18, as it's easier to remember and implement, although I understand this would mean it wouldn't work with Halflings.

That's...actually a pretty clever idea, and makes the Champion's ability seem even more "cheating." Though giving it at level 3 makes an already-attractive 3-level dip VERY attractive. Not sure that's a problem worth considering compared to just bringing the Champion up to par but...hrm.



Revised Champion

Improved Critical
Beginning when you choose this archetype at 3rd level, your weapon attacks score a critical hit on a roll of 2, 19 or 20. At 7th level, your weapon attacks also score a critical hit on a roll of 18. At 10th level, your weapon attacks also score a critical hit on a roll of 3.

Remarkable Athlete
Starting at 7th level, when you make a Strength check, you may add your Dexterity modifier to it as well. When you make a Dexterity check, you may add your Strength modifier to it as well. When you make a Constitution check, you may choose to add either your Strength or Dexterity modifier to it as well. You do not have to add them if you do not wish to (for example, if they are negative).

In addition, when you make a running long jump, the distance you can cover increases by a number of feet equal to your Dexterity, and when you make a running high jump, you may choose to add your Dexterity modifier to the maximum height you can jump. Your standing jump distance and height becomes half of these values.