Does piercer feat make champion half Orc pretty strong?

[Spacehamster]

I mean at 6th level you have maxed STR and have three attacks that crit on 19-20 for 4d6 + 5, at 8th you prob have two levels barb and can rage and reckless attack for 3 potentially 5 attacks that do 1d6 + 7 and 4d6 + 7 on a crit, prob want it to end up 11 champion 9 zealot for maximum carnage.
Prob even makes dual wielder feat decent for 4d8 crits instead of d6? 🤔

Nothing spectacular but should be quite efficient through its entire career?

Can ofc use a pike and piercer + GWM I realized as an afterthought, 4d10 + 17 crits is much nicer. 🤣

[Angelalex242]

Maybe not. If you're playing with polearms, your most important feats are the legendary polearm master/sentinel combo. Piercer would be the 3rd feat in that chain.

[Spacehamster]

Maybe not. If you're playing with polearms, your most important feats are the legendary polearm master/sentinel combo. Piercer would be the 3rd feat in that chain.

Well pike does not benefit from polearm master so this would be a higher damage but less crowd control version of that build.

[stoutstien]

Well pike does not benefit from polearm master so this would be a higher damage but less crowd control version of that build.

It deal less damage than the PaM/GWM combo as well.

[solidork]

I've got plans for a Half Orc Hexblade/Swasbuckler with Piercer thats a sort of duelist who kills to sate his patron, but I don't think the crit stuff really impacts your average damage appreciably. All the dice from sneak attack does work well with the reroll part of the feat though - more likely to have one that's worth rerolling.

[Yakmala]

I played around with a Half Orc Swashbuckler 7, Champion 3 with Piercer in a game with a level 10 cap. When circumstances were favorable they would use Steady Aim for a chance to roll with advantage to crit on a 19-20 for 4d8+8d6+4 for around 50 damage average.

Some sessions I'd get it multiple times. Some sessions it would never happen. That's the issue with crit. It's not extra damage on demand, it's extra damage when you get lucky.

[Gignere]

I played around with a Half Orc Swashbuckler 7, Champion 3 with Piercer in a game with a level 10 cap. When circumstances were favorable they would use Steady Aim for a chance to roll with advantage to crit on a 19-20 for 4d8+8d6+4 for around 50 damage average.

Some sessions I'd get it multiple times. Some sessions it would never happen. That's the issue with crit. It's not extra damage on demand, it's extra damage when you get lucky.

Yep and there are times you get it when the guy has single digits hps left too. I think a half-elf or elf Rogue X / 3 champion with EA is probably the most consistent for crit damage. 27% crit chance every attack. You can get it to 47% in a round if you get a second attack like Sentinel or being hasted.

[Skrum]

Yep and there are times you get it when the guy has single digits hps left too. I think a half-elf or elf Rogue X / 3 champion with EA is probably the most consistent for crit damage. 27% crit chance every attack. You can get it to 47% in a round if you get a second attack like Sentinel or being hasted.

I've looked in to crit builds and reached the same conclusion. Elven Accuracy is the only way it's even slightly interesting. For a Champ/Rogue build, I'd probably grab Blind-Fighting Style and then look for a source of darkness or obscurement. Then you can TWF for a vastly higher chance of getting a crit in a round.

[Spacehamster]

It deal less damage than the PaM/GWM combo as well.

It does? Pam gets one less dice on a crit? 😱

[stoutstien]

It does? Pam gets one less dice on a crit? 😱

Criticals are just not worth building around unless you have a bunch of dice to dump on them. The bonus action attack is going to be more consistent even if it means being behind on str for a few levels.

Not that there is anything wrong with using piercer and GWM. The difference isn't worth getting worked up about. Just a weird system point where critical hits aren't as useful as they look.

[RogueJK]

Half-Orc + Piercer takes the Champion subclass from being a below average option to being an average option.

Crit Fishing for +3d10 is certainly better than fishing for +1d10, but on its own, it's not going to compete with something like an Elven Accuracy Rogue or Smiting PAM Sorcadin for (nearly) at-will nova damage, or damage over the course of the adventuring day. Plus unlike most other crit-fishing builds, Champions lack a built-in way to reliably generate Advantage. (Well, other than Grappling Prone enemies, which costs at least two attacks to set up, and requires a free hand, which doesn't play nice with a 2H weapon like a Pike.)

However, you could conceivably try to shoehorn in 3 levels of Champion and the Piercer feat to supplement one of those nova builds, like the abovementioned Elf Champion 3-5/Rogue X with Elven Accuracy and a Rapier, or something like a Half-Orc Paladin 6/Champion 3/Sorcerer X.


Another Pike+Piercer crit-fishing build to consider is a Half-Orc Champion 3/Undead Bladelock X. Once you hit Undead Warlock 6, you're doing 2d10 on most hits thanks to Grave Touched, which means 6d10 on a critical hit. Plus you have access to stuff like Darkness + Devil's Sight, Blindness/Deafness, and Greater Invisibility to generate Advantage, along with Eldritch Smite Invocation for some at-will Nova damage or to make your critical hits even more impressive.

Something like this:
Half Orc
Fighter 1 -> Undead Bladelock 6 -> Champion 3 or 4 -> Warlock X
STR 15+2
DEX 10
CON 14
INT 8
WIS 10
CHA 15+1
Wear Heavy Armor and wield a Pike.
ASIs: Piercer at Warlock 4, GWM at either Fighter 4 or Warlock 8 (depending on progression), then +2 STR or +2 CHA at Warlock 8 or Warlock 12
Invocations: Eldritch Smite, Devil's Sight, and Thirsting Blade by Warlock 5, and then Eldritch Mind at Warlock 7, Agonizing Blast at Warlock 9, and eventually Lifedrinker at Warlock 12.
Fighting Style: Defense or GWF (if you want to squeeze every last drop of potential damage out of your Pike hits)


This is a more melee-focused Bladelock build, sacrificing a little spellcasting prowess for harder-hitting weapon attacks, Action Surge, and more frequent (big!) critical hits. Starting with Fighter 1 gets you Heavy Armor, martial weapon, and CON save proficiency right out the gate, and would be necessary anyway on an Undead Bladelock build, even if you weren't planning to go all the way to Fighter 3, since unlike Hexblade the Undead subclass doesn't get any additional armor or weapon proficiency. So a Fighter 3/Warlock X is effectively only 1 spell level behind a Fighter 1/Warlock X.

Likely not as optimized as a Sorcadin for overall daily melee damage output, but would still be putting up some impressive damage numbers, and seems like a fun build to play, with critical hits feeling really, really good. (I almost went this route with my current character, before settling on an Echo Knight/Ancestral Guardian instead, since the party needed a supportive fighter more than just a straight damage dealer.)

A critical hit at Level 7 (Fighter 1/Undead Warlock 6) could be doing:
1d10 base
1d10 Grave Touched
4d8 Eldritch Smite
All of which is doubled on a crit = 4d10+8d8, then...
+1d10 Piercer
+1d10 Savage Attacks
+4 STR
+10 GWM

For a grand total of 6d10+8d8+14, or an average of 83 damage, plus a Prone enemy thanks to Eldritch Smite's rider. Plus you can reroll one of the damage dice thanks to Piercer, and reroll 1s and 2s on the damage dice thanks to Great Weapon Fighting Style, which pushes the average damage even higher. And once you hit Character Level 9 (Champion 3/Undead Warlock 6), you're twice as likely to land a crit.


Compare that to a similarly built Half Orc GWM Smiting Paladin 7 with a Pike and Piercer:
1d10 base
3d8 Divine Smite
Doubled on a crit = 2d10+6d8
+1d10 Piercer
+1d10 Savage Attacks
+4 STR
+10 GWM

For a total of 4d10+6d8+14, or an average of just 63 damage (pushed similarly a bit higher by the abovementioned rerolls).

[Greywander]

Grab a lance and Mounted Combatant. Now you have reliable advantage (against some enemies) and a d12 damage die.

Though I feel this is still probably worse than other builds.

Edit: I just wanted to add that crit fishing builds are generally just not worth it. It requires a lot of investment for marginal gains, and you could build something much better for less investment.

[Skrum]

The best crit fishers IMO are paladins. Declaring smites after rolling the crit is by the far the highest, most efficient reward for getting crits.

(Variety of elf) hexblade 1 vengeance paladin X w/ elven accuracy. That's the best crit build. Idk that I would bother with crit fishing outside of this build.

[strangebloke]

The simple answer is, no, champion is a terrible subclass and always will be. You get a 2x crit chance, but

champion unlike other classes has no native way to get advantage, which is the other way of getting 2x crit chance (or 3x with EA)
champion has no way of generating dice to dump on hit, which pushes people to half orc (which rules out EA)
the above issues occur because champion pretty blatantly just isn't a very good subclass. It gives a lot less than other fighter subclasses.


The hexblade gives improved critical in a more limited form as well as LOADS of other bonuses. And sure, hexblade is overtuned, but the improved critical aspect of hexblade's curse barely matters. Something like the Samurai is better at critfishing because it can get 3x from EA natively, and Battlemaster has better payoff for crits, and paladins and warlocks have way better payoffs than any of the above and can use EA easily to boot. Heck, rogues with one EA advantaged attack have great crit potential and payoff. So yeah, you end up with a 2x crit chance to deal crits that don't do much.

The absolute best you could do with a straight classed half-orc piercer champion would be to grab Orcish Fury, take the fighting style that gives you a superiority die, and use a lance and piercer. You end up with like 7d12+2d6 on a crit, which is... eh. You'll waste a lot of that damage sometimes but its not the biggest thing, and there's lots of downsides.