D&D 5E Buffing the Champion Fighter

[cbwjm]

My buffs have included:

1) Remarkable athlete adds 1/2 proficiency to all Str, Con and Dex checks. On top of proficiency if you have it.

2) Late game, but Survivor also lets them add 1/2 proficiency to all non proficient saves.

3) This feat:

Weapon specialisation
Prerequisite Fighter level 6th
You are a master with one weapon, and your skill with it is legendary. Choose one type of weapon. You gain the following benefits:
* You gain +1 to hit and +2 to damage with weapons of this type.
* When you score a critical hit with this weapon your opponent must succeed in a Constitution save (DC 8 + your proficiency + your Strength or Dexterity modifier) or be staggered by the blow, suffering disadvantage to all attacks and ability checks made until the end of that creatures next turn. In addition, the staggered creature can’t take reactions.
* You have advantage on checks and saves to disarm you of your weapon.

For the feat, does the last point help stop you from being disarmed of any weapon or just their specialised one? Either way, I'm going to steal this for my games.

 

[Flamestrike]

The answer was simple.

Introduce that triggers on a crit.

This stuff benefits champs more because they crit more.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I've played a Champion to level 16. I've consistently been an anchor for the party in terms of HP and damage (thanks to GWM). However, I have noticed a few things.

1. Remarkable Athlete might as well say, "You may add half your proficiency bonus (rounded up) to your Initiative modifier." Outside of some effects that required Strength checks or Dex checks that I couldn't use Athletics for (which is a surprisingly small number) the ability hasn't done anything. Yeah, it's neat that I can jump farther than an Olympic field athlete, but it's actually never come up. Who cares if I can easily jump 25 feet if I never need to jump more than 10?

2. Increased crit range is decent, but not worth two levels to get to 18-20. I don't think it should be 18-20 at 3rd, but consuming my 15th level subclass ability is really lame.

3. Indomitable is genuinely terrible. I know every Fighter gets this ability, but it's so worthless. By the time you get it at 9th save DCs are all 17+, and you have two types of saving throws: Those you have like +9 or better to, and those you have like +2 or worse to. So you almost always use it on saves you've only got a 25% chance of success on anyways. It never feels good to use this ability. It feels like, "Reroll a save you still can't possibly make. Pray for a natural 20!" or "Waste an ability rolling d20+12 vs DC 17. Nice rolling, chump. I bet you won't need this later, right?" Finally, there are two levels where your only class ability is Indomitable. Quite honestly, this should just be like a Legendary save (auto success 1, 2, or 3 times a day) or like the original design (advantage on all saves).

4. Your only difficult choice is when to Action Surge. You want to use it early in the combat so it actually does something meaningful, but you have to balance the fact that this combat might be easier than next combat (or, worse, there might not be a next combat today at all!). And once you use it, you're stuck on auto-attack. So it's a complete gamble when you should use it, and you feel punished for guessing incorrectly by having nothing interesting to do until you rest. Without feats, the class would be unplayable.


Overall the biggest problem I've had with the Champion is that so many of the abilities are just, "Hey, remember that one ability you sometimes use that you got 5 levels ago? Well, it's a tiny bit better now. Thanks for leveling!" That's not a problem unique to Fighter (e.g., Barbarian Brutal Crit) but it feels like a poor design pattern that hits Fighter harder than other classes. I mean, Rogue doesn't have to consume a level for every die of Sneak Attack.

 

[Flamestrike]

For the feat, does the last point help stop you from being disarmed of any weapon or just their specialised one? Either way, I'm going to steal this for my games.

Just the specialised one.

There should be a dot point that lets the PC change the weapon out for a different one by using (X weeks) downtime. So when Bob the champion finds a cool magic axe he an train with it for a month and switch his specialisation around.

Its superflous in my games as I allow retraining of feats, archetypes, skills, pact boons.... heck pretty much anything.

http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/B1ufjiBCl

Link above is all my houserules and tweaks. Feel free to steal what you want.

 

[Xeviat]

Overall the biggest problem I've had with the Champion is that so many of the abilities are just, "Hey, remember that one ability you sometimes use that you got 5 levels ago? Well, it's a tiny bit better now. Thanks for leveling!" That's not a problem unique to Fighter (e.g., Barbarian Brutal Crit) but it feels like a poor design pattern that hits Fighter harder than other classes. I mean, Rogue doesn't have to consume a level for every die of Sneak Attack.

That's an interesting thought in itself. Maybe if we tried to tune all abilities to be closer to the value of an ASI/Feat, we could make some of those levels more interesting and viable. You're right, that general damage scaling doesn't mean the same as a full class ability. "Reroll a save 1/day" is hardly a feat; Lucky gives 3 non-specified rerolls.

 

[Flamestrike]

That's an interesting thought in itself. Maybe if we tried to tune all abilities to be closer to the value of an ASI/Feat, we could make some of those levels more interesting and viable. You're right, that general damage scaling doesn't mean the same as a full class ability. "Reroll a save 1/day" is hardly a feat; Lucky gives 3 non-specified rerolls.

Lucky and indomitable stack though.

Fighters can pull off 2 re-rolls.

 

[cbwjm]

Just the specialised one.

There should be a dot point that lets the PC change the weapon out for a different one by using (X weeks) downtime. So when Bob the champion finds a cool magic axe he an train with it for a month and switch his specialisation around.

Its superflous in my games as I allow retraining of feats, archetypes, skills, pact boons.... heck pretty much anything.

http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/B1ufjiBCl

Link above is all my houserules and tweaks. Feel free to steal what you want.

Sweet, thanks for the link. So many houserules, I'm going to enjoy reading through these.

I'm also pretty easy when it comes to retraining. When we first started playing 5e, since everyone was new, I let everyone make any changes they wanted to their characters once we finished the first quest. That included shifting ability scores around if they wished to do so, as well as retraining skills, tools, etc.

Even in later sessions I allowed retraining if a player had an idea but it ended up not quite being as fun as they thought it would be.

Edit: Straight away I opened your house rules and saw the expanded elven subraces, cool stuff.

 

[droid6689]

I think the best way to buff champion is
1) Extra ASI at level 7 attacked to remarkable athlete
2) At level 10 they get the benefits of ALL fighting styles
Maybe switch the levels since an ASI is probably better than fighting styles

What this accimplishes is adding more versatility to the class. BM and EK get more versatility through manuevers and superiority dice while the Champion gets all straight boosts that don't have options
An extra ASI is nice to get the Champion to full faster and allow another asi to be used for a luxury feat while getting all fighting styles does nothing to increase their actual damage but lets them excel in many situations

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[Sword of Spirit]

This may have been said, but what if Improved Critical started at 18-20, and then increased to 17-20? (I'm not worrying about multiclassing in that thought.)

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

This may have been said, but what if Improved Critical started at 18-20, and then increased to 17-20? (I'm not worrying about multiclassing in that thought.)

I've mentioned it before, where I just flat gave them the 17-20 crit range at level 3.
I don't think that it makes the Champion too powerful, but it makes it a very powerful dip for Barbarians for example.