Well the problem that I am personally having (not speaking for anyone else in this thread) is that the Champion and Battle Master are just representations of the 2E and 4E Fighters respectively.
I certainly see the 2e fighter's crazy DPR reflected in the Champion (if not the style that got it there, quite so much). The BM falls so far short of the 4e PH1 Fighter, it's sad. It's not too far off the downgraded Essentials take, though.
It seems they entirely left out the 3E Fighter gameplay style. Where you had always available combat options by having a bunch of combat feats to tailor your Fighter.
Yes! I'm glad someone else has noticed. I understand that the 3e fighter suffered by comparison to the wildly overpowered casters of that edition, but the design, itself, was elegant & customizeable, and the characters you could build with it so much more varied interesting that what you could do with the 2e & earlier fighter (even with kits).
This is all ignoring the fact that the Champion is mechanically sub par at the only thing it can actually do, damage. I don't think Wizards did that on purpose and I'm assuming the Champion was created during the playtest when critical hits were max damage plus extra damage die and were never looked at again when the rule was changed.
I guess that's somewhat plausible.
How about the fact that all 3E Fighters would start with at least 2 feats giving them gameplay options right out of the gate, while you have to start as a variant Human or wait until level 4 in 5E to do so.
To be fair, you do get a Style choice right off.
In addition, there are no Fighter only feats in 5E.
Aslo, to be fair, the only fighter-only feat in 3e was specialization. It wasn't so much the unique feats as the sheer number - more than double the usual.
Superiority Dice resource system of the Battle Master. It feels too much like a 4E Player's Handbook Fighter to me.
See for me 4E Essentials was almost the perfect Fighter. Always on abilities and tactical choices every round.
Wow. To me, the BM feels nothing like the 4e PH1 Fighter, but does feel a bit like the Essentials Knight (just without the defender role support) or, perhaps, Slayer, thanks to the DPR. No dailies, no at-wills, very little choice in what it can do with it's 'encounters.'
Maybe Satyrn is right that we need to look at creating an additional subclass to fill that niche instead of reworking the Champion. Increasing the Champions DPR wouldn't hurt either.
IMHO, what's really needed is a full class that's not locked into DPR as primary function (thus, doesn't have a sub-class, like the Champion, for whom it is sole significant function).
And increasing the Champion's DPR would hurt (no, not just the monsters), it'd eventually make it 'overpowered' - long before it would make up for what the Champion lacks in other areas. It's an untenable design, in that sense.
Supposedly it exists for new players as a sort of 'training wheels' option, and for players who just want a very simple character. Why it's assumed those players only ever want to pay fighters is, presumably, because that's been the only such option in the past.
