Having followed this thread I am starting to think that simply allowing a champion to add his proficiency bonus to damage rolls on all weapon attacks in place of the expanded crit range would better fit the 'pursuit of raw physical power honed to deadly perfection' as stated in the PHB. Nice and simple, no resources to manage, just more physical and harder hitting than other fighter archetypes.
D&D 5E Fixing the Champion
- Thread starter krakistophales
- Start date
Uller
Adventurer
I think it depends on your game. In a game where you only have one or two fights between rests or not many PCs then this is probably fine. But think about a game with 3+ fights or long fights. Fighters make A LOT of attack rolls. And it goes up as levels go up (both from more attacks, action surge and just longer fights). With every hit doing +2, +3 or more damage, it only takes a handful of attacks to catch up to the damage potential of 4d8...and actually it's worse than that, because it isn't really the amount of damage you do that matters. It's how quickly do you take down foes that are a threat? Damage is one factor of many in that...if you do 99 hp to a foe with 100 hp and then another character trips him into a bottomless pit, then all 99 hp you did was a complete waste, right?
A consistent +2 or +3 (or +4 or +5!) to damage with no resources spent compounded by both more attacks per round and longer staying power as levels get higher will mean those foes that would have had 2 or 3 or 6 or 7 hp left after the fighter's turn will be down, very very consistently. Think about times in your game where a foe survived with just a few hp and managed to get off a good attack or use of a spell or power. With the fighter doing +3 damage consistently that becomes much less likely to happen.
Imagine two fighters (BM and Champ) walk into a room full of orcs. In the first two rounds the BM uses up his 4 superiority dice. Maybe that helps him drop one or two foes a little quicker. From that point on, the champion will be doing probably 3 or 6 extra damage every round for as long as the fight goes on (and the next fight and the next one until a short rest). An orc has 15 hp. 1d8+5 will not drop an orc (and 2d8+10 is not guaranteed) without a crit. 1d8+8 can (and 2d8+16 is a sure thing).
As it stands (with crits on a 19+), in this example, as soon as the BM has used those 4 SD, the champion is the superior fighter until a short rest is taken He is also the superior fighter in any battle where the BM player chooses to not use any SD...this is a problem my group ran into for a long time...my players would not use their short rest rechargeable resources because either they'd forget or fail to spot good times to use them or just be saving them for harder fights and they would end up going unused...they have learned and now use them more regularly...).
If you want to go this way, I'd try half prof bonus first and pay attention to how often the character drops foes a little sooner than he otherwise would have.
The long and the short of it is, I think adding full prof bonus would just make the champion so clearly superior to the BM that for an optimizer/tactician it becomes no choice at all (and now the optimizer/tactician is left picking the more boring/less customizable subclass).
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lowkey13
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ChrisCarlson
First Post
I beg to differ. (And here I am disagreeing with you in a public forum where you claim I'm not supposed to disagree with you...) Now what?
I hope you realize you just told the overwhelming majority of people, who've responded to you in this very thread, that they are wrong for doing so...
Also, telling someone that their idea may be wrong-headed, short-sighted, or even flat-out bad, is productive. At least, IMO. And I should know. I've experienced plenty of it, myself.
I call shenanigans on you, sir. There is just no way that can be a true statement. Not without a great deal of houseruling, DM acquiescence, and a major overhaul of the core precepts of a TTRPG, where dice are used to generate random results. Or maybe you were/are just the luckiest player ever. I suppose that could be it.
What a fascinating admission. I'm going to assume you mean to say superiority dice? But, yeah. You get how that's you arguing against yourself, right?
FYI: The champion next to you wasn't always crying for a short rest to recover his increased crit range.
krakistophales
First Post
Alright, precious, that's not how public forums work. Whatever puts you to sleep at night.
Not what I said at all. I simply said that, for myself, I don't go into a "what if?" forum whose premise is that "I think something could be better if fixed this way" and jump in just to be contrary for contradiction's sake and say "Nah, bro, it's totally not broken. Bye"
No, you're right. I had a total of 5 SD and most of my maneuvers activated on an attack roll hit, and I had 4 attacks with +11 to hit...OF COURSE I must've been the luckiest player ever to be able to use 5SD across two rounds to deal nova damage. I think my DM was in on it, too...must've been the 10 dollars I slipped him every session which I THOUGHT was for the pizza and beer, but I guess he had something more sinister in mind.
Nope, wrong again, bud. I don't make a habit of arguing against myself, not when I have so many people like you that are more than happy to argue with me just for the sake of arguing. And from the beginning I've always been saying that BM is the superior choice to the champion, and that's why this thread was born: to modify the champion so that he can be as good as the BM, and not a trap, suck option like he is now.
You're right, he was crying for a different reason: because while he was doing normal damage all the time due to not being able to crit consistently, the battlemaster was tearing
up and laughing about it over the short rest campfire.
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lowkey13
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krakistophales
First Post
Sure, look, it's no problem if you disagree with the premise of the thread. But let me ask you this: If your opinion is simply "it's not broken", why bother coming on at all just to say that? I'm not trying to suggest that people should stifle their opinions, but in a thread where you have to agree with the premise in order to provide productive criticism/feedback, simply saying "I DISAGREE" gets everyone nowhere, right?
ChrisCarlson
First Post
IMO, you shouldn't just ask that of [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION]. You should address that question to every single person who has posted in this thread, who are all saying basically the same thing: "You are wrong in your assessment." I guess we all just don't understate how public forums work.
Again, "People today seek confirmation, not conversation." And that's a shame.
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lowkey13
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AaronOfBarbaria
Adventurer
I think the issue is that you actually are trying to suggest that people should stifle their opinions when you incorrectly assume that a person has to agree with the premise of the thread to provide productive criticism/feedback.
Telling someone that it might be their perception, not the thing they are looking at, which might be the source of the problem being experienced (which is what telling you that the champion isn't broken is) is by definition productive feedback.
That tool your looking at that doesn't drive screws in very well, and when it unscrews things it causes damage to the object? It's a hammer, not a screwdriver, so your expectations of it are the issue - not that the tool doesn't match them. If you don't think someone pointing that out to you is providing productive feedback, that's on you.
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