D&D 5E Fixing the Champion

[krakistophales]

If the thread asked "Do you guys think the champion is a trap option? I think so. Discuss" then I'd welcome all the "Nope, think it's fine" responses. But when the thread assumes that it IS broken, and asks instead for help fixing it, people whose opinions offer no fixes or suggestions towards the purpose of the thread are simply contrary. If you're butthurt about that, that's fine, but it doesn't change the truth.

I don't seek confirmation. I seek discussion, but pertinent to the thread's purpose, not 8,000 different ways you guys think the champion is fantastic, because that isn't the purpose of this thread.

 

[Umbran]

Alright, precious, that's not how public forums work.

We really don't care if folks disagree, but we expect and require them to disagree *respectfully*.

So, the condescension in this? It isn't appropriate here. Treat each other well, please and thanks.

 

[krakistophales]

Well, perhaps it might make the original poster reconsider their premise. I don't fully understand why you don't like the Champion so much. I understand why I don't like the Battlemaster - for me - but I also know why it's a great class for other people.

Just because a class doesn't operate in the way you want it to, doesn't mean the class is "broken" or a "trap," it might just mean it's not an ideal class for your playing style. That's feedback. I would add that there was decent playtesting in terms of balance, and the very significant changes you are making would likely throw it out of whack.

But you can do whatever you'd like. I think the class is fine. If you make the changes and play with it, report back! Actual play beats theorycrafting.

[EDIT- and if you want constructive feedback, I do like that you are keeping in the spirit by making these simple changes, but I also think they are OPd. Any of them, alone, is pretty nice. In combination? That's a lot.]

So which would you keep and which would you throw away? I'd say the expanded crit range is a must, as well as remarkable athlete actually becoming remarkable. The regeneration and the fighting style thing can stay, I guess, though I'd rather give someone the option to go more defensive or offensive with a flat +1 in either direction, rather than offering them the "option" to pick a contrary fighting style they haven't been using the whole game, which results in them taking a +1 to AC anyway.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Waterbizkit]

First I'll say that I'm in the crowd that feels the Champion is fine as is, but this is just my experience and also not necessarily in the "spirit" of the thread so I won't belabor the point. In so far as your proposed changes go, I feel like you need to ease into them and not alter too much out of the gate (as the poster above me, at the time I write this, mentioned).

The expanded critical range is the one I'm most skeptical of, but that's because I'm taking Advantage into account. I'm sure why you've had such a problem generating it in your games, but my players have been able to readily gain Advantage since level 1. Party composition may play some role in that, but even so I simply feel it's easy enough to get that over-expanding the critical range can be too much too fast. If you absolutely feel you have to tinker with it I'd go no further than 17-20 as a maximum, as also already mentioned.

As far as Remarkable Athlete goes, I could go so far as allowing it to offer full proficiency in all physical skills not already proficient in. But anything above that, like some people who I believe mentioned expertise, I wouldn't go for.

The rest? Not sure I'd tinker with it. I think the second fighting style is fine as is. But then again, I think it's all fine as is. Anyway, like I said to start: ease into any tinkering you do. Small changes are easy to track. Change a lot at once, and if you tip too far in the other direction, it becomes difficult to tell where you need to scale back. So even though I don't agree with your premise at all based on how I've seen Champions perform in my games I'll give you the best of luck tinkering with stuff at your table.

 

[krakistophales]

First I'll say that I'm in the crowd that feels the Champion is fine as is, but this is just my experience and also not necessarily in the "spirit" of the thread so I won't belabor the point. In so far as your proposed changes go, I feel like you need to ease into them and not alter too much out of the gate (as the poster above me, at the time I write this, mentioned).

The expanded critical range is the one I'm most skeptical of, but that's because I'm taking Advantage into account. I'm sure why you've had such a problem generating it in your games, but my players have been able to readily gain Advantage since level 1. Party composition may play some role in that, but even so I simply feel it's easy enough to get that over-expanding the critical range can be too much too fast. If you absolutely feel you have to tinker with it I'd go no further than 17-20 as a maximum, as also already mentioned.

As far as Remarkable Athlete goes, I could go so far as allowing it to offer full proficiency in all physical skills not already proficient in. But anything above that, like some people who I believe mentioned expertise, I wouldn't go for.

The rest? Not sure I'd tinker with it. I think the second fighting style is fine as is. But then again, I think it's all fine as is. Anyway, like I said to start: ease into any tinkering you do. Small changes are easy to track. Change a lot at once, and if you tip too far in the other direction, it becomes difficult to tell where you need to scale back. So even though I don't agree with your premise at all based on how I've seen Champions perform in my games I'll give you the best of luck tinkering with stuff at your table.

I'll admit that game had a lot of people come and go, and therefore party composition was wonky and you couldn't rely on the cleric because he appeared and left and so forth. However, If we're already going to 17, then 16 shouldn't be that much of a stretch. Remember this is at 15th level. In previous editions, you could expand your critical range to 15 or in some rare cases even less, all while having a triple or quadruple modifier to both dice and static bonuses. To allow an extra 12 damage 25% of the time isn't so dangerous that I would think it OP.

For remarkable athlete, full proficiency bonus is all it needs. Half is just ridiculous.

As for the fighting style, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree there. The reason I would offer a flat bonus and call it something like "Veteran Warrior" or something is the fact that most people are going to stick to one fighting style and optimize it, and therefore will take the only other viable option, which is the +1 AC. Sure, some people might go for flavor and try to have another fighting style as a "backup" or however they justify it, but by and large someone who's optimizing will have chosen great weapon fighting with a greataxe, greatsword, or maul, and therefore the only thing they're going for is more AC. With the new fix, you can either decide to go defensively and keep that +1 AC you'd get anyway, but this way you give those people the option to be even deadlier with a flat +1 to hit and damage instead, which gives a little more leeway in choosing.

 

[Uller]

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?

The converse could be asked of you. Why would you start a thread on a public forum about proposed house rules and reject outright any criticism of your premise (that the class is "broken" to begin with)? You are rejecting ways that the champion is equal or better than BM as if they are things that never happen. If they don't happen at your table, then awesome...ignore them.

If you're goal is to rewrite the class with like minded folks, recruit a handful, start a private thread then publish the results to the community (or not and just use them in your own game).

You're expansion of crit range idea won't be earth shattering. Take a monster with 100 hp that a fighter hits half the time....

Assume 1d8+5 damage per hit, with a crit on a 20 it will take about 20 attack rolls to take it out (9.5 average hit, hit half the time, +4.5 average per crit, crit 5% so 9.5*.5+4.5*.05 = 4.975 . So with a little luck it will take 20 attack rolls, probably 21.
crit on a 19: 5.2 per attack roll so about 19 attack rolls, maybe 20
crit on an 18: 5.425 per attack roll, ~18 or 19 attacks
crit on a 16: 5.875 per attack, ~17 attacks
Edit: The swinginess of the dice will probably hide or overwhelm these effects most of the time, same as with the use of SD against monsters with lots of hp. /Edit.

So basically with each you are making it more and more likely of taking out the 100 hp foe with one, possibly 2 fewer attach rolls. The use of each SD probably gives you about a 50/50 chance of using 1 less attack (this is a guess...someone better at statistics can do the math). So a crit range of 16+ is the same as using about 4 SD. This assumes using them as straight up damage or giving you one extra attack. Probably the best use of SD is to give the rogue an extra attack to get SA damage. At 17th level...that could be 10d6+5 (or so) extra damage...or it could be none if he misses or had some other way to use his reaction to attack or wants to use his reaction for something else.

For monsters with fewer HP/easier to hit the effects will be less pronounced. For monsters with more hp/harder to hit, it will be more pronounced.

For each +1 damage you give, that's about the same as 2 fewer attack rolls in the scenario above. For lower hp monsters it's less pronounced, for higher hp, more. (10.5*.5+4.5*.05=5.475 or ~18 maybe 19 attack rolls, the same as a crit range of 18+...if you want the champion's extra damage to be less swingy, +1/+2 seems about right to me, anything more and it is too much, I think)

 

[TwoSix]

So which would you keep and which would you throw away? I'd say the expanded crit range is a must, as well as remarkable athlete actually becoming remarkable. The regeneration and the fighting style thing can stay, I guess, though I'd rather give someone the option to go more defensive or offensive with a flat +1 in either direction, rather than offering them the "option" to pick a contrary fighting style they haven't been using the whole game, which results in them taking a +1 to AC anyway.

I'd boost crit range to 18-20, and then 16-20. I'd also have Remarkable Athlete apply to damage rolls. Makes a nice mini-capstone at 7 like the EK's War Magic. The Champion becomes like the 4e Slayer, an at-will damage dealer par excellence.

Edit: Also, I disagree with the group calling for small changes. You're not publishing these house rules. Make the changes something you're going feel immediately, otherwise why bother?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[TwoSix]

Well, here's the thing. Theoretically, the classes are already balanced against each other, and have undergone extensive playtesting. The core rules, as written, should be fairly balanced (that's not to say they are perfect, or that people can't find exploits, but you know what I mean).

Normally, when a person proposes altering a class, it's about tradeoffs. See, e.g., the spell-less ranger. In exchange for spells, the "new" ranger gets X.

This proposal is different. Instead of changing or swapping out abilities, it's more, "Let's just enhance all of these abilities." It's a given that powering up even one ability can sometimes lead to wonky or unforeseen results that theorycrafting doesn't cover- powering up five separate things (two increases to crit, increase to remarkable athlete, souped up fighting style, souped up survivor) at the same time can make it exceptionally difficult to determine what went wrong.

Except it's fairly obvious from the last 200+ posts that [MENTION=6775149]krakistophales[/MENTION] doesn't believe that the champion isn't balanced, n'est-ce pas?

And the trying to determine what went wrong argument is a little weak. You know how you know the changes went off the rails? The character does too much damage! It's not like he's giving the Champion the ability to cast Wish. He's making changes that will give it a nice bump in damage. If everyone says, "Wow, that character is doing so much damage!", then you can dial it back a notch. This is only at one table, after all, it's not going right to Mearls' keyboard.