D&D 5E Have we rebalanced the Champion Yet?

[Garthanos]

The point is, first we should balance Champion against the most brain-dead BM. That is a floor.
If you want to do analysis of a fancier BM who uses things like Riposte, go ahead!

Those maneuvers can be used in brain dead fashion rather successfully i think sure you can have somebody who is for instance moving allies around to no benefit but I assume the worse case scenario is selling it completely far short. As a DM I would recommend someone who felt their BM was under performing trade out maneuvers for the reliable hitters or even as I said work the other maneuvers into a more valuable state.

The BM needs to be take in a reliable form I think if you are comparing to a Champion who is also pretty reliable form

The Champion might never Crit too... I suppose but we arent assuming that.

 

[NotAYakk]

I said do it, I am not sure why you are apparently disagreeing with me. Go ahead and do it. Talking about doing it is a waste of time. Actually model a BM that uses its dice to get extra attacks and compare it to the Champion. Don't argue about "we should", DO IT.

 

[Garthanos]

I said do it, I am not sure why you are apparently disagreeing with me.

because "The point is, first we should balance Champion against the most brain-dead BM. " is implying it isn't appropriate as is "If you want to..."

 

[NotAYakk]

I'm glad you keep arguing about if you should do something or not. I don't know why. The thing can be done. Go ahead. I'm not stopping you.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I said do it, I am not sure why you are apparently disagreeing with me. Go ahead and do it. Talking about doing it is a waste of time. Actually model a BM that uses its dice to get extra attacks and compare it to the Champion. Don't argue about "we should", DO IT.

I did, the calculation is pretty simple. Compared to a subclassless fighter the brainless-BM works out as +18 points of damage per short rest (levels 3-6), whereas the Champion (with 2H sword) works out at about +0.6 per hit.

It's still a fairly meaningless calculation - no player who is interested in tactical combat will want to play a champion anyway. It's like trying to balance the tree that falls in the forest.

 

[NotAYakk]

I did, the calculation is pretty simple. Compared to a subclassless fighter the brainless-BM works out as +18 points of damage per short rest (levels 3-6), whereas the Champion (with 2H sword) works out at about +0.6 per hit.

It's still a fairly meaningless calculation - no player who is interested in tactical combat will want to play a champion anyway. It's like trying to balance the tree that falls in the forest.

Yes, that calculation was done.

The other one is the BM who manages to get a riptose strike for every die. So 4 extra attacks (and 4.5 damage per hit on them) per short rest.

We could also balance the half-orc champion for +1.2 damage per hit.

At 4 rounds/combat and 3 combats/rest that is 12 rounds for the champion for 7.6 damage per short rest over subclassless fighter, compared to 18 for the simplest BM.

Assuming 16-18 stat and 2d6 weapon and attacking 14 AC at level 3-5, each attack is +5or+6 for 2d6+3or4 (10/11). Each attack is worth .05*7 + .6or.65*10or11 = 6.35 or 7.5 damage. Extra dice on it are worth .65 or .7 times die size, or +2.925 or +3.15. So the BM riposte is worth 9.275 to 10.65 damage for a die.

The riposte-BM gets 4 attacks for 37.1 to 42.6.

At level 20, you have 6 (and maybe) more dice per short rest. You might be using a flaming greatsword for 4d6+5 damage. Enemy AC is going to be 18ish, while your attack is +11. So an extra attack is 4d6+5+1d12 or 25.5 damage and +20.5 on crit, for 70% accuracy and 5% crit or 18.875 damage times 6 is 113.25 damage per short rest (plus some extra if you activate Relentless, but that is dangerous).

The level 3-4 champion is getting 7.6 damage. The level 20 champion with a flametongue and some source of perma-advantage is getting .177 * 14 * (4 * (3*4 + 2)) = 138.768 damage, without .1 * 14 * (4 * (3*4 + 2)) = 78.4 damage. But I didn't include advantage in my calcuation of the riposte-BM.

Riposte-BM has 1.44x damage at level 20 and 4.88x extra damage at level 3. Again, the gap is much much larger at level 3 in scale terms. In absolute terms, it is actually pretty flat: 29.5 damage vs 34.85 at level 20.

In terms of swings, it is 4.6 swings/rest gap at level 3 and 2.4 swings gap at level 20.

A Flaming sword with advanage and GWM against an AC of 18 is .75 hit, .1 crit for 35.5 on a hit and +20.5 on a crit, so 28.675 per swing, a 1.52x scale on the extra damage on a BM. The Champion's extra damage scales by 1.77x in comparison. The gap falls to 33.37 damage in favor of the BM with perma-advantage and GWM, but this is only like one and a half swings.

Gaining an extra attack on an action surge gives more swings at 20 than at 3, so it leans the wrong way. Getting more swings on a second wind is the same number of swings per rest. Damage per hit gives more than 4x the damage at 20 than at 3, so also is a poor fit.

Damage on crit is like 6x larger at 20 than at 3, so that is also a bad place to put power (worse than damage per hit).

Per-Hit damage: 4.3x as much damage at 20 than 3 (gap mostly unchanged with advantage)
Per-Crit damage: 6.5x as much damage at 20 than 3 (gap larger with advantage)
Extra Swings: 2.3x as much damage at 20 than 3 (gap larger with advantage).
Extra Swings on AS: 4.5x as much damage at 20 than 3.
Damage Gap needed to fill: 30 at level 3, 35 at level 20.

We could aim for the gap to be on average closed at 3 and 20 -- be under at 3, and equally over at 20. To make this as small as possible, that is extra swings.

Our overall target is +32.5 damage. Swings are worth an average of (6.35 + 18.55)/2 = 12.45 (without features, using typical stats/weapons). 32.5/12.45 is 2.61 extra swings per short rest.

That is pretty close to 1 extra swing per encounter.

We want to keep this simple. And I want to avoid this scaling insanely with multiclassing. So how about:

Action Hero
Starting at 3rd level, a Champion can make a weapon attack as a bonus action on the first turn of combat. It they qualify for the Two Weapon Fighting bonus action attack, they may instead make up to two weapon attacks as a bonus action, but no more than 1 with each weapon.

I think that is easy to remember and doesn't require tracking resources, so should be suitable for a Champion.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I reckon Champion passes BM after around 30 hits, which is certainly a lot.

Thank you for finally acknowledging that the break-even point is way up there.

But I reckon the real trick to Champion is to Proc GWM bonus action attacks. I haven't done that calculation - it isn't really possible, since the proc happens anyway if the target dies.

Feats are optional. The classes are supposed to be balanced in a featless environment. If a class only achieves power when it takes a specific feat, it is underpowered. This is doubly true when the feat is GWM, probably the number one suspect overpowered feat. And it's triply true since, by your logic, our hypothetical champion player is not going to remember to activate any of the features of GWM.

And for what it's worth, I did do the calculations after making a couple of assumptions, and it looks like it amounts to around a 10% increase in expected damage. Assumptions are assumptions, but the take-home point is that it's not gonna bring that break-even point down a huge amount.

The real thing with the Champion (and Brute) is they are boring for any player who enjoys tactical combat, and there is really no reason why such a player would ever choose that subclass (apart from multiclass dips). And that doesn't matter.

It seems to me like you're conflating the dichotomy of enjoying/not enjoying tactical combat with the dichotomy of noticing/not noticing a numbers discrepancy. These are independent. If Alice wants a simple fighter and plays a champion, and Bob wants a tactical fighter and plays a battlemaster, there's nothing stopping Alice from noticing, "Hey, on 90-95% of my attacks, I flat-out deal less damage than Bob."

Comparing the brute to the battlemaster is much more balanced on that perceptual level. Alice can see instead, "Oh, Bob deals more damage and does a special thing a limited number of times, but I deal extra damage the rest of the time, that seems fair." This has been the basic tradeoff between fighters and mages since 1E, the model obviously works (again, talking perceptions, not math). The question then becomes whether the brute damage is mathematically too much over the long term, which is an interesting exercise but harder to actually notice at the table, getting back to your point about the limited utility of white-room analyses. And if it is too much, then you can just dial it back a bit (while still leaving it above fighter-normal) and then everybody is happy, Alice and the white-room analysts both.

 

[Garthanos]

Action Hero
Starting at 3rd level, a Champion can make a weapon attack as a bonus action on the first turn of combat. It they qualify for the Two Weapon Fighting bonus action attack, they may instead make up to two weapon attacks as a bonus action, but no more than 1 with each weapon.

I was considering tying an additional attack to beginning of fight or when you use second wind so a long fight might get 2 eh.

 

[NotAYakk]

I was considering tying an additional attack to beginning of fight or when you use second wind

I proposed second wind a while ago (see like page 2). Problem is it is just a 1/rest not a 1/encounter boost, and as noted to match Riposte you need closer to 1/encounter.

This is the beginning of a fight. It isn't the Gloomstalker thing, which synergizes too much with action surge. Neither is it a free attack; you have to pay a bonus action. That makes a bunch of multiclass nova stuff not work perfectly with it (as they have use for the bonus action).

The boring champion only has (a) GWM crits, (b) TWF off-hand attacks to use their bonus action on the first turn. So having it consume it (and grant 2 attacks with TWF) reduces MC synergy while being basically the same for a vanilla champion (well, a bit less, due to GWM bonus crit being lost).

It ain't perfect, but it isn't far from what a Riposte-BM gets. And of the options I could find, it is the one that boosts the most at low levels and the least at high levels.

 

[Garthanos]

I proposed second wind a while ago (see like page 2). Problem is it is just a 1/rest not a 1/encounter boost, and as noted to match Riposte you need closer to 1/encounter.

This is the beginning of a fight. It isn't the Gloomstalker thing, which synergizes too much with action surge. Neither is it a free attack; you have to pay a bonus action. That makes a bunch of multiclass nova stuff not work perfectly with it (as they have use for the bonus action).

The boring champion only has (a) GWM crits, (b) TWF off-hand attacks to use their bonus action on the first turn. So having it consume it (and grant 2 attacks with TWF) reduces MC synergy while being basically the same for a vanilla champion (well, a bit less, due to GWM bonus crit being lost).

It ain't perfect, but it isn't far from what a Riposte-BM gets. And of the options I could find, it is the one that boosts the most at low levels and the least at high levels.

I am thinking both on start and on second wind so in a long fight .. it means it matters less when you get big fights instead of lots of little ones is that too much? @NotAYakk