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

[FrogReaver]

As I keep trying to explain, if you increase damage without increasing complexity it is a de facto nerf to battlemaster, who has to use his brain both in selecting maneuverers and using them to maximum effect.

It's like designing a wizard subclass with this power: "You automatically select the best spell for the situation".

1. Changing the champion isn't nerfing the battlemaster.
2. The champion should be competitive with the battlemaster. There's no good argument for why he shouldn't be. That means sometimes the battlemaster should come out ahead and sometimes the champion will. Thus, the analogy of "automatically select the best spell for the situation" falls flat on it's face.

 

[FrogReaver]

The game has THREE vanilla fighters already: Battlemaster, Champion and Samurai.

I don't find Samauri to be vanilla

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Because they want a simple fighter. And you've been telling me for pages and pages now that the battlemaster isn't that.

If you want a simple figher is CANNOT be equal in effectiveness to a complex fighter. It has to pay for the simplicity. Which is what the Champion is: it gives up some damage in exchange for simplicity.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you want a simple figher is CANNOT be equal in effectiveness to a complex fighter. It has to pay for the simplicity. Which is what the Champion is: it gives up some damage in exchange for simplicity.

Sure. The complex fighter at his best played should still be a little stronger. That's what we are designing toward. It's just that the complex fighter on his worst day (or nearly worst day) shouldn't also be stronger than the champion.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sure. The complex fighter at his best played should still be a little stronger. That's what we are designing toward. It's just that the complex fighter on his worst day (or nearly worst day) shouldn't also be stronger than the champion.

Which is how things stand now. A complex fighter on his worst day has no relevant abilities, or forgets to use their abilities, or has blown all their special abilities before getting to the fight that matters, and so is baseline +0, whereas a Champion on any day is baseline +extra crits.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

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!

The BM who just spends their SD on getting higher damage numbers, rather than engaging with the the more tactical maneuvers is the floor. Just using Riposte and Precision attack whenever they can is about the lowest level of engagement we can expect from a good-faith example player.

I never denied it. My point is, there is no reason why a player who cares about such things would choose to play a champion, so it doesn't matter.

Maybe they like the subclass abilities as more fitting to their character concept than the other Fighter subclasses.

How, when they can just play a battlemaster? There is nothing in the champion can do that a battlemaster cannot, other than serve as training wheels or allow combat passivity.

Extra combat style, specific synergies with some race/feat combinations, getting crits is fun, regenerating HP in combat . . .

Buffing the chamipon can only have two effects:

1) Increasing complexity, forcing a player to engage with combat when they don't want to.

2) Frustrate battlemasters, who, for all their tactical acumen, struggle to keep up with someone who does nothing but stand around hitting things with a sword.

1) Buffs don't have to be complex.
2) I think any Battlemaster player who likes using tactical acumen is not going to be using "total HP damage dealt throughout the day" as a performance metric. Even ignoring the more . . . tactical options that maneuvers can grant, being able to apply extra damage at just the right time is going to be more valuable than just getting it randomly, and tactical players will understand and value that.

There is no downside to bringing Champion on-par with a baseline low-engagement Battlemaster.

Instead of giving an attack at start of combat what if you grant +2 Attacks when using 2nd wind?

Personally I'd be against making second wind more powerful - it puts even more eggs in a single basket.

Actually . . . how nuts would simply granting the champion an additional charge of second wind really be?

 

[Garthanos]

The BM who just spends their SD on getting higher damage numbers, rather than engaging with the the more tactical maneuvers is the floor. Just using Riposte and Precision attack whenever they can is about the lowest level of engagement we can expect from a good-faith example player.

There is no downside to bringing Champion on-par with a baseline low-engagement Battlemaster.

I think that might be the issue you and I see that as a very simplistic tactical choice and an obvious one that anyone with an internet connection can/will end up making and some others seem not to.

You might be able to present better but here are a couple off the top of my head to attempt to explain why I see the riposte or appropriately used Precision attack are not nearly peak performance or achievement and rather what happens when perhaps you like their style (which I do) or just want to be certain.

The haymaker of tactical choice might be something along the lines of getting our ally out of a sticky wicket. Perhaps wizard is swarmed and you prevent the bad guys from getting a full round of attacks and perhaps them being available for 1 to 3 rounds of a bigger battle when they might have gone down... and that same maneuver can get a Paladin or rogue into position to make a round of attacks he wouldn't have been able to make too out of the deal not as awesome as the haymaker of possibilities but still better by the numbers than a riposte ... so you are responsible indirectly for some big things that can be accomplished (but yes only sometimes). Hard to convert some obviously into hit points but ...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The BM who just spends their SD on getting higher damage numbers, rather than engaging with the the more tactical maneuvers is the floor. Just using Riposte and Precision attack whenever they can is about the lowest level of engagement we can expect from a good-faith example player.

No. It is not. There is no reason to assume a battlemaster has even chosen those manoeuvres. The floor is 0.

Maybe they like the subclass abilities as more fitting to their character concept than the other Fighter subclasses.

Champion is as generic as you can possibly get. There is no character concept that fits champion that can't be fitted by something else just as well, probably better.

1) Buffs don't have to be complex.

Any active ability is more complex than a passive ability. Every ability that uses a consumable resource is more complex than an ability with unlimited resource. Any ability that is situational is more complex than any ability that is always on.

 

[NotAYakk]

The floor on Champion damage is also zero. They could choose never to attack. That would be a dumb decision. But if we are talking floor...

The point is that we have to assume some baseline level of competence. Doing a riposte every time someone misses you is an example of a baseline level of competence in a player. It doesn't require any tactical analysis of the situation. And neither does getting a crit on a champion.

Another possible baseline is you just dump your dice as otherwise pointless damage boosts.

A tactical BM (a) could choose to save their dice for crits, (b) arrange to get more crits, (c) use the dice on things more useful than damage, (d) apply them when the fight is hard and save them when the fight is easy. All of these are tactical choices that a Champion doesn't have. I'm not advocating we balance against those, but we should be aware that those are there.

I'm saying balancing against a BM build with 0 tactical decisions on the part of the player is a reasonable thing to aim for. Being a lot weaker than that isn't good.

Heck, I'm not even balancing the champion against the BM who goes GWM and uses the accuracy dice to turn misses into hits. That requires math to work out if it is worthwhile, and I'm lazy.

 

[FrogReaver]

No. It is not. There is no reason to assume a battlemaster has even chosen those manoeuvres. The floor is 0.

If a battlemaster dice has 0 damage impact it's because the player actively chose to use 1 of the following:
1. Evasive Footwork - Gain AC against OA's (position himself)
2. Parry - reduce damage from an attack (self survivability)
3 Rally - grant temp hp (party survivability)

That's the only maneuvers that have no affect on damage output. All of those are useful in other ways and in many cases could be more valuable than the damage that could otherwise be provided.

So you are right, the floor can be 0 damage. But if the floor is 0 damage then you still get the ability to more safely position oneself, to reduce damage, to grant temp hp - all of which are still not 0 floor maneuvers in terms of impact.

Champion is as generic as you can possibly get. There is no character concept that fits champion that can't be fitted by something else just as well, probably better.

Doesn't matter.

Any active ability is more complex than a passive ability. Every ability that uses a consumable resource is more complex than an ability with unlimited resource. Any ability that is situational is more complex than any ability that is always on.

Agreed - but the goal is to bring the champion up to par with the minimum amount of complexity. The least complex option (+2 dmg to all attacks) does a decent job IMO, but others feel it doesn't close the gap enough and so they introduce an insignificantly more complex option as an alternative.