Undrave
Legend
It's not popular with newbies though!
It's popular with ancient D&D-playing dudes in their 30s and 40s who just have a beer and chill whilst they play.
This is was discussed at some length in another thread. Personally I've introduced a number of new people to D&D in 5E, and none of them have expressed the slightest interest in Champion. It's got zero distinctiveness, it doesn't have any pop-culture equivalent, and if you tell people it's simple, and for newbies, they don't want that (also, frankly, it's not meaningfully easier to play than say, a Warlock). Even the boringest most man's man vanilla "straight white guy" man I ever played with, who likes soccer, cars, holidays in Spain, the suburbs and so on, and had never played an RPG before didn't pick a Fighter, he went straight for Spellblade or whatever it was called in 4E. And in my experience most new players circle around Ranger (so many Rangers), Druid, Warlock, Bard, and a few others. Wizard if they really like Harry Potter.
Going back to 2/3/4E I likewise saw (and the thread agreed on this) pretty much zero new players wanting to be "Basic Fighters" or the like.
Sure, and that's a valid concern but newbies love them. If there is a class with "pet animal" as a feature, newbies from around the world will flock to that class. It's not even a Pokemon thing, it like waaaaay predates that.
Personally I'd say just give them a familiar that does basically nothing mechanically and most of them will be happy. Just don't make it easy to kill.
Re: Talent of magic, if they don't get 'em level one, they ain't going to pick that class, because other classes do get them level 1. Just telling ya.
Well I created the Prodigy to fulfill the niche of the Champion without weighting down the Fighter (do you think it fulfills that?)
But you make some good points in regard to the Newbie and I think I'll see about mixing your perspective with my simple magical class concept!
Do you think the animal companion needs to be at level 1 or would level 2 work? Thinking it could be a refluffed Mage Hand that can give you help on a specific skill.