You Don’t Have To Leave Wolfy Behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' Your Companions Level Up With You!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 8251063" data-attributes="member: 72555">No.The battlemaster who picked non-damage preferred non-damage over damage.  They looked at the damage choice, and said "I can do better".So the resulting BM is, in the opinion of the player, better than the BM that just does damage.The Champion, if it is worse than the high damage BM, is (in at least the eyes of the BM player) even worse.I mean, if you give one kid a choice between 100$ and 10$, and then you say "it isn't fair for the other kid to get 100$, because the first kid could pick 10$, and that wouldn't be fair to the first kid", that is what you are saying looks like to me.---And practically, if the champion is significantly worse than the damage BM, then a less damagy BM gets to match the Champion at the only thing they do (damage) and do other fun stuff.So what I do is aim to make the champion approach BM damage and give it significant other fun stuff.In my case, that is extra healing dice on second wind (for extra), plus an attack on second wind (which  helps them keep up with BM damage output).A naive 18 str BM using a greatsword and who burns dice only doing damage in a 3 round fight at level 5 against AC 16, and takes defensive fighting style (because GWF math is annoying):hits on 10+, crits on 20.  Makes 8 attacks (action surge) for 16d6 +32  for 56 dice (0.6) and 32 static (.55), plus 4d8 (18) is 69.2 damage over 3 rounds.  And has riders on 4 attacks.The same champion gets 9 attacks (action surge, second wind), heals an extra 2d10 HP (11).  Crits on a 19+.  So 63 * .65 + 36 * .55 is 62.05 damage.So letting the champion roll +1/2 fighter level additional d10s and giving them an extra attack on second wind ends up with the champion being about on-par with a low damage BM build.The high damage BM build is over 100 HP of damage here.  There is a lot of room to upgrade the champion without running into the BM.---Another idea I have played with is letting the champion make a free shove or grapple on their turn on a foe they hit, granting advantage if they crit.  This gives the champion some dynamism.  But it sort of overlaps with BM maneuvers.The BM is such a strong subclass, I have considered smashing together multiple subclasses to match it.  Like Samurai+Champion.The Cavalier had a use for the bonus action every turn.I also gave that Cavalier an enemy who utterly ignores them and gives them free bonus action attacks with advantage every turn.And when I did that, the Cavalier still couldn't match the BM's damage output.As a general rule, if you have a mechanism that punishes foes for doing something, this is worse than just doing the damage in without any requirement on the foes doing something specific.So the Cavalier in this example had one advantage over the BM -- it imposed disadvantage on those attacks not on them.  Which is pretty good.The Cavalier cannot effectively use PAM.  If I gave the above Cavalier PAM, it would become worse, I suspect.Their damage would drop from 2d6 to 1d10.  The 1d4 extra attack wouldn't be used, because the Cavalier is getting their class-based bonus action.They would get the reaction attack as foes approach.This dependency on bonus actions to use class features is part of the Cavalier, and it is fair to make a build that uses bonus actions to compete against them.One of the BM strengths is that it uses zero outside resources for its abilities.  Another is that those resources scale really well with other bonuses.The BM was able to use GWM every attack because precision attack compensates for it.  The BM was able to use PAM because it has no use for bonus actions.Do the same build on a Cavalier, and they lack precision attack, so GWM -5/+10 won't be a significant damage increase on a moderate to high AC foe.Their class feature relies on using a bonus action to punish, so PAM is less useful, as when their class feature triggers they grant overlapping bonuses.The inability to use GWM means that the PAM 1d4+3 attack is much smaller at 5.5; the small die size matters more.---My goal was to give the Cavalier the ideal situation to deal as much damage as she possibly can.  And see if they keep up with the battlemaster.That is one way to see if there is a damage gap.It was consuming 1/4 of its subclass daily resources per round, and it required foes to behave in specific ways.In comparison, the BM had nearly no requirements on foes, consumed about 1/4 of its per-short-rest resources per round, and matched the same damage output.The BM can do better; if foes attack the BM, ripostes kick in for another pile of damage (which also costs dice, but these are short-rest dice).I am unaware of a way to make a Cavalier do better.An ally could use farie fire or knock the foe prone for the Cavalier, enabling -5/+10 on its main attack.The BM also gains here, but possibly less.</blockquote>

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