D&D 5E Should Crits be x2 Damage? (And Champion Sucks)

[pming]

Hiya!

In such a game, the Battle Master actually compares even MORE favorably against the Champion. At least with feats, the Champion can get the Great Weapon Master's bonus-action attack on crit more often than the BM, which closes the gap between the two somewhat.

And multiclassing allows the Champion's crit range to shine with classes that have better crits (e.g. Rogue, Paladin, Barbarian).

Ok, so why then, is Champion the overwhelming choice for my players when they want to play a "fighter"? I mean, if they sucked so much...why not go with Battlemaster? Or even Barbarian or Paladin?

The Champion is a nice, effective, no-nonsense class. It's got some nice little perks that make it a fun class to play. There is a LOT of room for someone roleplaying a Champion; from the enthusiastic guardsman, to the grizzled mercenary, or maybe a plucky farm hand who's out of a job after his employers family was killed by rampaging orcs. It's a wide-open class that is a toe-to-toe melee base.

I suppose if all a player was interested in was his DPR, or if the campaign/DM in question focused on either strictly RAW or a combat-oriented game...then maybe Champion isn't a good choice. But, honestly, how many campaigns out there are like that? I think most groups tend to favour one of the three pillars of 5e, but I don't think there are very many extremes.

Anyway, my group at least has a thing for Champions I guess. *shrug*

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Hawk Diesel]

Ugh, no. The confirmation roll as implemented in 3E slowed down gameplay and was often a total buzzkill. "I rolled a nat 20...! Oh, wait, I didn't confirm. Boring old normal hit." Your rule of giving players something on the first 20 even if they don't confirm is an improvement, but it still seems like you're gating the excitement unnecessarily.

It's one extra d20 roll, and you don't have to be rolling all those damage dice because you already know if either max damage, double max damage, or dead. How does that slow down the game exactly?

Also, giving a player max weapon damage can often allow them to do more damage than if they roll double their weapon dice.

 

[LapBandit]

Champion is a distant third in mechanical power, so I have homebrewed it at my table:

6th level, 11th level - Add an extra damage die to your weapon attack criticals.

Remarkable Athlete - Add full proficiency not half.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Critical hits should not deal double damage. Critical hits shouldn't even be in the game, if you ask me.

Critical hits favor the monsters and NPCs heavily, and have done so in every iteration of critical hit rules ever implemented in D&D, because the monsters are intended to typically be temporary participants in the game-play, frequently have more chances to critical because they make more attack rolls per turn, and often have greater damage both in dice and flat modifiers.

Yet, players seem dead-set (pun intended) on the inclusion of critical hit rules - so I say the least we should do is make sure that there is just enough to a critical hit for a player to be happy, which my experience says the 5th edition critical hit rules deliver on, without creating the circumstance that a monster rolling a critical hit is too negative of an experience to a player - which I again think that 5th edition delivers on, since my players have their characters crit on as many as 8 times a session and still insist that we not remove critical hits from our game.

And my personal experience DMing for, and playing as, a champion fighter is that you are looking to solve a problem that isn't actually there.

I agree totally. In the OSR clone I was running before 5e crits were just max damage. Which I thought was cool but didn't make a random crit the determinative factor in most fights.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

Champion is a distant third in mechanical power, so I have homebrewed it at my table:

6th level, 11th level - Add an extra damage die to your weapon attack criticals.

Remarkable Athlete - Add full proficiency not half.

I wouldn't say the Champion is that bad, but the problem for me is that it relies on a mechanic that comes into play only at random. Theoretically, a champion may never experience a crit.

So whenever a champion increases their crit range, I give an additional +2 to weapon damage.

As for the Remarkable Athlete, I think it's fine, since it applies to general Str, Con, and Dex checks that might not be easily covered by skills and don't fall into their sphere of influence.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

This post is a placeholder so that the forum will stop telling me there are new posts in this thread when there effectively aren't because someone posting in the thread has me on their ignore list - and for some reason I've yet to figure out, that has been intentionally designed to prevent me from reading whatever it is that person has to say.

Mutual ignore (aka Block) is a good idea IMO. It prevents idiots from reading things into your words that clearly aren't there.

I know I have no desire for my posts to be read (and occasionally replied) to by people who clearly don't understand them. Snobbish of me, yes, but there it is.

In response to the OP: my "fix" for Champion is simple and doesn't involve critical hits, because I find crits boring and insignificant. I enhance Remarkable Athlete to grant the bonus even in things for which you have proficiency already, just like Expertise. Voila! Champion is now the He-Man fighter, terrific at grappling and other forms of physical control, and a clear contender with the Valor Bard for Strongest Man In the World.

 

[CTurbo]

I've found that the max damage + 1 extra die works best. A crit with a 1d8 weapon would be 8 + 1d8 + str/dex mod.

 

[famousringo]

Bigger spike damage affects more than just players. Those dragons will get an extra 7 or 8 damage on a crit, so I hope all your teammates invested heavily in CON futures (as in: If you want to have a future, load up on CON).

 

[Hawk Diesel]

In response to the OP: my "fix" for Champion is simple and doesn't involve critical hits, because I find crits boring and insignificant. I enhance Remarkable Athlete to grant the bonus even in things for which you have proficiency already, just like Expertise. Voila! Champion is now the He-Man fighter, terrific at grappling and other forms of physical control, and a clear contender with the Valor Bard for Strongest Man In the World.

I don't know if adding the bonus like that is balanced. Not that I'm opposed to it, but my gut feeling says that it's potentially better than Expertise because it could potentially apply to a lot more skills, even if it may be only a max of 1.5x proficiency rather that 2x proficiency. But then there's that part of me that remember that most fighters will only have 4 skills that they are proficient in, unless they take the skilled feat, but then if they invest in a feat should they not reap the rewards of such investment? I don't know. Maybe it is a decent fix.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I don't know if adding the bonus like that is balanced. Not that I'm opposed to it, but my gut feeling says that it's potentially better than Expertise because it could potentially apply to a lot more skills, even if it may be only a max of 1.5x proficiency rather that 2x proficiency. But then there's that part of me that remember that most fighters will only have 4 skills that they are proficient in, unless they take the skilled feat, but then if they invest in a feat should they not reap the rewards of such investment? I don't know. Maybe it is a decent fix.

Trust me, it's not better than Expertise (Athletics). A Fighter 11/Rogue 9 winds up better at control than a Champion 20 with a similar DPR. But at least it gives Champion a definite niche.

Athletics, Acrobatics, and Stealth are pretty much the only skill-based Str/Dex/Con rolls you wind up making, so the only ones where the rule variant comes into play.