D&D 5E Why Good Players Should Not Play Champions

[Giltonio_Santos]

Champions are fine. BMs appear to be better because they get a say on when their special thing triggers, but champions trigger often enough to also feel awesome, which is what you want from this game. My wife, for instance, dropped champion in favor of BM not because she wasn't feeling powerful enough, but because she wanted to have something to activate as part of her combat actions.

We have a champion in our party now, and the player is having a great time, when compared to his moon druid before it. And I'm not even saying that he wasn't having fun as a druid, it's just that now he loves everything about his character. This is a player with a very casual attitude: he hates to micromanage resources and he loves to roll dice. The champion allows him to feel even more awesome rolling dice (Adding a d8 damage? Booooring. More crits? Aaaaawesome!).

Now, if you ask me, I believe the right design choice is really for champions to be just a bit behind EKs and BMs*, enough so that power gamers don't feel attracted to a RNG-based character option, which is bound to frustrate them in the long run, by its own nature.


* If you cannot design them to be absolutely equal, which appears to be the best choice, but also the most difficult (if not impossible) one.

 

[Mercule]

I am not a new player (putting it mildly), and I don't shy away from complexity in general at all. I have had a great time with the Champion when I have gotten to play one, would love to play one again. I have had many players have great experiences playing them, including going back to them after playing other classes.

I don't see why I would want anyone to not play one. Maybe we aren't "Good" enough

This. I'm usually the GM. When I play, though, I frequently tinker and fiddle with builds. I also help the less experienced and/or crunchy players ensure their builds are meeting their vision for their characters.

I see nothing wrong with the Champion. It actually looks like what I'd probably play, if I ever play a Fighter in 5E. I don't really care for the Eldritch Knight and the Battle Master seems like too much fidget for too little gain (i.e. the appearance of mastery vs. actual mastery). The Champion does what Fighters are supposed to do: fight well all day long. Now, could the Champion/Fighter be mechanically improved on, so it isn't outshined by the Barbarian or Paladin? Other folks' experience seem to indicate such, but that's a class issue, not a subclass issue.

 

[bid]

The fact remains that a well build mid-high level Champion with the right gear outclasses a well built BM with the same gear. Even moreso on longer adventuring days with fewer short rests available.

You have the right to believe that, even without facts to support it. Only you can convince yourself of the opposite.

You had to be HO with a flaming tongue greataxe and a pocket cleric, that should raise a flag.

 

[cmad1977]

Waste of a good talent maybe?

Champions have few tricks, or maybe one: when to use action surge.

when a (sub)class has more tricks than autoattack or cantrip spam(warlocks...) the quality of the player comes out more as he can combine tricks that are more than a sum of the components of a single trick.

Whereas I find that the quality of the player has nothing to do with the class mechanics. A 'good player' to me is capable of looking beyond the mechanics and interacts with the world instead of relying on their 'power bar'.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[bid]

Plus a bm is not going to be costantly using his SD on every attack, especially if your mcing into barby. You get 4d8 per short rest. That is not that impressive at 8th lvl. Honestly I personally think the bm is not a good dip subclass, except for a few classes like the rogue. I think the ek is better for all spellcasters, even if they dump int.

Each SD can be an extra attack, an easy 40 extra damage per short rest. That's impressive.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Zard, aren't you the same one who created that glorious train wreck of a thread a while back, "Fighters Still Suck"? Or am I misremembering?

 

[Blue]

Just try yourself, you'll find the same result.

- Half-orc BM 3 / barbarian 5 with mace.
- Half-orc champ 3 / barbarian 5 with greataxe.
Both use reckless attack against the typical 65% hit target.
BM uses his SD on precision (near misses) and riposte.
Assume something like 35 rounds of combat (in 5-7 encounters) before short rest.


You will run out of hp before the champion catches up on the BM damage. I tried 3 different strategies before giving up.

It's a common point that BM is front loaded. So yes, taking it when it's at the peak of it's power and just testing it there will give results favoring it.

Why not retry with Half Orc Fighter 11. Battlemaster gets 5d10 that has to last through 3 attacks a round less any you spend on riposte for an average fo 2 encounters. Champion just gets a 5% extra chance to add in +2d12 (avg 11) damage per attack. Fighter 11 we can also assume 20 Str pretty easily.

(And this is assuming no feats - GWM will grant more attacks to the person with more crits even before cosnidering the -5/+10.)

I can run the numbers - what assumptions were you using for when you should try to use precision (since sometimes it can be a wasted die) and how often were you considering you get riposte?

 

[Blue]

You still run out of hp before the champion catches up. Try it out.

D&D is a team game. White room theorycrafting that assumes no healing covers a really small corner case of actual play.

Of course, so do no buffing / debuffing. An occasional haste can be better used by a champion then by a limited-resource battlemaster. Debuffs that grant advantage same thing - they help the champion more than the BM.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I certainly hope that the Champion is a weaker DPS option than a battle master if the battle master is played well. As a powergamer, the last thing I want to see is the tactically simpler option be the stronger DPS option. There should be at least a loose positive correlation between mechanical complexity and damage output assuming close to optimal play.

Why? to make yourself feel better for choosing the more complex option, like a reward or something? Personal preference of playstyle shouldn't mean "I'm mechanically better than you too." It just means "I like different things than you." In fact, the goal was to have both simpler and complex PCs at the same table with minimal difference in overall mechanical effectiveness. That was one of the worst problems with 3e, the system mastery disparity. If you choose the more complex option, that should be because that's what you prefer. It shouldn't be because you want to be better than the other players like it's some sort of competition.

To the OP, personally, I think it's flawed to make a lot of these BM vs champion comparisons because even from just a DPR context, it all comes down to how many combat rounds there are between short rests. And that varies widely, so it's a futile effort to come up with some sort of objective declaration of the winner. IMO, we'd be better served to stop worrying about it and just play what you want to play. Don't like champions? Fine, don't play one. No need to disparage other people. I don't like bards, but you won't see me going around saying how people who play bards are worse than me.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*