D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[Minigiant]

Considering they are also very popular in terms of actual usage, it's pretty clearly more complicated than that.

And no, @Minigiant it's not because they built those options for a demo that doesn't play the game and has been replaced by a totally different demo. It's because they didn't execute their goals well with some PHB options, so people play them because they love the archetype or because they want the implied playstyle, and then the option doesn't deliver.

The Champion is what people want. It just also sucks, so it gets played and also scores very poorly on satisfaction. In case it was about to come up, I'll head off the "Champion is free" counter arguments that always come up. Adam Bradford confirmed that the DDB class and subclass rankings don't change when viewing only people who have purchased the PHB and other books on DDB. Champion gets played a lot because a lot of people want to play it. That's it.

So, any "solutions" to the Champion that either cut it or gut it, are non starters.

The Champion suck and is unsatisfactory because the mechanics were designed for a style of playstyle that a huge chunk of the community doesn't play.
That's the whole issue.
If you play the way 5e was designed, there is no Fighter or Wizard problem.
The issue is if you don't play that way, the Champion Fighter, Berserker Barbarian, Rangerr, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Monk all kinda suck.

You see this in other games "You are trying to play Pathfinder like 5e. Play the way the game the correct way and then the casters are fun" I've read and heard many times.

People want the Champion fighter's image. 46% of 5e don't want the Champion fighter's mechanics. Because the Champion's mechanics was designed for 54% of the community. Because 46 of the community don't play the style or lack the DM that the Champion was made for.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The Champion is what people want. It just also sucks, so it gets played and also scores very poorly on satisfaction. In case it was about to come up, I'll head off the "Champion is free" counter arguments that always come up. Adam Bradford confirmed that the DDB class and subclass rankings don't change when viewing only people who have purchased the PHB and other books on DDB. Champion gets played a lot because a lot of people want to play it. That's it.

So, any "solutions" to the Champion that either cut it or gut it, are non starters.

I mean, I've never really said otherwise. I get that people want simple stuff. I, personally, would love to see a truly simple caster--which neither the Sorcerer nor the Warlock are, as both require more careful optimization than Wizards just to keep up (e.g., note how Sorcerer is one of the ones with sub-par satisfaction.) But that's a different topic; back to Champion.

I get that "a simple Fighter that just works" is a desirable thing. It's just very frustrating to me that every time they try to make one, it comes out bad, and not "too good" bad--it comes out ineffectual and lackluster, in ways that were fully predictable in advance.

The Champion gets 1[W] bonus damage, on average, out of every 20 attack rolls made, rising to two out of every 20 later. Compare that to Battle Master, which just gets 4d8 extra damage dice per short rest, rising to 6d12 later, often with some other effect tacked on top. Just to keep up, a Champion using a greatsword (2d6) needs to get ~2.57 extra crits per short rest (rising to ~5.57 at high level)--which translates to ~51 attack rolls per short rest early on (~25 combat rounds at level 5, due to Extra Attack), and ~56 later (aka ~14 combat rounds/SR.) Action Surge simply bumps the number of combat rounds up by 2, so you'd still need ~12 at high level, which is still far too many (3-4 combats per short rest.) The requirements to keep Champs in line with even other Fighter subclasses, to say nothing of more powerful classes like Paladins or Wizards, are completely unrealistic.

All of this was a simple mathematical calculation away. And, as you say, "cut it or gut it" solutions cannot be the answer here. Whatever changes, it has to keep to the spirit, the concept, while improving the mechanics--by a lot. I'd also argue that simply boosting the crit-threat range is not a good idea either, as the amount needed to make sense (getting it to around 8-10 combat rounds/SR) would make crit-fishing builds overpowered.

We have to get better at finding ways to do damage that are genuinely simple, but comparable on a reasonable time frame. 3e had that problem, and 5e has it too, as is the case with a lot of things; the problem is surely smaller than it used to be, but still a problem.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I mean, I've never really said otherwise. I get that people want simple stuff. I, personally, would love to see a truly simple caster--which neither the Sorcerer nor the Warlock are, as both require more careful optimization than Wizards just to keep up (e.g., note how Sorcerer is one of the ones with sub-par satisfaction.) But that's a different topic; back to Champion.

I get that "a simple Fighter that just works" is a desirable thing. It's just very frustrating to me that every time they try to make one, it comes out bad, and not "too good" bad--it comes out ineffectual and lackluster, in ways that were fully predictable in advance.

The Champion gets 1[W] bonus damage, on average, out of every 20 attack rolls made, rising to two out of every 20 later. Compare that to Battle Master, which just gets 4d8 extra damage dice per short rest, rising to 6d12 later, often with some other effect tacked on top. Just to keep up, a Champion using a greatsword (2d6) needs to get ~2.57 extra crits per short rest (rising to ~5.57 at high level)--which translates to ~51 attack rolls per short rest early on (~25 combat rounds at level 5, due to Extra Attack), and ~56 (aka ~14 combat rounds/SR.) The requirements to keep Champs in line with even other Fighter subclasses, to say nothing of more powerful classes like Paladins or Wizards, are completely unrealistic.

All of this was a simple mathematical calculation away. And, as you say, "cut it or gut it" solutions cannot be the answer here. Whatever changes, it has to keep to the spirit, the concept, while improving the mechanics--by a lot. I'd also argue that simply boosting the crit-threat range is not a good idea either, as the amount needed to make sense (getting it to around 8-10 combat rounds/SR) would make crit-fishing builds overpowered.

We have to get better at finding ways to do damage that are genuinely simple, but comparable on a reasonable time frame. 3e had that problem, and 5e has it too, as is the case with a lot of things; the problem is surely smaller than it used to be, but still a problem.

Yeah tbh I don't know why they can't just give the Champion PB damage to weapon attacks at level 7. I get it'd be an issue at level 3, but seven levels deep is a large investment to make. Not that this would fix the whole deal, but like 3 scaling to 6 extra damage on every single attack forever will add up.

Also, The Champion could get a boost when they use base class features, rather than getting a bunch of new features. Use Action Surge, get advantage on all attacks you make with Action Surge. Or an extra d8 damage. Something. Simple.


But yeah my comment there was more directed at minigiant and others than you.

We don't need a significantly more complex fighter base class nor a more complex champion. Just more effective.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The Champion suck and is unsatisfactory because the mechanics were designed for a style of playstyle that a huge chunk of the community doesn't play.
That's the whole issue.
If you play the way 5e was designed, there is no Fighter or Wizard problem.
The issue is if you don't play that way, the Champion Fighter, Berserker Barbarian, Rangerr, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Monk all kinda suck.

This. Is. False. The Champion sucks just as much in a long dungeon crawl adventuring day. It's very poorly balanced. The issue is not playstyle.

You see this in other games "You are trying to play Pathfinder like 5e. Play the way the game the correct way and then the casters are fun" I've read and heard many times.

People want the Champion fighter's image. 46% of 5e don't want the Champion fighter's mechanics. Because the Champion's mechanics was designed for 54% of the community. Because 46 of the community don't play the style or lack the DM that the Champion was made for.

The playtest champion isn't that different, they just boosted it to where it should be, and suddenly satisfaction skyrocketed.

The issue is not playstyle.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But the aforementioned explosion increased the player base something like tenfold, if not more. Any data collected during the playtest is no longer representative, not because WotC necessarily did anything wrong,* but simply because the population is radically different from what it was back then

True, but say it increased ten-fold, that's 90% of fans who have likely only known 5e, for up to 10 years, they're probably pretty accustomed to it.
Grognards got comparably accustomed to 1e or BECMI or 2e (each had roughly a decade run), and they (OK, we ) mostly remain zealous about 'em, gobbling up retroclones and bemoaning what WotC has done to the franchise.

So that we're looking at a 5e.2024 that will likely stray even less from 5e.2014 than 2e initially did from 1e, shouldn't be surprising.

And, as much as some grogs may hate on 5e, it's not that different in the broadest strokes - HD, 9 levels of casting, Ask Your DM, and what we now euphamistically call the martial/caster gap - so if you ever hoped a class-balanced version of D&D was coming, give it up.

I mean, I've never really said otherwise. I get that people want simple stuff. I, personally, would love to see a truly simple caster--which neither the Sorcerer nor the Warlock are

I remain unconvinced. I get the impression that there's a very human tendency, maybe it's confirmation bias, to project a desire for a given condition onto those in that condition, regardless of how they got there.

I'm sure new players have traditionaly been told (wrongly in 3e & 4e) to play a fighter as a simple training-wheels experience (3e Barbarian would have been better, 4e Archer Ranger) - by experienced players who are, just possibly being condescending.
But, I suspect the players driving the popularity of the fighter are not choosing it for it's simplicity, nor for any aspect of it's mechanics, but for it's concept - thus the disconnect between most popular class (always, in every edition, even though it's changed radically from one to the next, mechanically), and class with strangely low approval ratings.

 

[Minigiant]

We have to get better at finding ways to do damage that are genuinely simple, but comparable on a reasonable time frame. 3e had that problem, and 5e has it too, as is the case with a lot of things; the problem is surely smaller than it used to be, but still a problem.

WOTC figured it out with the UA Brute fighter that dealt more damage that the Champion, was comparable to the Battlemaster, and was as simple and had more click-clack dice fun.

I wonder why it never came out of UA.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah tbh I don't know why they can't just give the Champion PB damage to weapon attacks at level 7. I get it'd be an issue at level 3, but seven levels deep is a large investment to make. Not that this would fix the whole deal, but like 3 scaling to 6 extra damage on every single attack forever will add up.

Also, The Champion could get a boost when they use base class features, rather than getting a bunch of new features. Use Action Surge, get advantage on all attacks you make with Action Surge. Or an extra d8 damage. Something. Simple.


But yeah my comment there was more directed at minigiant and others than you.

Understood.

We don't need a significantly more complex fighter base class nor a more complex champion. Just more effective.

Well, that would be part of why I think a distinct Warlord full class is so useful. Instead of having to try to squeeze both a "complex Fighter" concept and a "simple Fighter" concept into the same chassis, you fork out the complexity into a distinct class so that each one can live its best life. "Fighter" then becomes a range from ultra-simple (Champion), to semi-simple (I'm given to understand Rune Knight is fairly straightforward), to semi-complex (Battle Master and Eldritch Knight). "Warlord," or "Captain" or "Commando" or whatever it ends up getting called, thus spans the higher end of things, from semi-complex (I'd put Resourceful and "Lazylord" here--basic effects, nothing fancy) to fairly intricate (Bravura with its risk-reward tradeoffs, Tactical with its tricksy nature) to ultra-complex (Sapper engineering-type, Knight-Enchanter part-wizard magical strategist). Both can have ranges, but be comfortable in a low-complexity or high-complexity focus, with the middle-pointing subclasses of each starting to blur the line a little.

I remain unconvinced. I get the impression that there's a very human tendency, maybe it's confirmation bias, to project a desire for a given condition onto those in that condition, regardless of how they got there.

I'm sure new players have traditionaly been told (wrongly in 3e & 4e) to play a fighter as a simple training-wheels experience (3e Barbarian would have been better, 4e Archer Ranger) - by experienced players who are, just possibly being condescending.
But, I suspect the players driving the popularity of the fighter are not choosing it for it's simplicity, nor for any aspect of it's mechanics, but for it's concept - thus the disconnect between most popular class (always, in every edition, even though it's changed radically from one to the next, mechanically), and class with strangely low approval ratings.

The Essentials Sorcerer subclass, "Elementalist," was the first and AFAICT only truly simple spellcaster class. It was also one of the better subclasses to come out of Essentials.

You can get a truly simple spellcaster--one that makes just a few initial decisions, and then has to figure out how to get the most bang for their buck out of the sharply-limited options available. Stripping out the ability to freely choose spells is a big part of this; you have to take the good with the bad, the strong with the weak, and find the best path forward. This especially works if there's only a very small set of options to choose from (e.g. earth/air/fire/water, like the 4e Elementalist did), so there's enough design space to ensure each one is distinct and valuable for something, even if that something isn't always what the player wants.

 

[NotAYakk]

The Champion suck and is unsatisfactory because the mechanics were designed for a style of playstyle that a huge chunk of the community doesn't play.
That's the whole issue.

The only thing good about the 19-20 crit range feature is making some unexpected moments a bit more likely. Mechanically, it doesn't do a very good job of, well, killing or hurting stuff.

The 19-20 range instead of 20 means that 5% of swings do an extra set of weapon damage dice. We'll be generous and make it 8 damage from the dice. So it adds 0.4 damage delt per swing.

We'll compare it to the battlemaster. And we'll pick a really simple strategy for the battlemaster. We'll pick Precision strike, and we'll pick an arbitrary ability that we can choose to apply after we hit and deals 1d8 damage. We'll completely ignore the save part of the ability.

We will use Precision when we miss by 1. Only when we miss by 1.

We will use the other ability when we roll a natural 20. Only when we roll a natural 20.

When we run out of superiority dice, we'll stop using them.

We miss by 1 on about 5% of swings, and we roll a natural 20 on about 5% of swings, and they rarely overlap. We'll assume they don't.

At 0.1 uses per swing, this means we can pull this off for an average of 40 swings. But really, it means we are capped in how many dice we spend.

Spending dice on the first grants 9 extra damage. Spending dice on the second grants a bit more usually - if you miss by 1 and add +1d8 you always hit. So each die is worth at least 9 damage this way.

You have a 10% chance to use them on each swing, and deal an extra 9 or more damage when you do, so it increases your damage per swing by 0.9. Note this is higher than what the Champion gained.

But, you may say, you will run out of dice! You'll run out of dice after you deal at least 9*4 = 36 damage.

For the champion to deal 36 extra damage (on average) before a short rest, that means the champion has to have swung 90 times.

Between short rests.

And that is the point where the Champion breaks even with this really trivial battlemaster strategy.

What playstyle, exactly, does the Champion not suck at? Exactly how long are your days, and how rare are your short rests?

What more, that battlemaster I described? Three are more optimal ways to play it. I just chose a completely brain-dead mechanism, and the champion was strictly worse.

The champions' fundamental problem is that its' level 3 feature sucks at level 3. It is best at level 20. By level 20, the gap between the Champion and the Battlemaster in terms of damage closes a bit, and you have to actually play the BM with some care, because the Champion at level 20 has a 18-20 range and has lots of ways they can leverage it (more attacks, weapons with more damage dice, are the two most obvious).

The Champion is a mechanically simple fighter. But my problem it is also a mechanically poor featureset.

At level 7, it gets a feature that isn't complete junk. Then it gets ... a second fighting style. WotC knows about the problem of "pick something cool from a list; now, at a higher level, pick your 2nd most favourite from the same list!", but did it again. Also, the 2nd style was forced to be defensive, as the offensive styles didn't both work at the same time.

And maybe it would have been neat if two styles stacked in fun and interesting ways (either offensively or defensively), but no, they don't.

The champion was basically a subclass that was difficult to distinguish in actual play from not having a subclass. /shrug.

 

[Minigiant]

This. Is. False. The Champion sucks just as much in a long dungeon crawl adventuring day. It's very poorly balanced. The issue is not playstyle.

It's more than the long adventuring day. You gotta use low HP monsters all 20 levels so the Champion can cleave and get all the extra cleave attacks to bring their damage up.

The thing is unless you record and look at your damage, the average players wont notice how much behind the Champion is behind a Battlemaster... unless you run short adventuring days.

The fighter class was designed for long adventuring day. The Champion just sucks but most people wont noticeable how much it sucks compared to other Fighter subclasses unless you play in a way that makes all Fighters suck. Crawford pretty much said that the the Champion was designed for the people two groups of people. And those groups would be unlikely to realize the Champion sucks.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's more than the long adventuring day. You gotta use low HP monsters all 20 levels so the Champion can cleave and get all the extra cleave attacks to bring their damage up.

The thing is unless you record and look at your damage, the average players wont notice how much behind the Champion is behind a Battlemaster... unless you run short adventuring days.

The fighter class was designed for long adventuring day. The Champion just sucks but most people wont noticeable how much it sucks compared to other Fighter subclasses unless you play in a way that makes all Fighters suck. Crawford pretty much said that the the Champion was designed for the people two groups of people. And those groups would be unlikely to realize the Champion sucks.

While they may not notice it directly, I have found players in most games to be pretty perceptive on a gut, intuitive level. They can feel something is wrong, even if they can't specifically point to anything and call it out. Obviously, different groups work differently, but I've seen it often enough to be skeptical of the notion that long-run problems are completely invisible. They just become a vague malaise in the background.