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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 9164908" data-attributes="member: 72555">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.</blockquote>

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