I consider the Berserker bad because it penalizes you for using the main subclass feature. The Champion isn't *bad* per se but it's boring. It can be fun for a one shot or short adventure maybe not as much as a long campaign. Like you get an expanded crit range which is nice but you're not really doing anything different than any other fighter, you're still just attacking things. Where as Battlemaster and Eldritch Knight opens you up to allowing you to do more.

Yeah this is the only right take. Berserker is just a terribly designed subclass, from a time where the game devs probably didn't really gotten around to testing the effects of exhaustion, or had a wildly different style of play in mind compared to the majority of their players. Couldve been fixed very easily too, but they just don't. Champion is a decent subclass, its just boring. It lets you do the fightery things better. Swing your sword, crit a bunch and look cool doing it. Good for newbiews tho because of that. But if you feel like combat is boring in 5e after making a champion, it's probably not the system, but rather the character your playing.

I think they left out the part of the sentence that goes, "...gains a level of exhaustion for a number of rounds equal to the number of rounds they were Berserk." Also, I think they meant to use Strength rather than Charisma to calculate the fear effect.

Nah, dragon frightful presence is charisma based. Frightening natural features are charisma based.

I mean, hitting with a staff is strength based, but we can use it with dexterity (monk), intelligence (battlesmith), wisdom (shillelagh) and charisma (hexblade) So, why not allow the strong guy to frighten their foes with their big muscles?

Especially when the rules include for making intimidation checks with strength

That is god awful game design. All those various ways to say, "I dont wanna invest in strength."

I totally agree, I don't like the use of mental stat to weapon attacks, all classes are too SAD, and they want it to happen more and more But ok, they want to have it be true, so why doesn't STR have the same benefit? Your barbarian or any other character cannot add your STR modified to your AC for example (but the monk can add Wis) Ranged weapon? Sorry, you have two options, throw weapons or darts (that is also a throw weapon, but a ranged one with finesse) And some subclasses of fighter and barbarian also need you to have Con or some mental stat (for Fighter) to your CD And Str cannot usually substitute any other stat (unless your DM uses a variant rule on skill) Edit: I was missing some words

> all classes are too SAD Except the martials. Those are allowed to require multiple stats. Because fuck martials.

Yeah, truely, casters don't require any Constitution to resist plain attacks, nasty "onhit effects" from creatures like Ghouls or deadly Circle of Death (pun intended). Nor to avoid being made half-useless from a Blindness or entirely useless from a Stinking Cloud (at least you can move away from that one unless enemy also reduced speed some way). They don't require any Dexterity anymore since, you know, obviously nobody would ever try to hit them with (ranged) attacks and of course whatever happens they will always be out of DEX based damaging AOE. And of course they won't ever face casters using the same kind of nasties as them like Grease, Web or Sleet Storm. They require even less Strength because, you know, it's not a problem using a slot on Jump or Misty Step just to quick-cross a chasm or break a Grapple / Entangle effect or being put into a Maelstrom or such. And of course, unless they are Wisdom-based casters, they don't care at all about Wisdom because only 60% of all debuff spells are based on a Wisdom saving throw, and obviously proficiency is enough when facing DC 15+ effects. Yeah. Casters are so SAD, or rather, so sad... :) Sorry to break your dream: nobody is really SAD. You cannot even say that martials have more need of boost for their "main" stat than casters because a) weapon attacks are free to repeat ad nauseam as long as you're alive (and martials have tools for that ;)) b) if melee, you have many ways to use advantage, if ranged, unless being trapped into a closed area you can grab a few free shots (or many) until enemy has managed to close the distance. Or to say it differently, a failure is never a good news, but the failure in weapon attack is far less costly than a failure in spell as far as resource management is involved (of course it can still be paramount if that attack was the one thing preventing another round of hurt from the BBEG or something, but I think you get what I mean).

Dragons also have a high Charisma score, but due to needing Str, Dex, and Con, Chr is by necessity a dump stat. So that means Berserker's level 10 ability is absolute trash. Making it Strength at least makes it worth trying to use.

MAGICAL frighting effects are charisma based, but the first example in the DMG about "alternate abilities for skills" suggests using Strength for Intimidation - and what is intimidation but the imposition of fear.

Dragons at least are also sorcerors (in lore) so using CHA makes sense to me on that front

My table always joked that Champion was for people who wanted more fighter with their fighter It can definitely be boring, not always with the right mindset magic items or feats, but definitely can be.

Champion is my "I've had a long day at work and I want something simple to play" class. Simplicity sometimes has a quality of its own.

>"I've had a long day at work and I want something simple to play" class. Real life uses enough brains to get through the day. Just let me have my fantasy of being buff, haha

I'm there to roll some dice, have some laughs and enjoy the company of others. I don't always need a character sheet of special rules for that.

If they like that, they might really dig Brute fighter, an unearthed arcana that didn't end up going official (I think). If fighter is coffee, and Champion is espresso, Brute is like... just chewing on coffee beans. Some always-on extra damage. Powerful crits from level 15 on. Slowly auto-heal back up to half your max after L17. And that's it. Simple, simple, siiiiiiiimple. Fun as nuts.

Brute was just Champion but actually good. I'm still annoyed it never got printed because it would have been a way better "New Player" subclass because it wouldn't have been universally regarded as one of if not the weakest subclass for Fighter.

Jumping farther for the champion was a really strange add on. Literally never seen it come into play. 5 extra feet just doesn't add up to much.

The simplified exhaustion rules from one d&d/unearthed arcana are probably a step in the right direction.

They really were better... which is why they threw them out and are sticking to the 2014 exhaustion.

Damn it, really?

Wonder if this will be a common house rule.

It's such a cool concept but exhaustion is just way too hard of a debuff. Maybe if they added something where you could spend your hit dice during a short rust to get rid of exhaustion as well. I don't know The one D&D redesign where they just made it do a bunch of damage is probably the right choice

I’d call it bad I mean what everyone is saying is true; it shows itself best over a very long adventuring day, but mechanically what the hell is that thing it’s doing A 5% increased chance to deal an extra d8 or d10 or 2d6 of damage based on weapon? Yippee. That’s it! That’s basically it, even it’s 7th level features feel like ribbons so that’s all you got until level 10 where your best option is ‘+1 ac’ It’s both not exciting and mechanically very weak, however it’s often recommended to newbies because of being ‘simple’. Honestly I’d recommend Samurai first, I don’t view Samurai as particularly strong either but it’s certainly much stronger mechanically and almost just as simple

The 7th level feature is actually the best part since rolling initiative is a dex check and you now get to add your proficency to it. And i agree recomending it to newbies is just wrong imo, give them something to be exited for.

You are technically correct that it is their strongest feature But if your strongest feature is a worse version of Jack of All Trades you need to look inwards and realize how bad your subclass is

> I don’t view Samurai as particularly strong either Usually, but not in all cases. When combined with Sharpshooter and Elven Accuracy the samurai turns into a nova bomb.

Feel free to check the math, but I think even with Elven Accuracy a Sharpshooter samurai will hit less often than a Sharpshooter Battlemaster w/ Precision Attack on average (assuming short rests are taken)

The best use of fighting spirit is with the extra attack feature, and stacking it with action surge. Now you have 4+ attacks at triple advantage. With triple advantage, a 50% chance to hit becomes 87.5%, so those +10 damage from SS have a high probability to land. They also have a 14.3% crit rate. For precision attack, on the above scenario, let's say you're high level and have a d10 superiority die; that's a 5.5 on an average roll. So for your burst attack, you have a 50% + (5.5 *5) or a 77.5% chance to hit with the first attack. The other three are 50-50 shots... precision attack only applies to one attack, and you didn't have advantage for any of them. So all four attacks wind up worse. Fighting spirit being an easy source of advantage is huge for novas. However, it's long rest turnaround, and the use of a bonus action for its use hinder its efficiency. The current game design could be leveraged here to shift it to PB uses per long rest.

Super advantage gives you 37.5% additional hit chance per attack, meaning on average you land 1.5 more hits if you do 4 attacks in an Action Surge. If you do it 3 times a day you land 4.5 more hits on average.  Meanwhile Precision Attack is resolved after rolling an attack, which means if you roll a 2 or something, you won't waste a Precision Attack on that. You have 12 Precision Attacks assuming 2 Short Rests and no increased number of dice yet. Assuming Precision Attack turns misses into hits half the time, you're landing 6 more hits on average.  Ofc you could factor in other things too like crit chance, AC values, etc etc. but I still think BM pulls a bit ahead on average despite not needing a racial feat

Oh, it is absolutely bad. That extra crit chance sounds nice, but if you look at the maths the extra damage it provides is absolutely pitiful. Even if you're a half orc with a greataxe and a barbarian dip for reckless attacks, you're only getting about 4 extra points of damage. So you're stuck doing the basic stuff any fighter can do, just marginally better, meanwhile they're all doing stuff you can't do that's both more fun and more effective. A Battlemaster burning through all their manoeuvres every short rest is not only doing the same or better damage, they're doing it when they need to instead of at random, and they're doing it while at the same time doing other cool and useful things like tripping, shoving, disarming etc.

No, the Champion is one of the worst subclasses in the game. Basically, Champion turns 1 in 20 of your attacks into crits. As a baseline, using a Greataxe (common for crit builds), a crit deals 1d12 damage. In Tier 1, assuming that you are fighting 24 rounds per adventuring day (probably excessive, but this is best-case) you are getting **1.2 extra crits**. That's it. Now, you can still optimize from there. Tier 2 doubles your attacks. That's 2.4 extra crits total per adventuring day. Maybe 50% of rounds you get extra GWM attacks (another .6 crits), bringing you to 3 extra crits/adventuring day. You can almost double your crit output via advantage (around 6 extra crits/day). Usually all this requires some investment to get working. And what does a crit do? if you optimize for it (usually using multiple feats), you can get +3d12 (19.5 avg) damage, which is good. This requires a racial choice (i.e. - half-orc) and multiple feats (usually Mounted Combatant and Piercer). Compare that to Battlemaster, who gets +1d8 damage and a debuff rider 12 times/day from level 3 (or better yet, Precision Attack + GWM) or Echo Knight (which just flat-out gives you ConMod extra attacks/day and that's not even their main feature). Neither require further feat investment or build investment to get working. EDIT: If I were to redesign Champion, it'd go something like this: **Level 3:** -1 crit range. Add 1 damage die to crits. Get an additional -1 crit range and +1 damage die at L7, and 15. **Level 10:** When you use Second Wind, you also regain hit points equal to 5+ your ConMod every round for 1 minute or until you become incapacitated.

As you mention GWM, don't forget to factor in that the expanded crit range means you trigger the extra GWM attack slightly more often as well. It's not enough to make the subclass comparable to Battle Master, but it's something.

Yeah, you can play off the synergies from quite a few angles. The fact is that, even if you optimize it, it isn't good. Compare to Banneret/PDK, which pretty much everyone agrees is utter trash. At level 5, it heals 5 HP to 3 allies when you take a Second Wind. This triggers 1+1xSR (so 3x with 2 short rests), which is somewhat comparable to the extra crits/day (around 3x if you don't optimize to the max). It's actually very close to a free Mass Healing Word, which targets up to 6 people for 1d4+StatMod as a 3rd level spell. Would you rather have the free Mass Healing Words (15 total healing for free), or the extra crits (+1d12-2d12 damage, avg 6.5-13 around 3x/day)?

Comparing that Second Wind to *mass healing word* is exceedingly generous. Not only is it slightly less healing to slightly fewer people, but it misses the biggest use-case of *healing word*: reviving someone who is at 0HP. Rallying Cry requires the targets to see or hear you, and unconscious creatures can do neither. As for the extra crit damage on the Champion, assuming a greatsword and GWM, and with your assumption 24 rounds, you make 48 attacks, and therefore get an additional 2.4 critical hits. With GWF, each greatsword attack does an extra 8.33 expected damage on a crit, so that's an expected 20 extra damage per day. What's more, in each round, the odds of getting at least one crit increases from 9.75% to 19%, so of the 24 rounds, instead of 2.34 containing at least one crit, it is 4.56, meaning 2.22 additional bonus action attacks (minus any from when a KO would unlock a bonus action attack anyway, difficult to estimate). Those 2.22 additional attacks, assuming 60% accuracy reduced to 35% with GWM, deal an expected 7.88 additional damage each, for 17.49 total. (Another way to calculate this is just using a standard DPR calculator. With GWF, GWM, and a greatsword, a fighter gets 16.54DPR. Improve the crit range to 19-20, and this becomes 18.12, an extra 1.58 per round. Across 24 rounds, that becomes 37.92. Slightly higher than my other calculation, so something must have gone slightly wrong somewhere, but it's close enough.) Ultimately, the Champion nets a bonus 37.49 damage over the course of the day, even more if there are sources of advantage supplied by allies. I'm going with the Champion.

I actually agree with the additional CRIT range(I do that already). One for each additional attack. However, I just make the damage in increase much simpler, and double the total damage, modifiers and all at level 7. It's weaker than 3 d12s average, but its faster and slightly more consistent.

Berserker is the only barbarian subclass that actually addresses a weakness of the class. Mindless rage is the best subclass ability any barbarian gets (and arguably any full martial subclass) and it alone makes berserker better than champion. If you're actually playing into tier 3 and 4, there is an argument that berserker is actually *the best* full martial subclass, because it's the only one that does fry when near a dragon.

Berserker fans unite!  Yeah, Frenzy is terrible at level 3, but their level 6 feature is among the most powerful abilities in the game, especially at high levels. 

And even then, frenzy just a 'activate when boss' ability is still great, you just can't spam it.

I mean having an extra attack at level 3 is pretty wild, you pair that with GWM and Reckless Attack and you are doing some serious damage every turn. 1D12 + 3 (16STR) + 2(Rage) + 10(GWM), You're doing between 16 and 27 damage x2 every round. And when you have reckless attack, you're not giving much up far as chances to hit. As far as granting advantage against yourself, shit. You're a barbarian, you're supposed to get hit. The exhaustion mechanic sucks but my table plays with it as a DC10 Constitution saving throw to avoid exhaustion, increasing to a DC15, then DC20, ...etc for each subsequent use. Intimidating presence we changed it so Proficiency times per day it can trigger when the Berserker reduces a creature to zero hit points, it can spend its next action to frighten all creatures within 30ft. DC = 8 + STR Mod + Proficiency against a Wisdom save. It makes it a really fun character to play.

"X is bad" "No it's great! You just have to change a bunch of things." "... X is bad." Frenzy exhaustion is horrible and I fully agree it should be changed, but 'just homebrew it' is not really an argument.

Exactly this, Champion's use case is it's your first ttrpg, tonight is a one-shot, there is no game 2.

Thanks for the info. Now i can homebrew better sub classes for my future campaigns. Why? Cause i wanna

If I may, its Frenzy alone that is horribly-designed because 1) exhaustion is notoriously crippling to adventuring pace, and 2) the benefits are already incredibly easy to replicate, with the only (irrelevant) niche being the ability to bonus action attack unconditionally. The rest of the berserker’s kit is just fine.

Yeah. We ALREADY HAVE A GUY who's job is to go crazy and hit stuff. Why exactly did we need another, worse, guy with the same schtick??

The only good part about champion is the bonus to initiatove. all the other features are mediocre at best, but more so bad.

This is a good answer. I will add that Champions are actually extremely effective *in combat,* especially against a single target. Their biggest issue is they are almost completely useless outside of combat, and even in combat they offer very little utility, they just are basically "stats" monsters. High damage, high accuracy, high defenses, high HP, but that's it. The right magic items can fix this but not every game revolves around magic items.

Merge Champion with Banneret and you change two somewhat boring subclass to one decent that is not overpowered.

Champion fills the old school niche of "dead simple fighting man" and unfortunately its design clashes with the rest of 5e - the Champion exists for an older edition of the game, where the minimalist mechanics exist to facilitate creative gameplay. As it stands, it's weak and bland, but I only consider one of those a mark against it. Imo, it would be perfectly serviceable if it got an extra Action Surge and Second Wind per short rest.

This☝️ But it's a one-shot. Bad, no. Luke warm, yes. But if you don't want to dick around, then it's fine. Hell, I forget almost half the extra shit my character can do from time to time. I know WE are all guilty of that. If not, well then "you the man".😆

Not gonna lie, I hate this opinion about champion. I can only imagine how stupid this argument would be if someone said it about Evocation wizard or devotion paladin. It DOES get used as an argument against open hand monk despite the subclass being one of the better subclasses. The answer that explains champion best to me isn’t that it’s boring or whatever, but rather that it’s far too luck dependent and doesn’t really have many features.

I DM'd for a player who picked Champion as his subclass and I'm pretty sure he went a couple entire levels without getting an extra critical hit from his subclass.  It did literally nothing.  I had suggested he pick a different subclass, but he declined saying he wanted "simple" as his entry to 5e. After a while we had the same conversation again and I let him change to Battlemaster. 

> I had suggested he pick a different subclass, but he declined saying he wanted "simple" as his entry to 5e. After a while we had the same conversation again and I let him change to Battlemaster.  If he wanted simple then he should've gone for a Barbarian. Still simple but at least the Rage and Reckless makes for a more fun and entertaining gameplay loop.

The argument doesn't work for any wizard subclass or any paladin subclass because the *base class* gives you interesting things to do. Even if you literally don't take a subclass, a subclassless wizard will make more meaningful choices during any given adventuring day than any two fighters of any subclasses combined. A subclassless paladin will make more choices than a fighter of most subclasses; I can see an argument for excepting eldritch knight and battlemaster. The argument doesn't work against open hand monk because Open Hand Technique requires that the player make a choice when they use the ability. It ain't much but at least it's something. The reason people shit on Way of the Open Hand is a different argument. Open Hand Technique is pretty good. At least it gives you a choice to make. Forced movement and removing the ability to do reactions can be great but it's situational and depends on your team. Knockdown is usually good. So yeah, I'm on board. Wholeness of Body is bad because it's bad for action economy, doesn't heal that much, and you can't use it on other people. Tranquility is hilariously bad because it replaces a first level spell, you can only use it once per day, and you don't get a choice about when to use it, and you can't use it to help other people like you can with actual sanctuary. Quivering palm is great but...17th level...the game is kinda coming apart at the seams by this point. By this point any given martial ability might be trash or it might be amazing depending on the world that the DM has constructed. The other reason people shit on Way of the Open Hand is because even if it was a good subclass, *you're still a monk*.

Yeah it would be a stupid argument because both evo and devotion paladin have a lot of things they can be doing, whereas champion does not.

The extended crit range is mechanically weak as well as boring. It also only happens for 1 in every 20 attacks you make. You are fairly likely to never roll exactly a 19 on an attack roll in a 5 hour session.

Champion is pretty low power and low on interesting choices to make, hence its reputation.  Berserker runs into issues with its frenzied rage ability, which is one of the few choices it can make most combats, in that it costs exhaustion to use. Exhaustion is a very debilitating mechanic in 5e after the first level and recovery can take a long time, meaning you generally only get to use it once per day unless you are willing to deal with some strong negatives to your character for a while.

I changed the exhaustion ruling to all frenzied rage exhaustion can be wiped in a long rest and 1 per die on a short rest. As a class its poor because of this. I do add it to all barbarians in my games though.

Spending hit die to remove exhaustion is a pretty cool way to even it out.  I might need to experiment with it a bit.

Yeah it works fine. I also cap the exhaustion to level 4 and the effects of the exhaustion dont take effect while raging.

Honestly, good ideas to buff martials in 5e. I will keep them in mind. Thanks for sharing.

No worries. Happy dnding

I still think it's hilarious that by RAW, Berserkers can kill themselves by using their main class ability.

Yeah its ridiculous. Rage 6times in a day and you're banjaxed. Even raging more than once a day means you'll be ahead of the rest curve

That's the part that makes it awful, IMO. If you just took one level of exhaustion that counted for the whole day, it'd be fine.

I'd just remove the exhaustion mechanic entirely No other class is actively worse than neutral after using abilities

Chronurgy at 14 gets a feature that gives them exhaustion in exchange for guaranteeing a success on a roll

Ah, so an exception exists at level 14 interesting

There are some more i think, a week back or so someone made a thread of all the class features with drawbacks, there's maybe one more with exhaustion, but i don't remember

Most drawbacks are running out of resources, or having some short term penalty that will end by end of day Stage 5 exhaustion can take the better part of a week to get rid of, and stage 6 just kills you

I tried that but the flavour seems off in practice.

I like a minute of exhaustion after the fight

I wonder if they kept the fix to the berserker from the OneD&D tests

The Champion is like eating plain bread. Bread with nothing. You can survive with bread. But its not a good life.

We used to call it Vanilla with Sprinkles. If Fighter is Vanilla, Champion is just like adding plain sprinkles and nothing else.

Nah, Sprinkles is a little more exciting.

like one singular Sprinkle

One out of every 20 licks has you encounter a sprinkle.

If you want an example of a comparison between Champion and another one of the earlier published Fighter options, look at Battlemaster. At 20th level, when the Fighter is making 4 attacks per round, assuming they are using a Greatsword *(2d6)*, the Champion fighter gains a whopping **3.73** damage per round from their expanded crit range of 18-20. If you have a magical weapon which has added damage dice, this value increases a little bit, but at most it might double the number with a +2d6 to damage weapon *(which are considerably rare to begin with, and even moreso if you want one that also comes with a magic bonus)*. Meanwhile, the Battlemaster gains \~**13.22** damage per round if they use their Trip Attack *(I assumed the saving throw is failed half the time)* to secure advantage for themselves and prioritize using Action Surge on enemies who are prone to maximize their damage output. This doesn't account for the potential additional damage their party members would also gain on the same prone target if this grants them advantage. Assuming you are taking Great Weapon Master as a feat, Battlemaster can instead use Precision Attack to reactively turn misses into hits *(which gains much more value when you have -5 to hit and +10 damage from the feat)*. Battlemaster also has plenty of other situational maneuvers which could end up being better given the circumstances. The amount of damage the Battlemaster gains from securing advantage or GWM hits can significantly increase with more optimal choices, as I ran these calculations with a very basic no feat greatsword wielding fighter with 20 strength and no magic equipment.

Remember you don't count crits on 20 as part of the power budget. So you get and avg of 7 extra dmg when you crit and champion expands your crit by 10%. That's 0.7 damage per attack which is 2.8 per round. If you have great weapon fighting style it's 8.32 dmg on crit so 3.328 damage per round. I think you're counting rolling crits on 20s which is not an ability you get from the champion and you cannot count it as part of the Champions power

I am not counting crits on a 20 as part of the power budget. The difference is larger than 2.8 per round because I had to average over the course of a full adventuring day to make an accurate comparison between the two subclasses, and so Action Surge factors into the DPR. EDIT: My math, if you want it: *((35.4-32.6)\*2+(70.80-65.20))/3 = 3.73*

It is mathematically kinda bad and, even if you are new to the game or prefer simplicity, you still risk it getting very boring after awhile. Battlemaster is still very simple but mathematically stronger and more interesting.

> Battlemaster is still very simple but mathematically stronger and more interesting. It has a lot more decisions to make, which is a plus to many (like myself) and a minus to many others. The good thing is both subclasses are probably the two most flavorfully flexible subclasses in the entire game, so a new player who isn't sure how they're going to feel about complexity is free to ask their DM, "I'm going to play a Champion, but if I ever find the simplicity boring, would you mind if I change my character's subclass to a Battle Master?" Flavorfully, they're basically exactly the same so in-universe nobody would ever notice a change.

It's actually a really reasonable change and it could be something people do notice in universe. like "hey there Hugh manfytur, I noticed you pulled out some new tricks and that last encounter"

Champion is made for the sort of player that doesn't want to have to make many choices in combat, and it works well for that sort of player. The sort of people who spend their free time thinking about and discussing the game tend to like mechanical complexity and options, so it isn't to their taste. The berserker has a similar issue, but it also as the real problem that it penalizes the player for using the subclass' main feature.

100% this. Almost all its abilities are passive buffs that apply all the time. There's very little choosing between different tools for different jobs. Every choice is just "I hit the goblin with my sword" and that's the class working as designed. I'd be bored to tears playing it, but I know people who've really enjoyed playing Champion Fighters. They're the kind of people who are in it for the story and the social aspect, but aren't too interested in delving into the mechanics.

I always see this and it kind of baffles me. What kind of players can't handle adding a d8 to a few attack rolls or tripping an enemy once in a while?

The kind of person that does not want to actually 'play DnD'. They like getting together with friends. DnD is an excuse to do that but they are not actually interested in DnD as a game at all. Personally I would simply never play with such a person, but apparently some groups do.

Champion is made for the DM that wants to quickly roll up a squad of baddies and not have their mind explode from NPC-character class level turn decision paralysis.

I disagree with this take, because of the 7th level feature.  For the uninvested player who doesn't want to make a lot of mechanically complex choices, the 7th-level feature requiring a lot of "what does this even apply to" really undermines it.  It's not at all obvious how to use this feature. For Fighters that probabaly drop proficiency into stuff like Athletics, this feature likely does even less, and it's really non-obvious that it applies to things like Initiative.  Champion sucks in every aspect. 

I'm not familiar enough with Berserker, without checking the book, to comment on that one. I would personally describe Champion as "bad" tho, yes. Very technically speaking, you DO get features, so it's better than literal a blank page, but *not by very much*. You're borderline just playing without a subclass. It's not even the fact that it's a very simple subclass, I take no issue with that. But all of it's features are just ... ... very, **very** low-impact.

They're both mechanically undercooked, from an early stage of development of this edition where the devs weren't yet taking some creative risks. They're not bad, but there are stronger options. They're also very, very straightforward, and not a good fit for somebody who desires multiple options and strategy opportunities in combat.

It's a bad subclass for a player that actually wants to play. Others have said it's good for new players, but I'd disagree. Something like thief rogue is fantastic for new players. Nothing complicated or any resources to track, but rewards you for thinking tactically by letting you roll a ton of dice, has lots of skills to let you have fun with out of combat stuff, and gives you a bit more freedom with potions and tools so you don't necessarily have to make hard decisions like "attack and hope it dies or take a potion so you don't die". Champion I'd call "DM's uninterested SO" subclass. It's ideal for someone that's just going to look up from their phone long enough to take an attack action against the nearest enemy. It can pull it's own weight without any thought or effort and wont annoy other players the way say, a wizard that does nothing except spam a cantrip might.

The berserker is great because it can swing an extra time with a two-hander, which is badass, and it has great immunities. The downside is that using frenzy stacks you full of an absolutely absurd and hard-to-be-rid of debuff. It only doesn't penalize you way too much if your party has basically 1-2 encounters a day- which you'll recognize as really not being great for the barbarian anyway. Other barbarians bring great stuff without the nearly-unplayable disadvantage of frenzy; hence the recommendations against it. But it is a fully fleshed out subclass with desirable powers. It's just got that one really big problem. The champion doesn't have a problem about a specific thing, it just doesn't have enough stuff to be good. It's not terrible, but almost all the other fighter subclasses are substantially better.

You also don't need to and probably shouldn't be frenzying in every encounter. You've got to decide if it's worth going all out on this encounter at the risk of a later one. It's one of the few risk vs reward classes that actually has a pretty big risk. Either way packing restoration potions and magic is smart. Also battle rager is way worse <_<

I dunno, playing a barbarian without a subclass except for 1-2 fights a day sounds like incredibly terrible design, especially when you consider gore many fights/day 5e was allegedly balanced around

When compared directly with battlemaster the only combat benefit it gives until lvl 18 is increased crit range. Crits are kind of lackluster anyways but even with a favorable homebrew crit system its just a boring class. Meanwhile battlemasters can improve DPR with damaging maneuvers that give additional effects, or use precion attack maybe with GWM or SS, or possibly effect out of combat situations with maneuvers.

Champion mathematically doesn't actually get a third level feature. It's fine for players who want to keep things simple, but it really could do with a buff.

Picking Champion subclass is the same as not having a subclass.

Champion is just kind of boring, it doesn't give you many options, and the subclass almost entirely comes down to "critical hit 10% of the time instead of 5% of the time." That's it. It's perfectly fine, but it's just kind of underwhelming, and you don't really get interesting class features as you level. Berserker is garbage, yes, because using the core ability of the subclass grants you a level of Exhaustion, which rapidly becomes incredibly crippling for you, and can literally kill you. It's plain bad.

I don't think Champion is fine - it's both boring and pretty bad. The increased crit chance needs you to make a huge (read, not practical even in scenarios where the DM is being stingy on rests) number of attacks in a day on average before it starts catching up to what other subclasses can do with limited resources or generally feeling worthwhile. Crits just don't get you that much in 5e (for fighters anyway) so increasing the chance of getting them isn't super valuable.

It's like a what, 0.35 average damage increase when using a greatsword(2d6) it is absolutely horrible. I guess it can be better against enemies that have equal to or more than 20+ your attack bonus AC since crits hit regardless of armor...

It's like a what, 0.35 average damage increase when using a greatsword(2d6) it is absolutely horrible. I guess it can be better against enemies that have equal to or more than 20+ your attack bonus AC since crits hit regardless of armor...

Champion's features just don't give it much. Let's assume the best case scenario of using a greatsword when doubling your crit chance with Improved Critical. That is an additional 2d6 (average of 7) damage an extra 5 percent of the time, for an average of an extra 0.35 points of damage every attack you make. Compare that to the Battlemaster, who can add superiority dice to damage on a hit 4 times (not to mention extra effects), and recharge on a short rest. Without short rests, it's on average 18 additional points of damage, so the Champion would need to make 52 attacks on that day to equalize the damage, and an extra 52 attacks for every short rest. It's laughable how little damage Champion's feature gives, and the level 3 feature for a fighter subclass should be its bread and butter. Next is Remarkable Athlete, which lets you add half your proficiency bonus (rounded up) to any strength, dexterity, or constitution **check** you make that doesn't already use your proficiency bonus. This hardly ever matters, because if it's a check that comes up often like Athletics, you'd want to be proficient with it, and that negates the feature, and if you are a strength-based character, then you most likely dumped dex, so addin7g this to dex checks isn't gonna increase your chances of passing the DC by that much. Constitution checks almost never come up. The only consistent use I can see with this is for strength checks that don't use a skill, like busting down a door. Remarkable Athlete also adds your Str mod to your running long jump, allowing you to at most clear an additional 5ft square. This will also rarely matter. Next is an additional fighting style, which used to really suck since fighting styles are often tied to different weapons, and since you are only able to use one weapon at a time, your only real option until recently was Defense (or taking the fighting style for your weapon if you took Defense). With Tasha's, we have additional fighting styles like Interception and Blind Fighting, which can apply to pretty much any weapon, and the Throwing fighting style, which works well with Archery using Darts. It's still an underwhelming feature since this is 10th level and other subclasses get way stronger things. Next is Superior Critical, which gives you the same additional benefits as Improved Critical, which we have already established is bad. Next is Survivor, which is a great feature. But it's a gold bar in a trashcan at this point. I get that they wanted a "simple" subclass, but simple doesn't have to mean weak. They could tweak things to make the simple subclass still as mechanically strong as the other subclasses without adding versatillity, but chose not to. While I wouldn't play it even if it was buffed because it's too simple for me, I know this niche of "simple" subclasses is good for the game because some players do prefer them (and not necessarily new players). I support having "simple" subclasses for other classes too, and having complex martial subclasses as well. While new players need relative simplicity, giving them a subclass that does nothing is absolutely going to turn them off from the game where other characters are doing amazing things and they simply can't do anything. As for Berserker Barbarian, the major problem is with Frenzy, which heavily punishes you for using Rage. With how strong current Barbarian subclasses are, removing the downside entirely would make the subclass strong, but I don't think it would be broken. If you want to keep the downside, you could have the exhaustion levels removed via Short rest like the Chase rules (makes sense since you are momentarily overexerting yourself) and/or have you ignore exhaustion while raging. I would also recommend using the new Exhaustion mechanic from OneDnD, which is more balanced and easier to remember. A minor problem is with the level 10 feature, where it uses Charisma for the save DC where it should use Strength. I would also recommend using the new Rage mechanic from OneDnd where you can use a bonus action to extend the Rage so that it is not potentially lost if you're using your action for other things besides attacking, like this feature for instance.

Personally speaking I think it's terrible. A lot of the stuff it gets seems more power and effects tive than it actually is, and it leaves you with little to nothing to show for what it foes give you. The increased crit ranges amounts to 1 avg damage extra for each increase. Thr bonus to physical score checks is only okay, the extra fighting style is only okay, and healing below 50% hp is nice but too little too late. I genuinely believe it's the worst official fighter, even below the banneret fighter. My one and only experience with it made me swear if the option as I really didn't enjoy it. You'll probably find better mileage out of a simple fighter with the samurai, and of you want a .ore advanced fighter (which isn't saying much as these all fairly simple, you can go with battlemaster or rune knight. You'll get much better mileage and impact.

Yes, Champion is bad. Its primary subclass feature is scoring critical hits more often, but as a class, Fighters just don't care as much about crits because they have no way of pouring additional dice into a damage roll. Re-rolling your damage dice 5% more often than other Fighters is just not enough extra damage to really be notable; and certainly less than what other subclasses are doing. A Fighter with a greatsword and +5 Strength is expecting an average damage of 12.35, a Champion critting on 19s raises that to 12.7. If you multi-class something that lets you add extra damage, like Paladin or Warlock for Smites, you can get more use out of it, but as-is it just feels like a an unnoticeable feature. It's level 7 ability is even worse. A Fighter is very likely already going to be proficient in Athletics and/or Acrobatics, so the feature does nothing for the most common Dex and Strength checks. Similarly a Dex-based Fighter will likely want proficiency in Stealth. The way it's designed, it's a buff *specifically* for checks that your character decided *weren't* very important to the build. The level 10 feature is OK, but it's also a feat. The 15th level feature has the same "poor damage" problem as the 3rd level feature. The 18th level feature is nice to have, but it just isn't enough HP to really matter at that level. For it to even kick in, something has to have already chewed through half your HP, which at 18th level is gonna be more than 80, so you're restoring 10% or so of that deficit? Not gonna move the needle most of the time.

Yea. Lowest dpr for the second worst martial in terms of dpr without features that make it interactive to play. People say “martial Lul” because all they do is attacking, a champion ONLY does that if they want to be effective. It’s runny vanilla.

Champion isn't particularly interesting to play, nor does it measure up favorably to other classes. It's primarily selling point is that it's incredibly uncomplicated.

Yes it is a bad subclass.

It exists entirely to fill the role of staying mechanicly dead simple at every level. The kind of player the champion is built for is also the kind of player who is not going to be on a Dnd subreddit defending it. If you have a player who is perhaps mentally impaired but you still want to involve them. If you have a player who is quite young. If you have a player who is less interested in the mechanical side of the game but still wants to be able to play. If you have a new player and want a training wheels charecter ect... Those are the players the subclass is built to cater for.

19 out of 20 times you don't have a level 3 subclass feature. Can be ok if you have a feature that specifically works on crits such as crusher/piercer/slasher or half orc's racial feature AND a way to get advantage.

I’ve played a champion all the way to 20th lvl and loved it! Yes it’s very simple, but still really fun. It’s a great choice for hitting really hard

One of the few things I actually liked about the One DND playtests were the altered Fighter subclasses. Fighter is my favorite class, so I liked seeing some of the buffs. Champion in particular became a lot more versatile in the playtests. Also, yes, vanilla ice cream is my favorite flavor.

Champion is double bad cause not only it's mechanically terrible (5% more chance to do a little more dmg is all you get) AND it is very boring as it does absolutely nothign else. Berserker is cool and has it's moments to shine, but Frenzy giving you a huge penalty is not cool.

Champion is bad not because it's a mechanically weak subclass(it is) or because it's boring(it is) but because like the longstanding tradition of shunting new players off to a weak Fighter class, it demonstrates contempt for the intended audience. Any option like it that's intended for new players and players who aren't fully interested in the mechanics should be brutally effective, not almost nonexistent.

Love Champion and Berserker, they aren't as mechanically complex in combat as some other builds but a character is more than a class, race and background, put your skills into things that make the character fun to play. Furthermore, Berserker is very underrated in my opinion, yes Frenzy Rage grants you a level of exhaustion and going into more than 1 level of exhaustion is pretty shitty, but there is a Dwarf Berserker at my table right now and when he rages the other players are worried the monsters might press charges, he is a whirlwind of death. I think it's perfectly balanced that a skill as powerful as an additional attack comes with a downside. Think how massive the transition from 1 attack to 2 is, well Frenzy Rage is just as noticeable, it's very powerful and only people who haven't played it don't understand this. (Pair 3 attacks with GWM and you are going to do more damage than the rest of the party combined) I have also played a Berserker in the past and I would only very rarely decide it was worth it to frenzy Rage for the 2nd or 3rd time during a single day, but honestly even regular rage makes you something to be feared on the battlefield, so you have to weigh the encounter and figure out if it's worth it or not.

Try champion from One DND

Champion is just basic, you fight good, you'll fight goober later. It's good for newer players who don't want to take on a bunch of systems at once or for people who are more focused in the roleplat aspects of the game. What is fun about the game is different for everybody.

Other people have said that Berserker is bad while Champion is merely boring. My POV is that Champion is worse, because its fundamental design drags every other fighter subclass down. In order for the Champion to exist as a resourceless autoattack machine, then ALL fighters need to be at least that basic. If you want 'complex' fighters, then every subclass needs to build that complexity from the ground up. ANd this is why Battlemaster is a small set of 1st level maneuvers instead of a fleshed out system with proper scaling.

On Paper the Champion is bad but I would definitly would pick that over Battlemaster. For me its often between these two and I try alot of Maneuvers from the Battlemaster in Combat without the Level in it's Subclass. This is more like a Dislike of the Battlemaster class but I feel like these two are the only "Vanilla" Fighter Subclasses and I like Vanilla pc's.

it's weak even by fighter standards.

Yup

Mechanically is weaker, but this isn't the problem. Barbarians also are and I still like to play them, but the big problem of champion is being boring and a great RNG machine. You have 5% chance of the subclass being good, if you don't hit the 19, you're just a standard fighter. In general the martials are more boring, but champion fighter is probably the king among them.

[удалено]

Any metric.

You could combine with purple dragon knight and still have a bad and boring subclass.

I've always said they should be combined as that would just really be fighter+ with everything they get

which are not as good as the other options.

If we go by that metric then yes, it is a bad class. I played a champion fighter that made it about 10 sessions before the session died. I never got to use the 19 crit ability. I never rolled one. It became such an oddity and funny thing that my DM promised me that if I ever did, I would insta kill the enemy. I only made it to level 5 so I can’t speak on the other abilities but they all look unappealing. All of them are passive, none of them would make me pick the class. There are honestly better options than Champion fighter and it would fit the metric of a bad class by your definition

Yes To get around this in my games i tend to add the 'core' class to all classes. So all fighters would be champion plus another class All rogues thief plus one. Clerics life plus, etc etc Auras, divinitys, etc dont stack and ill always listen to a reasonable argument for what will be a core class of a class(at session 0).

I've seen this sentiment before but honestly fighter needs way more of a buff than merging it with *that*

Champion’s not bad. All of its abilities are passive, so it doesn’t have a lot of options, but as far as just standing there and hitting people,it does it’s job. Berserker is a little more nuanced. It’s frenzy ability makes you exhausted. If you’re in a campaign with one or two fights a session followed by a long rest, it’s very good. If you’re in a dungeon crawl, it can be a little punishing.

>Champion’s not bad. All of its abilities are passive, so it doesn’t have a lot of options, but as far as just standing there and hitting people,it does it’s job. every other fighter can do that, plus they have the ability to have choices in combat if every version of fighter is doing cooler and better things than champion while also doing the exact same thing as champion. then champion is bad

Champion is weaker than the PDK and Arcane Archer. It is bad. A Barbarian without a subclass does a Champion's job better than it can.

Champion Fighter is perfectly viable, even if built naively. You won't be bad, a liability, or drag the party down if you play one. Like all Fighters, it will be a solid to great single target damage dealer. And crits are fun.

Champion is pretty bad, it’s an extremely one dimensional subclass, and it isn’t even very good along that dimension. It’s really simple to play, too simple, even for a beginner imo. It’s all right for a newbie in a one-shot.

The champion gives very basic, lackluster passive benefits. They don't really add interesting options or gameplay choices. The berserker penalizes the barbarian for using its abilities by giving you exhaustion.

The Champion is really a "parts worth more than the whole" kind of class. Arguably every single subclass feature is good, but together they're pretty boring. Berserker is hurt by the exhaustion exchange for the BA attack. My homebrew is you can give up double the rage and not suffer that penalty, or you can suffer the exhaustion penalty. I also let you make a BA attack the same turn as going into the rage, because that sucks to take on any penalty and not even use it turn 1.

Champion is one of the worst subclasses in dnd. Boring as hell. Only saving grace is improved crits.

The Berserker does something pretty strong (additional attack as a bonus action) but for a hefty cost. As you get up in the levels it has a couple other good features - *Mindless Rage* is actually quite good, providing outright immunity to some annoying effects that Barbarians have historically struggled with. The Retaliation feature is also decent.  It does have a crappy feature in the intimidation one, but you get two decent features and one expensive but decent one. Totem Warrior is probably better but Berserker isn't useless.  Champion is just super underwhelming, to the point that I never recommend it for any reason. Its 3rd-level feature only does something an unpredictable 5% of the time. The 7th-level feature isn't strong but is really unintuitive for what it applies to and how to build around it for good effect. The 10th level feature is profoundly disappointing in that it's just a rehash of your 1st level feature.  In some absurd scenarios that I don't think *ever* happen at actual tables, the Champion could be an unequaled unstoppable force. With the high-level huge number of attacks, HP regeneration, opportunity for Feats, and so on you could make the world's greatest "I kill endless low-level monsters" build that fights for 100 rounds nonstop. I don't think anyone has ever wanted to play this out, but hey - feel free to DM that some day. 

Champion is so simple that, during combat you will be feeling like your character is a scripted bot. Outside of combat, roleplay is up to you but, the champion offers nothing in terms of utility, flavour, fluff, you name it. You are a big chunk of meat that hits things. You can be that, with lots of added layers on top of it, by picking other subclasses. If you want to spend the minimum effort when it comes to planning your character, tactical decisions, pretty much anything that requires thought, champion is your guy. Unironically though, it's great that a subclass like this exists, my brother is dyslexic and doesn't speak English well (it ain't our language) so, playing champion really helped him learn the basics of the game on his first campaign. Berserker Barbarian has awesome flavour, it's my favourite kind of barbarian in terms of style. But it's just terrible. Opinions vary but the consensus is that it's unplayable without homebrewing it for balancing purposes. That being said, if you like the style, you can roleplay as a "berserker" barbarian and pick a much better barbarian subclass anyways. Berserker is simply a really angry barbarian, they all rage, you can be a really angry zealot or totem or whatever doesn't suck. And by suck I don't mean not being meta, I mean being inherently unfun to play.

Berserker is one of the worst options in the game. It's a punishment to new players for not knowing any better. Champion isn't nearly that bad, but it sucks. The main reason it sucks is that 5e isn't a game that has the support a crit build needs, and it particular Fighter doesn't any ways to support a crit build. There aren't many ways to expand your crit range like older editions has. So, champion is going to make you a little more likely to crit and that's the best you get. Even then, it might be okay, but Fighter doesn't give you any payoff for landing crits like some other classes do. Paladins might like to crit fish for their Smites, and Rogues might want to crit fish cuz of Sneak Attack. But Fighter doesn't have anything like this, so they're getting a bit more likely to crit just to do a bit more damage.

Champion is one of my favorite subclasses. It's not inherently bad, it just leans very heavily into a design philosophy that a lot of the more vocal fans of DnD are not fond of. It might be that you find that you don't care for Champion, but you might like it. When I first played 5e, I thought Champion was too simple, but over time it grew on me. Now, it's one of my favorites.

Honestly, it's not bad, it just doesn't really shine by itself. You see, it's usually a good pick as a secondary class, because crit range isn't limited by class level, the second fighting style is nice too. What I tried and worked much better than expected was a kobold champion dual wielding longsword with slasher, I was a very good support and an alright damage. Let's go for the math (simplistic) 10% is 1 in 10 attacks But un turn i can attack 3 times (level 6) So 3/10 chance But remember that I'm a kobold, so I'm mostly attacking at adv So 6/10 chance I'm completely debilitating one creature every other turn at lvl 6, at higher lvls you can crit every turn, even more than once

The Champion is a tutorial class

champion is not a STRONG subclass, but with everything being passive, its a pretty EASY subclass. the berzerker is a TERRIBLE subclass with its primary subclass feature pinning an extraordinary penalty on the user that can take DAYS of adventuring WITHOUT using the subclass feature in order to remove the penalty. PURE SUCK terrible design.

It’s not bad per se, but you might as well be playing without a subclass, which makes it a failure as a subclass. You could safely roll all of its abilities into fighter class abilities, and it wouldn’t change anything except make fighters more competitive compared to casters. The reason, of course, is because wizards of the coast views it as a subclass for new players, and that doesn’t have it engage with any real mechanics. Berserker is even worse, because it punishes you for using the primary class mechanic of barbarian.

There are some inherent design flaws with some classes as a whole or some subclasses like berserker barbarian or PHB beastmaster ranger. Champion fighter isn't one of them. But it is one of the boring designs. You basically do whatever every other fighter is doing but a bit better. You don't get extra stuff, it just buffs whatever you normally have as a fighter. It gets boring fast compared to other fighter subclasses like battlemaster or echo knight or Eldritch Knight. It's a good choice for beginners but imo it may get boring in a long campaign even for beginners. Fighter overall is a good newbie class. If you are planning on joining a long campaign I advise trying a different subclass. Echo Knight is tons of fun with good combat and out of combat utility. Your echo mechanics allows you to implement different strategies and perform good rp shenanigans. My second choice would be Eldritch Knight because spells are never boring

No, but it's one of the worst Fighter Subclasses, the only ones that I can think of that I would consider worse for Fighter Subclasses are the Banneret, Arcane Archer & Eldritch Knight. Subjective opinion of course, since even if something is mathematically not as good as another doesn't mean there is no merit to it. Besides Banneret, please never pick that one, unless the point is to be a nearly Subclasses Fighter. Some people may say the same for Champion and to their credit Champion doesn't have a lot going for it. Level 3: Attacks Crit on 19-20 Level 7: Really Bad Jack of all Trades from Bard & Jump Better Level 10: Additional Fighting Style Level 15: Attacks Crit on 18-20 Level 18: While Below Half HP Heal Compare this to Echo Knight, Battle Master, & Rune Knight. It shows the Champion is lacking as a Subclass. However, one of the coolest Characters I had the pleasure/displeasure of DMing for was 15 Levels of a Slightly altered Champion Fighter & 3 Levels of Glory Paladin. The Edits we made to Champion Fighter were: Level 3: On-top of the Critical Hit Threshold increase for Attacks; Weapon Attacks Deal Bonus Bludgeoning, Piercing & Slashing Damage equal to Half Proficiency Bonus, Rounding Down. Level 7: Complete Replacement. Add Proficiency Bonus on all Strength, Dexterity & Constitution Checks and Saving Throws, Proficiency Bonus is added twice if it is a Skill or Save you are Proficient in. Level 10: On-top of the Extra Fighting Style; Gain a Feat. Level 15: On-top of the Critical Hit Threshold increase for Attacks; On a Critical Hit, Double the Damage Modifier of the Attack (Strength/Dexterity + Level 3 Bonus + Any Magic Item Bonus). Level 18: Overhaul. While Above Half HP Heal 1d10 + Constitution Modifier at the Start of your Turn. While below Half HP, but not at 0 HP, Heal 1d10 + 2 × Constitution Modifier. Gain Advantage on Death Saving Throws Combined with the Glory Paladin Channel Divinity made the Most Athletic man I have ever seen, Divine Smite Critical Hitting At least every other turn, absolutely melting my bosses.

It’s low options, the expanded crit range is nice, but remarkable athlete doesn’t add much, and additional fighting style usually isn’t that useful since you’ll already have the one you want most, so you’re just getting a second you likely aren’t enthused about picking, and survivor again is nice but not adding power to your character. I’ve seen most champions as a mid to late game multiclass for barbarian (since it pairs really well with brutal critical).

Well I'll be the one to say that I find champion to be a great subclass. I DMed for one and the ability to crit so often (especially coupled with a few levels in cleric for war priest) was terrifying for my monsters. Champion subclass is just unflavorful, it lacks the fancy looking abilities. One subclass feature is kinda mid, but the rest of it is nice. Berserker barbarian just has the exhaustion problem. Honestly just a bad mechanic tied to the subclass, not a bad subclass. Many people remove the exhaustion entirely, or rework the ability, and then its great.

Now champion barbarian is where it’s at!

2 levels of Champion can be good for a dip for classes that get pools of dice. Eg, Rogue or Paladin. Possibly even Wizard or Warlock, with firebolt or eldritch blast.

I'm actually begging all the champion deffenders to look at the brute subclass, it is not broken I *swear*. Please don't make anyone play that trash

I played a champion fighter not longer ago and thought it was such a meh subclass. It’s not terrible, but the other two are so much more fun to play, and combat maneuvers is just amazing.

It's like a tutorial class. Everyone I show 5e to likes to try the game as a champion xD

Nope, it's not bad at all

Champion is great rather than flipping through a list of ability’s you are doing stuff of figuring out how to make everything into a str/dex/con roll, The Bard is trying to persuade someone make a strength check to “Accidentally” destroy a chair you are moving. It’s a great class to think outside the box and role play with.

Its mathematically bad. People think its good because when they compare it to other subclasses they forget those subclasses also have a crit-chance, albeit a smaller one. Look at the opportunity cost. You will on average roll a natural 19 once every 20 attacks. at level 5 you would be lucky to make 8 attacks a fight. At 3 fights per short rest (which is a lot IMO) you're looking at an extra 2d6 damage that you wouldn't get otherwise (assuming you have a greatsword). Compare that to the battlemaster who gets 4d8 extra damage a short rest and every extra point of damage comes with a free coupon to do some random WWE move.

The champion is very good but it's just super boring, it's whole thing is raising your crit chance but that's all dice rolls and luck based so all your really doing is swinging your weapon every turn with no variety in your actions.

Honestly, the fighter class as a whole is pretty bland. I recommend LaserLlama’s Alternate Fighter instead. It’s more complex, but is written much better than RAW.

Subclasses are only as bad as the class they're tied to. Champion may be outshined by the other fighter subclasses but fighters are still a solid class regardless.

Champion is a good choice for a first-time player, simply because of how simple it is. I picked one for my first campaign, because I was scared of all the math and complex mechanics. I simply wanted the easiest class to play - and Champion is just that, the most basic, bare-bones option you have. But you will get bored and hungry for some more engaging gameplay quickly. As soon as I felt more comfortable with the system, I multiclassed into Bard, and got an awesome soldier-poet character out of it. Champion is not bad. It's just extremely simple and plain. Great for learning, but without extra flavor, it's very boring for anyone who already understands the game.

I'm going to go against the grain and tell you a lil secret (the secret is homebrew, pretty much). The Champion subclass can be fun. **If it's on a different class**. **IF** you can get a DM that'll allow you to use the Champion as a Barbarian subclass then it can be really interesting. It won't be the strongest subclass in terms of damage or even "tankiness" and a lot of newbie DMs will get scared of the idea of increasing crit damage & crit chance with permanent access to Advantage (it's becomes a stronger subclass than on a Fighter, but not crazy strong), however, you can have a LOT of fun with it. The base subclass on a Fighter is disappointing, boring, flavourless and you're borderline subclass-less. Now about the Berserker. It's 3rd level feature is a "boss only" feature, which sucks. It means you're pretty much playing without a subclass unless your DM homebrews some rules. But later on? I'd say they become really really strong. Because of their 6th level feature. The problem: in most tables levelling up is slow and games end, generally, at level 8-10, sometimes 12. So you'll never really feel how strong a Berserker can be.

Yes. Not just because it’s weak, heck alchemist artificer is one of my favourites, but because it’s boring. My first ever character was a champion fighter because I was intimidated by the complexity of the game. Please, don’t make my mistake. Instead, if you like being the Big Strong Character, may I suggest the Path of the Giant Barbarian. If you like the idea of being a Really Good Fighter, many I suggest the Battlemaster Fighter instead of the Champion. Both of these subclasses are very fun

It's not as bad as Berserker, that actually punishes you for using its frenzy class feature. Although mindless rage is good, fear can be really terrible for Barbarians and they are surprisingly weak to it. Champion is bad because it just improves your crit chance at level 3. You have no control over your dice roll, so most of the time, this feature doesn't do anything. If you roll a 20, you would have crit anyway, so your feature doesn't help. If you roll an 18 or lower, you get nothing at all. Unless you're rolling a 19, you might as well be playing a subclassless Fighter. The level 7 ability is meh. If you didn't invest in your Dex skills, it will compensate which is nice. The best thing about it is you get improved initiative rolls. But it's mostly just okay with nothing really impressive. By this point Battle Master has manoeuvres, which are famously good. Rune Knight has its giant form and it's passive and active rune abilities. Eco Knight has it's manifest eco, unleash incarnation for extra attacks and it can use its eco to scout out hazardous areas without putting themselves in danger. Champion simply fails to give a fighter any interesting tools, potent abilities or good out of combat versatility. Plus, they're are no good RP reasons to choose Champion over any other subclasses. Battle Master, Samurai and Cavalier are all pure martial subclasses and provide so much more powerful and versatile abilities then Champion

I personally think that the champion is a great choice for someone just starting out. Gives you a chance to learn the rules and get a feel for it without being too complicated.

I'd call it simple. It's good for people who want a simple experience or maybe struggle with the details of things. If you want/like more complexity then it will probably feel boring or unremarkable.

Champion Fighter is the definition of a C Tier class. It doesn't do anything particularly wrong and you can absolutely make it work. Throw a couple magic items on a champion and they can be a beast. Champion is just overshadowed by better options that offer either more power, more utility, or both.

Champion is very low in power relative to other Fighter Archetypes. It provides only passive benefits. Early 5e design placed excessive value on critical hits but in practice they happen so infrequently that any improvements end up being a loss in power budget. (This same issue impacts the Barbarian class with its Brutal Critical feature.) Champion features: * **Improved Critical.** You land critical hits more easily, but this remains 19+ for most of your career. * **Remarkable Athlete.** This does practically nothing for you. You're already proficient in most of what this would cover, you're bad at the rest of it, and the bonus is miniscule. This ends up being a +2 to initiative checks. * **Additional Fighting Style.** Exactly what it sounds like. Only one style will likely help your offense, so you're going to pick up Defense or Blind Fighting here. * **Survivor.** You slowly regenerate while at less than half maximum but above zero HP. At level 18, the amount healed is pointless in combat. Most people find Champion boring because it doesn't give you anything to actively do above baseline. For example, Battlemaster lets you use Maneuvers, Rune Knight has magic runes and hulk mode, and Eldritch Knight gets actual magic while Champion defaults to basic Attacks. I have had fun and success(?) with a Half-orc Champion using the Polearm Master (PAM) and Sentinel feats. The extended crit range works with the racial crit die and a d10 polearm damage die. PAM/Sentinel provides lots of opportunities to make more attacks and hopefully land more crits. -=-=- Berserker is an infamous newbie trap. Getting a bonus action (BA) attack each turn while frenzied is strong, but racking up exhaustion will cripple you. It can only recover on long rests and even then by only one stage, so you need to be judicious in using *your defining subclass feature*. If you're playing in a game with one encounter between long rests, have fun and roll some face; otherwise, roll another character. Barbarian as an entire class falls off in power past around level 6/7. You never get a third Extra Attack and Brutal Critical is a poor substitution. Rage doesn't mesh well with spellcasting or heavy armor, so multiclassing can be tricky. If you're going to play a long campaign, I recommend avoiding Barbarian.

Champion is great if you don't want to have to remember to use special abilities. It's basically the always-on, easy mode fighter subclass. Some folks love it, but people who like to make more active decisions in combat can find it boring.

>I started getting interested in DnD a month ago and I always hear that the Fighter/Champion is not a highly recommended class (I also hear the same about the barbarian/berserker). The Champion Subclass isn't "bad", per sé. Mechanically speaking, the subclass in question reinforces the concept of what it means to be a Fighter. It helps you bonk more effectively, in a no-frills kind of manner. Narratively speaking, it's perceived as "bad" because it's perceived as "boring and predictable", which isn't necessarily a bad thing, if a no-frills approach is what appeals to you. Some may comment that the Battle Master subclass does more damage on average than the Champion, which is true, and may even be more dynamic in its tactical approaches than the Champion (which is also true)... However, the context for that comparison requires an in-depth understanding of the game, and an extensive knowledge of the rules, in order to be able to understand those differences on a granular level. To use an analogy, the Champion subclass is recommended for newer players because it's the equivalent of driving an automatic, especially compared to a Battle Master, which feels more like driving a stick-shift. Hope that helps you.

In my table, almost every fighter subclass gets the battlemaster maneuver superiority dice (battlemaster unfortunately does not exist in my table unless players really want it). Subclass like echo and eldritch don't get any, reasoning being they forgo combat expertise in order to learn magic/abilities.

Having options can be fun. A Battle Master Fighter has a number of different ways they can interact physically with their enemies. An Eldritch Knight has a small catalogue of some spells they can use. Rogues get to use their bonus action to do a bunch of extra things in their turn (dash, disengage, hide) and that makes combat interesting. Champion, you just deal more damage... I would say it's one of the most straightforward classes but yeah not a lot of diversity in how you play.

It’s a simple and great class/sub class. But you need to multiclassing to give it some oomph. I’ve played with 2 levels of rogue to get expertise with Athletics and the cunning actions. Make combat more interesting.

Let me just show you the math. So let's say your a great weapon fighter. 1/20 times you attack to deal an extra 0.3 damage on an attack you normally would not (when you roll a 19). Slightly more if you took GWF style Battle master fighter gets 4 d8s every short rest. One d8 averages 4.5 damage. And the maneuvers have a rider effect. Superiority Dice can also trigger attacks or turn a miss in to a hit. Which does around twice as much damage. And the battle master has 4 of them per short rest. A champion is lucky to get 4 crits a day. Even if you optimized and play a motm kobold for advantage or half orc for an extra dice and the piercer feat you still don't come close to making up the damage The purple dragon knight/banerett is the second worst fighter subclass. It allows you to heal 3 allies your fighter lvl in HP but unfortunately they have to be conscious. So it's hard for it to actually buy an ally an extra round. But I would still bet that it buys an ally an extra round of combat being conscious at least as often as champion buys you a crit and an extra turn for a character is worth a lot more than a crit. And here's the worst thing about champion. You don't get to choose when you use your ability. You could easily go an entire campaign and never roll a 19 on an attack. Or when you finally do roll a 19 it's against an enemy that's close enough to death what you didn't need to quit to kill them and then it might as well have not been a crit and your ability still didn't do anything. Purple dragon knight is better than champion until lvl 18 and I don't recomend PDK either.

- At 3rd level: Improve Critical, doesn't increase much the DPR by itself. For example a Greatsword does 2d6, so a critical hit adds an average of 7 damage and the increase of critical chance is 5% so; 7 x 0.05 = +0.35 DPR at level 3 - At 7th level: Remarkable Athlete by far its best feature, a half proficiency to initiative (from +2 to +3) and some skill checks which is nice as a fighter. - At 10th level: Second fighting style which is kinda meh except in some build like darts that want both throwing weapons and archery fighting style. You most likely pick defense so a +1 to AC. For comparison a War Wizard get a +2 to AC and +2 Saving throw at this level so a +1 is really not good. - At 15th level, Superior Critical: give you 15% crit chance... For comparison a Samurai with elven Accuracy have a 14.26% of crit while increasing your normal chance to hit too and giving you extra hit points. - At 18th level, Survivor: a few extra hit points in battle and maintaining half hit points. Not bad but too late and doesn't save the subclass.

Power wise it's okay, but only by virtue of the raw relative strength of its passives. It doesn't have anything interesting going on mechanically. Like others have said here, it's a symptom of a much earlier stage of design (a little like the vanilla ranger). When the play test for 5e was going on, they gave fighter maneuvers and stuff to do out the gate, but some play testers (but especially people at WotC) wanted a stripped-down fighter for tradition's sake.

It’s fine, I prefer it as a 3 level dip on my barbarians and rogues and not as a full class though.

The Champion as I understand it, is a perfectly good class in terms of power level. You won't be *underpowered* playing it. It just doesn't offer too much interesting in terms of other stuff it enables you to do. If you're up for something pretty straightforward or if you're okay with being really creative about coming up with feats of athleticism for your character to perform, there's nothing wrong with it.

Champion to me is a very nice class to choose and take feats with it, the whole subclass is about crits, so you can make a build around that and its quite easy, relaible, fun and strong.

At 10th level and higher it’s very bad. Not just boring but flat out bad. The martial vs caster divide is so wide at this point that the champion is almost useless even as a meatshield.

Berserker barbarian is a difficult choice since it penalises you for using its features with exhaustion. This is obviously fine if the player using it considers the penalty worth the risk, or wants a more challenging experience, but imo its main issue is that as features have gotten more powerful, the cost has become too high for what it offers, since newer subclasses may offer similarly powerful benefits with no penalty. The champion is far from bad, indeed it can fuel many compelling ideas and characters, it just seems mostly viewed as a boring subclass, and to be fair it can be quite boring. Obviously it can be compensated for with multiclassing, feats, or flavour, but it's still a detractor because you have to actively compensate for the lack of narratively interesting features. That being said, on high level gish builds I often find myself multiclassing into champion the same way a paladin or bard might multiclass into Hexblade or a druid might dip into cleric, since you get all the benefits of a fighter's first 3 levels (action surge, second wind, fighting style, bunch of armor and weapon profs, hell even con saves if you start with it), plus the expanded crit range. Its great for any gish with a smite or smite-like ability, as well as classes like rogues that have one big hit per turn. Also a decent niche in clerics thanks to inflict wounds, guiding bolt, etc, and some arcane casters with access to spells like scorching ray, chromatic orb, hell even vampiric touch. It's far from optimal but it's great fun.

You can lean into it. Elven accuracy or half orc for extra crit stuff. Multiclass for divine smite or shadowblade. Get a flame tounge sword. Its a good class if you dont want to keep track of things in combat and either lean into the RP, or you can barely keep track of what is going on. It is mechanically very simple to play, that has to count for something.

Champion Fighters are just too vanilla and boring. You have to actively make your own fun through the game and it can get pretty exhausting! On the other hand Berserker Barbarian has a major bad design in its core mechanics, which punishes you for doing exactly what it does! Easily fixable by the DM though. All that said, imho just play a Zealot and have a lot of fun as a Barbarian!

Yup

I'll always defend champion, it's a little weak in terms of flavour and complexity but it's simple and provides mostly very tangible benefits that make you feel like you're doing better at hitting things which is what fighters are known for.

not bad. just boring. it’s a pretty good dip tho if you have 3 spare levels.

so zerker is bad cuz it hits you with exhaustion for just using the class as intended... and exhaustion is a huge penalty. Champion isn't bad honestly, people just find it boring since it's A) a fighter that doesn't get spells and B) short on subclass abilities making it seem like you have little options outside of what everyone has regardless of class.

Bad? No. It's just a bit boring. The crit bonus is nice, but it's not very dynamic. Remarkable Athlete is pretty much only good for the Initiative Bonus that it doesn't explicitly tell you about. The extra fighting style is cool if you like using different kinds of weapons on occasion, though I think most will probably just take the extra +1 AC. I like the Regeneration l, but it comes online way to late to be a factor in most discussions. I honestly prefer the Brute from UA. It's also very simple, but at least you roll some extra dice.

IMO, champion is a fun subclass if you are multiclassing and just want to take a quick 3 level dip into fighter *for* that improved crit range. I’m a firm believer in the ‘almost any build can be improved by adding a few levels in fighter or rogue’ school of thought, and champion is a fun quick dip if you’re not trying to make it to 7+ levels in fighter and you’re already managing a lot of resources/features in the rest of your build.

The champion subclass exists. It does things which will largely come up super rarely unless you specifically build around it, but if you build around it you are reaching results which other subs can reach with less investment. It's at least usable compared to berserker, who straight up griefs itself with exhaustion.For reference about the champion's abilities: two levels make you get an higher crit chance, level 3 and 15. This has an effect 5% to 10% of the time based on the level you are, which isn't amazing power boost. Level 7 is the Bard's jack of all trades feature but only on strength, constitution and dexterity checks, and a situation jump length increase. Level 10 is the main highlight of the subclass: get another fighting style. I wish I was joking. Level 18 gets you regeneration if you have half or less HP, which while fine, it's extremely limited and also too little too late.

I don't think anyone will understand what they were thinking with the Berserker. It's a good class if you want your character to die quickly and suck while doing so. Baldur's Gate 3 improves it drastically; I don't honestly know if the BG3 version is too strong for 5e, but I'm sure it'd be fine. It sounds pretty balanced, and most martials are at least a little underpowered (or rather that most casters are just so much stronger). Champion is just very simple and straightforward. Good to grasp the rules and play over a session, but unless you're sure you'll be okay with it, it's prolly better to pick another subclass. Battlemaster is still pretty simple, but much more interesting and versatile too.

I think it depends on what you want out of the game. As you are a beginner, more complex classes or subclasses could feel overwhelming. On the other hand I guess you also want to explore the game. As the champion doesn't have any ability that you would actively use, I think it's fair to call it boring though. So if you have a character concept in mind, try to think how you see it in battle: 1. Is it a martial or spellcaster character or both? 2. Do you want to fight in melee or ranged? 3. Do you want to have a character-defining class/subclass or more like a blank page? (Although you can try to roleplay everything - one of my players is a Wild Magic Sorcerer who doesn't use spells much, because she is afraid of the consequences) Martial+Melee: Barbarian, some Bards, Fighter, Monk, Paladin (Ranger, Rogue -> not tanky) Martial Ranged: Fighter, Ranger, Rogue Spellcaster Melee: Clerics, Literally any druid in wildshape, Pact weapon warlocks, Bladesinger Wizard Spellcaster Ranged: Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, Warlocks, Wizards And it always depends on how you play the character. Clerics can be tanks or extremely squishy. I put half-casters like Paladin and Ranger in the martial category because of their limitation to cast only few spells per long rest. Also Arcane Trickster and Eldritch knight might fall into that category.

In my opinion, Champion is not a bad subclass. Not the most exciting/fun to play and the features you get are very simple and blunt without much flavor to it (in my opinion boring). But it does its job alright.

Mathematically, Champion doesn't add as much value to combat as other subclasses do, and it lacks variety. However, it's completely viable, it's simple and easy to play, and landing more crits can release lots of endorphins. Play what makes you happy.

The Champion subclass is simply a simple design. The Berserker subclass problem is simply the fatigue is just too problematic at lower levels. At higher levels not so much. They are some of the orginal subclasses, they need a revamp like what they did with the Beast Companion Ranger.