Come to think of it the Champion is also the perfect candidate for the new weapon feats that impose addtional effects/conditions on crits, Tasha's added a lot of mileage to the Champion.
Like what?
Feats that get better on crits:
-Crusher (attack rolls are made with advantage until the start of your next turn)
-Piercer (additional damage die)
-Slasher (disadvantage on their attack rolls)
A Champion can trigger the additional benefits more reliably than any other, additional Fighting Styles will always benefit the one subclass that gets to choose two styles, Poisoner allows for BA application of poison to multiply the damage die on improved crits etc.
Numbers wise they still don’t amount to much. Again, with a great sword Improved Critical is an additional 0.35 average extra damage per attack. Even doubling that is negligible extra damage.
The causing disadvantage looked great at first until I read it more closely. It’s only one attack per turn, which means Improved Critical + that feat (when compared to just taking that feat) adds that effect in 1 turn per 20 turns.
This kinda just feels like you're only looking at damage and if they don't hit a certain threshold you've not disclosed then they're not good?
There's no language in the feat that restricts the critical effect to once per turn:
You’ve learned where to cut to have the greatest results, granting you the following benefits:
Increase your Strength or Dexterity by 1, to a maximum of 20.
Once per turn when you hit a creature with an attack that deals slashing damage, you can reduce the speed of the target by 10 feet until the start of your next turn.
When you score a critical hit that deals slashing damage to a creature, you grievously wound it. Until the start of your next turn, the target has disadvantage on all attack rolls.
The speed reduction is limited to once per turn, not the disadvantage.
If you combine the feet with Champion, an additional 1/20 of your attacks will cause the enemy to have disadvantage on their next attack. So levels 3-4 that’s 1 out of 20 turns, and 5-10 that’s 1 out of 10 turns.
That’s okay. Essentially those specific feats makes the Champion ability not completely worthless.
As for disclosing a number, I don’t know I would have to think about it. Do you think doing 0.35 extra damage per attack is meaningful? You do realize just a basic Dueling fighting style you get at level 1 does multiples of that, correct? Even if you are only scoring a hit 50% of the time, it’s nearly 3 times the extra damage.
Now I’ve been thinking about that feat. it might be good for a Barbarian :)
Use the new custom race to give yourself +2 to Strength, then pick the Slasher feat (+1 to Strength). You start with an 18 STR plus nearly 1/10 of your attacks cause the enemy to have disadvantage on their next turn because of reckless attack. At Level 5 you’re doing 2 attacks per turn.
If you combine the feet with Champion, an additional 1/20 of your attacks will cause the enemy to have disadvantage on their next attack. So levels 3-4 that’s 1 out of 20 turns, and 5-10 that’s 1 out of 10 turns.
That’s okay. Essentially those specific feats makes the Champion ability not completely worthless.
As for disclosing a number, I don’t know I would have to think about it. Do you think doing 0.35 extra damage per attack is meaningful? You do realize just a basic Dueling fighting style you get at level 1 does multiples of that, correct? Even if you are only scoring a hit 50% of the time, it’s nearly 3 times the extra damage.
Those numbers look awfully low, another perfectly valid way of saying it is that every 1/10 (or 10%) of a Champion's attacks will crit and trigger those additional effects. If the probability is something you care about/want to focus on then the optimal thing to do would be to have the Champion in question TWF, the more attacks the more they capitalise on their ability.
The Champion was never completely worthless...
Why are you contrasting a Champion's expanded crit range to a Fighting Style that they can also use?
As my first post in this thread said, if you're playing the Champion as anything more than a learning experience, then you actually need to lean into its features (like with every subclass) be it seeking advantage, being a Half Orc, using TWF, exploiting poison etc. Simply taking a generic Fighter swinging a great axe and saying look at how little the Champion improves the damage isn't really saying anything, for example did you account for GWF in your calculations?
And to be clear, I'm not saying that the Champion is a great subclass or even particularly good, but they certainly aren't as bad (imo) as you're trying to paint them with some calculations (which also leave out benefits like being able to nab both an offensive and defensive style)
I’m glad you agree with me that’s the numbers I gave are low. You just seem to question whether they are accurate. Math doesn’t lie.
A champion will crit 10% of the time instead of 5%. It can only take credit for that additional 5%, not the entire 10.
A critical hit with a greatsword will deal an extra 2d6 damage, for an average of 7.
7 X.05 = 0.35
I can show you the numbers for having advantage, or applying the extra damage when you’re a Half-orc. Or whatever scenario you want to throw at me. They don’t end up doing very well, either.
All fighters get a Fighting Style. I’m showing that the flagship ability of the Champion adds only a small fraction of something just a base fighter gets at level one.
I'm with SeanJP. Champion is bad because every other subclass offers far, far more. That doesn't mean your character is going to be much weaker than the rest of the party, but you could've played a Battle Master and spammed your maneuvers at random and you'd still get more damage out of that than Improved Critical would ever add. This doesn't take a whole lot of math to see; Improved Critical Hit is only doing something for you once every twenty d20 rolls. Remarkable Athlete is nice I guess, but it doesn't really make you any better at the things you're already proficient at. The subclass doesn't bring anything truly substantial to the table until Survivor.
The subclass is good. Not bad, not great. Just good. It is built around crit fishing, so, as others have said, GWM and PAM are the way to go. The PAM will allow for more chances to crit, and the GWM will give you ANOTHER attack on a crit. The damage is pretty insane with the right build (Mounted combatant and duel wielder, wielding two lances is hilarious as well) I have not and never would play one, cause they are so insanely boring out of combat that I would prolly fall asleep.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
The problem with the crit fishing argument is that other subclasses can still outperform a Champion there and still get additional features.
Anything you could give a Champion to improve their 19s and 20s will apply equally to a Battle Master's 20s, except the Battle Master can also choose to spend Superiority Dice on 20s to double them up. The Battle Master also gets to trip enemies without wasting attacks, which gives them advantage for the whole turn and can be combined with Action Surge to raise their crit chances. Any Superiority Dice left over is damage the Champion has to catch up to via random 19s and later 18s. They generally can't bridge this gap because BMs keep getting both more and bigger dice as they level.
A Samurai can stack Fighting Spirit with Action Surge to get a bunch of extra d20 rolls 3 times a day, and they get to choose when crit fishing would be most useful to them.
Arcane Archers get to reroll one attack they miss each round starting at 7th level, which constantly gives them extra chances to crit to for free. The damage from their special shots also has to be made up for by the Champion with random 19s. And like the Battle Master with Trip Attack and the Samurai with Fighting Spirit, Arcane Archers can also try to give themselves advantage for the round via Shadow Arrow (which also deals extra damage) and burn their Action Surge if it succeeds. They also get free damage against crowds through Bursting Arrow.
Eldritch Knights have access to Shadow Blade for bigger sustained damage + bigger crits + a potential source of constant advantage if fighting in dim light or darkness.
Psi Knights can choose to burn their psionic strikes on crits.
Rune Knights can burn their Fire Rune on crits and will sometimes also be able to add the damage from Giant's Might.
No matter how you slice it the random 19s and later 18s are too rare to add substantially to your damage, they're not reliable, and it's the only real trick the Champion has at their disposal.
You're forgetting that a crit hits regardless of AC. That means that 3/20 attacks hit regardless of the enemy AC. It could be 30 and your 18 still hits. This means that not only you apply the extra damage more often, you hit more often (mostly in higher tiers, lower tiers won't have that much anyway).
Another thing: Fighter was never the guy to 1 hit kill things. They can use a lot of small attacks that deal little damage. That's their point. That's why they have so many extra attacks and action surge. More attacks+18-20 is crit=a lot of damage.
And lastly, add the GWM feat and use it all the time. Hell, dip 2 levels into barb to have advantage on the attacks. The -5 to hit wouldn't matter on a crit, so even on an 18, you'll deal 4d6+10+str with no other buffs.
Conclusion: While I won't play this class as I prefer the battle master due to it's style, it is by no means bad.
That is a perfectly valid point, but situations where a natural 19 won’t score a hit are so rare that’s pretty negligible. GWM damage is not affected by crits.
Multiclassing into Barbian does improve it, but three points on that. First, you shouldn’t have to multiclass or make a very specific build to make a subclass ability effective. Second, there are always sacrifices with multiclassing. Third, the numbers still don’t amount to much.
Rolling with advantage you will roll a 20 9.75% of the time. You will roll at least a 19 - 19% of the time. This is a 9.25% improvement. 0.0925 x 7 = 0.6475 average extra damage per attack with a greatsword.
GWP doesn't add extra dmg from critting but critting hits despite the -5 to hit. That brings up another point - low str fighters (Idk why they're low but let's say they are) will get a lot from this.
True, nat 19 will usually hit, but not at high levels.
Now sure, when you avg the damage, it's never high. Why, because if the average was high then it'd be broken.
Also, imagine you're playing pvp as a lvl 20 character. Some classes can have really high AC. An Artificer on lvl 3 using point buy (not even rolling so highest stat is 17 at most) can get to 22 AC already. Landing those crits is very important.
I’ve never played super high levels, but if as a fighter it’s common that you’re literally depending on a Crit in order to hit, that’s disappointing. Like all of your turns are 19 misses and 1 hit? I find that hard to believe.
It’s a valid thing to bring up, but I think that is too rare of a situation. Even if what you are saying is true about the very high levels, that’s a long time to wait for your most major ability to not be negligible.
What I meant is that you can use GWM more reliably. A lvl 20 character should have +11 to hit, if I'm not mistaken, but only +6 with GWM. For comparison, a lvl 1 fighter with 18 str also has +6 to hit, but that's without the +10 dmg.
I might be wrong as I too have never played with that high levels, but there's no way the higher level monsters have the same AC as low leveled ones.
Hmm, the more attacks you make, the less rare they get in the long run. They are absolutely unreliable if you need them at a specific time. But rare, not so much.
If more sourcebooks continue to come out with feats or weapons that have effects on crits, then this subclass gets better and better.
Just to clarify: that's % chance to see ONE critical hit in a round.
If I had to play a Champion, he'd be a DEX fighter. I'd make him an elf, pick Two-Weapon Fighting style, dual wield and take the Piercer (or Slasher) Feat with Elven Accuracy. Note, the chart above doesn't even account for Elven accuracy! EDIT: It tops out at 91.3% with Elven Accuracy.
And for kicks, the vicious weapons should be errata'd to apply their effect on a critical hit, not specifically on an attack roll of 20. That would help out the Champion without breaking anything else.
Firecat5, if using GWM bonus causes you to have to roll a natural 19/20 to hit, the math works out that you should not use it.
Use it on things that don’t have such a high AC. A sidenote, the more damage do you normally do without GWM, the lower the AC threshold is that you should not use it.
Higher normal (non-GWM) damage and higher AC both diminish the value of GWM.
Kerrec, yes, the more times you attack the more often everything happens. You'll hit more times, crit more times, and miss more times.
Improved Critical still only amounts to 0.35 average extra damage per turn with a greatsword. But yeah, if you swing your toward 100 times, that does amount to 35 extra damage spread over all 100 of those swings. In contrast, if you have a 70/30 hit-miss ratio, just the level 1 Dueling Fighting Style that all Fighters get will amount to 140 extra damage over 100 attacks
Extra damage from critical hits is VASTLY underestimated when looked at as a ratio of actual damage output. See the attached link for reference. Combined with Feats that trigger on critical hits, the actual effect is often understated for this exact reason.
Extra damage from critical hits is VASTLY underestimated when looked at as a ratio of actual damage output. See the attached link for reference. Combined with Feats that trigger on critical hits, the actual effect is often understated for this exact reason.
End thread.
That's just a link to another thread, and I didn't see anything relevant there. Once again, for a Champion Fighter wielding a greatsword, it's 0.35 extra damage per attack, on average. How is my math wrong, or what am I not factoring into my math?
Extra damage from critical hits is VASTLY underestimated when looked at as a ratio of actual damage output.
Not really. It's vastly overestimated, as evidenced by the large number of people that think scoring crits on 19s is a good trade-off for other 3rd level subclass features. In the absence of crit damage bonuses a critical hit doesn't even manage to double your average damage for that hit. That means a 5 percentage point increase in your crit rate translates into a less than 5 percentage point increase in your overall damage.
It's over-estimated in a vacuum. When you factor in MC, champion is a pick for crit fishers like rogues and paladins because you get to double a lot of dice.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Extra damage from critical hits is VASTLY underestimated when looked at as a ratio of actual damage output. See the attached link for reference. Combined with Feats that trigger on critical hits, the actual effect is often understated for this exact reason.
End thread.
That's just a link to another thread, and I didn't see anything relevant there. Once again, for a Champion Fighter wielding a greatsword, it's 0.35 extra damage per attack, on average. How is my math wrong, or what am I not factoring into my math?
Extra damage from critical hits is VASTLY underestimated when looked at as a ratio of actual damage output.
Not really. It's vastly overestimated, as evidenced by the large number of people that think scoring crits on 19s is a good trade-off for other 3rd level subclass features. In the absence of crit damage bonuses a critical hit doesn't even manage to double your average damage for that hit. That means a 5 percentage point increase in your crit rate translates into a less than 5 percentage point increase in your overall damage.
Incorrect. It’s not a 5% increase in damage. It’s around 11%. See the following link:
It's over-estimated in a vacuum. When you factor in MC, champion is a pick for crit fishers like rogues and paladins because you get to double a lot of dice.
Well yeah, but that just means it's a good multiclass dip, not a good subclass to play as. Those are fundamentally rogue and paladin builds and it's the rogue and paladin class features that are making the extra 19s pull their weight.
This kinda just feels like you're only looking at damage and if they don't hit a certain threshold you've not disclosed then they're not good?
There's no language in the feat that restricts the critical effect to once per turn:
The speed reduction is limited to once per turn, not the disadvantage.
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You are correct, I misread it.
If you combine the feet with Champion, an additional 1/20 of your attacks will cause the enemy to have disadvantage on their next attack. So levels 3-4 that’s 1 out of 20 turns, and 5-10 that’s 1 out of 10 turns.
That’s okay. Essentially those specific feats makes the Champion ability not completely worthless.
As for disclosing a number, I don’t know I would have to think about it. Do you think doing 0.35 extra damage per attack is meaningful? You do realize just a basic Dueling fighting style you get at level 1 does multiples of that, correct? Even if you are only scoring a hit 50% of the time, it’s nearly 3 times the extra damage.
Now I’ve been thinking about that feat. it might be good for a Barbarian :)
Use the new custom race to give yourself +2 to Strength, then pick the Slasher feat (+1 to Strength). You start with an 18 STR plus nearly 1/10 of your attacks cause the enemy to have disadvantage on their next turn because of reckless attack. At Level 5 you’re doing 2 attacks per turn.
Those numbers look awfully low, another perfectly valid way of saying it is that every 1/10 (or 10%) of a Champion's attacks will crit and trigger those additional effects. If the probability is something you care about/want to focus on then the optimal thing to do would be to have the Champion in question TWF, the more attacks the more they capitalise on their ability.
The Champion was never completely worthless...
Why are you contrasting a Champion's expanded crit range to a Fighting Style that they can also use?
As my first post in this thread said, if you're playing the Champion as anything more than a learning experience, then you actually need to lean into its features (like with every subclass) be it seeking advantage, being a Half Orc, using TWF, exploiting poison etc. Simply taking a generic Fighter swinging a great axe and saying look at how little the Champion improves the damage isn't really saying anything, for example did you account for GWF in your calculations?
And to be clear, I'm not saying that the Champion is a great subclass or even particularly good, but they certainly aren't as bad (imo) as you're trying to paint them with some calculations (which also leave out benefits like being able to nab both an offensive and defensive style)
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I’m glad you agree with me that’s the numbers I gave are low. You just seem to question whether they are accurate. Math doesn’t lie.
A champion will crit 10% of the time instead of 5%. It can only take credit for that additional 5%, not the entire 10.
A critical hit with a greatsword will deal an extra 2d6 damage, for an average of 7.
7 X.05 = 0.35
I can show you the numbers for having advantage, or applying the extra damage when you’re a Half-orc. Or whatever scenario you want to throw at me. They don’t end up doing very well, either.
All fighters get a Fighting Style. I’m showing that the flagship ability of the Champion adds only a small fraction of something just a base fighter gets at level one.
I'm with SeanJP. Champion is bad because every other subclass offers far, far more. That doesn't mean your character is going to be much weaker than the rest of the party, but you could've played a Battle Master and spammed your maneuvers at random and you'd still get more damage out of that than Improved Critical would ever add. This doesn't take a whole lot of math to see; Improved Critical Hit is only doing something for you once every twenty d20 rolls. Remarkable Athlete is nice I guess, but it doesn't really make you any better at the things you're already proficient at. The subclass doesn't bring anything truly substantial to the table until Survivor.
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The subclass is good. Not bad, not great. Just good. It is built around crit fishing, so, as others have said, GWM and PAM are the way to go. The PAM will allow for more chances to crit, and the GWM will give you ANOTHER attack on a crit. The damage is pretty insane with the right build (Mounted combatant and duel wielder, wielding two lances is hilarious as well) I have not and never would play one, cause they are so insanely boring out of combat that I would prolly fall asleep.
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
The problem with the crit fishing argument is that other subclasses can still outperform a Champion there and still get additional features.
Anything you could give a Champion to improve their 19s and 20s will apply equally to a Battle Master's 20s, except the Battle Master can also choose to spend Superiority Dice on 20s to double them up. The Battle Master also gets to trip enemies without wasting attacks, which gives them advantage for the whole turn and can be combined with Action Surge to raise their crit chances. Any Superiority Dice left over is damage the Champion has to catch up to via random 19s and later 18s. They generally can't bridge this gap because BMs keep getting both more and bigger dice as they level.
A Samurai can stack Fighting Spirit with Action Surge to get a bunch of extra d20 rolls 3 times a day, and they get to choose when crit fishing would be most useful to them.
Arcane Archers get to reroll one attack they miss each round starting at 7th level, which constantly gives them extra chances to crit to for free. The damage from their special shots also has to be made up for by the Champion with random 19s. And like the Battle Master with Trip Attack and the Samurai with Fighting Spirit, Arcane Archers can also try to give themselves advantage for the round via Shadow Arrow (which also deals extra damage) and burn their Action Surge if it succeeds. They also get free damage against crowds through Bursting Arrow.
Eldritch Knights have access to Shadow Blade for bigger sustained damage + bigger crits + a potential source of constant advantage if fighting in dim light or darkness.
Psi Knights can choose to burn their psionic strikes on crits.
Rune Knights can burn their Fire Rune on crits and will sometimes also be able to add the damage from Giant's Might.
No matter how you slice it the random 19s and later 18s are too rare to add substantially to your damage, they're not reliable, and it's the only real trick the Champion has at their disposal.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
What I meant is that you can use GWM more reliably. A lvl 20 character should have +11 to hit, if I'm not mistaken, but only +6 with GWM. For comparison, a lvl 1 fighter with 18 str also has +6 to hit, but that's without the +10 dmg.
I might be wrong as I too have never played with that high levels, but there's no way the higher level monsters have the same AC as low leveled ones.
Varielky
Hmm, the more attacks you make, the less rare they get in the long run. They are absolutely unreliable if you need them at a specific time. But rare, not so much.
If more sourcebooks continue to come out with feats or weapons that have effects on crits, then this subclass gets better and better.
Just to clarify: that's % chance to see ONE critical hit in a round.
If I had to play a Champion, he'd be a DEX fighter. I'd make him an elf, pick Two-Weapon Fighting style, dual wield and take the Piercer (or Slasher) Feat with Elven Accuracy. Note, the chart above doesn't even account for Elven accuracy! EDIT: It tops out at 91.3% with Elven Accuracy.
And for kicks, the vicious weapons should be errata'd to apply their effect on a critical hit, not specifically on an attack roll of 20. That would help out the Champion without breaking anything else.
Firecat5, if using GWM bonus causes you to have to roll a natural 19/20 to hit, the math works out that you should not use it.
Use it on things that don’t have such a high AC. A sidenote, the more damage do you normally do without GWM, the lower the AC threshold is that you should not use it.
Higher normal (non-GWM) damage and higher AC both diminish the value of GWM.
Kerrec, yes, the more times you attack the more often everything happens. You'll hit more times, crit more times, and miss more times.
Improved Critical still only amounts to 0.35 average extra damage per turn with a greatsword. But yeah, if you swing your toward 100 times, that does amount to 35 extra damage spread over all 100 of those swings. In contrast, if you have a 70/30 hit-miss ratio, just the level 1 Dueling Fighting Style that all Fighters get will amount to 140 extra damage over 100 attacks
For reference:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/class-forums/sorcerer/38888-as-a-spell-caster-can-i-cast-two-cantrips-in-one?page=2#c38
Extra damage from critical hits is VASTLY underestimated when looked at as a ratio of actual damage output. See the attached link for reference. Combined with Feats that trigger on critical hits, the actual effect is often understated for this exact reason.
End thread.
That's just a link to another thread, and I didn't see anything relevant there. Once again, for a Champion Fighter wielding a greatsword, it's 0.35 extra damage per attack, on average. How is my math wrong, or what am I not factoring into my math?
Not really. It's vastly overestimated, as evidenced by the large number of people that think scoring crits on 19s is a good trade-off for other 3rd level subclass features. In the absence of crit damage bonuses a critical hit doesn't even manage to double your average damage for that hit. That means a 5 percentage point increase in your crit rate translates into a less than 5 percentage point increase in your overall damage.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
It's over-estimated in a vacuum. When you factor in MC, champion is a pick for crit fishers like rogues and paladins because you get to double a lot of dice.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Updated links
Incorrect. It’s not a 5% increase in damage. It’s around 11%. See the following link:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/class-forums/sorcerer/38888-as-a-spell-caster-can-i-cast-two-cantrips-in-one?page=2#c38
Well yeah, but that just means it's a good multiclass dip, not a good subclass to play as. Those are fundamentally rogue and paladin builds and it's the rogue and paladin class features that are making the extra 19s pull their weight.
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