Is it me, or do Champion fighters get shafted really hard in 5e...

Is it me, or do Champion fighters get shafted really hard in 5e? Whereas the Battlemaster gets a ton of circumstantially useful manouvres and the Eldritch Knight gains access to spells, what do Champions get? Improved Critical, Greater Improved Critical and a bonus to some skills they'll almost never use. Their marginally improved crit range (18-19-20 when you reach level 15, which is practically endgame) isn't impressive enough to base an entire build around. So what do they even get? Their features suck so much, especially compared to the features of the other two variant fighters, that they might as well have none. At least then you're not being tricked into thinking you get anything useful. Their only saving grace is that the frame of the fighter class is already solid.

They're the basic, dumb approach for newbies who don't know how to play. They don't get cool options because options are confusing and WotC assumes that new players are essentially braindead.

According to some math I saw around release, Champions are reasonably decent in terms of expected DPR, so they don't suck THAT bad.

Champions are for when you run a game for your 11 year old son/daughter.

And? You have two options you like better why do you want everything catered to you?

Because i like rolling lots of D12.

3d12 crits as often as possible

Champion fighters are fantastic, and I am very glad they are in the game. They are solid, and they are simple.

The key insight here is that different players enjoy and are good at different parts of the game. You got your good roleplayers, your good-at-mechanics person, your crazy-clever-plan man, etc. You got someone who's been rolling dice since before you were born, and someone at their first game. And you're all gonna have fun together.

Mechanics-guy rolls a caster, and is constantly evaluating the emerging battle situation re: his dozens of distinct but mutually exclusive reality-altering options. Or, if he plays a fighter, he plays a Battlemaster and chooses between his various maneuvers.

Newbie plays a Champion fighter, has fewer confusing options to keep track of, and does big damage.

Everyone has fun.

A class made to be simple and accessible doesn't have to be mechanically inferior. The Champion DOES get shafted, and we should call it what it is: Flawed game design.

And to that I say, what's new? Since when do we defend WoTC when people say they make unbalanced content? This has always been the way of things.

>Since when do we defend WoTC when people say they make unbalanced content? This has always been the way of things.

We didn't bitch about poor balance because bitching was a tradition. We bitched about poor balance because the balance was poor. Now, the balance is better.

You keep complaining that Champion fighters are mechanically bad. You seem very convinced of this. Have you done the math? Have you actually worked out the damage-per-round? Champion fighters are good.

This, you can always put a little complexity on top of what you're doing, play difficult classes, use certain items, but champion fighter represents the lower line of how complex your play style needs to be to be fully effective. I don't think there's necessarily anything bad with that. I'm pretty sure other classes have subsets that are "you're just really good at the stuff your class is expected to do" anyway.

No, it doesn't. It deals flat out the most, reliable damage in the simplest way, that is in no way getting shafted, what the actual fuck.

DO. THE GODDAMN. MATH.