| lghtbrngr |
Hey there! I'm Peter (he/him) I've been playing Pathfinder 2e for two years and TTRPGs since early 2022. I'm a big fan of Paladins in all of fantasy, from World of Warcraft to 5th edition, to Pathfinder, I love them a lot. But enough about me, let's talk about Champions
First, I'd like to establish some terminology that I'll be using in this post.
Selfless (champion) - a champion who defends their allies with their reaction by mitigating damage
Selfish (champion) - a champion who deals extra damage against enemiest with their reaction
High OP - a game/campaign where optimization matters, characters are expected to be built together in a way where they mitigate each other's weakness and boost each other's upsides.
DPR - a (rather flawed, but easy to use) metric to describe the sustained damage done by a character under a round, a way to compare two characters potency in a white room.
FA - the Free Archetype varianr rule, used at many tables. Need to mention it, because it causes quite a bit of variance in what I'm talking about.
Threat Tank - a party role that protects it's allies by threatening the enemy with something, mainly damage most of the time. This is the "hard to ignore" category of tanks.
Champions are amazing in Pathfinder, I don't want this post to sound negative. It's my favorite class, and for good reason - however, I don want to point out it's flaws, giving it a chance to improve in the future.
For the rest of the post, I will be focusing on justice champions, unless specified otherwise. Why? Because they are the ones suffering in a bit of identity crisis. They are defenders, like the other Selfless Causes, but their reaction and reputation in the community leads them to be thought of a damage dealers or Threat-Tanks. I identified two primary issues with them, and surprisingly both relate to their weapons.
Part 1: The One-Handed Problem
Justice Champions, if looked at as damage dealing threat tanks often gravitate towards bigger, two handed weapons, especially with the reach trait (see part 2). This however, in the current state of the game is misleading. Because of the Shield of Reckoning feat-tree (Blessed Shield -> Shield Warden -> Quick Shield Block -> Shield of Reckoning), justice champions with a one handed weapon and shield can start using an additional reaction per turn, starting at level 10, compared to all other champions, who only get an extra use of their main class feature at level 14, taking the Divine Reflexes feat. The extra reaction is absurdly powerful, giving them an extra attack unaffected by the Multiple Attack Penalty. This progression is only matched by the Fighter, the most famous and effective damage dealer in the system. Champions however, can only do this with a small weapon, unlike Fighters, who can run around with a d10/d12 weapon Reactive Striking left and right. If this doesn't invalidate two-handed justice champions enough, a shield attachment and a single class feat sacrificed gets the one-handed build Double Slice through the Two Weapon Warrior Dedication at level 2. With a rather simple setup like this, our one handed champion gets to make 4 MAP-less attacks at level 10. Yes, 4. That's more than most people make normal attacks. Meanwhile, our two-handed champion is stuck with a free rune on their weapon, no special actions and no way to match the scaling of it's one-handed sibling.
I see this as a possible balance concern and problem because most people believe (myself included, I only found out about this interaction a bit ago) that a two handed champion should deal more damage. Sadly, most of these people end up with fairly underwhelming characters that have sacrificed their defenses for nothing. Yes, that's the issue. A one handed champion gets to keep their defensive upside while also dealing more damage. The sacrifice of using a two-handed weapon somehow gets it behind, not ahead.
Part 2: The Reach Problem
Now, let's start talking about the biggest issue the justice cause has: reach. A High-OP justice champion simply can't be effective without a reach weapon, no matter the hands. This is thanks to their unique reaction, that not only requires the triggering enemy and hurt ally to be in your champion's aura, but also for the enemy to be in your weapon's reach. People are quick to jump to the Nimble Reprisal feat as a solution, but it's sadly only making the problem worse. While it tries to help non-reach weapons compete with reach, it makes reach weapons overwhelmingly stronger. As an example, if you're a justice champion and you're standing on a diagonal line, with an ally in the middle and an enemy on it's other side, even with nimble reprisal, you cannot step anywhere in a way your enemy ends up in your reach. Reach weapons however, don't struggle from this. On top of that, reach weapons let you cover and threaten more od the battlefield at any time, making you just better at your job. Workarounds of throwing weapons and/or getting Enlarged all have fairly major downsides, such as making said attack with Dexterity or being Clumsy for the duration.
Thank you for your attention! Hope Paizo reads this and addresses some of these issues.