The Workshop: Archetypal Organizations - The Champion

dungeons-and-dragons-players-handbook-artwork-20 — Copyright Wizards of the Coast

Let’s talk about another of the myriad of archetypes found within the pages of Dungeons and Dragons and how a DM can use them to inject some additional flavor into their campaign worlds by creating unique organizations or positions within those worlds that these specific types of characters would excel at.

You can’t throw a stone into the D&D community without hitting someone with a strong opinion on the fighter class. Some think they’re utterly passe and boring – why play someone that fights with a mundane weapon when you can instead cast powerful magic spells? Others are quick to point out that they can get the best of both worlds with something like an Eldritch Knight or love the versatility and flexibility that can come with a Battle Master. But one choice that I don’t see get a lot of love is quite likely the simplest archetype for any class in the pages of any official 5th Edition book – the Champion.

The Champion is a no frills class option that is all about fishing for critical hits at its core. There are a few other perks, such as an additional fighting style and fast healing if you are at low enough levels of hit points at much later levels. But at the end of the day going from a 5% chance of a critical hit to a 10% and finally a 15% chance is the real draw – especially when you consider that the Fighter gets to start throwing more and more dice each combat round as they earn extra attacks. And when you add in an ability like Action Surge, that’s a lot of chances of scoring a possible critical hit for double damage that can help take a tough opponent out of the fight.

But this simplicity makes it hard to figure out just how you would use the Champion in your game world. There’s nothing special about them like there is with some of the flashier archetype choices out there. There’s no core ability that makes them any more useful in certain situations than another person. There isn’t a real strong niche that they can fill.

Or is there?

If you ask me, I believe their mundane abilities and being masters of multiple types of combat make them uniquely suited for a number of roles within a campaign setting.

Special Forces

In a world where people can command destructive arcane forces that can level cities, why in the heck would you train to be really good with a sword? Well, because if destructive arcane magic is a fact of life, people are going to put a disproportionate amount of time and effort into defending against it, especially if they have something important to defend. A wizard that can’t bring his magic to bear because of an anti-magic field or similar countermeasures is effectively neutered, whereas a warrior who has trained to be really good with a sword isn’t. A strike team of warriors within an army that can be dispatched behind enemy lines with limited supplies and be trusted to survive and carry out the mission with little to no support is something that every commander is going to value quite highly. And that is something that the Champion Fighter is uniquely suited to do.

Trial By Combat

A Champion Fighter could find themselves a part of the local judicial system as a literal champion for the accused if they request a trial by combat. Alternatively, in a more corrupt system, the Champion could be the representative of the state or government that the accused must face in a trial by combat. Either way, their raw combat skill makes this a unique type of job where they would flourish.

Sport Combat

I’m not talking about more modern combat sports like boxing or MMA here (though a proper Champion build could do very well in sports like those as well). Instead I’m talking about a form of gladiatorial combat that is meant to entertain a population without resulting in the death of its combatants – think of it like modern day wrestling. The Champion not only has the raw combat ability to make a fight meant to entertain… be well, entertaining, but putting them in a battlefield with unique terrain challenges to overcome also lets them put their Remarkable Athlete ability to work. And while there are certainly other types of character classes and archetypes that could do quite well in this kind of setting (hell, entire campaigns could be run with this kind of framework), I do feel that the Champion is uniquely suited to it in ways that other classes aren’t from a standpoint of raw physicality. Their ability to stand longer and hit harder without the aid of anything else can be put on full display here and launch them into celebrity status within the campaign setting.

In what ways have you used the Champion Fighter in your own campaign worlds? Have I made you reconsider this archetype at all for your own characters? And is there an archetype out there that you want me to take a look at through the lens of this series? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time.

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Ben Erickson

Contributing Writer for d20 Radio

Mild mannered fraud analyst by day, incorrigible system tinker monkey by night, Ben has taken a strong interest in roleplaying games since grade school, especially when it comes to creation and world building. After being introduced to the idea through the Final Fantasy series and kit-bashing together several games with younger brother and friends in his earliest years to help tell their stories, he was introduced to the official world of tabletop roleplaying games through the boxed introductory set of West End Games Star Wars Roleplaying Game before moving into Dungeons and Dragons.