D&D: Five Ways to Be a Champion
Want to go for the gold with your next character? Here are a few ways you can make your next D&D character a Champion.
Do you want to be the very best? Like no one ever was? Well, have we got some good news for you. D&D is packed with ways to play a champion of some kind or another.
Whether you’re playing a Champion Fighter or just making a character whose focus is on never being ever kept down. If you want to be the best around, consider one of these five options, and make your next D&D character a champion.
Champion Fighter
Why not start with the most obvious option. If you want to play a champion in D&D, why not play a Champion Fighter? It’s right there in the name. Champions are all about the development of “raw physical power, honed to deadly perfection.” Which, in this case, means getting a critical hit on a 19 or 20 and being a Remarkable Athlete, just like the Homestar Runner.
Champion Fighter is an easy one to play if you want to keep things simple but straightforward. Your abilities don’t really give you extra stuff, but make you better at doing everything that you were already doing pretty well. Plus no one can deny you’re a literal D&D Champion.
Oath of Glory Paladin
The Oath of Glory Paladin is another easy choice for being a D&D Champion. Paladins who take the Oath of Glory are destined for greatness through deeds of heroism. They’re all about encouraging speeches, training montages, and buffing the party with spells like heroism, guiding bolt, haste, and freedom of movement.
Plus their Channel Divinity powers let them, hilariously, become peerless athletes, or inspire everyone as they smite an enemy and hand out temporary hit points. At higher levels they make everyone around them better and faster, and can even use their heroism to shield their allies, which is right up there with champion type behavior.
Zealot Barbarian
Zealot Barbarians are like the champions of the gods in the old school sense of the word. These primal powerhouses are invested with divinity itself, which transforms them into a champion of their god on the battlefield.
Their divine fury is one of the best extra damage options for a Barbarian in 5E, and on top of that, Zealots are such champions that it doesn’t actually cost anything to get them to come back from the dead. When a Zealot Barbarian gets knocked down, they are ready, willing, and eager to get up again, you’re never gonna keep them down. And that makes them a D&D champion.
College of Valor Bard
A Bard is a great way to champion a cause, and a Valor Bard is a great way to be a champion who champions champions, to use multiple definitions of the word there. Valor Bards are all about giving Inspiration out where it counts. Specifically, to damage.
Valor Bards can use their Bardic Inspiration to increase anyone’s damage roll, as well as getting an extra attack at 6th level, making them some of the most fighter-y Bards out there. True champions lift their friends up with them, and Valor Bards excel at that.
Mastermind Rogue
Finally there’s the Rogue. The Mastermind Rogue is a curious choice for D&D champion, but hear me out. Mastermind Rogues are mental champions. They’re the ones out there playing 4-D chess. Or at the very least they’re playing chess with co-operative multiplayer turned on, because they are such good tacticians they can use the Help action as a bonus action, and can aid an ally in attacking a creature they’re within 30 feet of, instead of within 5 feet, like normal.
On top of that these mental champions are able to divine information about their targets, and can even start redirecting attacks at their leisure in the higher levels, because when you’re a Mastermind Rogue even your enemy’s turn is secretly your turn.
Now get out there and be the champion of your party!
