Champion Subclass Alteration

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I'm here today because I was wanting to get feedback on a few adjustments I've done to the Fighter subclass: Champion.

Intent

The motivation behind these alterations is to streamline some clunky text that unfairly punishes a player not planning out their character's development 7+ levels ahead
(which goes against the simplicity that the subclass gives) and to give extra durability to a class not as dependent on rests.

The reason these are present is that (1) Remarkable Athlete actually becomes less effective when you invest in athlete related stuff, which can feel really bad for those that make that mistake. And (2) the subclass needs longer periods between rests to shine and doesn't get any defensive or utility methods to achieve this until level 10 (and only if you are able to choose the Defense or Protection fighting styles). And (3) getting only one thing at level 3 when a lot of other Fighter subclasses get two is disappointing.

That being said, its simplicity is a huge appeal that I don't want to majorly impact if possible with these alterations nor do I want to unintentionally introduce stranger than expected features.

(I left out Champion features which I had not altered for ease of understanding. So the subclass would still have the extra critical range and health Regeneration)

Alterations

The 1st feature, "Fighting Spirit", allows the Champion to gain Temporary hit points equal to its fighter level at the beginning of combat. This helps get the longevity going in a hopefully non-intrusive, non-abusable manner. Only issue is this might become tedious for players looking to not juggle resources.

Fighting Spirit

At 3rd level, when you roll initiative, gain temporary hit points equal to your fighter level.

The 2nd feature, "Remarkable Athlete", I wanted this feature to avoid punishing specific at character generation decisions, so the 2 skills being chosen will either be non-physical skills that get half the bonus or they are Proficient skills that get a Proficiency Bonus multiplied by 1.5. Does the current wording promote this or is better wording required?

Remarkable Athlete

Starting at 7th level, select two skills from the Starting Proficiencies of this class. You may add half your Proficiency bonus (round up) to those two skills and any Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check you make that doesn’t already use your Proficiency Bonus. If your already or later become proficient with one or both of these two skills, you may instead increase the Proficiency Bonus added by half.

In addition, your jumping distance increases by a number of feet equal to your proficiency bonus.

At the level 10 spot, I wanted to give the Player a choice between favoring short fights or protracted ones, but am unsure how this plays out. Are Tenacious Spirit and Determined Spirit balanced?

Additional Fighting Style

At 10th level, you can choose a second option from the Fighting Style class feature as well as one of the following:

  • Determined Fighting Spirit: When you roll initiative, you gain double your Fighter level in Temporary hit point
  • Tenacious Fighting Spirit: You gain Temporary hit points equal to half your Fighter level at the beginning of your turn instead of when you roll initiative.

Desired input

What I'm looking to be answered with this post are the following:

  • Does each alteration achieve what I've stated?
  • Are the alterations balanced individually and all together?
  • Do these changes make multi-class dips to good or just tedious?
  • If there is an unbalanced feature or combination thereof, what makes it/them so?

Best Answer

You really like temporary hit points, don't you?

All jokes aside here's my review of each of your points:

Fighting spirit - helps get the longevity going in a hopefully non-intrusive, non-abusable manner

Seems balanced to me, altough a bit tedious. Depending on how experienced your player(s) are going to be, it might be a bit of a hassle remembering to change your hit points at the beginning of each fight.

Remarkable athlete - avoid punishing specific at character generation decisions

Great idea but I find the wording a bit confusing. I'd reword it as follows:

At 7th level, you gain the following benefits:

  • Pick two skills from the Fighter Class's initial proficiencies. You can add half your proficiency bonus (round up) to any check made with those skills. If you are already proficient or you gain proficiency later on with either ability, you may instead increase the Proficiency Bonus added by half.
  • You can add half your proficiency bonus (round up) to any Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check you make that doesn't already use your proficiency bonus.
  • When you make a running long jump, the distance you can cover increases by a number of feet equal to your Strength modifier.

Additionally, if you plan to make the subclass more appealing outside combat you could consider changing the first point with Expertise with one or two skills. This may or may not be balanced depending on what sources you allow. Keep in mind that with Tasha's and UAs even Ranger and Barbarian get some kind of Expertise, so giving it to a Fighter could work out.

Alternatively, if Expertise seems too overpowered to you, you could also restrict the two additional proficiencies to skills with which the character doesn't have proproficiency with. This would give the character a wider range of skills he is good with, which I'd say, lines up with your initial objective.

Additional Fighting Style - give the Player a choice between favoring short fights or protracted ones

This is a tough one. I'd say Determined spirit is a bit underwhelming while Tenacious spirit is definitely overpowered. Five (or even more) temporary HP at the beginning of every turn means a Heroism spell permanently cast on you. Additionally, if you plan to keep the subclass's ease of use, having your player constantly change their temporary HPs is probably something you'd want to avoid.

Can't really think of any alternative here, though. Instead of giving the character temporary hit points with two features you could think of something else entirely. Maybe something involving their Bonus Action, which Fighters generally have little use for (except for Second Wind, which happens only once). Or maybe granting them Advantage in some particular circumstance, besides flanking. Or yet again, giving them some bonus to their Initiative roll, such as the ability to add an ability score to it (or maybe half their Proficiency Bonus). You have many other bonuses you can play with, aside from temporary hit points.

In conclusion, I'd say your ideas for 1st and 7th level are pretty cool but you should work more on the 10th level one. I'd suggest you to re-think your goal as well for this one, as "choosing the length of a fight" is usually something a player has little control over.

About multiclassing, Champion is already a useful dip for many builds, but your 3rd level feature shouldn't be too broken in a multiclassing scenario (3 temporary HP isn't gamebreaking) and multiclassing up to 7th level wouldn't really be worth it IMO.

I hope this helps, have fun!

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