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Do you want to play a support fighter that's super easy to use and is not the banneret? Do you want to play a crit fishing build that every time you crit, you inspire your friend? Do you want to
Discover a unique Champion Fighter build in D&D 5.5E 2024 that maximizes heroic inspiration and critical hits for party support.
Key Takeaways
- Heroic inspiration mechanics have changed significantly in 2024, allowing rerolls on any die and transfer between players.
- Champion Fighter subclass synergizes well with heroic inspiration through expanded critical hit chances.
- The Lord's Alliance Agent feat is crucial for granting heroic inspiration on critical hits.
- Multiclassing and origin feats are used strategically to maximize heroic inspiration benefits.
- The build balances combat effectiveness with support capabilities, emphasizing charisma and dexterity.
Summary
- The video introduces a new Champion Fighter build leveraging the 2024 heroic inspiration rules.
- Heroic inspiration now allows rerolling any die and can be passed to allies if already possessed.
- The build focuses on critical hits to inspire allies using the Lord's Alliance Agent feat.
- Multiclassing into Warlock is planned to gain additional origin feats that enhance heroic inspiration.
- The build uses the new Arouser background from Astarian's Book of Hunger's for charisma and skill proficiencies.
- Elf (High Elf) is chosen as the race for Elven Accuracy and useful wizard cantrips.
- Key skills include athletics, persuasion, deception, and stealth to complement the build’s playstyle.
- Fighting style selected is dueling, with weapon masteries focused on rapier and shortbow.
- The build aims for a high crit rate to maximize the benefits of heroic inspiration on critical hits.
- The creator promotes Patreon for access to exclusive subclass PDFs and playtests.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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play the champion fighter in a completely new and interesting way? Then stick around because this is the build for you. Hey guys, it's Warner's and I'm back with another build video for you today. Ever since the 2024 rules came
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out, I wanted to make a build that somehow took advantage of the new heroic inspiration rules. Originally in the 2014 rules, inspiration was a resource your DM could give you essentially whenever they wanted to. Usually in my experience, it was a reward for engaging
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in role play, but it could essentially be given out for any reason. And essentially when you rolled the D20, you were able to give yourself advantage on the roll if you didn't have advantage on it already. But now in the 2024 rules,
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if you, a player character, has heroic inspiration, you can expend it to reroll any die immediately after rolling it and you must use the new roll. If you gain heroic inspiration but already have it, it's lost unless you give it to a player
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character who lacks it. So there's about three main differences, two in the ability itself. So first of all, now it's a reroll for any die, that includes damage dice, D20 rolls, bardic inspiration, your 1D4 blessed die, literally any die you roll, you can
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reroll it and you must take the new roll. So that's super cool, it can be used for a lot of different things now.
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But now if you already have heroic inspiration, you can give it to one of your party members because they don't stack. Also though, there's a bunch of new ways to gain heroic inspiration. For example, humans after a long rest
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automatically gain heroic inspiration. There's a lot of other class abilities and different feats that give access to heroic inspiration as well. But last November when Forgotten Realms Heroes of Faerun came out and the Astarian Book of Hunger's came out, there was a ton of
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new origin feats that introduced new ways to gain heroic inspiration. And this build is going to utilize all of them to make the ultimate heroic inspirer build. What's great about it too is the champion fighter, which is the subclass we're going to be utilizing
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most today, has a mechanic where they can give themselves free heroic inspiration. And then one of the most important feats we're going to be utilizing in this build is the Lord's Alliance agent feat because when you score a critical hit, you can give one
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of your allies heroic inspiration. And the champion fighter's whole thing is that they have an expanded crit rate. So just with those two aspects, we already got a really interesting build going on.
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But there's even more. So let's go ahead and get into the build after I tell you about my Patreon. So every month I come out with 2024 rules compatible subclass PDFs and I even do free play test for
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the content [music] that I haven't released yet. So if you check out my Patreon down below, you can sign up as a free member to experience the free play test. And if you sign up for $3 with my
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Vanguard tier, you can get access to all of my paid PDFs. And with that out of the way, let's go ahead and get into the build. First of all, for our class, we of course are going to be starting with
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fighter. I am going to do a little bit of multiclassing, but just for a couple levels and that's mostly to gain extra origin feats. But for fighter level for our starting skills, we're going to go with athletics and persuasion. This
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build is going to have a pretty high charisma, so I decided to lean into it a bit. And then the champion fighter later gets proficiency in athletics and we're actually going to have a pretty low strength score. So I went ahead and gave
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myself proficiency in athletics so that we can take advantage of the advantage even with a low strength score. With the fighting style, I went ahead and went with the dueling fighting style. And then we get second wind here level one
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and we get three weapon masteries. We are going to get the rapier weapon mastery for Vex and the shortbow weapon mastery with Vex as well. For the third one, pick your favorite and literally for all of the other weapon masteries
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that we get throughout this build, just pick your favorite. You don't need anything else except for the rapier and shortbow. Even the shortbow is optional.
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And that's it for the class. For the background, we're going to be going with the new arouser background. This is from Astarian's Book of Hunger's. It says, "You grew to adulthood in the beating heart of a large city such as Baldur's
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Gate. You spent countless evenings in taverns, playhouses, parlors, gambling dens, savoring all the city had to offer. You are a natural at interacting with people to learn their secrets whether over a high stakes game or a high class soiree. You might have been
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thrown out of an establishment or 10, but only by people who don't know how to party." You automatically get deception proficiency, which works out well with this being a charisma forward build. And then you get another skill of your
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choice. And I went ahead and went with stealth. Stealth is just a great skill and we're going to have a high dex for this build, so yeah. For tool proficiencies, we can actually just pick a gaming set, literally pick whatever
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you want. I don't think anyone actually ever uses these, but maybe I'm wrong. And then we gain access to the tireless reveler origin feat. And this is what it says, "When an ally you can see within 60 feet of yourself expends heroic
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inspiration, you can gain heroic inspiration if you lack it. You can use this benefit a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest." If you lack it will become an
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important line in a lot of these heroic inspiration abilities because some of them have that qualifier and some of them don't and it becomes important in how the build will work. For ability score improvement, we're putting two in
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dexterity and one in charisma. And then the species option, you probably think I was going to pick human, but I'm actually going to pick elf and that is for the classic Elven Accuracy champion fighter build. We want to really get our
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crit rating high because critting in this build does way more than extra damage. And I went ahead and went with the high elf. We get prestidigitation, which is a great cantrip and we can also replace it with any other wizard cantrip
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at the end of a long rest. Wizards have really good cantrip options, so that's pretty nice to have on a fighter. We also gain detect magic and misty step once per day. So yeah, pretty nice little pick up. You get the classic fey
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ancestry and you also get the keen senses where you can pick between insight, perception or survival. I went ahead and went with perception 'cause as we all know, perception is a great skill to have. We only need to sleep 4 hours and
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languages I picked up Elvish and Dwarvish, why not? For ability scores, we're actually going 10 in strength, 15 in dexterity with the plus two making it a 17, 15 constitution, eight intelligence, eight wisdom and 14 charisma with the plus one making it a
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15. For starting equipment, you want to get a rapier, a shield, a shortbow and studded leather. That'll cost you 105 gold and you get 144 if you don't use starting equipment with fighter, so you definitely have enough gold. And that's
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level one. Real quick guys, I'm trying to get to 10,000 subscribers by the end of 2026. The more subscribers I have, the more likely I'll be able to get noticed and the more likely I'll be able to get noticed, the more content I can
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make. So if you enjoy this content, please subscribe down below. Thank you guys again. Let's get back to the video.
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Level two, we're actually going to go into warlock and we're going to get one of our most important origin feats with Lessons of the First Ones. We're going
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Once per turn, when you score a critical hit against a creature, you can choose an ally within 30 feet of yourself who can see or hear you and who lacks heroic inspiration, that ally gains heroic inspiration. And then also Revere Your
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Honor, when an enemy you can see deals damage to an ally of yours that is within 5 feet of you, you have advantage on your next attack roll against that enemy before the end of your next turn.
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And then we're going to go for Lessons of the First Ones again and we're going to gain a second origin feat and we're going to get musician. We gain proficiency with three musical instruments of our choice. Pick whatever
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you want. I like to have a lyre, a drum and bagpipes just cuz they're all very different instruments and I don't know, it just feels nice. But you gain Encouraging Song. As you finish a short or long rest, you can play a song on a
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musical instrument with which you have proficiency and give heroic inspiration to allies who hear the song. The number of allies you can affect in this way equals your proficiency bonus. And that is level two origin feat. And then here
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at level two, you also gain packed magic. You get a warlock spell slot and a couple cantrips. And for spells, I'm going to pick booming blade, Eldritch Blast, Comprehend Languages, Expeditious Retreat and Hex. We got a nice ritual
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spell with Comprehend Languages and we already have detect magic with high elf. Expeditious Retreat is a first level spell that will always be good, especially for a build that isn't going to be really spell focused. And then Hex
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is going to be great because our bonus action is going to be free most of the time anyway, so might as well add some extra damage with Hex. And then level three, we're going to go fighter two and
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we gain action surge. And we all know what action surge is, nice pick up.
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Tactical Mind is great cuz we're going to be able to add a D10 from second wind to an ability check if we fail it. And if the check still fails, we don't expend second wind. Great ability for the fighter. And then at character level
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four, we're going to go into fighter level three and we're going to pick up our subclass, which is champion fighter.
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We gain improved critical. Your attack rolls with weapons and unarmed strikes can score critical hit on a roll of 19 or 20. Great pick up. And then third level, we get remarkable athlete. Thanks to your athleticism, you have advantage
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on initiative rolls and strength athletics checks. In addition, immediately after you score critical hit, you can move up to half your speed without provoking opportunity attacks.
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So we got a built-in little skirmishing ability and we're pretty athletic even though our strength is only 10. And then character level five, we go fighter four and we get more weapon masteries. Pick your favorite, don't really need any
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more for what I got set up. And then we finally get our first feat with Elven Accuracy. And if your DM doesn't allow this, I'm sorry, pick a different feat that gives a plus one to decks. This makes it so that we can increase our
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dexterity intelligence wisdom or charisma score by one to a maximum of 20. And whenever we have advantage on an attack roll using dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, or charisma, we can re-roll one of the dice once.
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Essentially, we get to roll three dice and pick the highest. And then, character level six, we're going to go into warlock level two, and we're going to be able to pick up one more origin feat. And the one more origin feat we're
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picking up is purple dragon rook. So, we gain the following benefits. In treat, we gain proficiency in one of the following skills: insight, performance, or persuasion. I actually put insight here, but honestly, because of our musician feat, it would probably be good
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to get the performance skill. So, pick your favorite though, it doesn't really matter. But then we gain this great ability, rallying cry. When we roll initiative and we don't have the incapacitated condition, we can choose a number of creatures equal to our
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proficiency bonus that we can see within 30 ft of ourselves, and those creatures gain heroic inspiration. And we can do this once per long rest. So, now that we have all of these features, I want to kind of break down how many ways we can
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give heroic inspiration and how they all interact with each other. And then I'll do the DPR for level six. But first, let's look at these features. So, first of all, at the end of every short or long rest with musician, at this level, we
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can give three allies heroic inspiration. And then if any of those allies use their heroic inspiration within 60 ft of me, then I gain heroic inspiration three times per short or long rest. So, that basically means if all the other players use their heroic
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inspiration within 60 ft of me, I will get up to three heroic inspirations back. And then let's say combat is about to start and we've really used a lot of our heroic inspiration. A lot of us are a little dry on them. Then, once per
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long rest, I can use rallying cry and I can give the same amount as musician, my proficiency bonus features, including myself, heroic inspiration within 30 ft.
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And then in the middle of a fight, with my expanded crit range, anytime I land a critical hit, I can give an ally within 30 ft of me heroic inspiration. I want to make clear though, if you use this
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build, you have to change how your group uses heroic inspiration. And what I mean by that is a lot of these have the prerequisite of if you lack it, which means potentially, there's a chance to gain heroic inspiration, but if you
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already have it, it doesn't give you heroic inspiration. And then you can't give that to someone else, either. Those ones include Lord's Alliance Agent and Tireless Reveler. But purple dragon rook and musician don't require the creature to lack it. So, if you use either of
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those abilities to give out heroic inspiration and someone already has the heroic inspiration, it's okay, they can just give it to someone else. But the more active ones, the ones that happen on a critical hit or the ones that
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happen when someone uses heroic inspiration, those you can only benefit if they lack it. So, I personally, if I was playing this character or in this party in general, I would be using my heroic inspiration as much as possible.
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And as our crits become more likely and as our proficiency bonus goes up, more and more heroic inspirations will be happening all the time and more and more you'll be able to use them a ton. If your party is full of optimizers, I
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would recommend everyone picking up tireless reveler because at level 10 the champion fighter gets heroic inspiration every single turn and things could get a little crazy. Let's go over the DPR though. The DPR is pretty simple because this build is pretty simple. So, level
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six, round one, you bonus action cast hex. And then here at level six, you actually have two Eldritch Blast. And Eldritch Blast do a little bit more damage than the rapier since there's two blasts and the rapier still at level six
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here is just one hit. So, you'll bonus action hex, Eldritch Blast, and then action surge, hit them with your rapier.
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And then in rounds two through four, you just booming blade your hexed target. And here at level six, your average DPR in a four-round combat is 20.5. And here are our stats. Then, level seven, level five fighter, we finally get extra
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attack. And we get tactical shift. Whenever we activate second wind as a bonus action, we can move up to half our speed without provoking opportunity attacks. As a champion fighter, we can also do this when we score critical hit.
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So, we could potentially be moving around quite a lot on the battlefield. And then here at level six, we get yet another feat. And because we got purple dragon rook and technically we would have qualified anyway as a martial
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weapon user, but we're going to go ahead and get the purple dragon commandant. We increase our dexterity score by one and we get encourage ally. As a bonus action, you bolster one ally you can see within 30 ft. The ally gains temporary
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hit points equal to 2d6 plus the modifier of the ability score increased by this feat. And we can use this bonus action a number of times equal to our proficiency bonus. And you have advantage on all attack rolls while
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you're bloodied. So, yeah, we get a nice little bonus action temporary hit point ability that we can use when we're not casting hex or switching our hex target.
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And it's a nice little support pseudo heal. And even though we don't want to be bloodied, when we are bloodied, we just get advantage on all our attacks.
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And we have a vex weapon, so oh my gosh, with Elven Accuracy, that'll be really, really nice to have. And then at level seven fighter, level nine character, we get an additional fighting style with the champion. And I went ahead and just
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went with defense. If you're wanting to really commit to the getting bloodied and gaining advantage play style, you might want to pick a different fighting style, but I think this will be a nice one to have. My second choice would be
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blind fighting. They get blindsight at 10 ft. All right, and from here until the end of the build, we're going to be doing the exact same rotation. And that is hex and do your rapier attacks with vex and many ways to gain advantage,
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heroic inspiration uses out the wazoo. Our burst round does 61 DPR, but our average four-round DPR is 38.2. All right, here at level 10 character, level eight fighter, we get our level eight ability score improvement. And we're going to go with the defensive duelist
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feat. Being a finesse weapon user and already having a pretty high AC and no regular use for our reaction, this is just a great defensive option to have.
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Increase our dexterity score by one and we gain parry. You're holding a finesse weapon and another creature hits you with a melee attack, take a reaction to add your proficiency bonus to your armor class, essentially causing the attack to
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miss you. You gain this bonus to your AC against melee attacks until the start of your next turn. So, this starts out as basically shield for only melee attacks.
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And eventually, once we get our proficiency bonus up to six, we're looking at better than shield AC boost, but only for melee attacks. Then level 11 character, level nine fighter, we get indomitable. And the new indomitable is really, really good. We fail a saving
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throw, we can re-roll with a bonus equal to our fighter level. We must use the new roll and we can't use this feature again until we finish a long rest. But then at level 13, we can use it twice
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and at level 17, we can use it three times. So, pretty nice. Level 12 character, level 10 fighter, we get more weapon masteries. But again, I don't really feel like we need them as I've said before, but we got more. Yay!
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And we also gain heroic warrior. The thrill of battle drives you toward victory. During combat, you can give yourself heroic inspiration whenever you start your turn without it. Okay, this is where things get a little complicated, if that's what you want to
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call it. So, as I've been saying, we have so many ways to gain heroic inspiration and we already are using it as often as possible since there's a easy way to get it back. But now we just automatically get one at the start of
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our turn. So, I would try to use it every single turn. If you hit all your attacks, use it on a damage die that's a bit lower. And then, potentially, someone else will use heroic inspiration and you'll get one in between your turns
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and you could use it on like a saving throw or an attack of opportunity or something like that, you know? So, yeah, this makes your champion fighter very, very reliable with all the other inspirations coming at you all the time
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anyway. And then at level 13 character, level 11 fighter, we gain two extra attacks. We can attack three times instead of once whenever we take the attack action on our turn. Here is the level 13 DPR. So, yeah, same deal. Using
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hex, using our rapier attack with our action surge round, we're looking at 99.15 DPR. That third attack really added a lot to that damage. And then our average DPR is 61.95.
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I assume we've gotten half plate at this point, so our AC is 20. And yeah, at level 13, we're looking pretty strong, especially with our dexterity maxed out.
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All right, level 14, level 12 fighter, we get another ability score improvement. And I went ahead and decided to go with inspiring leader. We are two levels in warlock and our charisma score is already pretty high.
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And we already are a great support character, even though we're a fighter. So, let's go ahead and bump our charisma up by one. And when we finish a short or long rest, we can give an inspiring performance, a speech, a song, or a
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dance. When we do so, use up to six allies, which can include yourself, and within 30 ft of yourself who witness the performance, the chosen creatures each gain temporary hit points equal to our character level plus the modifier of the
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ability you increase with this feat. So, now when we do our performance, we're not only giving a lot of people heroic inspiration, we're also giving them temp HP. And then with our purple dragon commandant feat that we got earlier, we
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can also in the middle of combat give people temp HP. So, yeah, things are looking pretty good for a fighter and being able to support. And at level 15 character, level 13 fighter, we get study attacks. You study your opponents
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and learn from each attack you make. If you make an attack roll against a creature and miss, you have advantage on your next attack roll against that creature before the end of your next turn. We love a good advantage, and this
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also works really well with Vex because Vex gives us advantage only if we hit, and now this gives us advantage if we miss. So, basically, no matter what happens, our next attack roll will be at advantage. Level 16 character, level
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14 fighter, we get yet another ability score improvement, and I went ahead and just got our constitution up so we can be a little more tanky. And then, glorious level 17, level 15 fighter, we get to expand our crit range with
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superior critical. Our crit range for attack rolls with weapons and unarmed strikes now score critical hit on an 18, 19, or 20. So, we're going to be giving out heroic inspiration even more often.
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By the way, I'm going to show you some of the critical hit math towards the end of the video, so stick around for that.
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Our level 17 DPR, we're doing the same thing we've been doing this whole time.
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Our crit range has expanded though, so our burst round, we're looking at 104.66 DPR, but our average DPR for four rounds of combat is 65.4. Level 17, we got 155 hit points, 20 AC, and things are looking good. All right, now we got the
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final leg of our journey. Level 18 character, level 16 fighter, we get another ability score improvement. So, this is technically not rules as written, but I'm pretty sure most DMs would be okay with this. I'm choosing to wait to take my ability score
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improvement until I reach level 19 so I can get the epic boon feat. But here at level 18, I do still get more weapon masteries. But again, we don't really care about weapon masteries at this point. We just have so many, and we have
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a specific build we're using with the rapier, so yeah. But then, at level 19 fighter, we do get that ability score improvement, and we get to choose the epic boon feat, and I went with the boon of fate, mostly for thematics. So, we
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get to increase one ability score of our choice by one. I went ahead and went with constitution. That makes our constitution 18. We're looking pretty good there. And we get improved fate.
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When you or another creature within 60 ft of you succeeds or fails a D20 test, you can roll 2D4 and apply the total rolled as a bonus or penalty to the D20 roll. Once you use this benefit, you
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can't use it again until you roll initiative or finish a short or long rest. So, yeah, I just felt like with this character's inspiring everyone support team, I thought the boon of fate would be a nice little pick. We can
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debuff or buff our allies' enemies or our own rolls. So, yeah. And then, level 20 character, level 18 fighter, we gain survivor. You attain the pinnacle of resilience in battle. You gain these benefits. Defy death, you have advantage
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on death saving throws. Moreover, when you roll an 18, 19, or 20 on death saving throws, you gain the benefits of rolling a 20 on it. If you don't know, that means you get to automatically become conscious and you are healed to 1
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HP. And you get heroic rally. At the start of each of your turns, you regain hit points equal to five plus your constitution modifier if you are bloodied and have at least one hit point. So, very nice little combo here.
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If we do get bloodied, this is a way to kind of stay close to bloodied and have all that free advantage, but also not die cuz this is like plus nine HP every turn, which is nice, but it's not like a
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crazy amount, especially at level 20. Let's go ahead and go over our level 20 DPR though. Because we have the average AC set to 20 now, it did lower the DPR very slightly. So, our round one first round DPR is 103.63,
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and our average four round DPR is 65. The final thing I would like to go over though is this little statistic thing here, and specifically where it says crit here at level 20. Remember, we're going to have advantage a lot of the
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time. When we make our three attacks, there's a 76% chance we're going to crit at least once. With action surge, that goes up to 94.64.
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So, very likely we're going to be able to give at least one person heroic inspiration every round here at level 20, and most likely multiple. I'm going to go over all levels with that real quick. So, at level 17, it's very
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similar 76.84 to get at least one crit, 94.64 during action surge. Level 13, it's 61.26.
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With action surge, it's 84.99, so 85 basically. At level nine, it's 46.86. With action surge, it's 71.76.
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And then, at level six, it's 27.1, and with action surge, it's 46.86. In a four round combat, if we're critting, we're definitely giving out heroic inspiration. And that is so fun with all the other heroic inspirations we're giving out outside of combat,
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during short rest, when we gain initiative, we can give 10 HP out with a bonus action. We're kind of a mini party face. We got persuasion, perception, insight, or performance, depending what you pick, deception, athletics. We got a
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ton of great proficiencies. This build seems like it would be super solid and super fun to play, and your party would freaking love you. Hope you guys like the build. I had a lot of fun making it.
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Reminder to check out my Patreon down below, and I'm going to go ahead and give a shout out to my Patreon subscribers. So, if you subscribe on Patreon, you can be in this list as well. Thank you so much everyone in the
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Vanguard tier. We got Alex S, Brandon M, Brian, Cormac F, DSR, Stony H, and Matt T. While editing, we also got Troy B and Daniel S who subscribed. Thank you guys so much for watching, and have a great
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rest of your day. Peace out. [music]
Topics:D&D 5.5EChampion FighterHeroic InspirationCritical HitsLord's Alliance AgentArouser BackgroundElven AccuracyMulticlassingDueling Fighting StyleComrade Warners
