Tanking
Let me begin with a disclaimer: I’ve sunk A LOT of hours into MMOs. I’ve spent months of my life working the DPS charts in a WoW raiding guild (Enhancement Shaman FTW!), and my SWOTR smuggler is currently trudging through the hot sands of Tatooine. (Which sucks, BTW. The sand is coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.) I love that these games have introduced a new generation of gamers to tabletop, and I think that TRPGs are better for their presence.
HOWEVER!
The Heal/Tank/DPS thing sticks in my craw. I can forgive the notion of DPS, since dealing hit point damage is a necessary and common part of the TRPG experience (magus, monk, fighter, archers, etc.). And the party generally needs some form of healing, even if it’s only the ubiquitous Wand of Cure Light Wounds for use after combat (as it probably should be after level 1 and before heal comes online at 11th). But I see the idea of a Tank come up again and again on forums, and I’ll sit and stare at my monitor and wonder what these guys are thinking.
Bottom line: THERE IS NO AGGRO MECHANIC!
You can plop your big tough lump into a narrow corridor, or you can try and role-play insulting the baddies, but if compel hostility is your best mechanical option, you need to reexamine your paradigms. The big dumb fighter is not there to “protect the party;” he’s there to fight! The squishy guys are supposed to see to their own defense by A) standing in the back B) casting defensive spells like Mirror Image or C) getting out of the way via mobility spells like Fly. In my mind the correct video game reference isn’t DPS/Healer/Tank, but Shoot the Medic First! That’s how this game is played, and no amount of AC or HP from the front line is going to change that.
What do you guys think about the DPS/Healer/Tank paradigm? Does it have a place on the tabletop, or does it need to be excised from our collective TRPG vernacular? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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That’s a removal operation that isn’t going to be quickly accomplished, methinks. Group by group, session by session, teams and squads will attempt to follow this paradigm and be overwhelmed, annihilated, destroyed, and they will wonder what went wrong. Harsh words about ‘duties’ will be exchanged, cadres will combust and dissolve.
But all is not lost! Some will learn. A minority, perhaps, even single percentage digits in the vast multitude of attempts, if one prefers to think of such a bleak outlook. But some will learn to attend to their own wellbeing. They will be wizards who understand the value of Invisibility over Acid Arrow, and clerics who don’t dump Constitution. They shall take the form of berserking barbarians, for whom the death of their enemies forms their sturdy armor. They will be the wily rogues and slayers who slink in the shadows, patiently waiting for the moment to deal their incredible, lethal strokes, who eschew the thought of marching side by side in the wake of those walking bastions with armor classes that scale the heavens.
Lo, in my mind’s eye, I see these characters, and I laugh in joyous celebration. The threshing of character sheets shall cull the muh-mor-puh-gers, weaning the suckling babes from the udders of the beast of predictable programming and boss raids. And, when the blood finally cools and the stones cease their creaking with the weight of empty skulls, what remains shall be…
glorious.
“…value of Invisibility over Acid Arrow…”
Value of something stopped dead in its tracks by See Invisibility, as opposed to a long-range projectile that ignores Spell Resistance? The classic contrast Haste/Fireball is a better analogy.
Well, at 3rd level when you get it (or 4th, you poor sorcerers), the monstrous foes are unlikely to have this particular property, and the NPC casters will have to have learned/prepared it. Being unseen has in and out of combat applications, all of which are made far easier by not being counterable except with its specific opposites.
While Acid Arrow -is- my favorite level 2 damaging spell (mostly by dint of evocation usually going on my banned school list), it has 1 application, which is to do damage that the men with sharp sticks can generally also do. The clever mage can find exceptions, but fresh spells are harder to come by than mana potions, so the casters need to make sure each spell they have stretches as far as it can go in a day.
Later on when you’re fighting demons that can naturally see invisibility, you have other tools anyway.
I guess my DM just really likes spellcasters and monsters with blindsense/tremorsense…and stuff that poisons/ablilty drains the fellows with sharp sticks…and incorporeal enemies. In fact, I think he’s been conditioning our party to just rain damage on monsters before they get to use their battlefield-control abilities. Oh dear Pelor, we’re the monsters, aren’t we?
I feel like a synthesized instrumental is playing over your last paragraph, which ends with the beginning of “Princes of the Universe.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BMP-H2ydJk
Perfect.
The great thing about D&D, you don’t need to follow the paradigm. What’s to say you can’t be both tank and DPR? Let the enemy break their weapons against your might while you smash in their face with a full round hasted power attack! A paladin is capable of doing all three, given the need to do so. Sure you still have your beatsticks and healbots, but when you’ve got yourself an enlarged wall of muscle and steel in front of you who can reach you from around the corner with a lunging spear attack, it’s hard NOT to ignore that.
Imagine if you were the anti-party. How would you go about beating a party with the paladin you describe? I’m guessing you would try and get the squishy characters down ASAP rather than concentrating on the dude with the amazing AC. Most GMs will control monsters in such a way that “makes sense” in the fiction of the game world, exactly as you suggest: “That big guy in sparkly armor said something unflattering about our brood mother. Get him!” But if this were purely a tactical minis game (and that’s the part of the game I’m describing here), the smart tactical play is to shoot the wizard or the cleric first.
The thing is, often enemies are melee, probably for the specific reason of it’s harder for Melee *to* just bypass the Paladin to attack the squishies. If they try the Paladin’s probably going to hit them. Hard. And unless they have ridiculous move speed he’ll then move in next to where they wind up next round, hit them hard again, and now they have to take yet another hit if they want to continue for the squishies. It really is more worth-while for melee to attack the guy in front generally.
In a situation where there’s pure melee, and assuming it’s not an ambush, and assuming the Paladin has combat reflexes / won the initiative, then sure. But if I’m a pack of wolves, I would still rather surround the PCs and pick off the weak, scrawny prey in the robes. That strengthens the party genetically, ensuring that there will be fat and healthy adventurers for the next generation.
Now, would you, as the pack of wolves, go after a wizard who’s cloaked in magical fire that a creature of animalistic intelligence would only be able to perceive as “FIRE! BAD!”?
Our alpha has seen many winters. He does not fear the tools of man.
“There is no aggro mechanic!”
Knight and Crusader disagree.
http://dnd.arkalseif.info/spells/tome-of-battle-the-book-of-nine-swords–88/iron-guards-glare–3607/index.html
http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060501a&page=2
I do agree that that is not the Fighter’s primary goal.
Sure. There are any number of game elements that can do a passable imitation of “martial dude that protects the party.” Knight is probably the most direct correlation I’ve ever seen. But those mechanics simply aren’t baked into the system in the same way as an MMO. If you’re a new player and you come to the table thinking that you’ll put on a suit of full plate and protect the party, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.
Yeah, it’s not built in to the classic frontline combatant… other than yelling at the goblins about how their mothers were hamsters and their fathers smelled of elderberries, and hoping that some of them understand Common.
The most interesting piece I’ve ever read on the team roles is the Forge of Combat. The idea is that you have an Anvil (sets up the enemies with positioning and control spells), the Hammer (damages and destroys enemies) and the Arm (buffs and enables the Hammer)
If you ever find the time, it’s a really fun read. It’s helped to shape how I view tactics in Pathfinder, mostly for the better.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i5hWkHXHOetRlpLOmxbpoEWod77psN0JcwFvxClNrGc/edit
Funny old world. My post is mostly a copy + paste from an old reddit comment of mine:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/1e2jql/i_love_this_sub_and_all_of_the_wonderfull_players/
You actually linked to the same article as the OP of that thread.
I see this opinion often, and it’s like people ignore the tanking mechanics that are so clearly in place!
In no particular order:
* Opportunity Attacks: Huge tanking mechanic. Most enemies in the game are either melee-oriented or melee exclusive. This means that they will tend to move toward one person and attack them; OAs mean they tend not to switch targets when they do. You can either eat an attack or waste your turn to change targets, and neither of those are good options.
* Grappling: Takes away both of those options.
* Sentinel: Speaking of which, Sentinel potentially takes away both of those options too. Disengage does nothing against Sentinel, and if they eat the attack they stop moving. If the enemy does engage with a squishy ally, you can go save them by standing close enough that the enemy will suffer a reaction attack for attacking them instead of you.
* Compelled Duel, Panache, Bear Totem Attunement, etc.: Several mechanics exist that give your enemies Disadvantage on things for attacking anyone other than you.
There are probably more, but it’s early. Add on top of that things like threats, insults, provocations, distractions, and the like, and you have a healthy arsenal of tactics.
Let me give you an example of an effective tank, and one of my favorite builds overall, particularly by mid-high levels. I speak, of course, of the Barbarian/Rogue.
The Barb/Rogue has all the defensive features you could ever hope for. They are absurdly difficult to kill, tending to take 1/2, 1/4, or 0 no damage from everything. They have a lot of HP. They have good saves. They can easily carry a fight.
When it comes to tanking though, won’t they just go attack something else? Nope, probably not, because I have:
* High initiative, to get to them first.
* High speed, to get to them extra first.
* Sneak Attack, for absurdly powerful Opportunity Attacks.
* Sentinel, to make those attacks sticky.
* Reckless Attack, to give the enemies a little more incentive to attack me.
* Sentinel again, because you’d much rather attack me with Advantage and do very little than get hit with a reaction Sneak Attack.
* Peerless grappling, and the speed to use it for battlefield positioning.
* Taunts, insults, barbs, etc.
Overall I tank quite well.
I think that attacks of opportunity are at the top of that list for a reason. They are the only part of the system that 1) encourages the baddies not to run around the front line and 2) exists independent of character build choices.
Clearly it’s possible to have a “melee character that specializes in protecting his allies,” but you’ve got to make the system bend over backwards to make it work. That’s really the crux of what I’m getting at. If a WoW-head comes to Pathfinder, his first “tank” will probably have a sword and board, and that could result in confusion and disappointment.
The same could be said of WoW and threat*. Threat is the only tanking mechanic that exists independent of build choice for a WoW character. Taunts and bubbles and other tanking mechanics are all class features and sometimes spec features. If someone fresh from WoW and never having played D&D before wants to play a tank, they should figure out how to build one, as the mechanics do exist within the classes.
In fact, D&D tanking is nice, because Sentinel provides a fairly comprehensive melee tanking package, and anyone can take that.
* At least 10 years ago when I was still playing WoW, I have no idea what the game is like now.
Oh, and Grappling is available to everyone.
I have also thought of ways to “guard” the party, and I have to agree that it’s a hard concept to get around.
Feats and abilities that let you take attacks or damage targeted at allies only get you so far.
I think if an Agro mechanic was introduced, it would not last long as your enemy would likely have it too.
As much fun as making all the enemies attack the high dodge/health Tank would be, it would be less fun when your healer suddenly gets a hate-boner for their barbarian instead of stopping a dying ally’s bleeding…
So for my part, I would say no agro please.
Enemy behavior is probably one of the least regulated aspects of gaming. You’ll get a few “tactics” entries in some stat blocks, but beyond that it’s always up to the GM. I wouldn’t want to take away that flexibility, but I wonder if there could be some way to reduce table variation? One dude might have the monster attack the last PC that attacked it, while another dude might have it attack the weakest looking PC. I wonder if the Knowledge skills could be a good place to telegraph that kind of info more clearly?
Or perhaps a Perception roll to see what his behavior is thus far.
Maybe a use of read surface thoughts…
Agro does exist against players though and is purely psychological.
There is a Halfling Gunslinger who has evaded death twice now (nearly killing three of us total across both encounters) in one campaign and is basically a Kill-on-Sight target for future encounters.
It’s an open-ended campaign so we may or may not run into him again.
The DM was stoked he lived this long though, so who knows. I would laugh if he became a boss in the future.
I go by what the enemy is, and what specifically they are doing.
For example, bandits are smart enough to go for the weaker enemies. However, if they are ambushing travelers, they’ll typically aim for the mount first, cut off their escape. Goblins and Kobolds do likewise, not because they are thoughtful of tactics, but simply because they’d rather stab the frail librarian than the bulky warrior. Mercenaries will have a more methodical method of fighting and might even use combination tactics.
Orcs, trolls, bugbears, ogres, large creatures like owlbears or elephants, and the like all go for whoever is biggest, loudest, and most in their face. Typically this is the martial types.
Chromatic Dragons, btw, are *assholes* who will do everything they can to make you fly. They don’t fight fair. You have to *earn* a successful dragon fight, in my group at least. =)
*cry
In Pathfinder, if an enemy has the Confused status, they have a 1 in 4 chance to either:
-Act normally
-Attack the nearest creature
-Do nothing
-Attack themselves
… plus, if a creature attacks a creature that is confused, they *have* to attack the creature that attacked them. So there definitely *is* an Aggro mechanic in Pathfinder, it’s just kind of niche; the only way I know to consistently get the Confused status on someone is with Confusion spells or as a Madness Domain Cleric at 8th level. But it would be super easy to build a high AC Confusion-Based tank. Maybe not as much HP as you would like, but I’m sure there are creative ways around that.
One of the things I love about Pathfinder is its ability to Lego together so many cool abilities to fulfill almost any concept. My own iteration of “melee dude that protects his pals” was a helpful halfling riding my illustrator’s huge wildshaped turtle. That thing was a 7 x 7 square of reach, buffs, and silly mechanics. I think I got his Aid Another up to +15 AC at 11th level or so, and the turtle’s vital strike (aid another gave it +13 to hit or so) was rolling a truly goofy amount of d8s.
4e gave the fighter a way to draw enemies through marking, which gave the target enemy a good few reasons to focus on the fighter, with penalties to hit others, and possibly also an OA.
I personally liked that the defenders had the tools to protect squishy companions.
Good call. I think that 4th had the concept of MMO style tanking baked more into the system. While it’s certainly possible to build “melee dude that protects his friends” in other iterations of the game, the concept isn’t central to play in the same was it is in an MMO.
Might be nitpicking here, but I feel like CRPG tanking and 4E tanking are slightly different. In Xenoblade Chronicles, (I know it’s not an MMO, but it seems to be the same thing) Rein’s “tanking” mechanic is creating aggro so monsters (which are programmed to attack the one with the most aggro) attack him. 4E fighter-tanking is the fighter making enemies take a penalty to attack rolls, but it’s still possible for monsters to attack rogues/monks/wizards/whatever.
Oh sure. The mechanics differ on a number of levels, but my larger point is that the idea of “everybody hit this guy” is more present in the rules of 4e than other editions.
Absolutely.
To get around this whole “enemies wont attack the tank” thing, I just went and made a character who could effectively mop up a fight after thr party has already died. Wnd being a cleric means that once the threats gone I can just go around reviving everyone
lol. We’ll call it the resurrection tank. Looks like a winner to me.
One thing I consistently see in guides and advice for people who want to tank is, if you want to tank, you need to give the enemy a good reason to target you. In a TTRPG, if you have absurdly high AC and health but no reason for the enemy to go after you (say, a 3.5 dex, wis, and con focused monk without a way to get Dex to damage) the bad guys are just gonna ignore you and go after the people they can hit and are actually hurting them. If on the other hand you can also dish huge damage, or control the battlefield with huge reach and trip, you can give even tactical enemies a reason to focus on you. One of the more fun ways is to have the tank be a cleric with heavy armor, a shield, and a ton of defensive buffs. Suddenly “shoot the medic first” not only becomes harder, but is what the party wants in the first place.
Imho, having a guy in the party whose job is to take the hits is smart, but it also has to be played smart. The baddies are going to attack someone, so it helps if you have someone who specializes in taking those attacks. However, again, they must have a reason to draw those attacks. Personally, I think the best option is to have the tank have some other role as well (e.g. dpr master, healer) ans have everyone else invest enough into defense that they aren’t “squishy” easy targets. For a 5e example, if the party is classic rogue, wizard, fighter, cleric, the fighter (knight) punishes people for hitting guys other than him and deals very good damage, the cleric is wearing heavy armor and a shield as all good clerics should to make hitting them about as easy as hitting the fighter except they aren’t doing the fighter’s threatening damage or have the knight’s threat drawing ability, the rogue’s cunning action makes pursueing him a work in futility and just leaves you vulnerable to everyone else while trying to pin him down, and the god wizard controls the battlefield with spells like grease and evard’s spiked tentacles of forced intrusion to inhibit movement while using mirror image, misty step, and similar spells to dodge and avoid like the rogue while those heavy dpr now have free reign to whack them.
As a party, it is so nice when that all comes together beautifully. And of you’re facing, say, a stone golem, city guards, or similar foes with mid to low tactical abilities, it absolutely should work. Of course, as a DM, it’s your job to provide complications for the party to overcome, and one of the easiest is to provide situations where the party’s standard tactics don’t work. Not every time or even often, lest the party feels you’re unfairly targeting them and every enemy seems to know what they’re weaknesses are. It also tends to throw them for a loop more if their tactics usually work roughly as intended the few times it doesn’t. This is one reason the banderhobb is one of my favorite monsters in the game. It provides the perfect excuse to bypass the tank, go directly for the squishier guys, and even split the party up so their smooth teamwork falls apart. Similarly, that ancient lich you guys made mad has a lot of resource to study up on you guys and try to hit you where you are weakest. When done right, they can have their usual tactic of healer/tank/dpr that lets them shine and feel good against lesser and random encounters, but against the bigger and tougher ones they suddenly have to adapt on the fly when it doesn’t go quite so well. An easy way to make the harder and more memorable while encouraging creative thinking from players.
…and I just realized what a WoT that was. Sorry, I took the flaw: excessively verbose.
Nice Order of the Stick callback. Man I love me some OotS.
I agree that everyone needs to be a threat of some kind. That kind of undermines the concept of party roles though. I guess that’s why I dislike the MMO terminology. It implies a kind of “balanced party” play that creates rigidity in group composition and play style.
I swear I recall hearing references to “the tank” prior to MMOs…..existing.
If that’s correct, it probably meant something different and the term (like all the other roleplaying terms) were stolen by videogames, morphed into something different, and then when people hear them again in reference to TRPGs they have no idea that the same terms mean different things.
I think that is correct. You can argue that tank is a generic term with meanings specific to each game, but WoW is the 500 lb gorilla here. It tends to be the dominate meaning, and that can be a real problem when it comes time to learn about TRPGs.
The big issue is that in a TTRPG party everybody is DPS at heart. Tanking as a mechanic actually cuts away at the strategy of the game, because instead of making the party think about how to approach the combat they just end up with every fight being forced into some form of tank-n-spank.
Aggro is a mechanic that has to exist because the game has to have a way to give the mobs a targeting preference, since there isn’t a real person controlling it. On the tabletop, on the other hand, the GM can make decisions about what makes the most sense for the monsters to do and usually attack the guy that has an AC of 26+ isn’t the right choice.
Now, I understand that some people want to play the big sack of hit points that monsters have to slog through, but you don’t have to put some kind of mechanical means to force this to happen. If you want to be scary in a fight with high AC you can just build a sword and board fighter with Dueling, go Champion to get Defense or Go Battlemaster for some maneuvers, and then just have at it with a long sword and a good strength score. People tend to notice the guy that does 1d8 + 4 to 7 damage that can make multiple attacks a round. They also tend to not want to give them an extra attack by trying to walk past them to get at the squishies.
All in all though, it’s about what your group considers fun. I don’t like those kinds of mechanics, but I know people who do, and there’s nothing wrong with either opinion.
I have seen so far 3 “I am Tank” joke threads on r/Pathfinder_RPG in the last 24 hours or so. Congratulations, you have created a monster.
Now I am become Meme, the destroyer of forums.
I mean, I’ve made a Tank-like build work. But it was as playing a Castellan (Cavalier Archetype), not a fighter. And my job wasn’t just to take hits. I also hit back, like, really hard. But mostly the tank stuff was role-playing driven, as my Castellan was pretty emotionally vulnerable, and when she took a cause, she took it hard, and would gladly give her life for her allies.
I think the big distinction (and the one I should have penciled into the OP) is this: You can make a tank-like playstyle work, but it’s not central to the game in the same way it is in an MMO. They’re usually niche builds, and although they can be both fun and functional, they aren’t necessary for the success of a party. More than that, they require a degree of system mastery that a fresh-off-the-WoW newbie who says “I want to play a tank” likely won’t possess.
As I write I’m thinking of a buddy of mine who disappointed himself with a gun tank, and another who tried to turn a paladin into a “protect my allies” type with only the low DC Compel Hostility spell. That’s why I’m against the term “tanking” as jargon for tabletop: it leads to disappointed players. Or at least it did for my friends.
Yeah, that makes sense. Parties really don’t need a tank. Just another way MMO players transferring to Tabletop get screwed over I guess.
There was no Tank in table top paper and dice D&D, or any other table top paper and dice game. It was not needed as your figure or peace took up space and had an assumed area in front that your weapon would make hard to run though without damage.
So you formed a line of Fighter, healer in plate and that kept things from getting behind you in corridor. Somewhat biger space thief and other leather would be front lines to protect mage. Larger than that you avoided unless you hired men at arms to fill it in. Yes sometime enemy would attempt to charge though and you get a double damage attack but then they would get though if there were two of them your body would always block one.
And no one could stand in the same space or pass through another character to get somewhere.
Computer games it has been extremely difficult to make characters take up space so there has been no way for a character to actually block an enemy from moving through them or the realistic zone in front where your weapon gets in the way of them going though. So they had to come up with the unrealistic threat to replace physically blocking. IN D&D your fighter was a major damage dealer as well until mages got to high-level spells that needed no tanking because nothing but ash was left after the first spell.
But that was late 70’s to mid 80’s maybe they felt like they have to copy computer inefficiency now.
Thanks for the perspective, Milferd! It’s so easy to think in terms of MMOs first, since so many gamers these days seem to travel from the computer to the tabletop. I tend to forget that game development historically went in the opposite direction.
My first real (not single-session) D&D character was literally built to be a MMO-style tank. I gave him the closest thing to an aggro mechanic that there is in 5e: the sentinel feat. He could punish enemies trying to disengage from him or attacking nearby allies.
He was a total tactical dead-weight. The sentinel feat came into play exactly once in the campaign.
You, my good Nutt, are the reason I’ve written this little diatribe. I want no other player to suffer that experience ever again.
I don’t think a tank should be NECESSARY to the well-being of a party any more than you need to follow the standard formula for the other parts of a party (caster, healbot, skillmonkey, etc), but if that’s the archetype a player want’s to play, why not let them? I think it would be easy enough to make a “taunt” mechanic in most systems, based on either damage or saves or some combination of the two. Some people like playing healers. Just because its’ suboptimal in D&D 3.5, does that mean the whole concept should be excised from the campaign? If a player wants to be a big, beefy wall of HP who can simply wait for the enemies to fall over from exhaustion rather than blood-loss (or to many fireballs to the face), who are we to tell them they’re wrong?
I’d rather tell them up front than let them figure it out for themselves after several levels of, “Well I don’t die, but I don’t feel like I’m doing anything either.” I saw that happen to a couple of my buddies, and I’d rather help others to avoid that fate.
Sure, if that’s the kind of game you’re going to be running then by all means warn the players. GM’s not warning people was sort of campaign we’re getting into and then being upset when we don’t do what they expected is a pet peeve. But let me ask you this- would the game be seriously diminished if you homebrewed some kind of aggro ability, as either a feat or class feature? Or if you used a Bloodied/Crippled mechanic (reducing performance when you’re low on HP) to make in-combat healing more valuable?
Not at all. What I’m arguing against here isn’t so much “let the tough guy take the brunt of the attack.” There are plenty of ways to make that work. What I want to discourage is allowing new players to believe that some form of tactics from one game is directly applicable to another. I’d discourage a new Magic the Gathering player from attempting to run a queen’s gambit as well.
I agree that “aggro” shouldn’t be a mechanic in a PNP game. I even find mechanics like 4e’s “marking” a bit weird and somewhat off-putting. Monsters should be allowed as much freedom as players in their targeting, because the DM is quite capable of role-playing them, unlike a computer. And generally, a high AC and/or good defenses are a reason not to attack a character, due to the enemy having more success attacking “squishier” targets. Even a wolf pack or a tiger knows you go for the weakest member of the herd first. So everyone should have some sort of defensive capability, even if it’s simply a good Stealth check.
However, a PC who wants to be attacked and can give foes a reason to attack him first – generally through using mechanics like reach + trip and/or Bodyguard to make attacking anybody else a frustrating proposition, or dealing enough combat damage to force the enemy to try and deal with him first – should be allowed to use his schtick. Present me with a compelling reason to focus my efforts on a specific target and I may well choose to do just that.
True that. I think that players coming from a video game world get frustrated with the lack of enemy predictability. You can become familiar with an enemy’s attack patterns in a CRPG, so I think that expectation carries over to the tabletop. It just takes a little learning to realize that controlling enemy action is something you’ve got to work towards actively rather than anticipate passively. It may be an obvious point, but the fact that a “DM is quite capable of role-playing [enemies], unlike a computer” affects every aspect of play, player expectations included.
I think Dragonlance had an aggro mechanic
Any chance of a link? I’d be curious to see what that looks like in practice.
3 levels of Guided Blade Swashbuckler, 3 levels of Vexing Daredevil Mesmerist, rest in Devoted Muse – You can redirect an attack to yourself and if it misses, they are forced to continue attacking you until the end of their turn. Costs only a single AoE – build comes online (Weak version) ~level 2 and the strong version comes online ~level 4. The biggest issue that I’ve had with tank characters is the fact that 90% of my party will go straight past my choke point and into melee without a second thought.
8 Con Magus runs right past me and dies on first turn – then blames me for his unconsiousness for not drawing their attacks. Rogue runs pasts me and suffers from heavy damage. I’m sitting there like “dudes… if you waited one turn… ONE TURN!” – but too many people want the super fast pace battles that end in one to two turns rather than to plan out the most strategic outcome. “Win Quickly” is more important to them than “Saving daily resources for the boss”.
Sounds like dumb players shouting “tank can’t hold aggro” while running into the fire has leaked out of video games. :/
This is actually one of the things I don’t like about PF2, that Attacks of Opportunity are now only available at higher levels and for specific classes. I rather like playing the tank/melee brute, and even if I can’t compel enemies to target me I would like to at least have a zone of control that they have to manuever around. Plus it just doesn’t feel realistic to me that you can rush right by an armed soldier without him getting a hit in.
I thought that Starfinder got the balance right on that one. Simplified spells and the business of defensive casting; simplified the number of things that could trigger a AoO.
Tanks are a thing in D&D, and this is good. If everyone primarily contributed to combat by doing damage, things would be boring. If everyone saw to their own defense and offense, they wouldn’t need a team.
In MMORPGs, tanks work by attracting attacks to you. In D&D, they work by punishing attempts to attack anyone else. That’s part of why attacks of opportunity are important; you need to be able to control the battlefield to stop enemies from just walking around you.
Really, the absent pillar in most D&Derivative games is Healer. In-combat healing is almost always a waste of action economy, and healing resources are scarce enough that you need to be good at something else to justify your XP share.
I like what I call dex tanks. these are the high dex and wis 3.5e monks, the 5e rogues with high con and a single barbarian level. These guys have as much AC in the nude as a paladin in plate, but they’re fast enough to head the enemies off and high enough DPS to be a real threat. A pure Healer/DPS/Tank setup in’t much good, but having one or more characters that are either healer tanks or high damage output tanks is good. The front lines need to be tough, but if tough is their only skill, then they can just be bypassed.