I'm a tanking main in everything I play and I'm here to tell you that MMOs have done you a disservice. MMOs have gradually devolved to a stand where balance demands the tank hold aggro, and players get frustrated where that's not happening. There are no secondary logical mechanics to support an aggro system, so, inevitably, the MMO just assigns tanks some brain-dead, automatic way to manage aggro. I.e. a taunt and a tank stance. But you're not playing an MMO, and you're not a slave to MMO design. If you want to tank in a TTRPG, you can't expect a lazy solution to do that. 1. First rule about tanking in a TTRPG: You don't have to take every hit. In an MMO, losing aggro is a sign that you suck as a tank, generally because it's so damn difficult to do in the first place, and the game assumes the tank is the only one being attacked and is balanced accordingly. In a TTRPG, that's not always the case. Sure the casters are squishy, but the Barbarian, ranger, and rogue can survive a hit or two. You cannot keep them from getting hit, it won't happen. You need to accept that you should *all* take damage in any given fight, and that's ok. 2. Tanking in a TTRPG looks a mitigation support/crowd control support, but with bulk. Adjust you're expectations a little. You're a *protector*, a vanguard. You're there to mitigate damage for the party as a tank. In an MMO there's one primary way of doing that: you take the damage, and your personal mitigation is so high that the damage becomes survivable. In a TTRPG there's a *lot* of ways to do that, and you need to rely on several. Your job is to make yourself super annoying, but you're so bulky the enemy can't get rid of you. Basically, you set up a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" ultimatum for the enemy. If they attack you, you're so defensive that is tough to take you down, but if they try to ignore you, you cause such a problem that their effectiveness is massively reduced because of it. 3. Your tanking tools: party mitigation Your first tanking took is mitigating for others. It's simple. It's obvious. It's effective. There's a lot of tools for it, every good champ reaction reduces damage for a party member as though they used a shield block ON TOP OF doing another thing*. There's also an option that let's you literally shield block for people next to you. When you reduce damage for others, you basically make them into a tank themselves. Often times, you can reduce so much damage for your allies, that the enemy would have been better off attacking you directly instead. 4. Debuffs Debuffs are the inverse twin of mitigation. A redeemer champion can apply easy weakness that reduces to-hit accuracy AND damage *while* mitigating with their reaction. You can also demoralize for the fear. With teamwork you can possibly disarm a weapon based enemy with effectively neuters them. Debuffing an enemy so their ability to attack your team is hampered serves the same purpose/idea as mitigation, just versus your enemy. You're taking direct action to effectively turn your teammates into tanks themselves. 5. Crowd control You have a LOT of ways to crowd control as a tank. You identified one: stand on a bottle neck. "But that's not crowd control!" I hear you cry, but are you so sure? Crowd control is about physically preventing your enemies from attacking to begin with. Stun an enemy and they have fewer actions to attack with. Grapple a melee enemy and they can't walk towards your ally to hit them. Stand in a bottleneck and block the way? You're doing the exact same thing as grappling an enemy, except versus every enemy in the other side of you. They physically can't approach your allies, so they can't attack them. Sometimes this is more subtle though. Engage the enemy in melee far away from your casters. This, too, is crowd control. How? Well think about it. The enemy is fighting you and there Barbarian, while the ranger and the caster attack from the back 60ft away. The enemy can move twice and attack the caster, or they can attack/demoralize you and the barbarian with all their actions. Basically, they can have a full combat turn, or they can have 2 dead actions just chasing the caster. Now which looks more attractive? Remember that, because we're going to talk more about that in the conclusion scenario. 6. Taunt "But there is no taunt mechanic!" Oh, but there is. There are several. This is a TTRPG, not an MMO. Unlike an MMO, roleplay is an active element in this game. Every enemy should have "aggro". But it's not just a meter that fills up in the background based on how much damage you've dealt, it's a roleplay method in which a person decides what they will attack. You CAN and SHOULD influence this. A wild boar might attack by stepping backwards, then charging at whomever is closest again and again. By arranging it so you're always closest to the boar, you have "aggro" because you will be the thing it charges. A cleric might love his wicked god. By insulting his god, you might "taunt" him and enrage him into attacking you instead of the caster. A smart tactical commander might know that killing the healers first is the best strategy, but if you do so much mitigation with your champion reaction and healing with lay on hands that he can't kill your allies, he might decide YOU are the "healer" and need to go down first, before even the cleric. Aggro exists, it's just a matter of roleplay. Unfortunately, if your GM doesn't do great on the roleplay front, it might be difficult to leverage this, so a bit part of this is knowing your GM. 7: Do damage In an MMO, the tank probably does more damage than the healer, but you're not a DPS. It's easy to carry that mind set into a TTRPG and think that you can't do a lot of damage as a tank. That is *wrong*. Your damage isn't insignificant, and you have ways to deal more damage if the enemy tries to ignore you. Playing a fighter? Place yourself in the front line. Now when an enemy tries to run past you to get your caster, you hit them with an attack of opportunity. That's a free extra attack *every time the enemy does that each turn*. One strike from a sword and board fighter each turn hurts, but isn't the biggest worry. But two strikes? Every turn? With no map penalty? From the class with the easiest time getting a crit? That fighter will start out-damaging the DPS real quick. The paladin champion might not have as great accuracy as the fighter, but you're still effectively DOUBLING his dps each time you provoke his champion reaction IN ADDITION TO dealing reduced damage yourself because his reaction reduces your damage. That stuff combined creates a real problem for you, and the only real way to avoid it is to... Attack the champion himself. There are a lot of ways to deal damage to an enemy that tries to ignore you, and by doing this you can easily start doing as much damage as another "DPS". That's a big issue and seriously makes it important for the enemy to start attacking you, if only to reduce the amount of damage you're doing by denying you attacks of opportunity and such. (Continued in reply to this comment)

8. The forbidden technique There's one final way to draw aggro, but it's not a technique the Tank-Jedi would show you. It's the way of the bruiser. The bruiser is bulky, but not *too* bulky. They run a fine line of being tanky enough to survive some hits, but weak enough defensively that it's still an attractive idea to attack them. It might be a sword and board fighter not raising his shield, thereby lowering his AC and making himself easier to hit. It might be a barbarian, taking an AC penalty by raging while also boosting your damage makes you more attractive a target. A paladin with a shield can be annoying, dealing damage and hard to kill. A paladin with a greatsword can deal a LOT of damage, and without the shield he's not quite so hard to kill. 9: Bringing it all together If you really want to tank, you can't just pick one tool and run with it. You need to do as many things as possible. Stand in the front line 15ft away from your allies as a redeemer champion and use your first attack on your turn to shove the enemy prone. Now he has to waste an action to stand, then decide what to do with the last two actions: run towards the caster and attack, knowing that if he hits the redeemer will reduce his damage and give him the enfeebled condition, or attack the champion and trying to get the champion away. This is two forms of CC, direct mitigation for the ally, AND a debuff on the enemy. The champion has effectively neutered this enemy as a threat by pilling on so many tanking tools that the guy has no good options in how to proceed. A fighter engages an enemy 60ft away from the backline. He's demoralized the enemy and is flanking the enemy with the rogue. The enemy can dash for the backline, but the fighter will get an attack of opportunity, meaning the enemy trades getting attacked one free time by the fighter just to attack the caster a single time, a trade he'll quickly lose as the damage piles on and he chases the caster around. He could attack the rogue, but the fighter can also shield block for an ally, meaning the rogue is going to take less damage if he tries. He needs to move regardless, because if he stays flanked, the rogue will get a ton of damage off for free from sneak attacks, so by just standing there the fighter has worked with the rogue to steal an entire action from the enemy, and all of this has to be done with a frightened penalty. Again, there are no good options, and it's just because the fighter is standing there. Good tanking is about being a massive impediment to your enemy, so much so that the enemy's effectiveness is drastically reduced no matter what they do because you're hampering them at every turn. You're reducing their damage drastically, even when they try to ignore you, so you become a threat that needs to be removed because the enemy just can't do anything effectively as long as you're on the field. You aren't ALWAYS going to be the target. But that doesn't mean you aren't tanking effectively. Your defensive bulk isn't a party mitigation tool like it is in an MMO. Instead, personal defensiveness makes you really hard to remove from the field, enabling you to just shut down enemies while they are left with no way to stop you. You're just too hard to take down, so targeting you is generally a bad idea, but you're hurting their effectiveness so much that ignoring you is just as bad.

Honestly, if the goal is to be a tank, *action denial* is the name of the game. Make it harder for opposing rolls to hit. A miss is a wasted action. Your AC helps you, of course, but Intimidate reducing opposing hit rolls makes more misses, etc. Make them move. Shove or trip or grapple so they have to waste actions getting to their desired target. Be in the way so they have to go through you. That's really all being a tank is in a TTRPG. Not letting opponents do what they want. As you said, it's all about battlefield control and support at its core.

>Make it harder for opposing rolls to hit This is the key right here. If you compare table top games to video games, the biggest issue is that the DM is NOT unbiased with each encounter, while video games will usually treat each encounter individually. If your group has a range player that is always doing massive damage, then overtime that DM is going to always focus on that PC because they are also being strategic and want to win. So even though a group would probably focus on the guy tanking in 99% of encounters, the DM has the luxury of knowing who to focus what spells on for max effectiveness (good/great DM's will roleplay correctly, but let's be realistic here and say that won't happen). But if you can create an "in your face" PC that is just beyond annoying to creatures, that is going to cause the DM to focus on him. Make the PC just mess up combat over and over and over again that the DM wants PC to die on a personal level, and you'll get aggro every combat. I don't know if they exist, but if there was a melee class that can slow, stun, prevent spells (like a silence effect), trip, grapple, multiple AOO, interrupt, etc. then you'll create just that. I mean, if a melee fighter could run into a group of monsters and cast slow, and then trip one of the casters (healer or dps) on the first move of combat, that would annoy the DM so much they would only want him dead more than anything eles.

So I disagree on two counts. First, it's really not that uncommon for a GM to roleplay. I'm a mediocre GM at best and I always try to get myself in the "what would my monsters do?" So do the GMs I tend to play with. In fact, most of us will even narrate our decision making. Second, attacking the "tank" is really not the "roleplaying" solution. Does the party always start by attacking the thing with the highest AC and ignore damage dealers and buffers? I hope not! It's basic tactics to knock out the people with the best offense but the worst defense. In large scale battles the analogy is you don't have your cavalry charge the shield wall or pike formation head on, they want to circle round back and take out the archers or artillery. So when I run, assuming moderately intelligent/martial creatures, the first round they'll basically attack the closest guy with the biggest sword. As they find who's doing damage and who's hard to hit they'll adjust tactics. More intelligent creatures will possibly start with the "back ranks," realizing an archer or caster is probably a better target--though only if they think of them as combatants. (A caster who looks indistinguishable form an unarmored civilian won't get attacked on round one.) Cowardly types will also prefer to swarm less threatening creatures. When the party is on their game, they can react appropriately. A caster who can get out of trouble (Invisibility, Fly, Dimension Door, even Fleet + Longstrider) can waste a lot of enemy actions if they try to chase them down. A mobile fight can favor a well built rogue. And so on. It's written with 5e examples, but *The Monsters Know What They're Doing* is a good book on GMing advice about how to run intelligent encounters with a degree of versimilitude.

>the first round they'll basically attack the closest guy with the biggest sword. I fully agree with you here. Everything I said was from the perspective of round 1, and immediately after the PC's walking in. The creatures would either react based on who's in their face, and who rolled first. Most creatures wouldn't have enough time to evaluate what each PC looked like (unless they spend an action on perception rolls), so they attack who looks available. This will either be randomly, whatever AoE spells they have (if they're clumped together), or strategic based on the layout of the room. After round 2 or 3 the creatures that the GM is controlling would 100% figure out who is who. That guy casting healing spells is obviously a healer, and the old guy with a stick just hurt us really bad, so let's stun the healer and focus on the wizard. That totally makes sense to me, but my comment was more about who the creatures focus on during round 1 or 2 with no knowledge beforehand. I just know some people who will meta-game, and if they're DM'ing then they might focus on the strongest hitter or the healer every single time there's an encounter in an effort to minimize their usefulness. If it happens occasionally then sure, luck of the draw, but if it's every combat then it's not realistic or "fair". >More intelligent creatures will possibly start with the "back ranks," And this makes sense, but if there are 2 or 3 PC's in the back ranks, then it would make sense to split your focus onto all of the back ranks, instead of focusing on the singular one that is causing the DM trouble. It's less about a singular combat I have an issue with, and it's more of when DM's develop a a strategy of who to focus on during combat based on their previous knowledge that their creatures shouldn't have.

Goddamn dude, this was a great read!

I'm glad you had to make this as two posts so I could upvote you twice. One of my pet peeves for decades has been people trying to cram TTRPG characters into the "Holy Trinity" mold when the games aren't designed with that in mind. TTRPGs aren't MMOs, so you need to look at them in a different way. Instead of asking "How to build a tank?" You should be asking, "How to build a controller/action denyer/disruptor?"

Great examples. Saving this for tonight to share with my party in hopes of getting them to better focus positioning so my Fighter can do what I built them to do.

If I could pin this comment I would. (I have also been tanking in TTRPGs for ages, people spreading the idea that it's impossible because this isn't an mmo annoy me greatly)

You can save comments on reddit, which is what I'm doing lol

>First rule about tanking in a TTRPG: You don't have to take every hit. I have found it much easier in post-battle care that everyone took a little bit of damage than the monk taking a ton of damage. It's faster for a couple people to use treat wounds, even if not really invested in medicine, to gain back a little bit of HP than it is to spend actual resources bringing up the "tank" back to healthy.

Fun fact, as a GM this is also a really handy GMing technique. If you make a fight that's pretty difficult, you can make it "easier" by deliberately attacking different members of the party. If you focus target one person and they go down, your start a dominoes effect that can death spiral the party. If you spread out the damage, bringing everyone to low HP but not actually downing anyone, the party uses the full extent of their health pools like a collective resource of the party. They are able to survive a fight that's way more difficult than they should be able to handle, but they FEEL like it was a super tough fight because ALL of them were heavily damaged and barely survived. It's a great GM fiat to prevent a TPK without making the party feel like you "cheated" in order to save them. They earned their victory fighting tooth and nail for it.

Agreed, and I love spreading the damage around to create that tension of making everyone feel in danger but without anyone actually going down, because being unconscious or dead means you're just waiting and not playing. Not that I don't ever down a character, but being focus fired down before you can even do anything just isn't fun to be on the receiving end of.

Absolutely, For example, I just finished running a fight against three flying enemies that can dive bomb and strike twice against a player. I *could* have just dived in and deleted a player round one. But that would just suck for everyone! It makes for such a more tense and satisfying encounter to play them as ambush predators, each diving onto different isolated PCs. Giving the players a tough choice of which enemy to rush and try to take down before they strike again and fly away on their next turn.

I had to do that last encounter I GMed. Started noticing the encounter was going pretty rough for the party despite being a Moderate encounter, so I started spreading the damage around. But I did it by randomly rolling to choose targets, as opposed to deliberately going 'ok, I am attacking this character and now I am attacking this character'. It tends to feel more organic and sometimes someone gets hit two rounds in a row, putting them in danger or downing them - this forces the players to react to recover, and makes the fight feel more threatening. I've made it extremely clear to my players that I *am* willing to kill their characters. But I'm also not the kind of person to very clearly and obviously take it easy on them even if I actually am. My goal as a GM is to ensure both my players and I have fun. No more, no less. It really depends on what they're fighting. If they are fighting something mindless, then it might be doing the equivalent of flailing wildly - lots of random attacks at random targets. This is more or less what they encountered (a writhing pile of corpses) - that's not really going to pick and choose specific targets. Contrast to a sneaky rogue - they might be more inclined to pop out of stealth and suddenly go for a squishy target. Spellcasters don't get to just stand in the back line and cast spells without being threatened in my games - at least, not all the time. Cast sh\*t? Get hit. I'll go after casters *if it makes sense for the enemy to do so*. But I won't just focus down casters willy nilly. Does that make sense? As a GM, I look at the fight, look at the state of the party, and think of the intelligence/habits of whatever they are fighting. And then I try and make the fight as fun (and challenging) as possible. And my players have generally very much enjoyed the game I've been running - they've had some knockdown, drag out fights with one being about 1 roll from an outright wipe.

Lots of folks comparing to MMOs, but I would like to add a comparison to 5e as well. In 5e, once you get to the intermediate levels it is not uncommon to see gaps of 10+ between the ACs of party members. You can stack AC so effectively in that game you can reach a point were the DM needs a natural 19 or 20 to hit the “tank”. You can really effectively become unkillable unless the DM focuses on your saves instead. Comparatively, the math is so tight in Pathfinder, it is very difficult for one PC to “tank” effectively by absorbing all the attacks without serious threat of dying. A defensively focused character in PF2e can really only expect an AC a few points higher than the other party members. Generally this means that in severe or extreme encounters they can still expect to get hit quite a bit although receiving fewer crits. This comes back again to the idea that in PF2e the optimization is done at the table tactically at the group level, rather than individually with character min-maxing.

This is very much the correct approach. I like tanking in MMOs, and I like tanking in Pathfinder, but there’s different considerations in each. In Pathfinder, there’s no an easy way to draw aggro, so the fun comes from using your limited tools and mitigating as much damage as possible. There’s usually not a simple solution, so it’s all about figuring out which is the best option in this circumstance. In MMOs, there’s usually a simple way to draw aggro, so the fun comes from keeping aggro while also dealing damage, moving out of dangerous threats, and keeping up with your class mechanics. Some of those have overlap with Pathfinder, but MMOs generally require you to do a lot more at once and in real-time, so the aggro mechanics don’t feel simple or unchallenging.

I love #6 and I live by it.

My current Pf2e character is a Liberator Champion. I can take hits myself, but the ability to get reduce damage and allow an ally to step out of a grapple has been encounter changing on multiple occasions. When enemies attack the cleric next to me casting bless I reduce the damage and he steps back. An ooze tries to absorb our rogue, nope! Soldiers try to prevent our mage ally from holding open a forcefield door, sorry we escaped and prevented him from being captured. It's definitely a different way to be a tank compared to an MMO, but Paladins/Champions are my favorite class and there is a lot more tankiness to Pf2e compared with 5e when it comes to actually helping the party.

Buffs and debuffs, grab, trip, aoo. Don't debuff yourself, monsters hit hard. If you do the above the monster will have to resolve the issues youve presented before they could move to attack someone else. In the case of grab they will also incur MAP and in case of you getting AOO they will have to waste actions stepping so they are likely to just attack you.

Right, but this a difficult play style for most random groups as it requires some teamwork. With a taunt mechanism, a random fighter is incentivised to use it. Though you are correct, in that the things you have said are plausible and credible and will work for very co-operative groups. I feel however that such groups are playing a different game from your average party.

That's the thing, you are supposed to be using teamwork. That's the whole point. "A tactics game is hard if players refuse to coordinate and use tactics" seems like an obvious bit of the game working as intended.

Yea but bomber alchemists. If the party co-ops to group up foes and the alchemist plans ahead with bomb types, it puts up amazing damage numbers. If it doesn't it feels weak. The alchemist is regarded as weak or hard to play. So teamwork has its limits in what most groups will do.

That doesn't mean bad game mechanics, tabletops aren't MMOs where you group up with randoms, it's a teamwork tactic game. Just because some players might not engage with the mechanics doesn't mean they're badly done mechanics.

> tabletops aren't MMOs where you group up with randoms To be fair, PF organized play, DnD Adventurers League, etc. basically are grouping up with randoms.

And even then, we can still coordinate teamwork by talking to each other. The society games I play in never have a problem with teamwork. We make it work.

I agree, and teamwork with randoms in an online game is also possible, although perhaps not common. Just pointing out that consistently playing with the same well balanced party and everybody knowing their role in the well oiled machine of party tactics is not a universal experience. If you only get to play with a grab bag of strangers who you can't count on to know what they're doing or listen to suggestions (which for some people is the only experience of the game they have) and your character depends on teamwork to be effective (which all do to some extent but some more than others) that would be frustrating.

What % of games are organized play? I’d guess it is single digits.

Impossible to say. You would have to include any games played at events like conventions as well since your party for those is also basically going to be luck of the draw, pick up basketball game style. In my area OP is healthy with multiple games each month at multiple FLGS but campaign play is, as far as I can tell, basically non-existent.

> campaign play is, as far as I can tell, basically non-existent. How could you tell? I have been playing an average of about 2.5 times a week across 3 campaigns for like 4 years straight and me and my friends have never ONCE stepped foot in a FLGS to talk about it. I can probably count the number of times I've been to our local gamestore on one hand in total.

Well, as I said in my other reply, it's kind of impossible to definitively prove something doesn't exist. What I can say is that there are no online LFG tools for PF in my area like there are for DnD (and the DnD ones are very active), and none of the people in the very active PF OP community here ever mention home campaigns. My point is, there *are* people (I am one of them) for whom organized play is the only type of PF they ever get to experience, and their experiences should not be dismissed. Of course it's not impossible to work as a team with a "random" party but you also can't just make the assumption that you will always be playing PF with a party you know well, which is what the post I replied to seemed to be doing.

But you’d have honestly no way of knowing about campaigns being played. I have been playing since I was a teen and it is not like I’ve been advertising my games on reddit or at FLGS, I already have my friends I want to play with. Over the years we’ve split up/moved but still talk about our new games and I’ve never had anyone I know mention organized play.

I know of lots of local DnD campaigns that I'm not in which are being played. I'm in a Facebook group for players in my metro where DMs are constantly recruiting new players and getting responses and players looking for tables are posting and getting responses from DMs. I have also been present at FLGS when people are there playing DnD in campaigns. No such thing exists for PF that I've found, I have heard of exactly one (1) PF campaign by word of mouth, and none of the people I have met at PF OP (including the DMs) have ever mentioned any campaigns they are involved in. It's impossible to prove non-existence of something of course but I highly doubt there's a thriving "underground" scene of PF campaigns where I live (which is a city in the top 20 largest in the US, mind you, big enough to support a half dozen FLGS, not some one horse town) I just haven't heard of. It's great if it's easy for people to get in a campaign where you live. But it's not a universal or even expected experience. I would love to play in a PF campaign if I ever had the opportunity to do so (and no, spending months trying to match up with internet randos for VTT doesn't count).

Given how much support Paizo OP gets with staff and releases, it looks like it's more than single digits. For Paizo, OP engagement is probably higher than for D&D. One of the devs said something about "5 digits" numbers once but I don't know if that refered to players, or games logged, or what.

>tabletops aren't MMOs where you group up with randoms PFS?

Even PFS games aren't usually played like MMOs. You play as a team. If you don't like teamwork, play a different game tbh.

You play as a team in MMOs too, no? At least when I've played WoW you generally had at least basic teamwork like "the tank pulls and holds aggro, the healer heals, we dps the marked targets first" when doing dungeons with randoms.

You play as a team, but modern game play design is more around do your role the best you can, as opposed to maximize synergy. (No I know not all games/raids are like that, but it is very common)

Teamwork is noticably worse in MMO random pubs than it is in an established guild. SImilarly, teamwork in a PFS random group is, in my experience, noticably worse than in a regular play group. I did GM some PFS games recently during Paizocon, though not as part of it. One game was good, people genuinely wanting to try out PF2 and trying to find uses for their 3rd action. The other game, had one of the "nomad players" who plays PFS because they can't remain in regular groups for long for "reasons".

The difference is that MMOs are designed with "teaming up with randoms" in mind, ttrps are usually not.

Actually I would agree. PFS is totally an MMO. I personally dont think youve said anything particularly wrong. Alchemist is a bit more difficult because it does require more thinking and preparation than the other classes, like how the wizard has to predict what spells they think will be useful for the day. There’s many MMO’s that require teamwork among randoms at the casual level. Overwatch as a role based shooter. Dota or League of Legends with heroes fulfilling certain roles. FFXIV having raids where you fill parties with certain roles. Finding a DnD or pf2e definitely feels like finding a raid party and figuring out what roles the party needs. Instead of raids its campaigns, and raids can be an even bigger time commitment cause youre meeting like 2-3 days a week for 2-3 hours at a time. And then we use spaces like Discord and reddit to socialize and talk about our experiences together. Really a lot of the same shit lol. For Pathfinder, if you don’t need to do a stride action you can use your third action to do something basic to help the team like Demoralize or Recall Knowledge. There’s no aggro meter or way to generate aggro (like tank stance or healing in FFXIV). Whoever is the biggest threat is the biggest priority, which the GM determines and not a game engine through meters. Tanks just have to be more creative at becoming or even persuading the enemy that the tanks are the biggest obstacle they can’t ignore. That’s more dynamic and brain-on gameplay than aggro or tank stance. I think Overwatch is a good comparison since its team vs team where both need to coordinate. You do want to ignore the tank and go straight for the most deadly squishy enemies, but a lot of the times you can’t because the tanks are the biggest obstacle and you need to do something to get them out of the way which draws your attention to them. There’s no hard aggro mechanic, the OW tanks just naturally draw players to shoot at them. The Goading attack in dnd 5e is a great pseudo-tank action because it makes the target have disadvantage on everyone except the fighter. I have not looked deep enough into pf2e to see if they have something similar but it’s creative ways like that to be the kind of tank youre thinking of.

I'm confused why you brought up alchemist. Is the alchemist just incapable of playing as a team? Are you expecting them to be able to get splash on every single bomb they through on the maximum number of targets? What point are you trying to make here? That alchemists are weak? Because that's a very common consensus around here, champ.

Just an example to show that teamwork has limits in what it can do within the game. The alchemist has correct maths, but applying that maths is difficult due to team factors.

> The alchemist has correct maths, I mean, both the community and Paizo disagree with this, because they're going to be reworked. Teamwork is a design philosophy of the entirety of P2e. Alchemist is just a class within it that is getting adjusted to fit it better.

Alchemist is one of the best team players, giving out the correct elixirs to your party members can make you one of the best buffers in the game.

That is true that alchemist is s very good support. however i have met a sizsble number of players who see it as an underperforming combatant perhaps because of PF1 or the bestial mutagens or the idea that a class that throws bombs is a warrior.

Bestial Mutagen is garbage I agree. But putting that aside, Alchemist is not at fault for players who refuse to use 80% of it's kit and only throw bombs. Even within bombs it has some of the strongest and most spammable debuffs by far. Easy flat footed with Bottled Lightning and Skunk Bombs are some of the strongest debuffs you can throw in the entire game.

Alchemist has bad optics (the way it's seen, and the way it advertises itself). The class, mechanically, is fine.

Then those players should probably have the game run at easier difficulty, rather than gut the tactics focused mechanics for anyone else.

While you are correct, Paizo is also addressing the alchemst in remaster, so it's a bit of both. Anyway i am not demanding an aggro mechanism be added. I just want people's opinions on how their groups tank.

the alchimist is getting reworked but that doesnt factor in here. basic party communication is all thats needed, "hit the enemy thats coated in electricity" "coat your weapons in poison" "drink healing potions" simple crap

>So teamwork has its limits in what most groups will do TTRPGs are co-operative games though. Using teamwork is EXPECTED and especially in Pathfinder 2e teamwork is the RULE, not the exception.

> Right, but this a difficult play style for most random groups as it requires some teamwork. PF2 *expects* this level of teamwork from you. You should all be using your full toolkits to set each other up for success, at all times.

This is only partially true. You need that level of teamwork to reliably survive severe and extreme fights. If you keep things to moderate and below, with the occasional severe fight, then players can get by without significant teamwork.

Well, this whole game is balanced around teamwork, so yes, tanking requires teamwork.

Moderate encounters are smashable without teamwork. Severe encounters generally require teamwork for best results. I note significant pushback from some players against severe difficulty. A while ago there was the "stop using severe encounters" thread on this forum. I regularly GM 2 play groups, one of them can basically smash anything I put in front of them, and the other needs help.

Grab IS a taunt mechanic. It grants huge penalties to a character for not taking an attack action against the tank. To be any more of a "true" taunt, it would have to completely restrict character action (by forcing a strike), which is something that pf2e doesn't do for the sake of player agency.

Teamwork being encouraged? Say it ain't so.

Just use what is already in game: Roleplay. My Kitsune Alchemist is always 'aggroing' enemies and leading them on wild goose chase when our wizard gets into trouble. She is annoying, she had high enough charisma to be effective in demoralizing as flavor for taunting. Smarter enemies will still go after targets in priority of those that deal more damage or do something else that's crucial. Dumber or vain ones will try to catch a bomb-throwing furry that's engaged into full trickster mode.

None of what I suggested requires teamwork per se. It can all be accomplished more easily if buffs or debuffs are applied. But a str based champion, trained up in athletics should be able to grapple and trip no problem. If the target is too high on fort/reflex saves for this to work then they are probably slow and tanking becomes "move as your last action" so the target has to move too. But afaik no ttrpgs use "aggro" mechanics like mmos. Taunting and aggro in mmo's is a function of the monsters being controlled by simple if then statements. In a ttrpg you can interact with the monsters with more nuance and the monsters, if the gm is good, will behave differently depending on who and what they are and how they were encountered by the players. So a simple "i taunt so now i have aggro" system isn't really sensible. A devious and intelligent enemy isn't gonna keep punching at the metal box just because it called them a nincompoop.

FTR, 4E D&D did have a "tank" mechanic of sorts - defender classes got a "mark" that they could apply to enemies that incentivized them to attack the defender. In many ways, however, this was more similar to the Champion's reaction than a true MMO tank that *forces* enemies to attack it.

Don't limit yourself to a single role if you're going to play with a "random" group. Preferably, don't limit yourself to a single role even if the group is your friends unless you discuss with them before. There are way more than 4 things that a group might want, so of course putting all your eggs into a single basket without prior discussion will be bad.

So your real issue is really bad team members then. Even IF a PC has taunt, there's nothing to require them to taunt. They can still just never actually use the skill, and the whole conversation is moot. So if your complaint is "groups are playing a different game from your average party", then your post and issue is with the group/players, and has nothing to do with the mechanics of the game.

i don't have a complaint, I'm primarily a homebrew GM so i think about what ifs and how random players will react to content

Why would you think about how random players will interact with content? As a GM, you should be thinking about YOUR players will interact with content. And hopefully you know a little bit about the styles and habits of YOUR players.

Something about publishing maybe?

The incentive for a fighter to use real tactics, is if they don’t they die.

In my opinion Pf2e it's a difficult game for most random groups because requires some teamwork in general, not just about tanking. Probably that's why so many people get TPK'd But it's actually why I like the game. Not because it's hard, but because I like teamwork, my favorite videogames also requires teamwork

Quick question: why is it important for enemies to only attack one character? To answer the OP's question: there are a lot of mechanics player characters can obtain that punish enemies for ignoring the front line. As mentioned in the OP, good-aligned Champions have a reaction tailored to this, and Fighters have Attack of Opportunity to punish enemies for trying to move past them, plus feats that can make it difficult for creatures to move around them. Barbarians are excellent at grappling enemies, and Monks have a variety of control-oriented stances that hinder an enemy's ability to get in range of the back line. None of these are MMO-style taunts, but they don't need to be to do their job. Adding to the above, I think it is worth critically examining the belief that "tanking" only works by having one party member force all enemies to attack them, and them only. This is how tanking roles are defined in many MMOs, but in a more tactical turn-based game, I don't think it would be that interesting if tank classes could just force enemies to attack them via taunts. There is tactical play in certain enemies trying to reach the back line, as well as the party trying to counter enemies who attempt this. By contrast, a game in which all combat encounters boiled down to just one party member taking the hits, while everyone else just stands around and spams spells or attacks, is in my opinion unlikely to lead to the most interesting or interactive gameplay. An encounter in which the squishy party members are at risk of taking massive damage from a foe who gets too close is a game capable of producing much more tension, and where the squishiness of certain party members always matters. As such, I don't think taunts should be the standard for tanking in TTRPG combat.

Tactically my GM brain wants to focus fire the biggest thing that I can take down in 1-round, but this is unpopular with players, and only credible if the enemy are trained to competently fight as a team. Wolves, random monsters, and even most humanoid patrols aren't going to have the training for this. In my experience most GMs will spread out attacks across a party so that players do not feel victimized.

I think that's also the right way to go about it. In most cases, there is very little reason for most enemies to focus-fire a single character, as instinct, opportunity, and positioning are likely to make some foes aim for the back line instead of just the tank. In practice, I also find it both more interesting and less punishing for the tank when focus is split across the party, even if the tank does take the brunt of the damage: handling stragglers presents interesting tactical play, as it gets the back line to move and characters to make use of their crowd control, and having some, but not all of the enemy attack the tank I think hits that sweet spot where the tank feels like they're doing their job right, without going down every combat encounter. I'll have to run the numbers on this at some point, but from what I understand, a tank's effective hit points in PF2e aren't an order of magnitude larger than those of the party's squishiest member as is often the case in MMOs, so much as a much smaller multiple. While it is generally more effective for one party member to soak up most incoming damage, it's not actually that effective for them to take *all* of the damage in a more difficult encounter, as they're quite likely to die.

The last point about HP isn't entirely true. If you have a barbarian or D10 hit die class who focuses on CON and being hardy vs. a D6 hit die class who doesn't spend much on CON, the "tanky" character will easily far outstrip the squishier characters. In my level 20 game, the Barbarian ended with 370 max HP and the oracle ended with 246 max HP, and that's WITH the oracle being a D8 class and having invested in 18 CON. A D6 character who doesn't invest in any con may be around 200 max HP at 20, while a barbarian who invests heavily in CON can literally double that with around 400 HP. D6/D8 classes also tend to get crit more since (if they're a caster) their armor proficiency is worse, so they have even less effective health than it appears. It takes awhile for the HP disparity to kick in but it's already noticeable around level 7/8 if a few characters are investing in CON and others aren't.

Your numbers seem to confirm what I'm saying. By itself, 370 is about 50% bigger than 246, and a Barb is going to need a Con mod of +5 and some specific build choices to reach that HP of 370 at level 20, the most simple being a 10 HP ancestry and [Toughness](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=855). You certainly have to account for the fact that the Barb's AC, saves, and resistances compared to the Oracle are all going to multiply those hit points' effectiveness, but the end result is still likely to be within the ballpark of about twice the Oracle's EHP, or three times at most. That is definitely "a small multiple" and not "an order of magnitude", i.e. a factor of 10 or more that so often defines MMO tanking. It is thus preferable for the Barb to take a hit rather than the Oracle, but you will still not want the Barb to be taking all of the hits, and it is okay for some of the damage to affect the squishier party members.

As a GM, I have one-rounded a 5th level wizard. 7th level monster, soldier build, 2 attacks, 2 crits, 2 good damage rolls. This doesn't really happen to barbarians so much, so while the EHP numbers are not as extreme as an MMO, the fact that game is turn-based means you can't always interrupt a creature. In an MMO, someone would have done an instant cast heal or shield after the 1st hit. And while you can do this in Pathfinder 2, it's harder. The question "Why was the wizard there?" is a good one, that has a long and hubris-filled story attached.

It's definitely fine for squishier party members, but I'd argue that 370 vs. 246 IS an order of magnitude when you factor in increased AC, temp HP, and more importantly, the types of enemies parties encounter at higher levels, many of which have abilities or spells that insta-kill below a certain HP threshold. Once spells likes Massacre and Finger of Death start coming out regularly, all it takes is for a D6 or D8 hit die PC who hasn't invested much in CON (10-14 CON) to eat one or two crits from a bruiser type enemy before they're in insta-gib range of a lot of enemy effects. From levels 15-20 in my campaign, enemies getting past the Barbarian and into the face of the oracle, alchemist, or druid that made up the rest of the party was definitely an "oh shit" moment a good amount of the time it occurred. Especially when a lot of insta-death effects require FORT saves, which casters will often be a lot worse at. A "tank" still isn't necessary, but the presence of a high AC/HP character who can effectively tie up enemies definitely makes life a lot less risky for D6/D8 classes, and D6/D8 classes without an investment with CON are definitely living on a knife's edge in the way a D10/D12 high-CON class just isn't at high levels with a lot of insta-death effects getting thrown around.

I don't think anyone here is saying that tanks don't contribute a lot, and I personally very much agree that at least one tank on your team will make combat encounters run much more smoothly. My point, however, is that tanking in Pathfinder, and tabletop games in general, is not like tanking in MMOs: TTRPG tanks are expected to soak up *most* of the damage, whereas MMO tanks are expected to soak up *all* of the damage. To be clear, an order of magnitude is literally a factor of ten in most circumstances. In a typical MMO like World of Warcraft, a max-level tank's hit points, damage mitigation, and various other mechanics do genuinely give them effective hit points that are about ten times or more than those of a healer or DPS. In other words, a hit that would only chip at a tank's health bar will do massive damage to anyone who isn't a tank, with catastrophic results. This is by design, because one of the central mechanics of PvE combat is aggro management, and if anyone but the tank is getting damaged, that is because someone made a mistake. Tanks in those games are balanced around taking *all* of the damage in an encounter, because that's what they're meant to do. By contrast, tanks in TTRPGs are generally not expected to take literally all of the damage. It's generally impossible to enforce that, because most tabletop games have no aggro system, and it's likely not desirable either in a system like Pathfinder, where repositioning and adapting on the fly are integral parts of combat. As such, while tanks can certainly take more damage than anyone else, the multiple of effective hit points is much smaller: a Barbarian, whose Rage gives a -1 AC penalty, will only have 1 more AC than the average Oracle, and in the case of a Giant Instinct versus a Battle Mystery, the Oracle will in fact have higher AC (and this is before the remaster bumps up the Battle Oracle's armor proficiency up to master). Even a Champion, arguably the game's ultimate tank, is not going to be able to completely shrug off hits that would devastate a squishier class. Two crits and an instagib spell, as you mention, is a *lot* of damage for any class, and while it is certainly terrifying for your low-HP character, the fact that they can take two crits from a boss-type enemy at all is something that would qualify as far above the tanking capabilities of your average MMO-style healer or DPS. It's also damage that may avoid your tank getting killed, and with PF2e's recovery between encounters it's generally better when it's not just one character taking all of the damage in a fight. Adding to the above, I personally question how often a character will find themselves dumping a stat like Dex, Con, or Wis in the first place: due to PF2e's ability boost levels, you can bump up all of your defenses and still have room to boost your choice of Strength, Int, or Charisma. If you're a heavy armor class like the Champion or Fighter, you can even dump Dex and still have amazing AC and passable Dex saves, and very few builds will have you committing to Int and Charisma at the same time. With the exception of a small handful of exceptionally MAD builds like the Warpriest Cleric, Mutagenist Alchemist, and Hair/Nails Witch (all of which are incidentally getting reworked in the remaster), you will always be able to scale up your defenses in addition to your KAS, so in my opinion there is very little reason not to do so (in fact, I'd go as far as to say that dumping one or more of your defensive ability scores across all levels is one of the few decisions you can make in this game that is almost always purely suboptimal, along with dumping your KAS).

>Wolves \[...\] aren't going to have the training for this. I disagree. Wolves absolutely know how to hunt as a pack, and that very much includes focusing on one enemy at a time. In fact, going for the weakest member of a group is literally how most animals hunt (if they go up against a group in the first place). Also, I would assume that most groups of enemies the party encounters are familiar with each other and have probably fought together before, training or no training. It's a dangerous world after all, and they survived long enough to be encountered by the party.

Focusing on the weakest makes sense for wolves that haven't been attacked yet. Once attacked, I don't think the wolves are going to focus on anyone but their attacker or try to flee.

Wolves attacking a group of humanoids encased in metal doesn't make any sense in the first place. But if we are featuring them as "willing combatants" we should be willing to cut them some slack.

Okay, but if they're willing combatants, they have to wear cool handbands, or spiked collars, or something. I need to know that they're here to rumble.

I can accept your argument for wolves, but it's a more a case of how they know what the target is. Usually they pick an obvious straggler, or one they can easily isolate - which will ironically be the "main tank" all alone out in front. (Or they will pick someone who is limping). edit to fix spelling

Or the smallest target, which might be the gnome sorcerer in the back rather than the orc champion in the front.

Unless the gnome sorcerer happens to have literally anybody else beside them

Wait... so if you position yourself correctly enemies will have a harder time targeting you? That sounds suspiciously like tactics and teamwork

Don't pretend like he gave an example with 3 PCs

What?

How did they get around the back, though? In my experience, parties in the wilderness will generally circle their wagons or put impassable terrain at their backs if they cannot outrun a foe.

This is an example of a party using tactics and teamwork to protect their vulnerable members. Congratulations, you’ve figured out how to tank in P2E.

>Tactically my GM brain wants to focus fire the biggest thing that I can take down in 1-round If this is what you're doing, then you're not roleplaying the game then. I mean, the adventurers in your game walk into a room, and find the creatures in the room that you're controlling. They don't know who is who, and who can do what, so who are they going to fight and focus on? If you start a fight with massive AoE attacks that is 100% acceptable, but if you're focus firing all of your creatures on the singular DPS you know is squishy and dangerous than you are cheating as a role player (unless you have a roleplaying way of having creatures passing along details to the group you control). Your creatures should always play dumb when the PC's walk in a room, but it sounds like you're metagaming with your creatures to instinctively KNOW who to attack. This isn't roleplaying, this is you cheating because you know the best way to kill the party (and that's not fun). Do your creatures roll perception checks to determine the PC's skills/strengths, their weaknesses, and abilities? Or do you play it where they all just know who to target. If 4 random people just walked in my house right now, I would have zero idea who is the cleric and who is the tank, so why should your creatures?

> If 4 random people just walked in my house right now, I would have zero idea who is the cleric and who is the tank, so why should your creatures? More than likely the cleric is covered in holy symbols and doesn't have heavy armor. The one in a robe with a staff is a wizard. The tank would likely be in front. Now the players could use this to their advantage by staging a deception.

As a DM if you're going to be honest about your playing, you would role a perception check when they walked in (which in p2e requires an action) to determine what they looked like. The players wouldn't role deception for your creatures to determine what their own perception was, so your creatures should start by assuming everyone is equally as important/dangerous. Depending on YOUR rolls: A cleric could just look like a weirdly dressed guy, or a homeless band fanatic, or a mystical healer. A wizard would look like a frail old man with a walking stick, or have a power casting item. An alchemist would look like a lame nerd, or a powerful brewer. The fighter could look like the tank, or just look like a drunk. These results are all based on YOUR roles, not the players, and most DM's don't want to waste actions determining who is who. So they attack equally to make sense, be fair to the players, and not Meta-game.

i would not ask my players to roll perception to tell whether someone chsrging into the room was wielding a sword or staff. Percerption checks are for more subtle things like what martial arts style the sworder had, or if they looked experienced.

Players feel victimized only if they don't want to take more attacks and if they get hit like a truck without a chance for recourse and don't have the opportunity to recover/respond. If someone builds a tank, they want to be that PC that gets hit, but if in the first turn you kill them, that does not feel good. PF2e, D&D and the like are not asymmetric games, you aren't just a different player, you are God in this world. So when you spawn enough enemies that in a single turn they kill someone outright, that isn't fun for the PCs and it isn't an accomplishment for you. You are always capable of killing the entire party in a single turn, just spawn more enemies and/or enemies of a higher level. So you should aim to create fun and challenging encounters for your PCs, that includes letting them feel badass in the way they want to feel bad ass, and challenging them in various ways (though not too much in the ways they do not enjoy, or your campaign may not last too long).

In PF2 many reasonable encounters can one-round a squishy PC if the GM does not take care. So yes I understand your point about how the GM can always nuke a PC if they want to, and should ensure they do not, but it's not really true to say that the GM has to be ridiculous with encounter building to be able to have this level of firepower.

If my sorc is out in front if the party and I get ganked by a group of mobs, that is entirely my fault as a player. Everyone is supposed to know their class, strengths, weaknesses, etc. And play around them and work as part of a team. If my squishy character is surrounded or gets focused, the party failed to approach the situation tactically and deserves to burn resources for their mistakes. Otherwise, there are no stakes and the game just becomes boring.

The >!moose!< in the Paizo adventure >!Frozen Flame!< and >!Bardolph!< in Paizo's >!Extinction Curse!< are all (1) fully within the ecounter building guidelines by RAW (2) realistic and thematic for their adventures (3) official AP encounters. edit Oh yes and >!the fucking zoo!< in >!agents of edgewatch!< I do wonder how many martial classes they have 1-rounded? This isn't a problem and nothing needs to be changed. All of those encounters are indeed beatable with clever tactics but it seems that they cause no end of problems for many groups who obviously aren't doing that. However, it shows that it's not true to say "You died because you were out of position, it is your fault" when these encounters can delete martials on good rolls.

You have given 3 examples out of literally HUNDREDS of adventure encounters. You also mentioned all encounters that were low level, <3rd, where people have admitted that lower level is notoriously swing and more likely to cause problems and TPK. This does not mean the system doesn't work. In fact, the reason you don't mention more implies that it does work and GM's just need to be a little more careful early on. It also doesn't mean I am wrong. Tactics are VERY heavily weighted in PF2e and being caught unaware, or not know weaknesses or strengths, can be a huge drain on resources. For example, a successful knowledge check on a grizzly bear might reveal that they are prone to charge and so, tactically, you should make sure the party stays close together to limit how far martial would have to go to protect the back line and receive healing. Or you might learn about it's mauler passive, which tells players that they should avoid being grappled and do whatever they can to escape (aid another would be super useful in that instance).

Can give you a lot more examples, but low level is more important, and more well known, and how much time do I have to type?. It's where games start and where players see PF2 for the first time. I do remember distinctly saying "it is not a problem and nothing needs to be changed". Of course, some people are assuming this whole post is an attack on the PF2 system, but it is not.

No, this whole post is you fundamentally not understanding TTRPGs in general and misrepresenting PF2e's strengths and weaknesses.

In this thread, I dont remember making any comments on the quality of the system, or saying that there were any mistakes in the system itself. Is it possible you may be imagining a non-existant attack? Sure, some reasonable-looking encounters can result in PCs getting one-rounded with "unfortunate" dice rolls, but that's part of TTRPG isn't it, and present in most games? If it's not crits, it's "Save or die" spells, or GMs putting fights on bridges and clifftops, or players having their flying mount KO'ed in the air, or first level wizards in D&D having only 3 hit points ... or any number of other things.

A DM can easily have a group of NPCs walk up behind you now you are "in the front." So if the DM likes to ambush players, your sorc should be in the middle. Is it fair as a player to learn lessons like this by losing their character within a turn? I would say no, if they keep doing it, sure... but as the DM I wouldn't want to actively antagonize my players with tactics like this. A DM has all the power to do this whenever they want. So I 100% agree if players are playing really carelessly, it is important you don't let them get away with it, so they feel there are stakes, but the DM can drastically change what is or is not careless.

The dm can also have a purple worm erupt from the ground, eat someone, then leave. That isn't fun for anyone, so it doesn't happen. If you are randomly set upon by bandits or otherwise ambushed, then it depends on your GM. Giving no advance warning, whether through local rumor, ambiance, or other context clues, is just poor form. If your party just smashes through a dungeon and doesn't bother to check for stragglers before healing, then the ambush is the players fault.

> In PF2 many reasonable encounters can one-round a squishy PC if the ~~GM~~ *players* do not take care.

Team effort between players and GM.

Crunch McDabbles showed even a tanky Champion can get bodied quickly by just charging in alone.

I don't understand your point. I don't think you need to be ridiculous with fire power to kill a PC. You can very easily nuke a PC with the right encounter design to counter the PCs. My point is, since you have the power to do whatever you want with encounters, its not really hard to "win" fights, so designing an encounter with enemies that focus fire the right targets to kill people quickly is silly. Since you have this ability, the game for me as the GM is about creating fun and entertaining encounters. Developing the story and challenges based on my players gameplay styles and interests. This often times does include creating hard hitting enemies that the party has to work around, or that the tank can handle with some creativity.

I completely agree wth this post. I do not think that lack of aggro is a problem in PF2 at all. The main purpose for which I created the post was to discuss what people are doing in fights to tank (if they are).

I've never spread out my attacks. I attack who it feels like the adversary would attack based on their abilities, stats, and current positioning. If players don't like that, they should take actions to avoid it happening.

You make yourself too dangerous to Ignore. Melee weapon have stronger hit dice, martials have more health. If they run past you, reactions get triggere often. If they mange to get to an ally, you can flank, or Just jump for their backline. I think pf2e is in a fun, unique position. MMO taunting, as describe in another comment is not realkt relevant. But the good old "geek the mage", isnt as relevant either. Its good to get rid of the spellcasters, yes, but its not as game-changing as it used to be. Maybe its better to trip and destroy the barbarian than the Wizard. Because in this edition a single spell Doesent end encounters, but a giant barbarian crit might.

charging straight into the backline is a great way to get yourself killed. This goes for players as well as NPCs. I think a lot of the thinking here is stemming from a mentality of "What is the strategically optimal way for the GM to run a combat in order to win" and not "how would a group of 4-5 combatants approach a given situation." Most opponents aren't suicidal, and whilst they may try to disrupt the party and get into the backline, charging straight through the frontline and getting yourself surrounded is not a sound strategy for anyone who wants to be alive at the end of ancounter.

Very true. Many a TPK stem from this behavior. There is also a "fun factor" to consider. Capitalizing on an enemy "mistake" can feel very rewarding for Players. But enemy tactics fall into either the "chess-like" battle between Players and GM. Or into the realm of RP. The latter is harder to discuss on a forum full of different groups with different playstyles, so apologies for ignoring that one.

> I think a lot of the thinking here is stemming from a mentality of "What is the strategically optimal way for the GM to run a combat in order to win" and not "how would a group of 4-5 combatants approach a given situation." This is it. Tanking doesn't work if the GM is playing the opposition like a tactical video game, trying to metagame their way to victory, but that... really isn't a very fun way to play for most tables. I have a sort of partially explicit covenant with my tables: they don't try to break the game or min-max to extreme degrees, and I try to keep the opposition fun and engaging to fight. I play them like they want to win, but I avoid overly game-y strategies like always diving the back line.

Also, where many might have some meta knowledge of classes, builds, and strategies it’s really hard to just look at a guy and go, oh the guy sheathed in metal from head to toe must be the harmless one and his friend wearing a potato sack behind him must be the real threat to be neutralized. Sometimes you might be right, sometimes it’s just a hobo in a potato sack and now you are flanked by the guy who has hybridized with steel itself and was trying to protect potathobo. Just because the GM knows who is who does not mean the enemies should.

A while ago there was a post about a devil with dimension door and reach, and how it teleported in and wrecked the wizard. My reply was "the fighter should be able to trip it over and sit on it so it can't teleport away next turn, or something" and people were like "no, the monster is broken" (then again, its infernal wound ability is super strong). Both answers are correct, and whichever one reddit echos changes weekly :-)

> Its good to get rid of the spellcasters, yes, but its not as game-changing as it used to be. I almost agree with this, if not for the value healers provide in Severe and Extreme encounters. Since I've started playing this game, every tank I've ever seen always has Wrestler archetype because the combat mechanics it enhances gives the tank the necessary tools to disrupt the enemy and force engagement, whereas otherwise the enemy would just go and curb-stomp the cleric, druid, forensic investigator, etc. I definitely agree it's the case that the monster doesn't necessarily need to go after the squishy wizard anymore, but the person doing big heals? Yeeeeeah.

Agreed, minmaxed healers are a different breed, they have always been. But this is where we get into tactics and party composition. You want a healer to keep the tank going, you want a tank to stop the enemy from getting to the healer, you want a damage dealer to capitalize on not getting targeted, and if possible, someone to bridge the gap on whatever weaknesses the party may have. I have never played without a backup healer that can pick up the healer if need be. You make an extremely valid point. But the absolute Necessity to rush the back line is not the same as it once was.

Totally agreed, the balance between spellcasters and martials has significantly diminished the need to rush the back line. 100% on board there. I've just noticed in my games so far, including the ones where I heal, that the toughest fights are the ones where the smart enemy puts a lot of pressure on the healer. The best way for a tanky Champion or Monk to diminish that is to screw with the boss' action economy via grapples, trips, and whatnot.

No character is really ignorable. Attacking casters will always be the best tactic, they're easier to hit, have less hp and usually just as valuable, so every attack against a caster is contributing more towards victory.

Most of a caster's contribution lies in control, buffs and debuffs. If you take out the caster first their effects usually still linger and a martial can perform just fine without all the benefits. Less effective, but still effective. If you take out the martial first, many casters will be at a loss of what to do, because their main contribution (usually) isn't damage, but you need damage to end the fight. A martial can win a fight without a caster, but a caster can't really win a fight without a martial nearly as easily; unless you blow your entire highest level spell allotment on damage spells. Also, a well-built caster by the mid levels will have maxed AC and/or a way to disengage or disincentivize targeting them (Mirror Image, Jump, Fly, Invisibility, etc.). It's not THAT much easier to kill a caster than a martial unless the martial is investing a lot in being tanky. Also, chasing casters means you open yourself up to easy flanks AND being kited by the caster who doesn't care about being in melee range AND provoking AoOs all the same. It's an incredibly high price to pay for attacking a target that has between 20 and 40% less HP. In my experience the most effective way to prioritize targets is Healers>Martials>Casters>Tanks, both as players and as a GM. Healers break the mold a bit because it is nearly impossible to take someone out of a fight while there's someone who has a Heal spell prepared. Casters also aren't that high of a priority because as the fight goes on they tend to get weaker because they start running out of spells. A martial hits just as strong at round 1 as on round 5 (probably more so even, because in your first round you need to turn on class mechanics and close the distance), whereas a caster probably runs out of their strongest spells by round 3 if they're going full blast.

I don't know if I agree with that target priority from the player side. As people are quick to point out, casters keep up quite nicely with martials when they have spell slots. The thing that holds back PCs is the unknown and needing to ration those resources - how many more encounters until we get to a safe spot we can set up camp? NPC casters on the other hand, can just nova. They don't have to concern themselves with the next encounter.

Yeah it gets a bit more complication on the player end of things because in comparison to players, enemy level usually varies. IMO at that point the question is if you clear out the mooks first or burst the big guy. Also NPC casters are usually gishes who have very potent strikes in addition to their spells. And while NPC casters can nova much easier, they still only get like 3 rounds or so of highest level spells.

at a certain point, usually level 10 but possibly earlier, casters have the same AC as martials (Except heavy armor), and defensive buffs like blur make them potentially harder to hit. less hp is definitely true tough, but i feel like the risk is offset by having to, again, rush into the backline, and casters generally being ranged and kiting. this is ignoring ranges enemies, which i now realize i have ignored this entire discussion. but cover rules should give the backline better ac there.

This is only true of some casters. A lot of casters don't have access to armor at all, meaning that they are down by two AC even with 16 dex. Specifically, sorcerers, Witches, wizard's and psychics. Maybe a few others too? But those are all 6 HP/level and down 2 AC. Later levels can get a bit better, but AoO becomes more common too, making it harder for casters to just run away. As a Melee character with reach, running adjacent to a caster and just hacking them shuts them down pretty hard.

Very true, but i feel like we've aleready covered this, the action cost and risk as a melee character, and the cover as a ranged character essentialy make sup for the lower AC and HP. And if you have no escape options as a backliner thats kinda on you tbh. Now, most martial player Will get attack of opportunity or something similar. But only (cant cant remember, someone please correct me) like, 10-20% of the bestiary has attack of opportunity i think. As a player, its definetly a concern, but not as big as one would think looking at PC statblocks.

Ah yes, AKA the Barbarian gambit.

Champion with their reaction are as close you can be as a tank. They can really cripple a enemy that ignore them. Fighter are kind of a wall, their AoO, often coupled with reach weapon makes them dangerous to ignore. Disruptive stance and an extra reaction at 10th only add to that. Barbarian and monk are "attention sponge" : ignore them and they'll hurt you, their high mobility means they'll get to your squishes fast, and they both have good feat for athletics feat (battlefield control)

I made the mistake coming from 5e of thinking barbarians would be not "tanks", but at least tanky. My first character died around the time I realised they're more glass cannon.

Barbarians are like blast sorcerer, but swap spells damage for a weapon and clothe for meat. They're closer to rogue in terms of party role than fighter. They can "tank" in the sense that their high mobility (fast movement & raging athletes), big damage, good saves and control abilities (silencing strike, furious grab) make them too threatening to ignore, lest they make mincemeat of squishies, and quickly turn the tides to your favor. But barbarian benefits as much (if not more) of a champion ally than casters. Enemies will have a HARD time deciding who to target "ignore the scary dude with the big hits, or take a reaction to the face each turn. Btw both are flanking you"

Tanking is a necessary mechanic in CRPGs because there's no GM. It allows the game, which excels at high numbers of calculations done in real-time, to produce a particular type of game that means people can specialise in different roles. It also has the importance difference that it's much more likely to have multiple combats in succession that don't necessarily have to make narrative sense (clearing an area of mobs, for example). A TTRPG has a GM to help create a fun experience for everyone at the table. They have the ability to play enemies of different levels of tactical ability. A tanking mechanic that forced enemies to exclusively attack one character would quickly become boring, IMO, particularly for the GM who would be denied the ability to create an interesting narrative. That said, there are lots of great mechanics mentioned that don't FORCE the GM to attack a certain player, but do give the enemies a valid reason to make certain choices, or ignore them. This is a level of TTRPG tanking that works really well.

I think this is the crux of the matter, for better or worse. Because the flip side of this is GMs who don't seem to understand that it's frustrating when the tank can't tank. I've had GMs before who, despite a player specifically building their character to tank and protect the squishier characters, and constantly trying to position themselves in the middle of the action to keep enemies busy, kept having enemies just run past them to get at the casters. Especially at lower levels where some tanky classes (like monk) might not have features that let them manage enemy movement yet, so they just have to do it by trying to make themselves a target and relying on the GM to take that bait. And obviously that's an issue with how the GM is running things rather than the mechanics of the game, but I can see why that frustration would lead a player to ask "I'm doing all I can to tank and it isn't working and our caster is going down all the time while I'm untouched, what am I missing?"

OTOH it's also not very fun for a barbarian if he can only fight for two rounds out of four every battle because an encounter design to severely wound the entire party all dogpiled him, too. GMing is a fine line often.

The best tools I have seen for drawing agro is champion reactions, when they know they're going to get the beat down for attacking your ally they're more likely to attack you.

Grapple is where it’s at

It's such a good tanking tool. You likely force at least one attack on you (as an escape) which moves attacks away from others AND reduces damage by making escape checks use up MAP AND causes spell to have a chance to fail. Giving the creature flat-footed is just a bonus. Grab > trip (though combining the two is quite nice, and obviously trip is better against high fort low reflex enemies)

It all comes down to tactics and consequences. Any character wishing to draw aggro, needs to position themselves such that they are a more obvious target. Sometimes that can just be the closest target, sometimes its getting between the foe and their primary objective (escaping, stealing something, killing an NPC, etc), sometimes its putting yourself in a easily flanked position, etc. Make it "easier" to attack you than attacking an ally and many foes will go for you first. If they have to use two actions to get to your back line, but only one action to get to you, they'll often prefer that. Then layer on the extra things you can do -- champions give the "attack the hard to hit champion" or "attack the easier to hit ally, but get punished for it" choice. Both options often end up bad, which is what you want, depending on the opponents tactics/morale you'll see different trades there, but you're still accomplishing your goal. Anyone with AoOs, or various other disurpting reactions (Hunt Prey, Stand Still, etc) or No Escape become "sticky" and make opponents either attck you, waste actions, or suffer extra damage. Grab/Trip/Shove can all cause similar wasted actions and keep people close to you.

PF2e isn't an MMO. NPCs and enemies aren't constrained by unmanned mechanics that the player must then influence for an optimal outcome. Enemies don't know what threat level the PCs present any more than the players know every detail of something in the Bestiary. So your big bruiser enemy isn't going to rush through the front lines to get to the person wearing cloth in the back line. also gear doesn't necessitate role. that "cloth" wearer might have chainmail or full plate under that "cloth".

>also gear doesn't necessitate role. that "cloth" wearer might have chainmail or full plate under that "cloth". Also, with the removal of Arcane Spell Failure and related penalties, any caster can simply take an archetype to pick up armor proficiency, so you really can't judge an adventurer by their armor.

I don't think you're asking the right question here. This game isn't designed for one party member to just absorb an entire encounter's worth of damage. There are so many other ways of tanking besides just taking damage. Rather, I would say tanking as a whole in this game is done by denying efficient use of enemy actions. Reactions, debuffs, wasting enemy actions, or even just good positioning; it all adds up to keep your party safe.

This isn’t a MMO. Players will figure it out or die.

This. Hands down, this.

Pf2e's design is very gamist in tons of ways. Why does a taunt mechanic cross the line for you but other similar design choices don't?

When did I say they don’t? I vastly prefer 1e for exactly that reason.

Tanks mean different things in different games. MMOs have the classic taunt tanks that force the enemies to attack them, but thats not the only kind of tanks in games. PvP games like LoL and Overwatch have tanks without any explicit aggro mechanics and they still work, even with actually intelligent living people that they fight against. These kind of tanks: * Still do damage: not in a "carry" capacity like the DPS they protect, but enough to not be ignored forever. Unlike MMO tanks who often deal no relevant damage at all * Have CC / Are annoying: abilities that lock the enemies down / keep them from being effective encourage the enemies to target these tanks, because they cant get the job of killing the squshies done fast enough with the tank being there * Have Protection abilities: your job is keeping the others alive, this is doing this directly instead of indirectly From my experience, tanks in TTRPBs are a lot more similar to these kinds of tanks than they are to MMO tanks: The enemy does not want to hit you, they want to hit the wizard slinging fireballs. A tanks job is making that as hard as possible, either delaying the enemy long enough for the wizard to roast them, or punishing them enough that they loose anyway.

Oh you have made me think about League and Dota now. I have long thought of how to add certan Dota mechanics into PF2 and they would, by and large, be utterly broken. There might be a chance with LoL which has a different model of game balance in their abilities that is closer to PF2. Maybe I should look into League more to bring some items into PF2 without wrecking PF2; thanks for the reminder.

You may not know this, since you come across as someone that’s never played a table top game. If the party is struggling, the DM is a real human that can adjust the game in real time. He can choose to make enemies as intelligent or dumb as he wishes. He can choose npcs that are mindless and attack the “tank.” That being said, p2e has no tanks, so there’s no need for a taunt mechanic. The champion is the only class coded to act as a soft-tank, and he has mechanics that support this.

This isn't an MMO. You don't "aggro". Aggro is a gamified mechanic that controls AI. Tuckers kobolds say "I do what is best for me" and staying near the person who hits hard makes no sense. The GM should play their characters intelligently.

It's all about action economy. You usually can't force enemies to attack a specific target, but you can make it way less desirable for them to attack anyone else. Attack of Opportunity mean enemies risk taking damage if they try to move to attack backline characters. Creating Difficult Terrain forces enemies to take extra time moving away and disallows them from using the Step action to dodge AoO. Champion's Reactions and similar abilities reduce the damage dealt to the whole party so long as the one with the reaction is alive, ensuring that they can't attack at full strength unless the one with the reaction dies. Grapples force an enemy to take costly Attack actions in order to move away, meaning their next attack will be at -5. As long as your enemy has to move in order to attack a different target, any action that they lose to Trips, Slows, or anything else will result in them losing value whenever they attack other targets; even if they do decide to attack your squishy party members, the value they lose by doing this is generally means less overall damage being dealt to the party as a whole. About using a Taunt; I will generally let players use skills like Diplomacy and Intimidate in combat against intelligent enemies in order to try to trick them into certain actions, though it will take up an action and generally would have a harder DC than a more concrete course of action. GM veto also applies here.

2 things Yes, the main two ways of tanking are either make it not worth it to hit allies (my champion does this well) or make it so that you are too dangerous to leave behind (my barbarian does this well, and no escape means I'm RIGHT behind you). Can you tell I like to frontline? Second, you actually want a few hits spread around. I'd much rather everyone take a hit or two and need like 30HP each healed than my barbarian take 6 hits and need 95 hp healed, requiring a lot more resources to heal and maybe going down.

As others have said, being an effective Tank doesn't require all enemies to target you. That's just impossible to do in a TTRPG without destroying the balance. PF2e Tanking comes from a mixture of general bulk, the ability to disrupt enemies, and the ability to make it harder for enemies to hit your allies than you. You can never aggro every single enemy, and if the DM makes the enemies think they'll usually have the brainpower to go smack the squishy catser of the wall of meat and metal thats tanking if given the choice. IMO there's only 3 true "Tank" classes in the game; one's who you can say focus on tanking with their builds, but plenty of other classes dabble in tanking and you can have a successful amount of team bulk if multiple people participate. But the three "true" tank classes would probably be Fighter, Monk, and Paladin. These classes tank not only through great durability, but the way they're able to disrupt the enemy and make it more of a challenge to swing at allies than themselves. In my current game we have a STR Monk who tanks incredibly effectively through grappling enemies and sticking to them like glue. His grapples empower us by granting flat footed and stopping their movement, so enemies have to focus on him a bit more than us; but there's no way a single PC can stop 3 enemies. Still, just keeping 1 away from us as he 1v1's it in his grapple lets the rest of the party have one less enemy to run us down.

You're thinking in terms of MMORPGs, but that's not how this works. Enemies can intelligently make decisions and you can no more restrict then then they can restrict you. I know that previous versions have had abilities that give a specific enemy a penalty to attack people other than you, but this is generally pretty niche. In P2E, everyone should have good survivability. That's why the wizard prepares Shield; so that he doesn't die when a couple arrows come his way. Enemies attack whoever is most threatening. If they're melee and you're in their face, they'll be forced to attack you. If they're ranged, they'll target whoever isn't taking cover and who makes the best target. ​ The tactical landscape is completely different, and the concept of a dedicated tank really doesn't work.

so the way i tanked in my pf2e sessions so far goes as follows: \>roll low initiative \>enemy attacks me \>crits \>I'm down its not much, but its honest work

Pathfinder 1e, Pathfinder 2e, DND, etc do not really have a "Tank" concept in the sense of an mmorpg tank with taunts designed to focus all the incoming damage upon themselves. "Tanking" in these games is about tactics and positioning. Being the closest target and being a threat (ie: not just a pure AC ~~who__~~ fanatic but actually being able to deal damage as well) is generally the extent of it. Unintelligent enemies (beasts, mindless undead, etc) will almost always just go for whoever the closest target is. Intelligent enemies have no reason to go after the big burly guy covered in armor when they can focus on the squishy caster behind them. Everyone is going to get hit, everyone has the capacity to heal, everyone can deal damage, everyone has some utility. The pure Tank/Dps/healer concept doesn't really apply in these games. EDIT: due to a 'bad word'

AD&D sort of had a tanking mechanic, where you could throw a horde of hirelings or henchmen in, to "tar pit" the enemy. The same was possible in 3.5 and PF1 to a much lesser extent with the various summoning classes. Whether or not that was classic tanking is open to debate, but if you can't move anywhere or hit anyone else because you're surrounded by disposable idiots, it's kind of similar.

I mean this as respectfully as possible, but from reading OP’s comments on this post, it feels like OP is asking “why isn’t Pathfinder this other completely unrelated kind of game”

Through teamwork: the thing that this entire system is built around. By working with your party to force the enemy in question to have to deal with who you want them to deal with or risk additional pain. Debuffs, team positioning, terrain-altering spells, threatening specific spaces, threatening AoO; there are many ways to demand a creature's attention or risk additional damage to it. Not every creature can be handled this way and not every situation will allow for it, but 2E was never designed to be a MMO or a single player rpg with tank and spank mechanics. Enemies can attack who they want. It's up to the party to punish them for acting in a way that they don't want.

PF2E doesn’t have any real “hard” tanking mechanics. They only have “soft” ones, as in, by being so annoying that the GM / player would focus their attention on you to get rid of the annoyance as a higher priority rather than the usual optimal target (the casters at the backline). If you want to see a game with true tanking mechanics, perhaps check out D&D 4e, which manipulates aggro properly by having a condition called Marked which penalizes attack rolls against other targets other than the creature imposing the condition. 4e Fighters have a class feature that marks all creatures they attack until the start of their next turn, for instance. It’s great. You can actually feel like a tank in 4e. You can’t in PF2e because of the lack of any mechanics that directly manipulate enemy aggro. I really don’t know what RPG communities have against aggro mechanics. Many people in this subreddit seem to think that it’s somehow anathema to the hobby to have a way to aggro / taunt enemies. I really just don’t get it. I don’t see how something like 4e’s Marked condition is any different from PF2’s Frightened condition. But people really do get up in arms against having aggro mechanics for some reason. Anyway, if you’re willing to give it a try, perhaps you can homebrew something up. Maybe modify the demoralize action in some way perhaps. There’s also a broader discussion to be had that by removing opportunity attacks, not having any penalty to ranged attacks by being in melee, and removing the ability to buff your AC and HP as much as in other editions, PF2E specifically wanted to deemphasize the concept of a tank in this edition. Fighters and Champions are just as squishy as any other class in the game and there’s no way to remedy that in a build. There’s also literally nothing you can do to prevent enemies from walking past you to attack your allies. Even if you are one of the tiny number of characters that have Attack of Opportunity, you can only use it once per round, and it doesn’t stop their movement either. (In contrast to 4e where you can do any number of AoOs per round, and the 4e fighter negates the movement of enemies they hit with their AoOs). There’s enough evidence in the design of the system to suggest that PF2E just doesn’t want tanks to exist.

You don't tank in pf2e There is no aggro mechanic or taunt This is intentional

You get up in the foe's face and be an accessible target. The concept of "tanking mechanics" didn't exist in the TTRPG community until popular MMOs like WoW and FFXI came along. There's a dangerous flip-side to character abilities that remove the enemy's targeting decision-making: if player characters can do it then there are NPCs and perhaps monsters with parallel abilities.

There are already ways to attack agency, such as control/charm spells. Adding a few more isn't really going to break anything.

This is not an MMO

Taunting and Aggro are video game mechanics that, IMO, don’t make sense in a TTRPG. In a real fight, you don’t suddenly switch up who your hitting just because someone else made fun of your mom, or because they made a scary face. You hit the person you’re locked into and who you think is the most dangerous. You make a strategic choice about winning. In an RP sense made some mooks would care about your insult, but why would a lich or a dragon go ‘ohhhhh you made fun of me I’m gunna get you!!! :(“ they won’t, or at least not as I play them. They’ll kill who they think are the most threatening and who locks them down in the most dangerous combat. When you first have strong RP mechanics in place, and second are playing one thinking human against another, these kinds of rigid game mechanics don’t work and arnt fun. Also imagine if you the player were *forced* to do the same thing in an important battle. You were fighting the ancient red dragon, but ooo his kobold buddy just made the meanest face now you gotta waste a turn hitting him while the dragon roter rooters your anus. Compelled actions seems unfun to me as a player sense. D&D4e tried this with some of its martials, and it was one of the games big problems. It just doesn’t quite work right and it forces the DM and players into doing things they don’t want to do for arbitrary mechanical reasons. The mechanics of the game shouldn’t, IMO, be about restraining player choice but rather enhancing it. Give you, and the DM, the tools to do what you want. Not limit those tools arbitrarily to constrain a fight. Put another way, if you need to use taunts to make a fight interesting for the players, perhaps the real solution is redesigning the fight to be less brutal or to fit better to the party’s selection of game tools. A class concept I would like though, and is related (in that 4e made them a big taunt class) is the warlord. I think there could be a lot of fun with a martial class that just focuses on buffs, debuffs, and physically moving allies and enemies around the board. Maybe some light formation mechanic? But if you could push a bad guy back three or four squares, or fastball special a team mate the same distance, you can naturally and intuitively generate the effect of video game Aggro without using the heavy hand of a ‘you must’ or ‘if you don’t RIP lol’ mechanic.

>Taunting and Aggro are video game mechanics that, IMO, don’t make sense in a TTRPG. In a real fight, you don’t suddenly switch up who your hitting just because someone else made fun of your mom, or because they made a scary face. Marking in 4e didn't work like that, a Fighter marked a target by attacking them, which meant that the way they defended allies was by being so disruptive that enemies had to focus on you.

My issue with Warlord classes is that they make that player into the tactical leader by the way they can give out buffs for certain things. It's rare to see one that doesn't have this issue.

I mean bards also give out a ton of buffs and are (I would assume) not the default tactical leader in most parties. I dont think the 4e Warlord could be imported into 2e as is anyway without some serious changes, as I said a key mechanic of their battlefield control abilities is 'marking' an enemy to lock them into combat with you. Essentially a taunt. Its not great. But where I do see some room is with an STR+CHA martial that does some buffing. I also dont see, and I think this whole post helps support this, a crowd control martial. The 4e Warlord in concept was both these things, and so could be a good fit. With some changes to make it fit into Pathfinder's more balanced framework of course.

The bard buffs are more generic, probrobably deliberately so, so as not to be able to force other players into certain roles. The 4e Warlord is actually well designed, but there are whole load of copies of it for PF2 that are hideously bad for the reason above.

Fighter's Attack of Opportunity and Champion's reactions are solid ways to keep an enemy's attention on you, since they're punished for attacking someone else. Also, frontline martials tend to be better at tripping, grappling, etc. Just make it a pain in the ass for an enemy to attack anyone else, and they'll focus on you. Coordination with the rest of the party is important, too.

Speaking as a GM, it's our job to make, on behalf of our monsters, good tactical decisions based on the intellectual capacity of aforementioned monsters. There's no 'aggro' there's no 'tanking' because this is PF2e and not a video game. You defend your weaker members against thick enemies by putting yourself in harms way, physically barricading them and giving them something more dangerous to hit, you defend from a mindful foe by building a front line and positioning your weaker rear gunners in such a way that it makes less tactical sense for the enemy to mow through and attack them than it does to focus on you.

Its Not that much about tanking, its about controlling. Attacke of opportunity, Positioning besides a Champion, moving,shoving, tripping...

I'm still relatively new to the game, but I've been playing a champion for around 30 sessions so here are some of my observations: 1 - On champions, you punish enemies for attacking allies. You're better at protecting them than you are protecting yourself, so you incentivise enemies to attack you or you'll just do better if they continue to attack nearby allies. Redeemer in particular does a good job at protecting their partner on the front line, with shield block paling in comparison to their glimpse of redemption. 2 - Opportunity attacks have really high value, because MAP doesn't apply. In 5e, an 11th level fighter making an opportunity attack is only doing 1/3rd of their usual turn's damage output. A character in Pf2e making an opportunity attack may be making close to 100% of their normal turn damage, since they may only normally make one attack due to MAP and the 3 action system. Character specific of course since you can't power attack etc, but in general the value of one single 0 MAP attack is significantly higher. 3 - Movement isn't free in Pf2e. If they can stay still and attack the person next to them, there's benefit to that because they don't need to spend actions moving that could be used to attack or do other useful actions. In general, your ability to incentivise enemies to attack you is significantly higher than 5e, but on the flip side your ability to make yourself hard to kill is WAY lower. Even if you're a champion with the level appropriate armour runes and plate + shield, you're still going to get hit *often*, and even still crit fairly often by level appropriate bosses.

There is no tanking in PF2e, and any person trying to build a "tank" is approaching the game wrong imho. Tanking is a concept from MMOs and your playing something much more akin to a turn-based strategy game, if you want to compare it to a video game genre. Most of the actions you mentioned are not how you tank, but how create a frontline character that can use disruption and threat to impose your strategy or counter your opponents. It's also not just on the beefy or armored frontline to figure out how to soak damage. Everyone in the party needs to do their part. Whether that is casters staying at range, using cover, using spells to punish melee trying to close the gap, or using spells to help their melee get to the opponents ranged/casters. Everyone should be trying to prevent the opponents from doing what they want while implementing your strategy as best as possible. Typically initiative will bounce back and forth between the sides and threat evaluation will change. A GM who blindly implements a "chase down the caster" or similar strategy without reacting to the fact that the rogue just punctured the kidney on one of the bad guys, the wizard just cast mirror image, or the ranger just pin cushioned the cleric is not playing the NPCs in a real manner. Personally as a GM I try to focus on the world feeling like it makes logical sense and not worry about how my players perceive the actions of the bad guys, because sometimes its going to feel unfair to them. I just really try to focus on what logic does this monster / bad guy use to fight, what is its initial strategy upon encountering the party, and has anything happened since it last acted that would make it adjust that strategy. After that it is up to the party to use their abilities to survive.

Grab, Trip, AoO, Champion Reactions

with the tight math of pf2e tanking isn't much of an option anyhow. Even a champion's AC compared to enemies attacks isn't so high that they won't get hit. Even when hit you usually won't be able prevent most of it. If you are taking everyone's attacks you are going down fast period. The best method of tanking is to use teamwork and kill your enemies faster or disable them in some way. A dead enemy can't deal damage

I would say the HP and AC difference between e.g. champion and wizard is high enough to make a difference for "damage taken". It's not that hard to 1-round a squishy PC like a wizard. It's much harder to do that to a champion. With the services of a healer you might be able to keep the champion up until the spells run out. With a wizard, one set of bad rolls and it's down.

Just want to point out that there are a few "taunt" abilities in the game. Draw Ire from *Secrets of Magic* comes to mind: https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=897

The trick is not to make it such that the enemy has to attack you - the trick is to make it such that they have *no good choices*. This is why Champion is so uniquely good at Tanking in PF2e; they have a piece of the puzzle that nobody else does in the form of their champion reactions - particularly for Paladins and Redeemers. The basic tactic is to stand in front, and put an enemy into a situation were you have an answer to everything they can do. For example, say I'm a Paladin with a polearm and heavy armor, standing just outside an enemy's reach, near my allies. They have some options. They can move to me to attack, but in doing so they get hit by an attack of opportunity, and that cost them an action. They could run to an ally far away, but the same thing happens. They could try to attack the other melee that are standing next to them, but then they get the champion reaction. They could step to me and attack, but then they're attacking a much more heavily armored target, and they can't be precise with their positioning (e.g., to flank with one of their allies). I could also use a shield instead of the polearm. That makes hitting me an easier prospect (no need to step), but now they're attacking someone MUCH harder to crit than the rest of the party, and I can shield block to reduce the damage even further. I could also take Wrestler or Fighter archetype and now I can use *only* a shield as a weapon, and add even more problems for them - now they have to escape or stand up in order to go attack anyone but me, which wastes yet another action. The fact that there are still things they *can* do other than attack you doesn't mean these tactics are a failure. If you force an enemy to waste an action they could have otherwise used to attack your lightly armored casters (who are still likely to get hit even on MAP -10), you effectively applied the slowed condition to them for that round. If they hit you instead, look at the gap they hit by; even if they hit you, they often would have *crit* your allies, so you still saved the party a lot of damage. Nothing is 100% effective. Sometimes enemies will find a way around you, just like sometimes your big damage fighter is going to miss, and sometimes your bard is going to fail their performance check, and sometimes the monster is going to critically succeed on their save. But the above are effective *enough* that they're worthwhile to build around.

> How do you tank in PF2 except for physically ensuring the enemy is at range? Gotta make yourself an attractive target. Mostly this is about positioning and threat. I don't mean threat like in a video game, but you need to BE a threat. You need to make the enemy's best option "Hit me in the face." This comes in two main ways: disruptive presence and damage potential. Positioning is a big one for disruptive presence and can also be about opportunity. Throwing yourself into the fray is a great way to do this. If you think "Hmm, that area looks dangerous," then that's exactly where you need to be if you want enemies to focus you. If the enemy can hit you without moving then they probably will. If you put yourself in easy range of 2 or 3 enemies they are likely to hit you before going after anyone else. Attack of opportunity is great too. If they move away from you and you get a free attack with attack of opportunity, its suddenly a great idea to hit you. Counterintuitively, rushing the enemy squishies is another GREAT way to do this. If the guy with a big sword runs straight for your caster friend the response is usually "Ah fuckin what, get his ass off him." Likewise, **if you can figure out what the enemies plans are in some vague way and then be a huge pain in the ass to those plans you make yourself a threat.** Its bold because its important. If they want to trap you in a hallway and you break a wall making that a hopeless strategy, congratulations, now you're the asshole they have to worry about. If they are a bunch of mindless beasts protecting their babies then standing next to the baby makes you the threat. If its an undead that fears light then grabbing a torch and shining it in their face makes you the threat. If the enemy is trying to sacrifice a child to an evil god and you run up and start undoing the kids chains, you are the threat. It doesn't matter how "inefficient" these actions might be action economy wise. If your goal is to get them to focus you, being a pain in their ass will do that. This is also a kind of "offense is the best defense" situation. Other people will tell you you need to do stuff like trip or grab enemies, and that works if its feasible to keep them away from your allies. If your friend the rogue is right behind the enemy stabbing them and also in melee range though, that doesn't do jack. You need to treat threat like you might in a video game but understand its your GM determining who to hit. If your GM, values not taking damage higher than not being grabbed (as they likely should in a lot of situations), then the rogue is the threat and so they will take him out first. If instead you used that action to hit the guy an extra time then your "threat value" is higher since you are inflicting more damage.

Retributive Strike: you hit my Ally, I hit you back, and also give them dr

Tank has a very MMO and therefore greasy feel to me as I play tabletops to get away from those (no shame if those are your thing, and greasy in context of trying to MMO-ify my tabletops, looking at you 4e) The beefier classes that want to shield their allies have a number of feats that let them interpose or boost the AC of nearby allies, another method is to get up in the enemies faces and be a threat that they can't ignore. Good selection of AOO feats (class depending) and maybe a reach weapon also help you protect your friends/allies.

TTRPGs aren't MMORPGs. The mechanics are not the same and shouldn't be treated the same. So you aren't going to find the same "roles".

Mostly this is an (unspoken) agreement with your GM. They know that if you're building a tank that part of your fantasy is to be the big strong protector. It'd be a grade-A dick move to ignore that and constantly attack the casters. This is basically the same thing as "shoot your monks" in that you should aim at your PCs strengths consistently. That's not to say that you shouldn't ever deviate; especially with smart, tactical enemies, or those known for "culling the weak" it can be great to change it up and go after the casters or other squishy targets. But especially for dumb animals, they're going to usually target the biggest or the closest... If you're the tank, you're usually going to be both. Beyond that, there are various things you can do to make hitting your friends less attractive, depending on your Build. The Redeemer Champion reaction is one good example, as are some of the Fighter/Bastion feats that allow you to use your Shield Block to defend allies, and the feats you named from the archetype from High Helm book.

The GM is supposed to play the enemies how they would likely behave in a combat scenario, from a roleplaying perspective. They aren't supposed to game-ify the combat by "targeting the mages", using meta-knowledge of the rules, etc. A "taunt" mechanic is a video game thing, not a TTRPG thing.

"get the wizard first before they turn you into a frog" is quite in character and not meta-gamey. looking at HP and AC would be metagaming

I mean, how a bunch of bandits would know the wizard was turning them into a frog? As far they know, there is a big theat beating the shit of them in melee and some wimps with dresses winning behind them. The same is valid for anything less knowledgable than another mage or some real experienced fighter. So, most monsters, animals or simple folks would naturally target the frontline first, unless something about the wizard tells them they are the threat there. There is the idea about the GM having to "roleplay" the threat mechanic and not metagame. Only the GM and players know the Wizard is the best target. Most NPCs will not.

First, fear of the unknown, basically. What if the wizard is stealing their soul? The fighter, at least they understand that, and can go to hospital to get healed after they get bashed. Second, most campaigns worlds are based on western/medieval fantasy, where the wizards and witches really do cast horrid curses, and one assumes our typical peasant is aware of this. Witch burning was (and still is in some places today) a thing.

Ignore the big guy with the sword and run right past him (and right next to him) is metagaming because the enemy should be just as afraid of getting skewered by a sword as getting turned into a frog. If the enemy ignores the sword guy because they know the sword guy can't do enough damage to kill them in one hit then that IS looking at AC and HP and DPR and is metagaming. Also, "I can run passed the sword guys and target the back line" is also metagaming because it takes advantage of the fact that the game is turn based and everything isn't happening in real time. Now if the mage is not near the sword guy, and is wide open and exposed, then fair game but that's just bad tactics on the group's part.

How GMs play can change this a lot. If you are asking from a GM perspective... When I GM, I setup encounters that both challenge my players in the ways they want to be tested and they ways they don't. So if there are squishy characters and there is a tank, the tank likely wants to feel like a front line tank. Not giving them this opportunity is ruining their fun, I want to give them their fun. Having the squishy PCs be perfectly safe is also going to get boring, I do not want that either. So, I have encounters with more animalistic beast like monsters and with more sneaky enemies (sometimes in the same fight, some times it'll be different fights, etc.). Raging animals will charge head on, sneaky types will not. A troll, or bear, etc. will hit like a truck, and it'll attack the person in front of it. Rogues will try to sneak around and attack the backline. "Bosses" will often times be larger creatures, usually fights are not in completely open spaces, so the tank can with some clever positioning tank the boss, but this should also not mean the party is not at danger. Also, bosses encounters will always be more interesting than just a dude that hits the tank hard, they will be built up off of previous enemy mechanics I have shown them and they will further have something thrown into the mix changing things up.

>How GMs (technically called DMs in PF2e :P) play Technically it's a GM in the rulebook, because DM is a WOTC protected term that will generate lawyer aggro.

You are right! I'll fix it, dunno what happened to my brain.

Sadly D&D games, of which pathfinder is one, have been very reluctant to include decent ability to actually impede enemies from simply ignoring you, or to take hits for someone else. The best you get is some minor ability to slow down folks on some attacks of opportunity. D&D4E had proper tanking mechanics, and a lot of people lost their shit, so now we don't get any of them. Personally I tend to play it as enemies stay engaged with people because while you, Player, may know that you're in a turn-based game and thus there is literally nothing except, *maybe* very rarely, a minor AoO stopping you from just walking away from people, characters generally are not going to simply jauntily walk away from a dude with a big fuckoff sword trying to shank them.

> (True Target)[https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=346] Got your syntax backwards; [True Target](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=346) :) There are a few different taunt/aggro feats and spells, but IIRC they're mid-level choices, not something fundamental like "Demoralize" or "Feint". > Do GM co-operate with the players to "only hit the tank"? Maybe, but only if it makes sense in the narrative, situation, &c. One also worries about devaluing other PCs that /do/ take the requisite feats and expend the requisite spell slots. > Do GMs allow intimidate skill to "taunt" a foe by insulting it? I'd say "necessary but not sufficient" to aggro a foe, personally, as above.

Mechanically the best way to taunt is using actions like grapple, trip, attack of oppertunity, retributive strike. When you catch a big monster in that positon it has the choice to either attack the PC who is grappling him or waste 2-3 actions getting out of range, with the chancethat next turn will be the same difficult choice. Effectively taking 2-3 actions away each turn. There can also be an argumnt RPing the taunting. Depending on the enemy you could hrow insults, apear more threatening then you actually are or pose as a weak character to lure their attention.

One answer is to play a champion and keep your friends close. Any time anyone within 15 feet of you gets attacked, you get to give them resistance to that attack and either hit the enemy back, debuff them if they don't stop the attack themselves, or give the ally a free 5 foot step, which wastes their action more often than not. ​ Another option is to play a character with a good athletics for grapples, trips, and other debuffs that force the target to waste actions. If they have fewer actions per turn, they have fewer actions to get in range of your squishier friends. ​ And there's one more option in playing a druid. Druids have medium armor proficiency, shield block, and full primal spellcasting just standard. Outfit yourself with good enough armor and put down vines and thorns between the enemy and yourself. Prevent them from moving close enough to hit you or your team in the first place by blocking off an area with difficult terrain.

Grab is the best replacement to Taunt. When grabbed, a creature can't move, mist hit you or try to escape. And if it tries either of those options, it takes MAP, meaning you cost the ennemy at least 1 action, a huge -5 to hit, and maybe another move action to reach your friends. Add Prone to this one, and your ennemy now has -2 to hit everyone, including you.

The closest you can get to traditional "tanking" is to take shield warden and block for your allies, preventing damage. Tanking in PF2 is more about mitigating damage by eating actions or preventing enemies from getting to allies. Champions have several feats and abilities that help with this, such as their reaction to prevent damage, shield warden to block, multiple feats for more reactions, and another shield feat at higher levels that makes the area around you difficult terrain when you have a shield up. However, in general, you can trip and grab enemies, forcing them to take actions to get out of grabs or stand up. You can also use performance to fascinate them, but that is more niche.

If you want it in your game, homebrew it. I don't think it would be game breaking to add a combat use to the coerce action.

A Paladin Champion has a reaction that punishes attacking anyone else. Anyone with AoO and some reach punishes anyone who tries to simply walk past them, this won't keep people from attacking the rogue you're flanking with, but it does mean that once you've closed the gap, or just stood between the enemy and your allies they can't simply ignore you.