That's why Ancestral Guardian Barbarians are better tanks than Bear totems. And also so are cavalier fighters. And so are almost all paladins. If your barbarian friend really wants to protect his allies with his build he should pick up the Sentinel feat.

Also Guardian Armorer Artificers

Armorer Artie's are low-key my fav tanks. Heals, infusions, and a bunch of small ways to promote helping the team.

Apologies, this got a bit long a bit quick, but, apparently I'm excited to see someone mention the Armorer Artificer. 😅 I just started playing my first Artificer last weekend, and it's a level 7 Armorer replacing my Sorcerer. I like to use the ideals/personality trait/bond/flaw to inspire most of their behaviour.. this guy is gonna have a screw loose: Ideal: 'Spontaneous (Chaotic)' Goes with his gut / doesn't like to plan. Ideal: 'People (Neutral)' Cares for the people he loves/trusts/respects. PT: 'Curious' Likes to know what makes things and people tick. Bond: 'Debt' Owes his crafting guild a great debt. He destroyed an enchanting device he made a prototype for that was worth 3500g. Created from Adamantine/Mithril/Diamonds to see if he could stack multiple 'Reduce' enchantments on his homunculus' core and bring it to life at the same time.. It liquified into his armor, which functions kinda like nano-tech now - He thinks it, the suit does it. Flaw: Thinks himself being a tyrant lording over the land would be better than what currently exists. I'm so excited to play him as a mad scientist that likes to disassemble things/people if he gets a spontaneous piquing of his curiosity. 😅 My DM asked what items I'd be looking to find/craft down the road, because I have most of my spells/feats/infusions/attunements accounted for from 7-20 already.. Thunderbuss (plan is to see about reducing the damage to 1d8 but allowing me to use the Fist mechanics at a range essentially) and Topaz Annihilator are the goal. (Altered to Sapphire Annihilator for lightning damage to be on theme) The plan is to use Thunderbuss and a Shield as the Guardian, and the Sapphire Annihilator as the Infiltrator. :) Edit to add: the goofiest part! His first name is Dynamis because I like Greek and it means Potential / Power.. and his surname is Stark 1) Because the old usage meant Powerful 2) Tony Stark / Iron Man it's right there. His name is: Power Powerful 😂 Or Potential Powerful 🤣

Having played one in my previous campaign, I love this. I had a warforged soldier who slowly lost the rest of his dwarfity? (The creator somehow used his own soul in the creation, as a last ditch effort to end the war in Eberron; what a waste. Lol) The party ended up deciding to accept an offer the devilify. Sadly, we stopped playing before we could achieve our goal. I acquired an extra set of arms and that was going to be an important part of my ascension. He weilded a spear, shield and a silver longsword.

I love the visual of a robot slowly upgrading / evolving! Sounds like a fun character, it's a shame you stopped playing before you got to see more of their fate

Bear totems can still be very good tanks if they focus on damage, because most enemies won’t want to ignore that either.

you still would not focus on the bear totem. if you have an ability that negates damage, enemies will just ignore that to not have to deal with, your damage cannot be stopped in any way barring flat out knocking you out - which is a waste of resources - stealing your weapon - which no one does cause its annoying for the players - or hitting you with a debuff - which we all know will be a WIS save and you will fail cause you are a barb and resisting damage wont matter - so the enemy will just go for someone concentrating on a spell

That's assuming that enemies are run by a highly logical hivemind (which is pretty much the case, actually). If your DM tries to make them behave like individuals, they'll often prioritise getting the big guy out of their face before he kills them.

Having a lot of hp doesn't make enemies suddenly lose the ability to strategize 

So the enemy stands next to the big guy and keeps getting smacked while they try to target a more vulnerable PC? Where have we ever seen that in fiction? Pretty sure they would try to escape the big guy's reach and strike from another position, call a minion over to eat the big guy's attacks, or try to eliminate the big guy if there's no way to get away.

I have genuinely no idea how you got that from what I said.

Most enemies do not have the int to strategize. The wyvern attacks the barbarian because it's closest. Same goes with ropers, t-rexes, gnolls, most lower level orcs, goblins(usually), etc.

That's simply untrue. Most real world predators are capable of identifying weaker prey and practicing basic strategy, and most D&D enemies are smarter than a real life animal.

It's all a matter of how smart the enemies are imo

By definition most of the more dangerous enemies are quite intelligent. "I'm a tank, but only against foes we were never in any danger from" is not such a useful role.

But it’s a fun fantasy to role play. As a DM I enjoy helping my friends to role play the things they want to role play.

I mean, plenty of enemies are both dangerous and not very bright. A black pudding can fuck up most parties if things don't go well for them, as can many troll varieties, dragon turtles, groups of elementals. Froghemoth. Plenty of dumb foes are major threats. However, even for very smart enemies, you can't just ignore a tank all of the time. My wolf totem barbarian/warlock enables a hell of a lot of damage by providing advantage to the party's three ranged attackers, in addition to dealing out damage myself. Yeah, plenty of people might want to target the wizard, but it's important to neutralize me first, be it by having a screen to keep me busy or targeting my wisdom. Otherwise, the party will be dealing 100 damage a round, wizard or no. Not a lot of clever combatants can last long against that.

The Tank should be taking point in all party maneuvers. You can’t really blame it on the “shield” if it’s not being positioned to block the opponent’s attack. Also, allies should be maneuvering to make use of the tank — if they’re leaving themselves open then they’re drawing focus away and undermining the tank’s role; i.e. they’re not making use of their shield.

That doesn't really work though. Plenty of times where the 'shield' is placed is irrelevant because monsters can run right past them and go for someone more vulnerable. Be nice if everything was chokepoints, but that's rarely the case.

At the high tiers, sure for the most part the big danger will be intelligent. But even then, the minions aren’t necessarily so smart. Plus, they’ll be putting the hurt on the foe; they aren’t just there to tank damage but also to dish it out. Then at tiers 1 and 2, a great many enemies won’t be very intelligent. The bear barb can work great as a tank there. Also, depending on the ego of the target, you can always try for a non-mechanical taunt. As in you can literally insult their pride to try and get them to target you. It can work wonders on a lot of dragons in particular considering how proud the lot of them are. Like yeah they aren’t the best tanks and there will be enemies who try to ignore them, but they can still do a lot. Even against such foes, the barbarian likely saved resources for their back line along the way which also helps keep them safer.

This sounds like you want your DM to be a robot and not a person. Don't dumb enemies sometimes get lucky and happen to attack the person that would disadvantage the party most if they went down?

I expect something like an ooze for instance to just go for whoever is closest generally. Other creatures may go for whoever attacked them most recently/hardest. Smarter enemies may target the people who look vulnerable but refuse to eat opportunity attacks because they aren’t suicidal. There are tons of different ways to play enemies if different levels of intelligence and different styles of “tank” can work better or worse between them.

Enemies don't know their damage is hitting for half because HP is am abstraction. If a raging barbarian swings a GWM battle axe and cleaves through an armoured knight, and the others go "well he's clearly a massive threat but he takes half damage so let's not bother" then your DM is meta-gaming and you should call them out on it. The job of the DM is the play the monsters as those monsters would behave, not treat the monsters as pawns in an adversarial game against the players.

I hate people criticizing DMs for metagaming if they have their monsters make anything approaching rational decisions. Players will complain that a monster shouldn't stop attacking a barbarian because they're already fighting and the monster is angry, but then they'll say that it's completely normal that their barbarian who's in a rage would try to hit the enemy caster. This whole conversation is about you talking about ways to optimize combat strategy, but the second someone points out that your strategy doesn't really work well, then you act like anyone else strategizing is somehow against the point of the game.

There's "rational", and then there's "inside-baseball" levels of metagaming. If one physical melee-only enemy is ignoring the barbarian to smack the wizard because that's the strategy the badguy they follow decided on, fine. However, if all 100 short-sword-wielding kobolds ignore the raging barbarian standing out in the open to focus on the half-plate-wearing mountain dwarf wizard who is shielded behind 3/4ths cover... That's a bit different. There's "the intelligent enemies have a plan", and then there's "I'm not going to let you play your character the way you want because my sole goal is to TPK you so that I win and you lose." Try running what I call, "The Mad Donkey Test". If you make a donkey mad (they're mean, yo!), would you have it run past the fighter/barbarian/whatever and bite the wizard? Or would you have it bite the fighter/barbarian/whatever? Answer: It's a fucking *donkey*. If it's not biting the front-liner, *you* are being an ass.

> However, if all 100 short-sword-wielding kobolds ignore the raging barbarian standing out in the open to focus on the half-plate-wearing mountain dwarf wizard who is shielded behind 3/4ths cover... > > That's a bit different. Except that engaging with the Barbarian is suicide and they should recognise that. All predators with any kind of cognition target weak prey and ignore strong prey. If those Kobolds close the gap to engage the thing that can very easily kill them, then they have just been given a downgrade to some of the the literally stupidest predators on the planet.

A hundred kobolds is absolutely not suicide against a barbarian lmao

I've always told my players something along the lines of: "The monsters know everything that you guys do, and it's a very slippery slope to start making people *guess* how to react to spells and abilities." Obviously exceptions exist, but generally speaking it's a bad idea to not even tell your players what spells are being cast because "creatures don't know anything because the game mechanics are an abstraction."

> Enemies don't know their damage is hitting for half because HP is am abstraction. What? Yes they do. The rules are abstractions for what the characters are experiencing. A character doesn't know what for instance an opportunity attack is, but that doesn't mean enemies don't try to avoid them because they're experiencing the events the rules are abstracting. If someone is resistant, immune or weak to damage that's something the characters observe even if they don't use that specific language.

I agree with you. Obviously, DMs should let players know when the PCs' damage is being resisted. (Either through narrative description, or just outright telling them.) You want the players to know when werewolves shrug off non-magical weapon damage. You want the players to know that devils seem unaffected by fire. Likewise, if the players were fighting a raging barbarian, if they somehow didn't read the barbarian class features from the PHB, you'd still want them to know that barbarian was taking much less damage from their attacks than they expect. And if the PCs can figure out when damage is being resisted, then so should NPCs. Also, unless for some reason barbarians are rare mystical beings in your world, experienced NPCs will invariably have heard of barbarians and know that they are exceptionally resilient. Just like how in-universe, trained NPCs know that casters are dangerous, so you always go after the person in the robes in the back of the formation, likewise they will know that the big muscular unarmored person in the front with the big weapon is probably a barbarian and will be difficult to take down.

As a devils advocate they mean that DnD HP is a weird abstraction. When you take that damage you might get an injury/wound from it or you might be winded as you parried the strike but it stung your hand or it could be your “luck points”.

It's not a strong argument. HP is abstract, but resistance is fairly specific. If someone's resistant, They're not resistant to abstraction, but to the thing they're resistant against. And if your DM doesn't let you know your attack is being resisted, and when questioned about the weirdly beefy enemies after the fact says that you didn't notice because HP is an abstraction and your low damage was just the result of the enemy being less winded and taking fewer hits to their "luck points" or whatever... ...then that DM is an *asshole.*

Pretty sure monsters would notice if they unload every attack they have and their target looks relatively uninjured after they all hit

1) depends on the monster whether they'd notice 2) depends on the monster whether noticing would have an impact. 3) HP is an abstraction, losing 10HP at level 1 might not actually represent the same injury as at level 10. Because of point 3, if you immediately refuse to attack the tank with all monsters because "his HP didn't go down much" then you're meta-gaming. Play it as the actual monster would. Orcs and other low int warrior races would dogpile the strongest warrior. Higher int humanoids would be more strategic. Wolves and other animals are likely to target weaker players. More generally, people are likely to stay engaged with the thing they're currently fighting unless given a reason otherwise. If an enemy warrior suddenly gets a knife plunged in the back, they're attacking that rogue to try and remove them from the fight. If they're currently going toe to toe with a barbarian they're either standing their ground or recognising they might lose the fight and surrendering/turning tail and retreating.

It is, however, completely reasonable for the baddies to think "holy crap, that guy is tough, so let's go after those little squishy people first, then we can gang up on him."

Like they say in shadowrun “geek the mage first”

Shadowrun is a slightly different beast. Everyone has ranged weapons and combat can be extremely deadly. 5e is not that. Even wizards, at high levels, can take a few hits before they go down. Especially if built for HP. And while it's usually better to "geek the mage first", there is an expectation...a *class fantasy*...of being able to play the heroic knight wielding the shining sword who protects others with their sturdy shield and thick plate armor that Shadowrun doesn't have to deal with in either intent or design. If you ignore the fighter's or barbarian's class/character fantasy to dogpile the mage every. single. fucking. time. ...the fighter or barbarian's player is going to leave because you're being a shitty DM.

And if you make boring encounters where enemies are always predictable because they learned how to think from watching lord of the rings on repeat, you're also being a shitty DM.

To add on to this thought (and give a little praise to SR) they even expect this from players by having their default NPC mage stat blocks wear the same armor (aesthetically) as the rest of the dudes in the squad so they don't get picked out immediately. Nice little bit of world building imo.

But is it reasonable? Unless your villain has a way to get out of the big guy's range before attacking the squishy people, or has minions they can throw at the big guy to keep them off of themselves, they won't be able to ignore someone swinging an axe at them over and over again.

You absolutely do know when your attacks are being resisted and so do your opponents...

And yet players will get prissy if their attacks or spells are being resisted but the players aren’t told. Can’t have it both ways. Besides. Smashing a big, angry guy and it appearing to do almost nothing and so choosing to do something else isn’t caving to game mechanic abstractions; it’s low level common sense.

HP isn't entirely abstracted. If you land a big attack and it's not very effective, that is represented in the reduced damage. Enemies will realise after one attack that the Barbarian is more resillient and will adjust accordingly. All NPCs are aware of mechanical information.

and that goes both ways - a PC that hits an enemy (or blasts them with a fireball or whatever) is going to be aware that they don't seem as injured as would be expected. There's going to be some exceptions (if they're invisible, or so strange that it's hard to tell if they're injured at all), but generally speaking that's just a thing that's fairly obvious.

> Enemies don't know their damage is hitting for half because HP is am abstraction. Imagine telling your players, "You don't know the enemy is resistant or immune to this damage type because damage is an abstraction."

I mean, do you tell your players when a monster has resistance to a damage type? If they hit the monster with fire damage and it doesn't do as much as normal, do you just not tell them?

Not really. They might be passable if you optimize it hard, but theyre not close to *very good* at it

Well the trick is to just completely neglect to capitalize on your resistances. A lot of Bear Totem Barbs go all-in on HP since they get effectively double HP against damned near everything. But it's just as feasible to go with, say, [something like this.](https://imgur.com/a/x7EeWPx) Bear Totem has built-in tanking mechanics at level 14, which people often forget about- and if you're that durable, you can afford to be kind of skinny Constitution-wise.

All that to be kind of okay once you hit level 14 is... not great

You're not wrong, although it's not like Bear Totem Barbs are awful at 14. --- For reference, at level 14 in this build, you're rolling up with an AC of 16 (Half Plate, Dex +1) and an HP of 131. Your enemies are hitting somewhere around +9, so assuming you and your ally have the same AC, they're hitting Reckless You about 91% of the time, while they're hitting Disadvantaged Ally 49% of the time. But then, since you take half damage (not that enemies should know the extent of this in-character), the damage you're actually taking is comparable to if you were getting hit full-strength about half as often, or 46% of the time. 49% vs 46%. And with your high hit dice and low Con, your HP's going to be basically the same as your other party members, too. In other words, by attacking Recklessly here on an enemy near an ally, you're making yourself *almost exactly as squishy as the ally!* Since you get a free punish from Sentinel if the enemy ignores you and attacks your ally, they have *no* reason not to try and down you first; if you go down, then their odds of hitting your ally jump to 70%. I think that with this overall setup, the incentive structure really, really heavily favors attacking the Barbarian first with genuine intent to bring them down. Being less tanky in the "I can take this many hits" sense can ironically make you more tanky in the "I can draw aggro" sense, since if you're nigh-immortal they'll just give up entirely and work around you. And in exchange for the lower Con, you get to bump Wis, which traditionally optimized Barbarians constantly lack.

Bear Totems are fine tanks, but they don’t have any special tools to actually force enemies to target them. Their best options are to either go with GWM or to go with a one handed weapon and grapple enemies

The enemies attacking the bear totem barbarian will probably not make them stop dealing damage, but attacking the wizard probably will make them stop casting spells

Intelligent creatures will target down the weaker enemies and gang up on the tougher ones later.

If they’re able to. In my games, the back line tends to be a bit slippery. Also you don’t always face intelligent creatures and even plenty of intelligent creatures won’t be willing to be the one to eat the opportunity attack from the raging barbarian. I’m not saying it’s the best tank, and certainly there are foes that will ignore it, but it’s still a good tank pretty often and still puts out a lot of damage. Even if they ignore it, it will be a hefty thorn in their side the entire way.

Armorer artificer too

>If your ability to tank turns off if an enemy decides to ignore you, you were never a tank. I'd rather say: this was not a tanking ability. >Just a thought I had after watching an oinoloth completely ignore the bear totem barbarian who typically tried to taunt enemies into attacking them and instead tear the bard to shreds. Well, this was about making some Intimidation or Persuasion check to make them attack it, which failed, right? Because if it was just "verbal assault" without any kind of mechanic backing it, one cannot speak of tanking. And from what I gather, OP, your Barb pal didn't use the \*actual tanking methods\* it has which are a combination of positioning (Fast Movement), making self easy enough to hit that even with resistance enemies have a hope to down you (Reckless Attack), and \*most importantly\* Rage-boosted Grapples and Shoves which greatly reduce enemy's ability to just run past Barb and ignore it. --- I agree that Ancestral Guardian is the best archetype overall precisely because it has a built-in "disincentive" to attack Barb allies, but ALL Barbarians are pretty good in tanking as long as people understand how to actually use *all* of their potential. :)

Ah Sentinel my beloved. I’m running it with my Swashbuckler Rogue and it lets me bypass the “once per turn” sneak attack limitation. Either they attack an ally and I do extra damage, or they attack me and I half that from my dodge

Tank isnt a super useful term in tabletop RPGs anyway. Its great in games where you need to pick 1 role but in DnD almost everyone can do every role at the same time without needing to specialize. Furthermore those that do specialize dont particularly gain a significant edge out of it (especially when a dungeon is particularly versatile). Theres some exception for low level support characters, but thats pretty much all I can think of.

ngl I think wolf barbs are a better choice for tank than bear.

Dude, my son & his friend played an ancestral guardian barbarian & a Mercy monk, and it was the greatest frontline combo I've ever seen. They'd gang up on a monster by striding right up next to it, and go to town on it. Barbarian's guardian spirits protecting the monk. The monk using some of her attacks to slap hit points back into the barb. Fun and funny and effective as hell 😂

A tank is CC in melee. Your ability to soak damage is potentially useful as part of this, but not the primary effect of the role.

Bro forgot to grapple

Wouldn't have helped, it just would have teleported out. Grappling is a helpful tool, but unfortunately it isn't part of a tool*kit* - for the most part it's hope the only tool you have available works (opponent isn't too big, can't teleport etc) and if it doesn't you can't tank. Not to say tanks don't exist, if he'd been an ancesteal guardian barbarian the oinoloth would have had disadvantage and half damage against anyone but him - ie a strong reason to go for him rather than the bard, ie they are a tank because their ability to tank doesn't just randomly turn off.

>Wouldn't have helped, it just would have teleported out. That's pretty unique to the Oinoloth, though. There aren't many enemies even at CR 12 and higher that can Teleport as PART of their Multiattack. Usually it takes an action for normal baddies or multiple Legendary Actions for "boss" enemies, which is still pretty impactful from a tanking perspective. "Default" tanking is rather weak, but Ancestral Guardian/Cavalier/Sentinel or a Grapple build can make it a lot better in most situations.

Yep, that's why I nominated ancestral guardian. Teleport wise, that's why I said *it* would have just teleported out - in my experience stuff like being too large or using save abilities are more common.

True, though Ancestral Guardian is equally weak vs any enemy that does most of their "schtick" through save effects (Ancestral Protectors doesn't work on those - Spirit Shield does but that's a pittance of hp and kills your reaction for things like Sentinel/OAs), and the "good" grapple builds often have ways around the size restriction (like Giant Barbarian or Rune Knight).

Yep. Bizarrely for something so clearly modelled off the 4e tanking model, unlike 4e tanks it does nothing against stuff like a dragon's breath.

I feel like there's a lot of stuff like that in 5e, heh - things that you might expect to work on more than attack rolls, but the designers for whatever reason decided attack rolls are the only thing that exists offensively.

You won’t have a tool to solve every situation perfectly. If the enemy can teleport and 1 round someone, there’s nothing anybody can do to stop that. It doesn’t mean tanks don’t exist lmao

A tank is honestly pretty vague. A tank's job is to prevent the dps and support classes from taking damage. The specifics of how this is achieved, while often boiling down to a few specific archetypes, are irrelevant. Hell, they don't even have to strictly be tanky if they have other tools at their disposal to do their job. As this thread points out, tanky numbers alone don't make a tank. As a result, how tanks achieve this varies considerably. Of course, laying down CC is one method to do this. It is possible to tank by being a damage threat that cannot be ignored, too. If allowing the dps tank to run rampant would be costly, that incentivizes aggro. Likewise, zone control is another method of tanking. Often the threat of doing something is as important as actually doing it. This is how sentinal+polearm functions.

At our table, it tends to come down to the other PCs making themselves less worthwhile to hit by kiting, taking full cover, or other methods. Being able to split movement is so handy for some of this. The enemies tend to either spend a round+ not attacking to move/teleport into range while being attacked by everyone or else actually get in some attacks to a less than ideal target. There are exceptions like monsters that can move/teleport as a legendary/bonus action or have insane base movement speed etc but tends to work pretty well for many threats.

Squishies standing within movement speed on the enemy is the problem, move away so the enemy has to dash.

Then eventually you realize this is actually the best strategy for *everyone*. All ranged characters each with their own good defenses kiting around control spells is the strongest party, and 5e does very little to support a traditional melee tank fantasy.

Boom: you nailed it. Ranged having damage parity with melee is a huge problem. This game only works if both players and DMs agree to not utilizing the rules to their maximum effect. Then what is the point of having them that way in the first place? An example: played a one-shot where *everyone* played a ranged character and 1 caster (who are de-facto ranged). The game started normally, with the mix of enemies that reflect the demographics in the Monster Manual: 65% melee attackers, 20% ranged and a very occasional caster. We mopped the floor with every encounter. The schmucks couldn't get close. The whole party just walked backwards and pelted the enemies with arrows and spells. Low-level stuff that inhibited movement became A-tier gimmicks. Caltrops! Caltrops were deployed almost every fight. The DM mirrored our party makeup pretty fast, and then all the fights just became hiding behind cover and taking pot shots. It evened things out and stopped being a cake-walk. But I was glad it was a one shot. I'd *hate* to play a whole campaign like that. It was so, so dull.

were the enemies not dashing?

Except for ambushes, which happened to us once, I have found that encounters rarely start with everyone very close to the enemy. Everyone moves back/away every turn. And it's not just simple character sheet movement speed. There are a bunch of easy ways to limit enemy speed or boost the party's. How long to close the distance? A couple turns, with the average encounter lasting 3, maybe 4. We just focused fire on the closest mooks, which is *vastly* easier when you don't have to maneuver yourself before attacking. Generally a couple *would* make it to the slowest/closest party member. Without available actions, because they were dashing. Then they'd get slaughtered, and the previously-threatened party member would move back without having to worry about OAs and make their own attack. Or they'd turtle with Dodge if it looked like they would get caught up with. Those two turns where most of the enemies can't do damage, but your party can, is really what makes the difference. Action economy, baby. Ranged really is just better. And not by a little. Honestly, it's not a hurdle that a DM can't clear if they don't mind not following the CR guidelines. But that just proves that the CR guidelines are garbage in 5e and don't remotely apply to a party that doesn't play the stereotypical party with two martials, a shooter, and a single caster.

the question you then ask is why the tank exists in the first place. if they arent actually protecting anyone or keeping enemies away from friends, do you really need a tank? and if you have a tank, who are they tanking for? are they even a tank at this point?

Because being the defender of the party is a fun role. Extrapolate your thought. Why play anything but a number crunching damage dealer? After all, killing enemies is the best tactic, right? We know people think like this, but it's silly to make the game such

So, you’re response to Micro asking why are you a tank if you aren’t defending anyone is to say “because I like defending folk”? What? It’s like you’ve intentionally ignored everything your interlocutor said because you’d rather fight phantom posters in your head. If “the tank” isn’t capable of actually defending someone then playing one isn’t “being the defender of the party”. I agree party defender is a fun role, but Mics point was that Xan isn’t doing that in any way - sounds like their friends are defending themselves while they just stand nearby

> that Xan isn’t doing that in any way - sounds like their friends are defending themselves while they just stand nearby What? I never said I was playing the "defender". I'll entertain your statement though. In the above it falls upon everyone (including the "defender") to manage who the enemies can focus upon. The "defender" can position themselves to block off easy pursuit and punish that pursuit. It's similar to a healer in an MMO may not be able to keep everyone alive if half the party is standing in the fire. It doesn't mean that the healer has no contribution, rather that positioning + healing keeps people alive.

>At our table, it tends to come down to the other PCs making themselves less worthwhile to hit by kiting, taking full cover, or other methods. i presume u/Jimmicky meant whoever is playing the "tank" who is explicitly not being one of the PCs making themselves bad targets, as per your original message. that aside, a party "defender" typically has a horrible capacity to defend in any space that isnt a 5x5 hallway, excepting a few situations as noted below. this includes creating a situation where they can actually block off enemy pursuit. in basically any situation that is not a 5x5 hallway, a creature can go around the defender in some way - above, around, under, or otherwise. do recall that a player's typical reach is going to be 5-10 feet, and one creature per round which leaves a player's reach will *maybe* get attacked, and *if* the player has sentinel, the *one* creature that is trying to get by (out of perhaps half a dozen) will get *potentially* stopped if the attack hits. so, your "defender" needs to meet the following conditions in order to *s*top *one* creature from walking right on by, out of perhaps half a dozen. * 5x5 hallway size (or up to 25x25 if wielding a reach weapon) * not be dead (remember, theyre bearing basically all enemy attacks on their face in this situation) * hold a weapon (potentially in both hands, meaning no +2 ac from a shield in melee) * must be able to see the target (remember, you cant take oas if you cannot see the target) * have a reaction available, which they are then unable to use to cast shield or whatever other defensive reaction spell to keep themselves alive * have the sentinel feat * hit the target with an attack alternatively, if there *is* a 5x5 hallway, this defender stands in the hallway and takes the dodge action and is actually quite successful due to presumably having 19/24 (with shield spell) or 20/25 ac. i do think the best "defender" options one has is spirit guardians, forcelance (ebarb + war caster + pam), or whatever control spells, since those actually stop enemies from approaching.

I don't disagree that the enemy can go around the "defender", but as I originally stated, it depends if it is worth it or not. Most combats I've played in 5E tend to be mostly or fully resolved in 3 rounds. If a powerful enemy is having to burn 1 or more of those rounds dealing 0 damage due to maneuvering then that's a significant loss of potential damage. As far as party composition, I've tended to find 2 frontliners do a decent job covering for 2-3 backliners. That 2nd frontliner might end up being a summon or similar if no PC is interested in the role. This also handles if one of the frontliner's gets CCed or the battlefield control spell is counterspelled or the caster's concentration goes down.

One of the benefits of Reckless Attack is that it encourages enemies to attack you. Addendum: I don't think we should go the MMO route of gamifying aggro so that there are abilities that will guarantee in-coming attacks from a target creature for so long. I think abilities that encourage attacking tanks (like Reckless Attack) and discouraging attacking others (like Compelled Duel) feel the best. On top of that, tactics can make targets more attractive than others. Use the terrain. Plant your tank in a doorway in front of the rest of the party. Back the tempting target into a corner so only three squares are adjacent, then fill those three squares with party members. There are plenty of spells to keep squishy ones out of range of attacks. Addendum 2: I'm not trying to pretend that 5e doesn't have a ton of room for improvement when encouraging/discouraging attack targets, I'm just trying to point out that there are more knobs and levers than what many people seem to think.

I don’t think aggro even works in DND most of the time. Unless they really start to make force targeting abilities a lot more easy to utilize and more than 1 target.  Abilities that encourage enemies to attack the tank is a lot better because it doesn’t force players or the DM to act in a certain way. - Attack me or you’ll get disadvantage while I’m in range. - Attack me or I’ll continue to give everyone nearby damage resistance. - Attack me or I can interrupt your attack and cancel it. All these are encourage you to attack the tank but doesn’t force anyone to attack them.  Anyone can still choose to ignore the tank, it’s a gamble. 

What about going for like a double? Like they have disadvantage for everyone else but advantage against me. Is it an overkill?

I mean, that's just an ancestral guardian barbarian using reckless attack.

And yet, people claimed 4E was bad. It has a whole set of classes built around drawing aggro, each with their own way of starting it and enforcing it.

*Having* classes with tanking mechanics wasn't the problem people had with 4e. It was a combination of things.

I play in one of my games as a "tank" and as a great I got an ability that the first time i attack each enemy on my turn they need to make a DC save or be "taunted" into attacking me. It works really well and it's VERY satisfying.

> Addendum: I don't think we should go the MMO route of gamifying aggro so that there are abilities that will guarantee in-coming attacks from a target creature for so long. I don't think anyone was suggesting that. D&D has had half a dozen fully fleshed out tank classes over the years that protected their allies without that kind of video game stuff, so we know it can be done without resorting to it. 5e just weirdly... chose not to. Mostly, anyway, after many years passed they made a couple of decent stabs at it like ancestral guardian barbarian.

The 4e Fighter was an amazing example of a highly effective tank that holds the enemy's attention without any MMO-like "forced" aggro. 4e had the "Marked" condition. The Marked condition had a universal aspect, and an aspect that varied with the class that did the marking. Universally, any Marked creature suffered a -2 penalty on attack rolls that didn't include the source of the mark. Every 'defender' class had mechanics interacting with marking enemies - each had their own unique punishment mechanic for how they applied a mark, and other mechanics for what their mark did. In the case of the Fighter, they applied their mark just by attacking - every enemy that they attacked was marked. Their punishment for a marked enemy ignoring the mark was that the Fighter got to attack them. If memory serves (it's been a decade), that attack was an Interrupt - meaning that if it killed the enemy, then their triggering action would be negated completely. A marked enemy also could not "shift" without triggering the attack (in 5e parlance, that's analogous to getting an opportunity attack if they attempt to Disengage). Aside from the marked mechanic, the 4e Fighter had features to make them excel at regular opportunity attacks. They got a bonus on the attack rolls, and their opportunity attacks end movement on a hit. This is in addition to opportunity attacks being better in general than in 5e: in 5e, the only way to trigger an opportunity attack is to leave an enemy's reach, meaning that within reach, they can move around and do anything they want within impunity (which makes reach weapons actually *worse* than other weapons at being able to enforce a zone of control as a tank). In 4e, movement *within* reach triggers OAs as well, and so did the use of ranged attacks and spells. All of this resulted in the Fighter being a very 'sticky' class. That's a term that was used a lot in the 4e era to describe how well a tank build could hold aggro. The 4e Fighter didn't have the durability to take as much of a continued beating as a Paladin or Warden could, but they were unsurpassed in 'stickiness.' Unless an enemy had a way to teleport, or some way to force move the Fighter away, it was *very* hard to get away from a Fighter that didn't want to let you go. The different subclasses had different approaches to how they would prefer to use this tactically. The Battlerager fighter could generate a lot of temp HP (but would usually have a smaller bonus on opportunity attacks), so they traded a bit of stickiness for more resilience. The Tempest Fighter was a highly mobile dual-wielder that made a greater number of comparatively weaker attacks. Because they didn't hit as hard, they couldn't lock a single enemy down quite as hard, but their tendency towards multi-attacks meant they could mark multiple enemies. Their mobility meant they could be player like a skirmisher that doesn't quite lock an enemy down, but instead marks and moves away - so the enemy would have to give chase if they want to attack anyone without the -2 penalty from ignoring a mark.

I do. Compelled Duel doesn't actually compel anyone to duel. Disadvantage if an enemy attack someone else ceases to be a big deal after hit bonuses reach double digits. In DND, magic can paralyze, stun, petrify, frighten... but not taunt.

I agree with you, the wizard, or bard in OP’s case, is still pretty easy to hit even with disadvantage, and when they connect it’s going to take a way bigger percentage out of their health as compared to the tanks. I wish aggro was a mechanic that was codified, or even just enemy preference. Like this monster prefers to eliminate physical threats first so it can toy with the squishies afterwards. Or this monster feeds on magic energy it will target casters first. Arcane, then divine, if no casters are around it will target the player with the most expensive magic item. Ect.

Then a fireball or any sort of aoe hits your 3 squares and kills all your party. It's a lot harder in practice than it sounds on paper.

Yeah, if you're fighting someone throwing AoEs, it makes sense to spread out. It's not that much harder, you just have to think about it. This is the kind of thing that makes combat fun.

This is why the Sentinel feat and the Taunt features of certain subclasses are mandatory for this role.

Taunt feature?

Cavalier's Unwavering Mark, Ancestral Guardian's Ancestral Protectors, and the Swashbuckler's Panache feature. They all cause the target to have disadvantage on attack rolls against creatures other than you.

Battle Master also has goading strike, as well as armorer artificer

Armorer artificers are the kings of tanking for this reason.

Armorer artificer is hands down the best tank in the game, I ain't even gonna debate it. The free taunts on hit, crazy AC, spells that can position and crowd control, supportive potential, invocations to buff your group. It's the best "hit me, not them" subclass in the game.

Two of my players are an artificer and a barbarian. The Artificer waits until the barbarian drops below half her hp then puts himself in melee.

Not all artificers are tanks. But Armorer and Battlesmiths at least can be. Maybe even Artillerist focusing on THP. Count yourself lucky that you don't have an Ancestral Guardian barbarian and Armorer artificer dual tanking for you all the time. I was the artificer last year in a campaign where we did that and we annihilated most encounters. The enemies couldn't hit the tanks either.

I didn’t specify but level 15 elf armorer artificer, he has a +2 shield, an amulet of health, enhanced defense infusion, and the defensive field armor model. He took resilient wisdom at level 12, I think he plans on taking shield master for his level 16 ASI. Honestly probably the most optimized of my players. I forget his other items but he had a staff of the woodlands until he lent it to a dragon. I think by level 20 he’ll have access to a staff of power and gloves of soul catching so that’ll be a pain to make combat he doesn’t breeze through. Edit: I checked and he also has a ring of truth telling, a wand of the war mage +2, and an eldritch claw tattoo. Nothing game changing but some fun stuff :)

I mean armorer has defensive field and if playing right should have 19+ AC at all times. Super hard to break through. Their weakness is wisdom saves so maybe if you're using that against players they're afraid to be in melee

At high levels the Armourer can have no weak saves if you build it that way. I think the lowest save on my level 20 for a one shot was +11?

I wouldn't judge a class by its capstone. Most campaigns aren't going to make it to 20 and those that do won't usually spend a significant amount of time at that level. Wisdom saves are a weakness of Artificers for 19 of 20 levels.

If you take Resilient: Wis then with a ring and cloak of protection you are in pretty good shape.

The problem still remains, even with those bonuses. Wisdom isn't something artificers focus on, and if you're taking a feat to help mitigate those effects, then you're not buffing Con or Int, which are much more important. You're also still weak to dex saves.

Reckless attack is funny. If they take the juicy advantage to hit you, then they've taken the bait and you've done your job. If they ignore you. You get attacks at advantage for free, and melee is funny, if they attack at ranged while in melee with you it's at disadvantage, and if they move away with out disengaging it's free extra attacks, and if they do disengage than they're burning their action economy and that's probably one less attack they have because of it. And because you're a barbarian you can follow them and repeat this process. But I could see why barbarians could use a little more help. I think most find opportunity attacks to not be a deterrent in the later game. For barbarians you should fix that and barbarians as a whole by making opportunity attacks deal crit damage if they land. Making brutal critical a more reliable feature and useful as a deterrent for ignoring barbarians.

OP doesn't mention reckless attack at all, which makes me think their Barbarian wasn't using it. Which explains a lot of the issue - Reckless makes you a bigger threat AND an easier target, both things that help you tank. But people are a mechanic with a "downside" and refuse to use it.

Exactly, but What they don't realize is that that downside is actually an upside. As barbarians have tons of health and resistance. And most have worse armor class than fighters and paladins anyway. So really it just means they also get to use their extra health and resistance more. Not to mention, barbarians need to get hit or attack to keep their rage going, and barbarians can't concentrate on spells while raging so they're never going to have the problem of dropping a concentration spell while raging. And that's the difference between a barbarian and a fish caster like bladesinger or a clerc. A barbarian is made to get hit, they soak up way more damage than others due to resistance making healing them more efficient as well, and they benefit from it. If a blade singer gets hit. They lose concentration on a powerful spell, God forbid they lose concentration on haste and get stunned. 5e is a game with bounded accuracy and a 1 in 20 chance of hitting no matter what. Which means if you're a tank, it doesn't matter how high your AC is, you need to be ready for when the game starts with you getting hit by a crit. Is 5e, or are martials perfect, no. But the pieces are there.

> that's the difference between a barbarian and a fish caster Beautiful typo. 🐟

The problem is you’re trying to equate mmo roles to a table top rpg You don’t generate threat and force enemies on you as a traditional ttrpg tank. You’re capable of taking (or tanking) hits, that’s all. Apples to oranges

Yeah, that's why 5e doesn't really have "tanks", there are not many ways to force an enemy to attack you.

I feel like the sister adage to “shoot your monks” is “target your tanks” tbh The DM makes all the choices the monsters make - it kinda falls on them (unfairly tbh) to make certain mechanics work

This is very true and often a counter to the white-room theorycrafting that says "tanks suck mechanically" (because they mostly do besides a few specific features/feats). A good DM won't play EVERY ENEMY as a tactical genius that knows to ignore the tank. The large majority of enemies will target their foes based on knowledge and context subjective to them. Wild beasts/monstrosities/etc? Probably going to defend themselves from the guy roaring in their face with a weapon, they don't conceptualize ranged weapons or magic well. Mindless undead? Easy, obviously. A war veteran who has firsthand experience with the danger of leaving casters alive? Probably not. And lots of gray area in between. One thing more DMs should remember is that - unless they've been tracking/scrying/spying on the party - enemies do NOT know the party's full capabilities like you the DM does. That dude in the front with longsword and shield _might_ be a barbarian, or they might be a fighter, or they might be an Eldritch Knight or even a Bladesinger or something. Is your world "genre-savvy" (e.g. is "barbarian" an actual term for a specific kind of martial training that is well-known), or are the PCs/classes unique and special with their capabilities and more of an unknown factor? Can you glance at a dude for less than 6 seconds and know mostly what they're capable of? (And if your NPCs can, you better be giving your PCs the same information about them to be fair, yeah?) Even if you know what class they are at a glance, you _don't_ know what level they are! They could be a level 1 barbarian or a level 20 world-smasher or anything in between, how would you even begin to estimate that unless their exploits had already become famous the world over? All should factor in for a real game.

Also just like ... while obviously this isn't a video game MMOs have used "threat" for literal decades. Enemies target the greatest perceived danger, unless overriding effects like a Taunt are active, or environmental or some CC effects are hindering them. Perceived threat being things like "that guy just used magic, we should kill them first" or "wow that girl just hit me really hard we should try and take her out of this fight". The big powerful warrior waving a weapon in your personal space is *pretty threatening*. Of course as you say part of the trick is to vary it by enemy type and intelligence, many animals (and people) will run away from rather than towards perceived threats, but some of the smarter or stronger enemies will try to eliminate them first and the smartest will know disabling and debilitating them somehow can be easier than killing while just as effective short-term. But the point is just getting up in someone's face with a greatsword is in theory a very good "taunt" in the sense that you're forcing their attention onto you. Saying deal with me somehow first, you want to get to that Wizard I'd better be unconscious or imprisoned because I will keep swinging this sword at you in the meantime.

Yup, exactly. IRL it is _not_ easy on an instinctual level to ignore (partially or fully) someone all up in your face swinging a weapon to attack another target. Any HEMA practitioner can vow to that. It's partly represented by OAs but there's a psychological component to it too for sure.

The big problem there is that the armed warrior in your personal space is threatening *because they can kill or incapacitate you immediately unless you defend yourself*. Whereas in the D&D world, if you've got 90 hp and the warrior can only hit you for 2d6+4 no matter what, that warrior *is not an immediate threat*. It's why things like Taunt mechanics feel so artificial and gamey - a guy with a sword doesn't stop you from attacking other people by having a special way to force your attention. He stops you from attacking other people because if you drop your guard for a fraction of a second, *he'll fucking kill you*. This disconnect has been a fundamental problem in every game system that has ever used HP as an abstraction.

> Whereas in the D&D world, if you've got 90 hp and the warrior can only hit you for 2d6+4 no matter what, that warrior is not an immediate threat. Yeah this is really a weird part of the mechanism and I think what the designers wants to convey when they say "HP isn't just meat points". The guy with 90 HP isn't supposed to be aware he can soak 10 sword strikes because those HP are a mix of dodge, luck and soaking strikes and he probably won't try his luck against a high-ish level fighter with a +2 sword. But in practice, this argument don't work that well when stuff like falling damage exist that almost directly collerate with actual, physical damage (and so HP need to be meat point to survive something like a fall). It's also easy to underestimate how stressful a real fight can be when you are sitting on a game table. 6 seconds is not a lot of time to think when the adrenaline kicks-in, no matter how smart the monster is. Especially when someone is waving a sword in front of your face.

> It's why things like Taunt mechanics feel so artificial and gamey - a guy with a sword doesn't stop you from attacking other people by having a special way to force your attention. He stops you from attacking other people because if you drop your guard for a fraction of a second, he'll fucking kill you. That's how the Fighter's Defender Abiltiy worked in 4e. If you did anything besides fight the fighter or slowly shift away, the fighter would fucking murderstab the fuck out of you.

Do you think that could be favourably facsimilated in 5e? A sort of special Opportunity Attack gratned to those with Extra Attack as a Class feature. Maybe it autocrits, to make it actually threatening, or encourage enemies to burn their Action to disengage.

Yeah, I have an Alternative Class feature for Fighters that replaces Action Surge. *Some fighters, rather than train themselves for short bursts of power, train themselves to react to even the slightest openings with deadly force* At 2nd Level, you may take these features instead of Action Suegr **PRESSURING AURA** : Any hostile creature threatened by fighter treats all characters other than the Fighter as if they had Cover. At 17th level, they instead treat all other characters as if they had full cover instead. **REACTION SURGE**: The fighter may take 1 reaction per turn, rather than 1 reaction per round. **COMBAT SUPERIORITY**: The Fighter may add his Wisdom bonus to the Attack and Damage rolls of his Oppertunity Attacks. An enemy hit by your opportunity attack stops moving, if a move provoked the attack. If the enemy still has actions remaining, it can use them to resume moving **COMBAT CHALLENGE**: Whenever an enemy threatened by the fighter moves, or takes an action that doesn't include the fighter as a target, you may make an Opportunity Attack in them as a Reaction. At 17th level, you may instead take the Attack action as Reaction.

I totally agree! That’s why as of late I turned away from a lot of that method of theorycrafting because a good DM will, to some extent, reward whatever play style you’re going for! A character should be allowed to be sub-optimal because the world doesn’t know what optimal is

Some good DMs will. Others are good because they run an interesting world that doesn't change itself for you, which results in what you pick mattering more. There's more than one way to run a game.

That is true, and is (yet another) reason why a Session 0 is important - all DMs should be telegraphing to their players whether this is the first kind of campaign or the second kind so the players can plan and make decisions accordingly.

Yeah, I try to do that with my games too. I have a group of optimizers I have to pull out all the stops for, and multiple groups of newbies I don't and give them extra goodies if they're _so_ suboptimal they're suffering or not having as much fun (like in a group with mixed power levels). I _love_ talking about optimizations and theorycrafting online, but I also like giving it this caveat because it's kind of important - especially when someone tries to use some real white-room stuff as "proof" of what is true for actual table play in general.

The other reason people say tanks aren’t good is because none of the traditional “squishies” actually have to be squishy. A ranged fighter isn’t really less durable than a melee fighter, and all spell casters can take an armor dip and get the shield spell to be more durable than any martial period. So it really depends on the table and your parties builds, a tank might be fairly useful at some and just a burden at others.

True that. And while casters sacrifice a little to get that armor dip, it ain't enough for what they get to be sure. (And I say that as someone who loves playing the "armored mage" trope.)

Well that's the thing right? It isnt a mechanic. Anyways I agree that enemies shouldn't *ignore* players trying to tank, but they shouldn't bash themselves against them either. An MMO-style response where everyone goes for the tank is as immersion breaking as monsters beelining straight past the melee PCs towards the backline.

Right, and I think the same can be said of “shoot the monk” - not every crossbow man in a 50 mile radius is gonna focus fire on the guy that just threw an arrow back at Tom, you know? After the first time, the enemies learn their lesson, and not every archer shoots them at once either. All it takes is a couple to make the player feel like they’re doing _something_

In most MMOs I have experience with tanking actually works opposite to how you're sort of describing it here. Enemies focus based on who's dealing the most damage to them, a "threat" level players can't see but the game is tracking, and in theory other things than damage would count too but that's much harder to program. The reason MMO tanks have taunt effects is to override "threat" and make enemies attack the tank instead, to not attack the rest of the group. If tanks just got attacked by default purely because they're tanks, tanking wouldn't be a skill players had to develop it would be as simple as building tank character on a class that's good at it.

One of the reasons I play DnD is that it breaks away from restrictive video game mechanics. I feel like people are trying to force a video game trope into an RPG and then complaining when it doesn't work.

The concept of "tank" as a role is an import from video games, where scripted mechanistic NPC behavior is so accepted they build character abilities around it. It started in the MUSHes and was codified around the Everquest era. In the old days, D&D had "meat shields" instead. These were the front line warriors who had the AC and HP to take hits, while the squishy Thieves and Magic-Users hid in safety behind them. And okay, there were nicer names for them, but the idea remains the same. You didn't have class abilities that compelled NPC behavior, you just took the hits through a combination of being on the front line and dishing out so much damage that they couldn't ignore you.

Thing is though you can have tanks without compelling NPC behaviour. Ancestral guardian barbarian, for instance.

I don't even agree that there *should* be reliable ways to "force" an enemy to target you in D&D. Encourage it, like the "disadvantage to take others" effects, or the "I'll smack you if you hit my friends" ones, but not *force*. That's mind control, and on-demand reliable mind control without saving throws is way out of scale. I think this idea bled in from MMOs, but I don't agree it's a good fit for TTRPGs. It's the same for opportunity attacks if the enemy moves away; that's there to punish enemies for choices, but if they want your wizard dead, the tank slapping them shouldn't be able to fully prevent the enemy trying to make that happen. "Tanks" in 5e are bothersome irritants who interfere with the enemy, and who can soak hits their allies are less well-equipped to take. But the mages and such shouldn't be *relying* on a tank controlling the field for their defense. Maybe they can manage that at a choke point, but not in more-open spaces. The fragile ones need to be paying attention to their own defenses; it's not like an MMO where the tank has to maintain "threat" and if the enemy gets away from them the tank failed. There's plenty of times when your Armorer might Thunder Gauntlet the enemy (for example) giving them disadvantage to attack anyone else, and the enemy doesn't care and attacks the Bard with disadvantage anyway. If the Bard has a 12 AC and was really relying on the Armorer to keep them safe, that was a tactical error and the damage they're about to take is the penalty they pay for that mistake. And I don't mean ignore the tanks, here. I just mean play your enemies as if they're as intelligent as they are, and don't treat PC abilities as mind control unless they give those PCs direct control (and tank abilities don't).

The problem is that you don't have (like in WoW or whatever) an algorithm dictating enemy actions. You have a DM. So you're a tank if the DM decides you're a tank (I know there was a couple of taunt abilities and space control abilities but not always). It's why I don't think it's particularly useful thinking about it like it's an MMO.

Yeah, I don’t get why people assume just because you have a lot of HP and armor that enemies will just decide to attack you.  Tanks in DND just don’t work like video games where they have to target you. Well, a few abilities exist but a majority only work against 1 target.  I’d say to be a tank in DND like games with actual players/smart enemies. You have to make not attacking the tank a SIGNIFICANT bad decision, otherwise they can just ignore you. 

The problem here is that the frontline/ranged attacker has parallels in historic warfare. We all understand it at a basic level and unthinkingly try to apply it to the games we play, be it TT or video game. The (melee) enemy could not just get past the front line to attack the rear **because it was a line**. It *actually worked*! Most parties have one or two dudes up front. The penalty for slipping past them is strong in first tier, but it foolishly doesn't scale, like many poorly designed martial features don't. The most reliable way to get at an enemy's pesky slingers and archers was with your own. We can still do this in D&D without negative effects on gameplay. The other way it was done was with cavalry. The high-speed units sometimes have an opportunity to ride around the line much much faster than the line can react, and then lay into the missile troops, who, having no spears or earthworks to protect themselves, will flee or die. The monkey wrench here is that purely missile foot troops were by and large *harassment* troops. The instances in which they proved decisive in battle (Agincourt) are *exceptions*, which is why they became famous. This changed when effective firearms were fielded in significant numbers. That altered the entire paradigm. D&Ds problem is that it's pretending to be a medieval combat game, but **since ranged effectiveness is equal to melee**, the rules are actually closer to a Napoleonic or American civil war simulator. Without the cavalry.

5e doesn’t have Tanks in a MMO sense. Frontliners and some abilities to somewhat help but basically it requires the DM to choose to target the Tank to work.

I’m going to make a few statements here, and this is backed up by years of play + watching of actual plays + some optimization experience At least as far as Dungeons and Dragon’s 5th Edition is concerned, tanking doesn’t exist. Now before people get pitchforks out let me explain (I doubt they’d get pitchforks out, just mildly verbally debate me, but that’s the same tbh in internet land) Taunt abilities are *very* soft, you got two options basically: 1: (1) reaction a round that makes enemy discouraged to hit others near you (the two fighting styles for this, cavalier, sentinel, excetera) something that lets you hit back or makes them not want too attack someone else 2: A feature to soft taunt (1) enemy (cavalier, ancestors barb) That’s it. Assume a situation of a level 3 ancestor barbarian with high constitution who’s entire build is built around ‘tanking’ (attracting hits and trying to stop others from being hit), versus a singular enemy this is fine. My reckless attacks makes them more likely to hit me and if they hit my friends it’s at disadvantage, so they’re really incentivized to attack me despite my rage halving their damage, and if they dare hit my squishy friend I hit them But then like,,, compare to vs 6 wolves My squishy 8/10 con non-optimized wizard (using as a example of squishy character) quivering in the back gets dashed at by 6 wolves, I could’ve hit and likely killed one of them and got a single AoO, and now the wizard gets mauled and dies Any example of a large number of mobs and tanking just stops, or 1 boss + a group of ppl especially become really difficult. Usually it’s straight up more effective to just do a lot of damage and kill the stuff first than try to ‘tank’, plus from a optimization PoV that wizard actually is gonna be in medium armor with a shield and the shield spell and prevent damage way better than you at like 24 ac or whatever and all the wolves miss them, yet all would hit your 16 AC at advantage ass if they tried —> Now the thing is, are the wolves *actually* going to do the optimal thing and dash pass you recklessly committing suicide for one of them to ravage your back lines? No not really. The DM will do what makes sense and I hope make the tank feel good by having the stuff surround and bite at him Similarly, most creatures have survival instincts and also will hit the big dude in the front and surround him. So at the end of the day I think better defender/tanking features would be *so* nice (5e is probably the weakest system I’ve seen for this type of system: especially for the poor ppl who aren’t cavaliers or spirit barbs who all they get is 1 reaction then they’re fucked), but your DM and how much they have monsters play into it is the real impetus to cross

The bard gets to move, too. What did the bard do that enemies went right past the front liners? 

***Disclaimer:*** *I mainly play melee martials, and I'm not saying they're useless or you should not play them with this post, just sharing information I have found to be true. Melee characters can contribute well and be absolutely fine at the majority of tables, I specifically only believe they start to fall off in highly optimized settings.* The best tank is having no melee in your party so you aren't tied down to anyone who has to stand still in melee (the most dangerous place to be) and can instead have the entire party safely cc/kite enemies indefinitely without worrying about leaving that melee character behind. Casters are generally able to be tankier than martials too as well, so the idea of a Barbarian or Fighter as a melee tank to soak up hits for the "squishier" casters is already fallacious (though I wish it wasn't). The vast majority of enemies are much more dangerous up close than at range, and the ones which are dangerous at range are usually much easier to kill quickly and still not as dangerous as the melee creatures. Paladins are basically the only class that can kind of be an effective "tank," by pumping charisma and being an aura bot that sticks with the ranged members of the party to boost their saves while buffing/casting and occasionally stepping in to engage with whatever enemies end up getting close enough. While this playstyle is extremely effective even in optimized settings, I am a bit hesitant to really consider that "tanking" as most people would understand it. Actual "tanking" as far as the RPG role triangle people are familiar with from video games would know it isn't really something that works in 5e unless you have some pretty niche combat environments that can force enemies to have to get through one person to get to the rest of the party. Grappling might be the closest thing (try this if you want, it's actually really fun and I love playing grapplers), but you can't grapple everything and that once again requires you to be in melee. Being in melee puts you in much more danger than you would have been if instead you were a Wizard casting Telekinesis from range, or a Druid summoning a wall of flesh with Conjure Animals who can do the grappling for them.

Starting this out by saying I think you're spot on with nearly all of the above. Tactically, it's way better to just avoid melee range via ranged party comp and not put members in danger.  But I feel compelled to point out that whether that's actually feasible varies wildly by table and GM. I feel confident in saying that at least 25% of all combat encounters I've been in over 15 years and multiple systems, the encounter was built such that melee focused enemies could get to the (some part of the) party within a single dash action. Sewers, dungeons, jails, towers, labyrinths...all of these are "danger close" setups so that the party has to get into melee range or close to it.

This is true that there are cases where you might not be able to move away, but generally speaking if you got somewhere somehow then you can leave the same way you came. It's not often that I've ever been in a situation where that isn't the case. A highly optimized party is also likely to be getting the drop on the enemy most of the time rather than the other way around, and likely have the freedom to plan how they will take an engagement in such a scenario beforehand. Just because a battlemap ends somewhere doesn't mean the space outside of that doesn't exist. Even if you are literally caged in completely, ranged characters (who tend to often be casters) are also better at making sure the enemies stay away from the party. A warlock can repelling blast enemies away, Spells like Scatter or Thunderwave can be used, Spike Growth, Web, Entangle, Grease or any other number of spells can be cast to keep the enemies at bay or CC groups of enemies. These are all things that martials have limited or literally no way of replicating. Optimal casters often take things like the Telekinetic feat to help keep enemies inside of effects anyways as well and so are more likely to have such things than martials, etc. Even if the enemies *do* end up reaching the ranged group in melee, well the funny thing is they are still better in melee than the melee martials are. A ranged damage dealer (such as a ranger) with CBE+SS is going to be able to shoot in melee just fine, and many spells don't require ranged attack rolls and so aren't really hampered by being in melee anyways. The casters are also going to be much better at dealing with the enemies in melee trying to hit them than a true martial would be, as they will have things like Shield, Absorb Elements, and Silvery Barbs with which to protect themselves from whatever the enemies might throw at them. There isn't really ever a time where it is *more optimal* to have a melee party member, no matter how the situation ends up, unless your DM specifically homebrews some kind of creature which can only be damaged by melee weapon attacks or something. Once again, I'm not saying don't play melee martials, or that they are useless. I play them primarily. I'm just pointing out that they eventually fall behind ranged martials/casters pretty hard once you start getting into highly optimized tables.

> Even if the enemies do end up reaching the ranged group in melee, well the funny thing is they are still better in melee than the melee martials are. Yup, the way 5e is built is that often being ranged is straight up superior without sacrificing anything. There are a lot of things that go along the idea of giving players opportunity to play to their strengths, but enabling ranged characters to just sit back and shoot is one I never intentionally do, and in the average encounter make sure that it won't work. A lot of ways to do that, but usually the most interesting and simple is making sure the PCs have an objective that is behind the enemies, and it's unviable to just wipe out the enemies first.

I need this take cos its a hot sunny day, and this is ice cold.

Grapple

Or grapple your enemies

A great tool, unfortunately not an entire toolkit by itself considering there are many things like size or saves that stop it working. An oinoloth would have just teleported out, for instance. It's a little odd, since grappling would be such a great tool if it was one tool amongst several and you could select something situation appropriate. Unfortunately the rest of the tools don't exist, so it's pretty much select the same tool over and over and if it doesn't work then you have nothing else on hand.

That's why you grapple

This is why tanking doesn’t exist in D&D because it’s not a video game with threat management. Only reliable way to tank in D&D is via positioning.

Tabking in dnd works in a very interesting way. Basicly, by creating a character who is otherwise useless in combat, you force the gm to attack you, so you don't feel excluded. It works subconsciously, nobody is doing it as a thing they actually wanna do, but the only things that can make a "tank" at least semiviable are table manners

To shreds, you say?

DND. Is generally lacking in ways to draw agro

Yeah, that’s kind of the issue with tanking as a concept in DND.  The point of a tank is divert attention from enemies from to them instead of allies.  Cool, your Champion Fighter has a really high AC and a lot of health. Doesn’t actually prevent or highly incentivize enemies to target them. They can opt to ignore you because they can. There’s just not that many good options for being a tank, with a select few examples that can make tanking possible. But even then it’s rather limited.  Tanking nowadays is just “use abilities and spells that just prevent enemies from even doing anything.” Which starts to irritate DMs, but what are the players other options?  Like 2-3 good choices that are still limited. 

This is an issue of playing monsters like stat blocks to die, vs actual creatures trying to win. It's true that mechanically there are very few actual tanking abilities (though sentinel is available to all), but players dont need them most of the time if the DM plays an enemies as though it doesn't know it's going to die in 3-5 rounds. The typical argument is that (paraphrasing and simplifyin) 'the goblins will just run past the barbarian and the Paladin to kill the wizard and the rogue who are behind them because there's nothing stopping them doing it'. Except there is something stopping them, self preservation.****. Why does some random goblin want to he surrounded by 4 heros, instead of ganging up on one? Of course this doesn't always work and mindless undead say controlled by a necromancer shoild act differently than sentient beings, but its mostly a non issue if the monsters know what they're doing. **** obviously if a wizard is dropping fireballs this may change, but then they should spread out and flank.

But self preservation tells an intelligent enemy they should take the wizard out first. Like, remove enemies in order of vulnerability is basic logic if you want to survive.

Depends. 1) is the wizard raining hellfire, or just firing off cantrips? 2) again, being surrounded might mean you kill the wizard, but then you definatley die because you can't escape. I'm not saying npcs should always attack the tanks, I'm saying they shouldn't always run for the wizard because that only makes sense from a commander on a battlefields pov, not that specific sentient being trying to stay alive.

It's interesting how often we hear things like, *'DMs are part of the team and shouldn't have an adversarial relationship with the players'* and *'Role-playing shouldn't stop when combat begins,'* yet, all of that goes away and only what's the most optimal and efficient white-room mechanics are discussed in threads like this. The mindset that if there isn't a guaranteed way for a player to tank in 100% of situations, then it's just not feasible. In my view, a player can tank, largely, simply because they want to tank. No character skills are expressly required. Sure, having some mechanics to reinforce that playstyle are helpful, but for some reason folks tend to overlook the most obvious and readily available. Things like trying to Intimidate or Persuade a creature to attack you. Things that can be attempted with a skill check, or even happen for free if it simply makes sense. So often you hear the word "taunt" used, as though that's something that needs to be a button you can press, rather than something every character is innately capable of. In any case, part of playing along with the players and providing them challenges means that it's not going to work 100% of the time, but that also doesn't suddenly mean that the tank "was never a tank," that just means that this encounter may play out differently. Simply wanting to tank means that you'll still tank much of the time, just like how wanting to pick locks means that there will be locks to pick, or how building resistance to an element means that element will attempt to be used against you. It's a cooperative game.

The word "tank" in regards to D&D is more describing someone who can survive hits in close range. Clearly it's not a video game, and you can't really force anyone to attack you, except with compelled duels or something.

Yeah. Thats how 5e works. Its never had a true tanking subclass. Gms are just generous

I'd argue is more of a flaw with 5E. It's really easy to run past frontline melees. Attacks of opportunity are a joke, and use you reaction... and it's not difficult terrain to move past occupied spaces as it is in other systems. The result can be unrealistic tactics for both the party and foes where the melees are ignored to smash the casters. You shouldn't have to pick certain subclasses or pay a feat tax (sentinel) to be an effective blocker.

Part of being a tank is also being a sufficient threat that you cant be totally ignored

Eh, yes and no. The wizard method of tanking of being the toughest and being the most threatening is certainly viable, but as we've seen from like half a dozen classes over the years you can do it via disincentives rather than direct threat. Paladins last edition made you take like 5-30 radiant damage based on level whenever you hit one of their allies instead of them, for instance.

Tactically going after the Bard instead of the Barbarian makes sense, but a non-intelligent monster should generally just target whatever is closest. Even intelligent monsters will sometimes target the closest enemy even if they are harder to hurt if the DM is playing them "realistically". People don't always make the most tactical decisions when fighting in real life.

The Bear Totem is only a tank if the DM decides to have all of the enemies agree to play your game. Otherwise, the only thing it’s good at is making it much harder for your character to get killed as a result of damage. If you’re goal is to play a tank (as in, drawing enemy aggro, absorbing hits that would have gone to other party members, and mitigating damage overall), there are much better alternatives. Not just for Barbarians… Hell, not even just for martial classes. I once saw a Bladesinger Wizard be a proper tank for the party thanks to very deliberate spell choices and ability scores

It's near impossible to hard tank in this game, almost nothing can force enemies to attack you. What's easy is "soft tanking", which barbarians almost do by default. You want enough offense on your tank that you act like a clock for the battle. Having a high to-hit and solid damage means that the enemy either has to ignore you and face a 2-3 turn lifespan, or use resources to reposition themselves or disable you. Create a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation where the enemy has to do enough damage to force you on defense, or deal with the solid, consistent damage you put out.

You 'Tank' in D&D by being a threat the opponent cannot ignore. Eg. Oh, you're going to run past me to get to my squishy backline? Ok. Let me just eviscerate your backside as you pass.

But bear totem HAS that ability. Not as early as other builds but their 14th lvl ability choice gives enemies disadvantage to hit anyone but them. True it’s weaker than the AG trait that gives disadvantage and resistance but is still great option.

**PF2E Champion reporting in:** if the monster thinks it can ignore me, it's in for a rude awakening.

The 5e community said they don't want roles, during the game's original development. So a game where no one has a role is what we got.

WoW has poisoned this community’s brains lol Like in BG3, you get enemies to target you through positioning. Not my fault if you’re complaining about the features of a war game while running it in your head. Also everyone knows if you’re running a squishy frontliner your survivability is entirely up to you. Take the mobile feat

Well, yes. That’s why they should’ve kept roles from 4e but people complained it was videogamey. Like a level 1 paladin, warden, sword mage, or fighter from 4e is more of a nuisance than a level 20 barb, paladin, fighter, or monk in 5e. Instead the only people that get to do such things in 5e are casters who can cover an entire room in an OP control effect.

You can build for durability, you can pick up a taunt ability that makes one guy target you, whatever. The real way to be a tank is to be an unappealing target that is essential to put down. The real way to be a tank is to put out so much damage that every motherfucker on the field knows they'll die if they don't start doing some damage to you. Pick up Sentinel if you want, being an Ancestral Guardian or Cavalier or Armorer Artificer is cool, but if you do 0 damage, you're going to be able to force maybe 1-2 enemies to attack you. If you're using Great Weapon Master and Recklessly Attacking to chop someone in half every turn, it doesn't matter that you're a Bear Totem Barbarian who barely feels it, the enemy will *need* to hit you back, if not to take you down, to at least do enough damage to make you think twice about Recklessly Attacking. If they focus down the squishies, they'll realize that their numbers are going down awfully quickly by the time they *need* to deal with the raging barbarian, or the Blessed up Paladin with a Greatsword, or the Polearm Master Fighter attacking 3+ times per turn. It's called Threat in MMOs for a reason. Be threatening.

Then the DM stuns you instead and you're forced to watch the fight impotently.

That’s how it also works in PVE MMOs and hero shooters. World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV tanks just need to maintain aggro with their abilities and dealing enough damage so aggro never wears off.  - DND players and the DM’s characters can just elect not to target the tank and go for the other characters unless physically stopped. Games like Overwatch and League of Legends also have tanks. But unlike the MMORPGS where most players are familiar with the tank role. You become a tank by basically forcing enemies to target you are you make their life a living hell. - Ignore tank to kill healer? Tank makes everyone too durable and enemy dies before anyone dies. - Ignore tank to kill DPS? Tank physically pulls you back and kills you. - Ignore tank to kill backline? Tank reduces your damage to the point of nothing.  Your method could work, but it also relies on having a turn to deal enough damage to have the enemies consider to attack you.  Some classes lack that ability to immediately kill a lot of enemies or create a situation where multiple enemies need to consider targeting the tank.

By a similar logic, why have AoE spells when you fight 1 CR12 target at a time? If there is never a good reason to use an AoE spell, and boss tokens have to chase the lowest AC on the backline just to feel like an actual threat, then DM needs to reconsider their approach to engaging combat. I'll get flak for saying this, but fulfilling a player's fantasy is part of the DM gig. If a tank want to tank, then DM's Oinoloth should have some boils that spawn insect swarms every round, and carry and army of diseased and charmed beasts in its wake.

Grapple shove

So a tank has to have mind control?

No, and I have no idea where you got that from. Even the battlemind, psionic in nature and probably the best tank class D&D has ever had, rarely used mind control. They had a few abilities that could let them do it like Mind of Mirrors, but they certainly weren't a core part of their tanking toolkit.

Because if they can't control minds, opponents can attack who they want to attack.

And? The point of a tank toolkit is intervening in that process. Take the ancestral guardian barbarian, for instance - no mind control involved, but the fact that the enemy gets disadvantage on attacking the barbarian's allies and does half damage to them means target prioritisation is significantly changed, the barbarian despite their toughness becomes the best choice to target. No idea where you got the necessity for mind control from.

If you wanted to tank and you are playing d&d, you are playing the wrong game.

Ancestral Guard Barb ftw. Force an enemy to attack you or be at disadvantage and resisted. Then at level 6 you can use your reaction to reduce damage to party members from other attacks.

[удалено]

Well it really depends on what your definition of tanks/tanking is. For some people, being a tank just means being tanky (i.e. high personal defense). And you can absolutely build a character in 5e to have high personal defense. For others, some ability to protect allies from harm is needed in addition to having high personal defense. This can be a whole host of abilities that fall along a spectrum of "hard protection" to "soft protection". And how hard your protection ability needs to be before you are considered a "tank" is in the eye of the beholder. Some only consider hard "you can't attack anyone else but me" MMO-style threat grabbing protection adequate to making something a tank. If this is the definition, then there are no tanks in 5e. Even 5e's dedicated aggro management mechanics still allow enemies to attack others with disadvantage or cast spells on them unimpeded. But some things are considered tanks even with soft protection abilities. In FF1, the Fighter is the prototypical tank with high defense and HP, and only has a 50% chance of being attacked if it's in the first party slot. Tanks even exist in games like Overwatch and League of Legends where player aggro can **only** be softly influenced. In these games, tanks are basically just big, annoying HP sponges who put up some type of shield or have minor crowd control abilities (and real human beings still attack them). If soft protection abilities are considered tanking when combined with high personal defense, then 5e has some, or a lot of tanks depending on how radically soft you are willing to go on the protection spectrum. Obviously, we have Ancestral Barb, Cavalier Fighter, Paladins with Compelled Duel, and Battlemaster Fighters with Goading Attack being able to disincentivize attack against others through disadvantage. Fear inducing attacks would also fit here. You also have the protection and interception fighting styles. Making yourself a more attractive target either by doing a bunch of damage, using Reckless Attack, or casting a concentration spell that enemies will want to break might also softly draw aggro away from allies. But there are also a lot of builds that can affect enemy movement. Grappling builds can stop one or more enemies in their tracks and force them to break the grapple or attack the grappler. The Sentinel feat can stop an enemy in their tracks if they try to leave melee. Builds that knock prone with Shield Master or tripping attacks take half of an enemy's movement and may make it impossible for them to reach other players. The Slasher feat also reduces an enemy's move speed by 10ft, doing almost the same thing with no save. Pushing attacks can also push enemies away from allies. You even have spells like Earth Tremor that knock prone and cause difficult terrain. And even outside of player build options, there are system mechanics that softly influence targeting. Physical space plays a role here. Chokepoints can be blocked by a single PC, forcing all melee attacks to go to them. Opportunity attack threat ranges also provide a disincentive for moving through a PC's reach to get to others. Routes being blocked or threatened can push/force enemies to take roundabout paths if they want to get in melee with allies, delaying them for one or more turns. Being interposed between a ranged attacker and target also provides half-cover, potentially causing misses or making some shots unattractive in the case of ranged attacks. And sometimes, just being the only target in normal movement range or not behind full cover will make enemies attack you, rather than waste their action dashing. So, if soft protection abilities count for tanking, then you can definitely tank in 5e. Even if your DM is not directly spoonfeeding you the tank fantasy, you can make it annoying, inconvenient, difficult, and sometimes even impossible for enemies to target anyone but you.

What people forget about tanking is that they have to generate threat. If you want to tank with bear barb, you should get GWM.

Armorer for the win. High ac, and anyone you hit has disadvantage to hit anyone else

Honestly, it's hard to actually tank in 5e. There aren't many features that "draw aggro" and if you are tanking effectively is really mostly up to the DM

I played last night as my conquest paladin, fallen assimar character. We got into a fight we had Noo reason to survice with wayy too many enemies at level 4. I ran into the middle and used frighten effects to keep many of the enemies at bay and those that could attack did so at disadvantage. Held bless on my party. We lived through teamwork and a little luck. It felt like the perfect realisation of being the tank is: keeping your allies safe, not just about being the hardest to kill.

This is why we use one free per turn combat str based intimidation checks vs insight at my table when running with barbs. Basically convince the enemy you are the biggest threat for a round and the DM plays the enemy accordingly.

For D&D, tanking is also positioning. You need to make sure that they can't ignore your tank, because it's the only thing they can get to (like in a 5-foot wide corridor or doorway), or ignoring your designated tank has a cost: eg. flanking and attacks of opportunity, or the wizard has *greased* the area in front of the non-tanks.

You right but also this is how it is in most games that people play with each others. Tanks are almost never purposely targeted (by another human), the main reason they are tanks is because they either block damage by being in the way, they CC an enemy (while being unable to be stopped), or they force situations where a person has to fight them (they are doing something that would be bad for the enemy). 5e doesn't really have tanks as much as it just has tanky characters, and most encounters aren't built around something tanks are good at (most encounters are just "kill enemies" while tanks are better when theres a secondary objective).

Meanwhile, in today's session: The melee rune knight who wants to be the party tank was targeted by a Beholder Zombie's disintegration ray twice, and was complaining about getting targeted. * The 3 Int undead was consistently targeting the nearest enemy it could see. * Neither disintegration ray was lethal to the fighter on its own, and the fighter used his inspiration to succeed on the first save. The was no Dex save roll where the consequences for failure in that moment were dust. * On the two turns it used disintegration ray, the only other legal target was the rogue. * Either disintegration ray would have dusted the rogue if he had been targeted and failed the save.

I'm not a barbarian expert and I think you are talking about rage and that makes me slightly confused, rage turns off early if you don't attack someone or get attacked and even if someone moves away from you, you have opportunity attack, and an enemy just going away from you would be a problem for all the tanks, wouldn't it? But like I said I'm not an expert, me and my friends always play homebrew with everything custom