@marker91964 года назад +54
In my experience the toughest part of trying to run a 'tanky' character is the inevitable meta-gaming that most DM's will engage in when it comes to target priority in the party, most of us have likely played RPG's and MMO's before and likely know about the usual order of how to handle enemies in terms of nuke the healer first, burst down DPS after that and then finally whittle away the tanks when their support is gone but it's worth noting that while that works perfectly fine in a gaming context it also happens to make no sense in terms of actual confrontations and fighting (the shifty looking guy in robes could possibly be a threat but the 7ft tall beefcake decked in plate and approaching you with a greatsword is unambiguously a threat and if you want to keep your head firmly attached to your shoulders you deal with the most immediate threats first).
This also translates to why I roll my eyes at DM's and players complaining about meta-gaming in combat scenarios because...it's a necessary evil that physically can't be avoided entirely given that combat is by far the most abstracted and meta concept in DnD as a game, the DM will always have a knowledge in their mind of who the party are and what they're capable of (something the monsters likely shouldn't have in most cases) and will be controlling them all as if they are a singular, cohesive unit rather than individuals (the reason I've seen behind certain DM's scolding players for talking tactically out of character at the table, a practice I think is perfectly acceptable and DM's really need to get over themselves about).
In my experience, the best way to 'tank' is to remember that it's not the monster's attention you're trying to grab but the DM's, you can use a spell to taunt a single creature but if you get the emnity of the DM then you can guarantee that they will target you first in every encounter, regardless of the circ*mstances around it, I'm not saying you should be rude to your DM but make yourself a very forward presence that the DM can't ignore, be the person who charges in first in combat, the acts pro-actively against enemies by interrupting monologues with attacks or takes brash or brazen attitudes, abuse player psychology a little bit.
If a DM notices someone getting a bit bold it's not uncommon for them to want to punish them for perceived hubris.
Overall, enemies in DnD are just as predictable and exploitable as enemies in an MMO, there's just different techniques required for drawing aggro (in this case, it's not the AI you need to aggro, but the DM).
@Dragoneth4 года назад +8
I'm a big fan of using Roleplay as the "Taunt mechanic."
@paulcrews95514 года назад +4
So what you're saying is that the aggro mechanic is us messing with the Dm. Challenge accepted
@Kestral2874 года назад +5
In fairness, at least regarding intelligent creatures - you reach a point, before too terribly long, when the 'shifty looking guy in robes' almost certainly *is* the bigger threat. Especially over a single engagement. An intelligent creature who sees the basic DnD group composition often enough will, eventually, figure out that the guy who can throw a barrage of fireballs can hurt him more faster than the guy with a big stick, to stay nothing of some of the save-or-lose spells out there.
That said, on the whole I don't think you're wrong about a lot of points. That's one of the reasons Sentinel gets so much love - the value is in just straight-up closing options. Even if the big monster (slash the DM) wants to go beat up on your squishy wizard, if there's a fighter with Sentinel in front of him he may just not have a choice about it. Personally, I take that a step further and to me that should be the primary concern of the tank - making sure your enemies. Achieving a reasonable amount of survivability is trivial, and achieving perfect or even near-perfect survivability is close to impossible, so finding a point of "I'm relatively hard to kill" is easy. The rest is putting that investment to work.@marker91964 года назад +2
@@Kestral287 I'd likely have to challenge that claim based on the fact that it's based very heavily off of meta knowledge that a creature may not strictly have access to, even an intelligent one, you wouldn't strictly know that an opponent is capable of throwing out offensive spells until either they've already started doing it or you're already very familiar with a particular spellcaster (or you're a creature with some innate capacity for detecting magical talent in others and as such could sense the 'aura' of a magic user), but even if you recognize the potentially superior threat posed by the spellcaster that still isn't strictly a reason to ignore the fighter who's advancing upon you and forcing close combat upon you, that's a reason to fall back since that's an inherently disadvantageous position for you to fight from.
There's also a lot to be said for the psychological impact of something advancing upon you over attacking from a distance, imagine a situation where you are faced by two men, one holding a gun (capable of instant lethal force from across the room) while the other is walking towards you cracking their knuckles and looking you straight in the eyes, you may very well recognize the firearm as being more immediately dangerous to you but (let's assume for the moment that escape is impossible, you have to try and fight) you are still likely to be pre-occupied by the person actually entering your personal space with clear hostile intent because we are somewhat hard-wired to naturally find proximity threatening, it's an instinct that actually requires a fair bit of training and discipline to overcome in a combat situation.
Let's borrow from another setting that frequently has the issue of potentially more dangerous units at a distance than up close, namely Warhammer 40k, units engaged in assault cannot open fire upon other units (with some very rare exceptions, namely vehicles) for the plain, simple reason that it's very hard to concentrate long enough to take aim at someone in the distance when someone is actively trying to punch you in the back of the head, melee is a very disorienting situation to be in that completely rewrites your priorities.
Yeah, the guy with the lascannon off in the distance is absolutely capable of more damage than the guardsmen charging you with bayonets but that doesn't suddenly mean that those guardsmen suddenly don't exist or that bayonet charges are infamously terrifying situations for both sides.@Kestral2874 года назад +2
It certainly shouldn't be universal, but in this world, magic has some very obvious physical attributes to look for: the pouch or the focus being the stand-outs. The guy in armor who's not using his weapon but has a religious symbol hanging from his neck? Almost certainly a Cleric. The guy holding a chunk of crystal who's not running away from the goblin horde despite carrying no armor and no weapon past a dagger? Arcane caster. The guy with a musical instrument strapped to himself? Bard.
Certainly these are not universal truths, and they're things that, if you have a good DM, you can game in turn. Pathfinder has a class called the Magus that's essentially the Eldritch Knight done right, and one of their archetypes doesn't use armor. So a properly suited Kensai Magus wears essentially the same outfit as a Wizard and carries a spell component pouch; the only odd thing they carry is a sword. I built one particularly tanky and at times, against enemies who weren't familiar with the group, got to get some of them to focus me from the outset. In 5e I could see a Bladesinger, or even a Monk who went out of his way to pick up the basic caster gear, pulling a similar trick. Certainly it doesn't last - once you whip out the sword and go to town (or in the monk case start punching things) it's going to start looking pretty obvious that they misevaluated the scenario, but the biggest concern is the first round or two anyway.
There is something to be said for the psychological impact of the guy in your face, but there's also something to be said for the psychological impact of "I don't want to be Fireballed". However, there are two points to be made here, I think. First, you assume the fighter is already in their face, but a lot of the time enemies are going to make their threat assessments *before* then. The guy with the brass knuckles came into the room at the same time as the guy with the gun - and that changes your scenario considerably. If the guy with the gun can get off the first shot he is absolutely the person I want to kill first every time. I can maybe run away from the guy with the brass knuckles before he gets a chance to punch me. It's much harder to outrun a bullet (or 120' range spell). So if "I" in this case am a bunch of soldiers with longbows or whatever... yeah I'm shooting the caster first.
Second, as you've said, that's the sort of thing that takes training to overcome, but... a lot of the intelligent enemies you face tend to *have* that sort of training, if not directly than through experience. The horde of low-CR goblins, sure probably not (but then, the guy with the pointy stick is only menacing so many of them at once). The dragon? Not only has it likely been around the block long enough to know what magic casters typically look like and the kind of annoyance they can be if left unchecked, it's also just straight-up *not* going to be intimidated by a fighter with a greatsword under the vast majority of circ*mstances.
And the flip side of 'psychological impact' is that sometimes monsters have *other* reasons to go for the squishy looking guy. I'd started to write a comment about the behir in my previous point, as something in the grey area where it's somewhat intelligent but not very so may well fall for the pointy-stick-in-front concern. But then - when you pause to think about it, the behir's main goal in most fights is going to be a good meal. It's 'intelligent' in that it's not an animal and can speak, but is still fairly stupid. Even so, it makes absolute sense that a behir knows how its own abilities work - here, I'm primarily thinking of the constrict - bite - swallow chain of attacks that it goes for. The guy in a ton of armor is probably pretty strong, which means he may be able to break out of the behir's constrict. The quick-moving guy with a dagger also has a decent chance to do so. The guy with a staff trying to stay out of the behir's reach? Probably not so much. And besides, something without armor seems like a much more satisfying meal.
