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View Full Version : Brainstorming: Tanking in 3.5



Darwin
2011-02-04, 04:03 PM
Every now and then another thread pops up on these boards asking how you succesfully build a "tank" in D&D. Let us for a brief moment assume these threads have a high hp, high armor, fighter type character in mind, and not a 60 ton belted warmachine of steel. The problem with this isn't building a character to fit that concept, but rather to have that character fulfill his expected role in combat. Namely, keeping the nasty wasties away from the squishy spellcasters raining fiery death on them.

I've played D&D for 4 years both very frequently, and very casually and I've seen this problem rise time and time again. My intention with this thread is to brainstorm ideas for how to make tanking a viable role in 3.5 by exploring the options the characters have available to them, and the options the monsters have to circumvent these.

I am on no accounts an expert in this area, so I'm counting on you to present tanking strategies, and the tactics that makes them obsolete. If we're successful in drawing a sizeable amount of wisdom and knowledge out in this thread we might even start a handbook of some sorts.

I know there will be a lot of people telling me that the only way to have a viable tank in 3.5 is to nerf the Wizards into oblivion, and they're probaly right. But let's assume that most people are playing with sensible DMs that knows when a gamebreaking spell needs to be banned. The guys over at Test of Spite seems to have had a lot of success tracking down some of the worst offenders of the game and have made up a neat little banlist/rules update (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8399975&postcount=2) that we could probaly consider the norm for most playgroups.

Alright, I think I got the basics down now. I'll probaly have to update this post every now and then when I recall things I should've mentioned, but we'll take it as it comes.

To start off I've got some basic ideas about tanking:

Feat: Improved Trip
What it does: Improved Trip lets you trip a character who provokes an attack of opportunity from you and nets you a free melee attack against him if it succeeds. The infamous Spiked Chain trippers take this technique to perfection.
Why it doesn't work: Limited area of influence. This strategy requires the enemy to prove an attack of opportunity from you, and the area from within he'll do just that is limited by your reach. In addition you are also limited by your number of attacks of opportunity each round, although that is easily solved by picked up Combat Reflexes and having a decent Dex score.

Feat: Goad
What is does: As a move action you can force an enemy to make a will save or be forced to make it's melee attacks against you this round.
Why it doesn't work: Goad only affects melee attacks, not ranged attacks or magic.

Feat: Stand Still
What is does: Instead of making an attack of opportunity you force an enemy to make a reflex save or immediately end his move action.
Why it doesn't work: See Improved Trip.

Aspenor
2011-02-04, 04:09 PM
An enlarged spiked chain wielding crusader utilizing thicket of blades, improved trip, and some of the other good AoO provoking feats/maneuvers can make a decent tank.

Of course, this will depend on how your DM plays the enemies. If he plays them smart, they will ignore you anyway and head straight for the casters at all costs. Your only hope will be trip.

Telonius
2011-02-04, 04:26 PM
It really all depends on the level of optimization that the spellcaster uses. It's possible to have extraordinarily poor spell selection, resulting in a caster that's weaker than a Monk. It's also possible to build a world-shaking engine of doom that causes the gods to stand up and take notice. Most actual games will fall somewhere in-between those two (in my experience they edge towards engine of doom).

One class that tries to fix the whole "You must attack me and not pointy hat!" is the Knight. Their class abilities are one of a very few things in D&D that can actually "draw aggro" by force.

Another option is the Mage Slayer feat. Again, if you're going up against a fully optimized caster, you have no hope of victory. But if it's only moderate-op, the caster will not be able to cast defensively as long as you're within reach. In that situation, he's much more likely to go after you - or at the very least waste actions getting away from you so he can do something else - instead of dealing with the pointy hat you're defending.

Togo
2011-02-04, 07:06 PM
First off, you need to clarify what you mean by 'tank'. Your description matches what my group would call a 'meat shield'. Their job is to stand in the way, and prevent the monsters getting past them.

There are several ways of doing this. You've covered one of the most popular.

The trip build.

You claim this doesn't work, which I found odd. A proper trip build will have some means to get big, be it enlarge, polymorph, boots of size alteration or simply being large to begin with. Being large give you a straight +5 to trip attacks, and improves your natural reach. Combine with a reach weapon, and you're covering a pretty big area - 20' to either side of you, and 10' taken up by your own space. That's a 50' wide barrier to stop monsters getting past you. Monsters can go around, if they take the time to do so, but as long as the party's more vulnerable characters are lurking in your reach zone, you can still trip anything that comes too close.

One useful tip is to ready an action to attack. That way, you can move 5' before attacking, extending your reach yet futher, and also trip creatures that might otherwise tumble past you. It's also worth readying an action to jump, levitate or fly into the path of flying creatures, where they will then trigger an AOO as they fly past. Nothing impresses the party more than tripping a flying creature doing a straffing run.


The light infantry build.

You build a character that's quite mobile, lightly armoured, but deals out a great deal of damage. You close with the monsters, and melee them. If they leave your area, you attack them again, and then rengage on your own turn. The point here is not to stop the monsters closing with the party, but to make it expensive for them to do so, milking their preference for targeting other party members to get yourself extra attacks. To properly bring this off you need to focus on damage, not defence, and you need either be mobile enough to keep up with a monster that's chasing party members who run away a lot, or have a devasting enough full attack that monsters simply can't take the chance of staying next to you.

Improved overun, possibly one of the least used feats in the game, can be quite useful here, forcing your opponent to grant you a favourable position, or risk being knocked prone.



The grappler

The point of a grappler is not to beat the enemy, but to keep it occupied while the rest of the party kills it. Grappling only needs to be a successful tactic a slim majority of the time, and you can force the opponent to use his actions to counter yours, rather than attacking. Against a numerically superior enemy, you need to take down people quickly, and teaming up with a party member that's good at damage against vulnerable targets, is the way to go. A rogue is the obvious choice but anyone who can use power attack or two weapon fighting will go in a pinch.

Note also that it can be worth grappling your own party members, particularly if you need to get them out of a sticky situation and you're a size category higher. Take -20, have them voluntarily fail their grapple check, move them into your square, and then drop them as a free action - in any adjacent square, including the ones behind you.


There are some more esoteric tactics out there, that can work fairly well. e.g.

The decoy.

Dress as a wizard, or literally disguise yourself as a party member that the monsters like to target, and stand in the front. My meat shield used to stand in front, apparently unarmoured and unarmed, with a wizard's hat, a staff, and a book under one arm. He had high hp, was almost immune to criticals, and had the best armour class in the party, but the monsters had no way of knowing that.


But these are quite situational.

It's important to remember that, just like any character, a single tactic will not work against every encounter. Acting as a meat shield is a tactic, not a build, and you need to bring more to the table.

Saph
2011-02-04, 07:34 PM
Trip/Stand Still builds do work. They work extremely well, in fact, assuming you get the right combos - 20' reach, Improved Trip, Knock-Down, Combat Reflexes, and some boosts to your Trip check will either kill or hamper most enemies just fine.

The real problem with "tanking" is that people keep interpreting "tank" as "party member that enemies will always attack regardless of tactics, logic, or their own safety". D&D 3.5 is not World of Warcraft. There's no aggro meter. If you want to force your opponents to do exactly what you want, cast Dominate on them.

The best way to make a "tank" is generally to make a character with enough attack power that they're a serious threat to enemies. A Power Attacking, Pouncing melee character generally has little trouble causing enemies to focus on him, because if you ignore him and walk past he'll kill you. No, the enemies won't ALWAYS attack him and ignore the casters - but if you can guarantee in advance exactly what the enemy will do, the fight probably wasn't a challenge anyway.

n00b killa
2011-02-04, 10:13 PM
I would sugest to convert to 3.5 some of 4e defender mechanics.

Giving the "Mark" (Basically you choose an enemy and it takes a -2 to hit to everyone else, and usually some other penalty) option to the tank classes gives them quite a lot of lock-down power.

This way has the advantage of letting the PCs play something other than a 3 meters tall, 200kgm weighting, spikedchain wielding, half ogre monstrousity if they want to tank.

Gan The Grey
2011-02-05, 05:50 AM
Don't forget the Knight class. Has some good aggro-generating abilities.

RebelRogue
2011-02-05, 06:24 AM
I would sugest to convert to 3.5 some of 4e defender mechanics.

Giving the "Mark" (Basically you choose an enemy and it takes a -2 to hit to everyone else, and usually some other penalty) option to the tank classes gives them quite a lot of lock-down power.
The problem with that, is that -2 to hit in 3.5 in general is sort of meh. I'd certainly mimic more of the 4e fighter abilities: include a free attack if the marked enemy attacks an ally or 5' steps. Letting AoO stop movement is probably too prone to reach abuse, though (or is it? I guess a tripper does that anyway).

Runestar
2011-02-05, 06:52 AM
Grappling is perhaps best achieved with summons. Huge centipedes have a decent grapple check, and you can bring in multiple copies. This can allow you to quickly lock down the weaker foes in the battlefield.