[PF] A Brief Guide to Martial Tanking

[Lord_Gareth]

You...are aware that Antagonize eats up your entire turn, thus limiting your ability to position yourself or otherwise offer a threat to monsters? It's a losing option even when it does work.

[watchwood]

It's a standard action. That still leaves you with a move action to move around or do whatever. And since it's based purely on you making a skill check, it's very easy to optimize into making it reliably. Especially when it comes with a built in ability to let you double your cha bonus to the roll.

[Lord_Gareth]

It's a standard action. That still leaves you with a move action to move around or do whatever. And since it's based purely on you making a skill check, it's very easy to optimize into making it reliably. Especially when it comes with a built in ability to let you double your cha bonus to the roll.

It's your only action that you can use to do something useful, and it comes with the built-in ability to eat up your only other chance to do something useful. Antagonize is insulting.

[watchwood]

It's your only action that you can use to do something useful, and it comes with the built-in ability to eat up your only other chance to do something useful. Antagonize is insulting.

...you are aware of the point of this guide, right?

[Lord_Gareth]

...you are aware of the point of this guide, right?

I'm a bit miffed at the implication that I'm not. There's infinitely better ways to tank than burning your turn on Antagonize.

[TuggyNE]

How trivial are we talking? Given that those attackers must move not just around you, but around each other, any control your allies have set up, any other melee on your team, any terrain in the area etc. They also have to have pretty close initiatives to pull this off without anyone realizing what they're doing and compensating.

Compensating how? If you have let's say four enemies total, all of a CR four levels below yours, and all of them are melee, and they start out spread out around you a bit, and each one of them on their turn simply charges to attack, well, there you go, you now have four attackers adjacent. Or if they are positioned in any way at all within move, double move, or run, then they can move up and perhaps attack, again with no particular difficulty.

If there is some reason for them to suppose that non-simultaneous action would be problematic, then they can simply delay as a nonaction until the last one is ready and all dogpile in rapid succession.

...you are aware of the point of this guide, right?

If the point is "here is how to be useless as efficiently as possible", then the posted downsides to Antagonize might indeed be quite acceptable. If that is not quite what is meant, on the other hand, then perhaps Antagonize is not so great for the purpose.

[watchwood]

I'm a bit miffed at the implication that I'm not. There's infinitely better ways to tank than burning your turn on Antagonize.

Frankly, you came off that way. If you've got suggestions or constructive input/arguments, I'd be glad to hear it.

Spending most of your turn to control how your enemy spends his is a long way from terrible, as far as tanking abilities go. When it effectively grants the rest of your party a collective free turn against that opponent, it looks like pretty good action economy to me.

[Lord_Gareth]

Let's start by quoting the feat:

Antagonize
Whether with biting remarks or hurtful words, you are adept at making creatures angry with you.

Benefit: You can make Diplomacy and Intimidate checks to make creatures respond to you with hostility. No matter which skill you use, antagonizing a creature takes a standard action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity, and has a DC equal to 10 + the target’s Hit Dice + the target’s Wisdom modifier. You cannot make this check against a creature that does not understand you or has an Intelligence score of 3 or lower. Before you make these checks, you may make a Sense Motive check (DC 20) as a swift action to gain an insight bonus on these Diplomacy or Intimidate checks equal to your Charisma bonus until the end of your next turn. The benefits you gain for this check depend on the skill you use. This is a mind-affecting effect.

Diplomacy: You fluster your enemy. For the next minute, the target takes a –2 penalty on all attacks rolls made against creatures other than you and has a 10% spell failure chance on all spells that do not target you or that have you within their area of effect.

Intimidate: The creature flies into a rage. On its next turn, the target must attempt to make a melee attack against you, make a ranged attack against you, target you with a spell, or include you in the area of a spell. The effect ends if the creature is prevented from attacking you or attempting to do so would harm it (for example, if you are on the other side of a chasm or a wall of fire). If it cannot attack you on its turn, you may make the check again as an immediate action to extend the effect for 1 round (but cannot extend it thereafter). The effect ends as soon as the creature attacks you. Once you have targeted a creature with this ability, you cannot target it again for 1 day.

So, cons -

- Mind-affecting. Hey, look at all the enemies you want this to work on that it won't work on!

- Spends your entire useful turn.

- Only works once/day even if it works.

- Explicitly doesn't stop the creature from targeting allies. Manage to tag a mage with it? He slows the whole party. Dragon? Breath that includes you. Fighter? Full attack - and he targets you with the last one, just because he doesn't give a damn. I can keep going. It doesn't define how the enemy spends their turn, it just means they can't do a single-target attack on someone else. Good thing every enemy ever has other options, huh?

[watchwood]

1) More things are affected by mind affecting affects then are immune to it.

2) Gains the entire rest of your party an extra useful turn in which to work in. That's a net gain.

3) Once per day per opponent, and even that limit is only on the intimidate usage. The diplomacy usage is spammable at will.

4) Most of those other options can be very easily neutered by just...moving away from the rest of your party, or ducking behind a wall so they have to move to be able to see you. Good thing it still leaves you with a move action, eh? Kinda funny how there are all these fancy AoE abilities with small areas to affect. It seems that they only affect 1 person if there's only 1 person in the area.

[Psyren]

Compensating how? If you have let's say four enemies total, all of a CR four levels below yours, and all of them are melee, and they start out spread out around you a bit, and each one of them on their turn simply charges to attack, well, there you go, you now have four attackers adjacent. Or if they are positioned in any way at all within move, double move, or run, then they can move up and perhaps attack, again with no particular difficulty.

If there is some reason for them to suppose that non-simultaneous action would be problematic, then they can simply delay as a nonaction until the last one is ready and all dogpile in rapid succession.

If you (never mind the rest of the party) have your thumb up your posteriors while all this delaying is going on then you deserve to take a little beating. Moreover, what kind of melee can't build to defend himself against a CR-4 foe's attack?

[TuggyNE]

Moreover, what kind of melee can't build to defend himself against a CR-4 foe's attack?

I suppose it would be more accurate to ask what kind of character can't manage this.

[upho]

@watchwood: Thanks for the guide! Like the focus on the tactical rather than the mechanical function. And thank you for making, AFAIK, the first and only guide dealing with one of my niche interests - the specialized BFC 'defense/true tanking' function/combat role. Keep up the good work!

Hopefully, this guide might help newer players as well as more experienced ones who, IME, surprisingly often seem to be unfamiliar with the tanking role and especially with analyzing build options and tactics from a tanking point of view. Though I fear the number of effective build alternatives will remain extremely limited. This lack of mechanical support, as well as the mentioned largely ignorant player base, are IMO signs of PF's unfortunate inability to provide martial classes with viable alternatives to the old repetitive 'full attack with damage boosts' kind of striker/DPR combat role.

Speaking of which, especially from a tanking perspective I think the PF martial classes often come with disparate features/capabilities. For example, they typically have a high durability (notably HP and AC) out of the box plus easy access to numerous options for increasing it further, but precious few options which actually put that durability to work. I mean, the threat (relative to other party members) of, say, a pally typically equals his relative damage output capacity, which isn't nearly enough of an 'aggro-magnet' to balance his superior durability. Meaning that, at least in levels beyond the earliest, most enemies with a brain will simply ignore the pally while focusing fire on more threatening and/or squishy party members, knowing (or quickly realizing) there's very little the pally can do to stop them in most circumstances.

I'd rather work from non-ideal conditions and make the tank functional in those. So that he can do his job the vast majority of the time, and not just when he lucks out on environment/terrain...
When things are as simple as "5 ft low ceiling dungeon corridor," any summoned sack of hit points can serve as a tank relatively well. It's the more complicated/tough situations where having a character actually based around tanking should prove beneficial.

Exactly. And I would add it's primarily in the most challenging and deadly fights tanking shines. If the enemy doesn't have truly threatening offensive capabilities and the staying power to put those capabilities to use, there's decidedly less to be gained by directing enemy attacks.

As for battlefield control... you generally use it specifically to divide and conquer foes. You trap them in "the suck" or use it to separate their units, and then full force wail on bits of their collective forces at a time, as they struggle out of the area in staggered intervals. At least that's been *my* experience for how best to use BFC. Bunching them all together close so their (melee) offense is still concentrated in one small area would actually be a poor way to make use of BFC, generally...

I guess one might also say a 'subset' of the divide and conquer philosophy is particularly important for a party main tank. Since you (probably) won't have wall spells or similar larger scale hard control tools at your disposal and you'd (probably) bite the dust if the enemy's able to focus fire on you, abilities which gives you a say in whether you draw or avoid a particular enemy's aggro are golden. In other words, you want control abilities on the individual scale (could include reach optimization and the trip line, for example) which allows you to divide enemy aggro. And yes, neither the BFC caster or the tank prefers the enemy all grouped closely together around a single PC.

[Prime32]

I suggest including some advice on becoming Dex SAD, to gain better mileage from Combat Reflexes.
Agile Maneuvers
Fury's Fall
Weapon Finesse

Also, some weapons of interest:
Double-chained kama
Flying talon
Flying blade
Kobold tail attachment (long lash)

[Nihilarian]

Cavalier (Order of the Shield)/Golden Legionnaire would be a fun character to play, since you can tank without losing your damage potential.

[watchwood]

Order of the Shield doesn't get you a lot over the regular Cavalier, though. Honour Guard and Order of the Dragon would have more synergy for the Golden Legionnaire, I would think.

[Fenryr]

I hope you read the Warder and/or the Warlord. They both can be really nice tanks even in the playtest.

It's not a bad way to start a fight, but the wording on it is pretty vague, and you'll be leaving a lot of it's practical effects up to your DM.

Then my DM is quite nice. He uses it like Antagonize but with longer duration. I'm the target of the AoE spells and the rest are collateral damage. With melee attacks 'm the only target.

[watchwood]

I've taken brief looks at some of the DSP stuff. Most of their class material reads like spell lists though, which is kinda a lot of reading to go through. :P

[watchwood]

Sorry to bump, but if anyone's interested I've added a sample build to the guide.

[Fenryr]

I've taken brief looks at some of the DSP stuff. Most of their class material reads like spell lists though, which is kinda a lot of reading to go through. :P

Well, they're maneuvers. For tanking Iron Tortoise and Golden Lion are quite solid.

Paladin spells that do both tank and support.

• Challenge Evil
• Compel Hostility
• Knight's Calling
• Holy Shield
• Divine Transfer
• Fire of Judgment
• Fire of Vengeance
• Sacrificial Oath

[Prime32]

Fighter (Phalanx Soldier), Fighter (Tactician), Cavalier (Order of the Lion), Cavalier (Strategist) and Paladin (Holy Tactician) are worth a mention.


Here's another build suggestion:

LG Cavalier (Honor Guard, Strategist, Order of the Dragon) 5/Oracle (Life mystery) 3/Paladin (Sacred Shield) 2/Golden Legionnaire 10
Revelations: Life Link, ?
Feats: Tower Shield Proficiency, Combat Reflexes, Protector's Strike
Bonus Feats (tactician): Shield Wall
Equipment: Silver Smite Bracelet, Vambraces of the Tactician (for extra uses of Challenge and Smite Evil per day)

Have your allies equip unenchanted mithral bucklers, and use Drill Instructor to teach them Shield Wall. Set up Life Link and shield other as standard for an Oradin build. Take a standard action each turn to raise your tower shield and give yourself total cover, which you can share with your allies depending on position (note that targeted spells do not bypass your allies' cover like they do your own). Use Golden Legionnaire's lockdown abilities to prevent enemies from maneuvering around it.