Why Tanking Doesn't Work in D&D 5e
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- Опубликовано: 28 авг 2023
- Tanking in D&D requires buy-in from the DM... unless we get some more features to support it.
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ruclips.net/video/5CeNuDZRF9Q/видео.html - Wally's Stream. Which is at 1am BST, 5pm PDT, 7 CDT, 8 EDT. Dennis wrote a mathless RPG for a reason.
We have a heavy armor wearing frontliner Kuo-Toa NPC in our party. We call him the Fish Tank.
That's fantastic!
The sentinel feat also sort of helps with that playstyle, by giving you a free attack on enemies that attack your allies, or sometimes stopping an enemy from reaching your allies in the first place.
Definitely dropped the ball not including Sentinel in the video, it definitely helps make the tank play-style exist.
In an earlier 5e game I tried making a redemtion paladin tank, and while I had multiple options for soft agro and preventing damage to my party, a lot of them used my reaction and were thus limited to one enemy/attack per round. Other options, like "Compelled duel", also struggled against multiple opponents. There are some options for protecting allies against/locking down multiple enemies, but they are few and far between and often require significant level investment (and in cases like conquest paladin may be out for character for how you want to roleplay your protector).
The closer you get to a viable tank, the more niche a character you end up with. Which is a shame since its an archetype people gravitate towards.
introducing hard aggro rules to 5e would run counter to the expectation that characters (both yours and the GMs) have agency to attack who they want to. However more soft aggro tools similar to the existing features such as those found in ancestral barbarians work fine without disrupting the play experience too much.
My personal approach would be to introduce a formal "Taunt Action" available to all characters, but perhaps rogues may use as a cunning action and maybe bards as part of a spell, at the cost of bardic inspiration.
Simply put it imposes disadvantage on the next attack the target makes against a target other than yourself provided the target understands the taunt, a bit like an opposite version of the help action. This way a soft tanking strategy becomes available to everyone, irrespective of the subclass features they have.
better to just cast Hold Person/Monster to paralyze the target than bother taunting it ya?
or maybe Imprisonment or Banishment to forget about the creature instead of taunting it.
Maybe just cast sleep to drop the threat.
Or cast suggestion, geas, charm monster so you can instead tell the creature what to do instead of taunting it to prevent it from doing something.
or maybe just petrify the target.
Do these fulfill the expectation that the target has agency? or is it okay because magic taht turns you into a pillar of salt is better than magic that makes you attack a different target?
related: ever use the confusion spell?
@@filkearney Okay. What if your character *doesn't* have magic? You know... The characters who might want to invite attacks towards them?
@@dungeondr the point of the video was that martials should have these options, which I agree with, and shouldn't require a martial to multiclass to access aggro and cc options.
I personally prefer a unified mana system all 13 classes can have as a common resource, but there are many different ways aggro/control mechanics can be added to martials... the point is martials currently don't have those options.
I have various solutions. you might too. the point is aggro and control exists, but it is too binary, and unavailable to martials.
The casters already have these abilities through various spells, but not martials.
To properly tank there needs to be more taunts, goads, punishments, and forced movement effects for barbarians, fighters, monks, paladins, and rangers as on-hit effects, single target, and aoe options.
I coincidentally develop these mechanics here on youtube each tuesday. swing by. :)
There was in 4e but nobody liked that so it was scrapped
@@pillarsofsnow7940thanks for pointing that out, cuz my first thought when clicking on this video was "why the fuck would I want that?" If I wanted to play a video game, I'd do that. A conscious opponent wouldn't target a tank first, an enraged one wouldn't care whatever the fuck you are. It's a role-playing game, why would I want stiff mechanics that are much better suited for a computer, which automates such processes.
@@zenbaahl7933 because a lot of players don’t want an RPG they want a power fantasy, and them having control over the battlefield feeds that fantasy.
You’ll find that there are about 3 types of DnD RUclipsrs, the comedic, the informative, and the power gamer.
The power gamers are the ones who will make videos about how mechanics, classes or abilities are bad because they are “sub-optimal” (watch out for that word it’s a huge red flag)
They also tend to be overly attached to either 3.5, pathfinder, or some kickstarter system, and are a very good example of the “stop having fun” meme
@@pillarsofsnow7940 its not that folks didn't like taunts and goads, they didn't like how 4e was structured overall.
for example, people like minion rules, but that doesn't mean they also like 4e overall.
@@zenbaahl7933 hold person, suggestion, command, charm monster, compelled duel -- these are well-received spells that force control over creatures in dnd but no one is making the claim that these are stiff mechanics. This is further hypocrisy (not YOUR hypocrisy) about how casters get whatever you can imagine because magic while martials don't get squat because sword. There is as much space for martials to control as casters get to cast steel wind strike.
5e can be more than it's allowed to be, but don't look to wotc to take the risks in doing so.
In general, when I'm DMing I will try to have the enemies fight smart: they'll go after the damage dealers if they can. But if a PC is standing between them so the enemy can't easily get to the ones doing the damage, or if I judge that the line-of-sight is blocked to the point that the enemies can't see anyone behind the "tank," then they will go for the target they can get to. If there are multiple enemies available, I'll try to spread out the attacks against all the PCs (that way a single PC doesn't take tons of damage and get knocked down. Plus, that seems to raise the tension for the players!).
That's what feats are for. Sentinnel, Mage Slayer, or even just the fact that being in melee gives an enemy disadvantage to ranged attacks.
Also the fact that fighter paladin and barb typically outdamage backline anyway, especially for single targets. The ranged spellasters can lay their big aoes at the beginning to fireball the minions away, and once only bbeg is left.. having the wizard 'tank' for them can actually be optimal, specially if legendary resistances mean a spellcaster is basically useless. And finally, ranged dps like a ranged attacking rogue fighter or ranger.. well, disengaging and making the boss take aoo from every tank (who again may have sentinnel or smites or more dmg per hit than a ranged player) is perfectly fine and does more damage by disengaging than attacking even at advantage would xD
Draw aggro by being un-ignorable. Build enough damage into your kit that ignoring you becomes lethal, or build enough crowd control that your enemies won't be able to act freely until they deal with you first.
League of Legends has this same issue, and that's how they deal with it.
Good overview/understanding of all this.
Most won't like to hear this, but 4e didn't have this issue - The marking mechanic for Defender classes gave mechanical reasons for the GM to treat that Tank AS a Tank, and thereby justified the PC acting out the class fantasy.
4e was pretty well designed all round, just not what people wanted at the time.
With the new system I'm making I've already fixed these issues; I can give a rough translation on how to implement them into dnd5e.
Defend action: Functionally works like dodge but is applied to an ally of your choice that stays within a certain range of you.
Intercept: For a reaction (or bonus action with preparation) you may become the new target of the attack if you are within 5? 10ft? of the ally being struck, taking the attack instead.
There are a few stunning and heavy forced movement effects in my system which allow tanks to serve actual crowd control purposes, and a few means of dramatically improving hp pools/ regenerating hp/ or improving health recovered on healing and so on... but I'll leave you with these 2 very simple fixes
That being said thank the algorithm for this video, you make some good points I didn't realize I had already fixed during development.
Do you have this up anywhere? Or is it more of a personal project?
This is the reason I miss 4e's Defender role, because their marking mechanics allowed them to punish enemies who didn't attack them and also made it a bit harder to hit anyone but the defender. I know 4e gets a lot of hate but the defender's mark was, I think, a shining example that Wizards should have kept when they made 5e!
I think the way I would do it is add something like a Threatened or Goaded condition where the target must make a wisdom safe if they want to attack anyone but whoever affected them.
For flavor, Barbarians could have Primal Bellow" and a Paladin's would be "Divine Wrath" as an AOE abilities.
Kind of like an inverted Sanctuary? I like it.
compelled duel spell, provides that as a single tarrget option specifically. im happy with similar being aoe as you suggest as well.
@@filkearney My issue with Compelled Duel is it's single target, costs a spell slot and is exclusive to one class. A condition would make it so anyone could do something like that if they want to tank (Barbarians, Fighters, Abjuration wizards and dodge tanks) without some way of taking that one spell
@@SadisticDouble no complaint here. point is the specific mechanic is already in the game, you just want to expand on it.
Sally Forth. :)
@@filkearney yeah, man. Also wanna point out, I do love Compelled Duel as a flavor spell
As a Storyteller, I recognize what the players are attempting to get out of the game and to cater towards that....
I go cleric
while I could go dmg cleric, I go support
Aid, Warding bond, sanctuary ect.
If they attack me, I have high AC and wis save
if they target my team, I can heal them, redirect damage, remove status effects or even curses
My party can be complete glass canons while I make them tankier than what they're suppose to be
I'm designing a system, & at the moment the thought is to make it strategic. Tanks get a shitton of stamina, which can be spent on reducing incoming damage OR increasing outgoing damage. So if an enemy doesn't want to get hammered into the floor; they need to exhaust as much of the tank's battery as possible.
This is, however, kinda imbalanced, and doesn't work well against enemies with very efficient dodge abilities such keeping out of range.
I'm also considering a system of reactionary focus-breaking- the enemy chooses their skill to attack with, the ally chooses the wrong skill to attempt to mitigate; so the tank makes an intimidation check to throw off the attackers focus. Tanks can do this more freely and efficiently than most other builds.
I probably wouldn't like these, but I acknowledge that people out there have different preferences and respect them.
We often do reaction baiting. I mean, enemies aren't forced to make an opportunity attack, but they often would, at least with how our DM runs a game. Otherwise mostly just try to keep ranged attackers at a distance (we often play with enormous maps, so it's not as hard as it may be in many other games).
I think u can tank in DnD I love to do it. High AC, polearm master, and sentinel… plus good spacing. I can force the enemies to attack me or stand there and think about their actions
Its not impossible. Be nice if it were somewhat feasible without two feats and a specific weapon group, though. XD
I have yet to try it but I plan to try a system where the lowest a creature's int the more likely it is to just attack the closest thing. Like an ooze will just seek food. As int goes up it'll start to identify group size and potential threat
The DM needs to have the option and ability to have his creatures be smart and recognize the healer and want to focus them or something. I don't always do this of course, if they are fighting some sort of raging beast or something then it'll usually attack whoever is closest to it. But putting in rules that force the creatures to target certain enemies makes the role as the DM less fun and interesting.
But just because you can't force them with some kind of aggro rules to target someone specific, doesn't mean you can't still force a target to attack you. You just have to do it with positioning instead. Make it very difficult for enemies to get around you and get away from you. Polearm master + sentinel is especially good at this, but even just having the sentinel feat alone is usually good enough to maintain control of a creatures targeting on it's own when you are good at positioning.
As an ancestral guardian barbar Dragonborn, can confirm.
Real hard to proc the damn ancestral guardian when everyone’s dead by the time you get there.
Using a whip helps some, keeping enemies unable to move past you as easily.
To go into more detail on it, whips? Terrible weapons, wonderful tools.
Your able to snag enemies and pull them closer as part of your attacks, you can use them to disarm, and just make yourself a general annoyance to ignore.
Combine that with decent AC or damage reduction, and some methods of gaining multi attack, and you can hold off a decent chunk of a group.
This makes me wish whips were a little more viable or martials had a way to inflict conditions with their weapons, because the image of several whip cracks leaving a group stumbling sound awesome.
@@RulesandRulings weapon masteries are quite a cool homebrew rule i -stole- found somewhere on the internet... like special abilities linked to the weapon type that only martials can use. They're super fun, i'd definitely recommend them!
My DM used to basically assign "aggro" to whoever was doing lots of damage... sadly, in the game where I played a ranger archer, that was usually me, as I got a ridiculous amount of shots per round, and my position was always getting charged, constantly had to beg allies to shift so as not to incur cover penalties, etc. It's work, and I literally would scavenge the battlefield afterwards for arrows, because I shot so many I could never carry enough.
Now, there was also a barbie who would suddenly get like 60-80 damage with a two handed axe while raging, and he would draw attention too, but that wasn't as reliable, and I was already probably doing like 20-40 every turn in arrow damage.
Sounds like a good way to deal with it generally, but you obviously found the scenario that makes it seem kind of wonky.
Opportunity attacks and the action economy encourage most npcs to not disengage from the PC in thier face, at least in the game I'm running.
I am not too knowledgeable since I just started playing my first campaign a few weeks ago, but Cavalier seems like a decent tanking class, especially at higher levels. Within it's class features it provides an alternative to the "Sentinel" feat through the combination of "Unwavering Mark" and "Hold the Line". Pairing that with "Warding Maneuver" to add a d8 to allies AC and provide resistance to any attack damage as well as the late game feature "Vigilant Defender" allowing you to make an opportunity attack on EVERY creature's turn without wasting your Reaction, it seems to me like it can wall enemies pretty well.
However, I can see it struggling to fulfill it's role against enemies that use saving throw spells, as you have stated.
If anyone has any suggestions on how I can make my Halfling Cavalier a more effective tank, I'd love to hear it.
Cal of Amity?
_You're gonna need a bigger gun._
If you are the tank your job is to be so scary that the monsters/villains want you dead before you have a chance to kill them. So generally I give my tanks good weapons. Also helps them feel less like a walking wall of hp
So I'm gonna start by saying this made me feel old, suddenly wanting to kick kids off my lawn. As I have officially been too lazy and or tired to actually get my own vids up, I'll suffice with giving a history lesson followed by how tanking "works" without min maxing or game law fanaticism.
History: The concepts of Tank and the other terms popularized in gaming, especially after the release of MUDs and later into the world of MMOs are based off of DND in the first place. This is both direct and in a round about way. Most of the computer games we play today are directly based off either A. DND or B. a game based off of DND. Examples of this are Ultima, which inspired a lot of JRPGs as well as creating the first official MMO with Ultima Online which created most of the Aggro coding used in the MMO games we think of today, As well as final fantasy and its currently known and exploited fame. As those games got more expansive they needed ways to hook people in and created expansive skill and magic trees that allowed the protagonists more control over the battles leading to more specialized roles, usually named after things people would do in combat as roleplay to do things...... you know like taunting. Eventually of course their was the silly flip in 4th ed(shudder) that tried to make tabletop games more like MMO's and we have the weird amalgamation we have today.
That being said Dungeons and Dragons is a tactical game, but one that is supposed to simulate an experience with real people, with real motivations(at least real in a world where objective morality frames exist by the mere existence of the outer planes). Heavy armored warriors used to tank damage by being in a strategic position whenever available but also doing enough damage consistently that they couldn't be ignored. Mages avoided the Ire of their enemies by saving their spells for the most appropriate moment to use them and spent much of combat trying to avoid getting killed waiting for the golden moment, I can't tell you how often my old wizards ran away from immediate threat just to survive..... hard to want to kill a guy who keeps running away when a steel murder machine is doing their job. And that brings us to how tanks work..... Teamwork. Even in those popular mmo games occasionally glasscannons/blaster/whateverboomys would break agro from the tank because they did the most possible damage, so there was a balance of not using that big boom immediately after cooldown, DND is like that. If every battle the teams focus is on getting the tank into a place to be a tank, the wizard uses a mixture of spells that doesn't immediately get them killed, the strikers wait for their moment to shine out with the extra damage, the Tank can do their job. It's not about FORCING the enemy to attack the tank, its about coercing the enemy into fighting the tank with a mix of roleplay, tactics, and skullduggery. heck, a mage and rogue who don't even show up for the first round or two of combat(hidden or invisible getting into location) is enough to lock many of the enemies into an attack pattern even for the most purely tactical minded GM, I've tested this in cons even. This is assuming there are multiple swarming enemies, as one big enemy the tank just needs to stand in the face of the enemy and keep attacking. Also, never underestimate insulting your enemies in a way that might piss off the DM, "his tactical acumen is that of a child, blah blah etc" managing to subtly insult the DM through their baddies is a good way to get your character mobbed.
Tanking, and psycological warfare, are an intellectual game that require the whole team to work together for the goal of tanking, either being outclassed by a huge(or few) enemies or mobbed by swarms.
my first thought when clicking on this video was "why the fuck would I want that?" If I wanted to play a video game, I'd do that. A conscious opponent wouldn't target a tank first, an enraged one wouldn't care whatever the fuck you are. It's a role-playing game, why would I want stiff mechanics that are much better suited for a computer, which automates such processes.
Yep. One of the points I made in the video, hard to justify hard aggro mechanics that would destroy agency. But more soft options would be nice.
Yeah, 5e pretty much leaves way too much to GM fiat. Very little in the game forces the enemy's hand, and the few mechanics that heavily encourage attacking the tank just aren't good enough at it.
Examples: Cavalier Fighter marks enemies they attack, and those enemies have disadvantage against other people... except it stops working if the enemy is no longer 5 feet away from the Fighter. Ancestral Guardian Barbarians can impose this disadvantage whether the target moves away or not, and it gives the ally they attack resistance too (amazing!) but only to one target per round.
Honestly, the best solution to this would be to just take the gloves off and let the features loose. Don't make Cavalier marks vanish if they move away from you, and let them apply all such taunt effects on every attack that lands. It's already not a requirement, just encouragement, to attack the tank, so enemies can still choose a different course of action, but the martial characters get to take advantage of their extra attack features to spread these effects among multiple targets. Sure, normally focused fire is the best way to deal with enemies, but if your goal is tanking, this gives players a tactical choice. Eliminate threats faster, or debuff more of them at a time. Both are sound choices given the right circumstances, but letting players have that option goes a long way to making martials more fun.
On top of that, disadvantage for soft taunt effects isn't as effective a deterrent as it could be. I honestly feel like such goading effects should just make any target other than you resistant to your damage until they've hit you back. This would help with saving throw effects, not just attack rolls, and an enemy with multiattack hitting you before swinging at an ally is still doing far less damage to your allies. So the taunt would be doing its job in more situations.
All very good ideas, which would be great to see implemented. You're right about disadvantage not being that much of a deterrent, especially since it cancels out with advantage.
So much being up to DM fiat is 90% of the reason I made my channel. I wanted to help DM's know what their fiat is doing. :-D
I prefer to run, and prefer the DM's I play with to run, the different types, races and motivations of enemies as different.
Is it a group of bandits? then they may just want to down the players quickly and rob them. death is optional and not necessary.
Are they bloodthirsty orcs, demons, or other such types of more malicious enemies? Then they'd go out of their way to go for the squishies, they might make bee-lines for enemies if they're the big strong dumb types, but they'd also go for the killing blows as well.
There's a lot of factors to determine which leads me to my point.
This is why I don't think having a built in system to allow "tanking" as videos games provide it to be a thing. Video games do it because it's easier to write one code for all the enemies and tweak it ever so slightly between instances - meaning it's easier to manipulate the system, purposefully aggro, etc. remember that a LOT of those features we see as quint essential "tanking" all came about basically by accident and were just improved upon over the decades.
Positioning, having multiple fighter types for every singular magic user, or one fighter type with a reach weapon and the ability to use reactions with a reach weapon (I think that's a thing) are one of the few ways to really keep enemies from getting into melee with your squishies in a TTRPG. (My opinion obviously, some TTRPGs are built different and some may or may not actually play into these devices better or worse than some)
You're looking at the wrong games, IMO. Competitive games like Mobas and Hero Shooters have had tanks for *ages* without any way to magically mind control people into attacking them and yet they are still a critical part of any team composition.
In games like these, it's not the tank's job to absorb damage... it's their job to be durable enough to walk into space controlled by the enemy and force them out of that space either through their own damage or crowd control. Winston in Overwatch doesn't have a taunt, and his shield is too weak to protect his allies, but yet he's one of the best tanks in the game because he can dive deep into the enemy team and kill or repel enemy damage dealers, giving his team space to move up without being afraid of them.
Say I'm a paladin in D&D 5e, wielding a two-handed sword. In the first round of combat I walk up to the enemy's squishy backline and attack them before casting sanctuary on myself (Or dash/sanctuary, if the enemy's backline is as far away as they should be). I'm directly threatening the enemy's mage with my damage, and since the enemy mage doesn't want to die chances are they'll try to cast spells to get away from me or stop me rather than cast them on my party, and there's a pretty good chance that if the enemies value the lives of their backline, they'll give me attention as well. To be an effective tank in a game where enemies have brains, you need to be someone that the enemy can't afford to ignore. Just being a ball of HP won't cut it.
It helps if your party is positioning smartly, as well. it doesn't matter how deep you dive into the enemy backline if your wizard stands close enough for the fight to be an easy target for melee enemies. They should be using cover and keeping their distance, same as the enemy. Naturally, this is a problem in a lot of dungeon environments, as there's not a lot of room to maneuver tactically in a 15x15 box... and even there you can use your attack of opportunity to grapple or trip, which is often more than enough to prevent enemies from getting to people you don't want them to get to.
Cough, something 4e did right, cough
4e did a lot of things right from a pure gameplay perspective. I firmly believe if it had been billed as a tactical spin-off of D&D rather than the next edition, it would have done a lot better.
@@RulesandRulings My group still plays it for games where we want a more "Action/superhero-ey" feeling game.