I think this was an interesting exercise, and ironically matches a concept I just learned about in psychology... As Spock would say, "Fascinating..." 🤔 (also liked it before the intro faded out 😆)
As roleplaying IS gameplay in D&D, if our foes are humanoid and speak a common language my tank just says "Hey I recognize you guys, your mom used to swing by our barnyard to flirt with the farm animals." and then just request a persuasion check from our DM. Usually works like a charm because it seems even kobolds love their mommas.
After starting the video my GF asked what a tank is, I paused and explained for a few mins, unpaused the vid and then you described what a tank is 😂😂 love it
I’ve said this on a few videos, but your content across this series and others has been an absolute joy to go through. I’ve been listening while doing my mindless work labor for over a year now and this was a lovely trip down memory lane. Keep up the great work! Thanks for being a welcoming voice into optimizing. The take of powerful niche builds instead of just the most powerful bar none builds speaks deeply to what I enjoy in any type of gaming. I couldn’t ask for a better source of inspiration and healthy escape.
I have such a love for tank/support builds, and I’m glad you give them that respect on your channel. My logic is that, yeah, I know I can optimize any type of character I want, but if I optimize for damage (both sustained or nova), other people at the table feel outclassed. But when I’m playing a tank, I can be right in the center of every combat and be relevant on every turn, without anyone feeling like stepping on their toes. I have a T4 Bladesinger, a T3 Stars Druid, and a T2 Mounted Battlesmith, and they’re as beloved by my tables as they are by me.
Just to be clear. I hit the like because your Tank builds are my favorite!!! Sad I dont play enough to be able to play them all!..... and now there is another one on the way!!!. Wooooooooo!
Hmmmm... if your wife plays DnD too, why not ask her to help film the team-up builds with you? So you'd both go over 1 character each and discuss inbetween maybe? You'd be an unstoppable adventuring duo ❤ Edit: it might also help with camera shyness if ur doing it together? Idk, just a suggestion so that she can be on the channel outside of the silvery barbs mob 😂
@@DnDDeepDive Now I'm curious, why doesn't she? I found out my wife likes some aspects of it, like making backstories, character personalities, and even their looks but has a hard time with the mechanics of builds. So I simply ask her "what would you like your character to do?" Once she tells me, I design the character to be as close as she imagined it, and present it. She's been happily playing a Centaur Zealot Barbarian with the mobile feat for constant charging attacks and is having a blast!
I'd love to see your attempt at making a College of Spirits bard; I love the idea of a paranormal investigator giving his allies inspiration using an ouija board and messages from the beyond. However, with the randomness inherent in the subclass, I'm unsure how to build a reliably effective character.
Im late to the comment game here, but my group finished a one shot last night where I ran the Tankadin at level 6 and I wanted to report back! Also, I wanted to provide an honest account but please dont view what I am saying as a criticism of you. I think that this channel is fantastic and love your videos. This is the second character build I have tried in a game and the tankadin was a lot of fun to play!! Overall, I think that the build worked really well, although I think it might work better at higher levels (at level 6, with that first dip, and missing Paladin 6, there were some features missing). I also rolled like hot garbage most of the time, so there's that too. I did end up with three magical items for the adventure but not until everything had been rolled and approved, Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, a +1 warhammer and a staff of healing (which we got mid adventure). One more note, our DM is awesome and definitely tailored some challenges for our group. We had 4 combat encounters, with two short rests and one full heal from a temple in the middle. So while we were able to get hit points back to full each time, our spell slots were gradually running out over the course of the adventure. Pros: For most mundane attacks, I was really tanky. Our first encounter was a crew of skeletons - most of which couldnt hit me. That said, because of issues that Ill list in the cons, I was out of the fight for almost four rounds and a party member went down. There was another enounter where we were ambushed by assassin rogues, I took four arrows with the assassination feature, was able to SoF and Shield my AC upto 28, so only took one of those on a critical hit, taking me from 56hp to 9hp. But nothing else hit me for the rest of the fight. In our final boss battle, I took a cone of cold to the face and survived. I went down because I got hit by a meteor (thats a whole story for itself). Healing worked out here. I was teetering on taking a cleric instead (the other two party members were a warlock and a sorc) but didn't want to have three main casters without some form of tanky boi doing the work. Healing word was great for picking up downed friends. In the final fight we had two people down, and the channel divinity feature "Turn the Tide" was really helpful here and super dramatic. Lay on hands was a good supplement for getting everyone to full health with the staff of healing doing the bulk of work after our assassin encounter. The rolepplay aspect - the backstory I built for this guy was a knight of the round table / judge dredd concept. The flavour of this character worked really well. Cons: This felt at times to be a "one trick pony" at times. My thing was AC and a little in the way of conversation. I probably would have died without the extra hit points from increasing CON but the CHA scores weren't as high as needed to compensate for my garbage rolls last night and I failed some social rolls that ended up going the way of combat as a result. On that note, the saving throws for this character were pretty bad. Thats really how I ended up taking most of my damage - the creatures we faced had options for attacks requiring saves in lieu of AC attacks. I missed a dex save in an encounter and ended up falling into water in our first encounter. It took about 4 rounds to be able to get out and by then my team mates were hurting. You mentioned the taunt aspect, so ill not harp on that, but because of that, mobility was an issue too. If I wanted to get anywhere quick, I needed to use the dash action, which left me without being able to attack. Two of our encounters - one against rogues that would hide and move (low perception meant I wasn't able to find anyone), the other against high level mages who could misty step or fly, meant that I wasn't able to get to them and meet them face to face or compel them to attack. But what I could do was try and put myself in the way of things as much as possible or switch to healing where required to run that aspect. This was a really fun concept to try out and Ill definitely look at some of the others to see if there is something else I can run for the future. I will say that the other build I have run from your channel was the tempest cleric/storm sorc at level 11, which was an amazing play through - but am wondering now how this paladin would have run at a higher level? Thank you so much for all that you do! This channel is amazing and I love your work! Michael
Predictions for next week's build: 1. Tank built around a class that hasn't been the focus yet (Warlock, Cleric) or 2. A wacko tank concept that came together against all odds that'll blow our lids off
Amazing intro. I was looking for tank builds and kept getting the bearbarian and things of that nature and i said "whats stopping the DM from just..not attacking you?" I ended up looking at every subclass of the fighters and barbarians and setting on the Ansestral Guardian. Made him a Dhampir with the charger feat. Drop to half health heal for 15 baby
Always love your videos. With the One Dnd grapple changes, it could be nice to see you play around with that to make a tank without the typical taunts. I'll also reference you to a comment I made on your mount and blade build where you can bump the survivability of both characters massively if the mount has a soft taunt
I’d like to feed you an idea. For Halloween season maybe consider doing monoclass builds? Like just milk as much as you can out of a class. Because for a compulsive multiclasser what is more spooky than monoclassing? 😂
I'm currently running a Battle Smith tank. The level 20 goal is 12 levels of Artificer (Battle Smith), 4 levels of Fighter (Cavalier), and 4 levels of Wizard (War Wizard). My DM is going to allow me to use the INT modifier instead of STR for the Cavalier's bonus action retaliation attack. I made the case that as I use INT as a combat modifier, I should use that as the metric of how many times a day I can use it. The War Wizard was for Arcane Deflection and INT modifier bonus to initiative.
Came here to see what could be done with the dhampir bite, and could see the quality of the thinking - despite not wanting to focus on tanking at the time. Been a regular since. 🎉
One of my favorite tank moments was very simple, we were attacking a volcano base of an elemental fire lord and we break into the inner ring of their base, immediately we realize we're outnumbered, a dozen Azer to our group of 5, Once we're thru the door, the Barbarian-Warlock and I, the Jedi-like Sorcadin down our enlarge potions and go to work. He leads the group south towards 6 and I head north. It takes him and the group of Tempest Cleric, Brute Fighter and Lore Wizard about three rounds to finish off their side, doing damage and healing from the fire splash damage to clear that end, on my end, it's them missing me and me missing them and I was glad they did because I didn't want to take the splash damage. Still, because of my enlarged size I was able to hold up those 6 Azer in a decent size hallway for those three round and wait for the party to came back to help finish them off. There were things I could have done to increase my chance to hit like unleash my Sacred Weapon or switch to bless, but it wasn't about doing damage, it was about holding up half the enemies for the rest of the party so they could fight six on four instead of twelve on five :) I was very proud of myself, I didn't even need to pop shield :) plus the aforementioned, if I hit them, I would have taken a decent chunk of sustained damage for my efforts.
Great work! I actually like the consistency in the method but maybe some considerations are necessary: 1. You should take Shild Master feat more often. As you said in your rogue build, its great against fireballs! 2. As for the barbarian with polearm instrad of Shild, dealing high damage with good positioning is basically a taunt 3. AC overperforms for 2 main reasons: - Shild spell and other limited resources are basically limitless in your calcularions - Your enemies dont have a great hit roll, like giants of similar CR would have. A party of optimized characters show really challenged by their DM fights CR 4 creatures até level 1 and CR 10 at level 4, when that's the kind of dynamic you have, AC is secondary against a +11 to hit a low lvl player. 4. Summoning / taking space is not a greatly apreciated tactic. You should have to change the method or create a New category... But its odd to let out onevof the best ways to tank 5. Likewise control is kinda underapreciated in your builds, its not gonna show in the math, but its similar to getting a nice soft taunt, doest show on math but its important for the build. *Instead of taking a 3 level dip in artificer in every build maybe you should consider more spells as 'taunts'. If you make your party fly against a melee enemies they Will attack you! But we kinda dont think of a 4th level fly as "taunt". A good combination of 3 or 4 spells is actually farly better and more versatile than any taunt feature you would have to invest 3 level in spell progression to get. 5b) To that point, Undead warlock is a great dip for tanks, even better for ranged or raging ones. With the new dragonborn combos greatly for AoE concentrationless fear 6 *(and maybe the most important and more conter intuitive)* Having played some ancestral In my life, the best way to actually tank is to AVOID damage, (probably the same for armorer). If ALL YOUR PARTY has resistence agains any attack and attacks are made with disadvantage you what the target to attack them! Not you!! Any half optimized character os reasonably 'tanky' and gets really tanky with a ancestral Guardian protecting concentration (with resistence the DC hardly passes 10) and dobling the HP; not to say about temp HP and armor of agathys/peace Cleric combo. Ancestral Guardian should use a bow! Or get a fast horse to lend the hit and desingage (or echo) or get sentinel and Centaur and be Mounted by the paladin with high AC! Now your forntline is imortal and you get 4 heavy armor attacks (extra attack; bônus action e reaction with sentinel when the pally gets the attacks from you) ... There are quite a lot of ways to tank in dnd and i hope to see a New category of tank that includes summoners and controllers. Or at least that they participate using the current method and the comments makes the math sustainable Keep the great work!!!
Tank/bruiser is my favorite archetype not just in D&D, but in all games in general. From all of your builds, my fav is Clockwork Soul/Armorer, hands down. By the way, you guys look like a wonderful couple together!
I had an idea for a tank that I tried at one point, not sure how well it works. Basically the idea was you go Armorer Artificer 10, Mercy Monk 7. You take Dwarven Resilience and Durable, and use Patient Defence to gain HP through your Hit Dice. At Artificer 10 you also take the Periapt of Wound Closure to make the healing even more ridiculous. The extra Monk levels are mostly for the extra Ki as well as for Evasion. Not sure where the last levels go honestly.
Doing a great job with your Pathfinder builds. I've been doing a similar thing too. I tend to like wilderness classes myself including Ranger, Barbarian and Druid. Can you do a BarBEARian next?
I feel like there needs to be a tank that also tanks/taunts spellcasters. It'd be cool if there was a tank that let their allies had advantage on saving throws if they placed the taunt on the spellcaster. I'd love to play something like an ancestral guardian in that case. I actually homebrewed a Dancer Rogue subclass that could taunt a spellcaster.
Taunting a spellcaster is extremely difficult, but tanking them can be more easily done by choosing a magic resistance race such as satyr, yuan ti, or gnome
I played a Dhampir death cleric(5) hexblade(1) Ancients Paladin (14) in a battle Royale one shot, and my DM allowed me to use the spell vampiric touch as an upgrade for the dhampirs bite, and since the bit is a simple melee weapon attack, I was allowed to stack divine smites, that's would crit on a 19 or 20 with the hexblade curse. That character was filthy, and I never died.
The only Tank build I've ever tried in 5e was a monoclass Conquest Paladin and it worked great! Felt nice to control the battlefield through fear and forcing enemies to work around my positioning, like a nice chess battle with the DM. Gives a ton of space to your party members to work with. Have you ever tried that class? Or thought about it?
You ask if it’s good to split a video in Part 1 and Part 2, when Part 2 gets way less klicks. Yes! Because Viewer Binding by Watchtime is by far the most important stat for the algorithm. So viewer who would leave you in a huge Video may end it but do not klick in the second part, but those who klick on the second part are willing to watch this topic even longer and might even complete the second part too.
"Armor class is king". Based on the current Dungeon of the Mad Mage campaign my friends and I are about to wrap up, I have to agree. We've managed to turn my Eldritch Knight into an untouchable wrecking ball. At one point, we pushed his AC to 34 (+5 Dex, +1 Shield, +1 Half-Plate [with Medium Armor Master feat], Haste, Fizban's Platinum Shield, Shield of Faith, and casting Shield). It is an absolute rush to have the DM ask "this creature has a +15 to hit, why can't I hit you?".
I love your builds so much. I'm one of those people who enjoys building characters almost as much as playing the game so I'm definitely in the right place. I was wondering if you could make a character (or have made a character I missed) that, rather than being a front line fighter, stays back and gives disadvantage to enemies/advantage to friends?
You've inspired me! What about a tank that's a mix of Cavalier and Druid? The idea being to focus on the battlefield control aspect of tanking. Guess you would get the added benefit of shape-shifting as well. Not sure how thid would go, haven't played dnd in about 20 years and am getting back into it.
Hey Colby! I'm just getting into d&d with my kids. We don't have any books yet but are using D&d beyond; do you have any builds that just use the base game?
I don't remember did you use mounted combatant on your battlesmith tank that way you can force enemies to attack you while you have Sanctuary going so you don't take any damage and the only damage that your Mount would take would be area of effects if they fail?
Funnily the best 'tank' experiance I've had was actually with one of your very first sustained damage builds, the fightarian. I swapped to guardian barbarian and have thoroughly enjoyed running around being a pain in the plans of the enemy. Although thank goodness we run a paladin and cleric in our party, I spend more time unconcious than I do fighting!
I’m playing a Bladesinger Tank in a campaign right now just got to level 3 artificer, still debating on if I want o take 3 levels of Psi Warrior after I get to Bladesinger 6 to help reduce damage to teammates as well as the other bonuses of taking fighter
Have you ever considered using fathomless warlock using guardian coil and grasping tentacles features for tanking? using the possible group controll and damage reduction to increase the survivability.
For a damage build I want to recommend whisper bard 3,fighter2, spore druid 2, gravecleric8, pally 2..... Half high elf for booming blade early without feat . Point buy for 14 str ,14 con, 15 wis, 12 char. racial to Str and Wis... heavy armor and shield for defense. Spells :Spirit weapon, Guardian of Faith, spirit guardians, Thorn whip for forced movement or placement of enemy and Shillelagh. Note Guardian of Faith doesn't have a limit of 1 so you could cast multiple with overlapping coverage, but your already taking 2 rounds to set up. First round spirit guardian, spirit weapon... round two guardian of faith, spirit weapon.... round 3 Mark with grave curse ... action surge... booming blade/smite(booming blade is made with a melee weapon attack), Only get 1 attack no reason to wait for crit to smite on other turns., spirit weapon. You could skip the guardian of faith and booming blade faster, but I'm always casting it .... at the very least to protect squishy friends. Wild shape is an option but really using druid for move take damage stay take damage like spirit guardian.
I have been toying around with a character build, that makes a good tank with good TPK management. It's a shadar-kai, 8th level Eldritch Knight & 12th level Divine soul sorcerer using shadow blade, and with the ruling by wizards of the coast. It makes it a good DPR build as well using booming blade, and twin spell.
That's hard to make happen in game, tho. Unless your character has the time to prepare beforehand, it's useless. And if you're in a dungeon, that won't happen. A fight broke out in the city? Not happening as well.
Here's a concept: Interception fighting style conquest paladin with the metamagic adept feat, twinned spell, and compelled duel. Just as a basic thing to work from, would this he good or absolutely horrible?
My favorite Tank by far is the Naked Bladesinger, Barbarian 1/Bladesinger 2+. Just go all in on Con, Dex, and Int, for a sustainable AC in the 30’s and all the spell utility. Second place goes to the Mark of Warding Dwarf Armorer 4/Abjurer 2+. The over 630+ “hit points” to burn through due to Durable and Dwarven Fortitude while passively blasting via Armor of Agathys is for you, not so much for everyone else at the table.
With these tank builds and the limited options available to get a soft taunt, I always end up thinking, there's gotta be a way to get a soft taunt going via some sort of spell, right? Compelled duel seems purpose designed for it, but of course it has its drawbacks. Maybe bless on everyone except yourself if you're facing a saving-throw-based enemy? Some kind of powerful AOE support spell that you can have all of your squishy friends stand in while you stand out front outside of the AOE?
Based on how well the quickened blade ward worked for Clockwork Soul, my guess for the next tank build is something that takes advantage of the reworked Earth Genasi from MoM. Maybe with heavy armor master to help nullify some of the damage that's already resisted.
I'd be really curious where treantmonks Ancestral Guardian/Echo Knight/War Mage tank would rank, it's a tank build I've been interested in trying out, I'm just not sure how I feel about so many wizard levels...
As someone who DM's at least as often as I play (and often much more). The best "soft taunt" in the Game, is Reckless Attack. If a Barbarian attacks recklessly, opening themselves up to counterattacks with advantage, then I will almost always have the nearest melee opponents, and even some ranged, attack that Barbarian. It simply makes the most sense from an in game perspective, the crazy guy with the big axe is obviously dangerous, but he's also reckless and making himself easy to hit, so take him down ... the enemy doesn't know that he has "resistance" to damage, or a the biggest "Hit Dice" in the game. They only know that he has massive holes in his defense. Opposite to that, if a Character has super high AC, and is next to impossible to hit, then I'll have a couple of people try and occupy them, whilst focusing fire on Characters that can actually be harmed. If you want to "Tank" you have to be able to take a hit, not duck, dodge, or deflect every single attack.
Would love to see a tank ranking that focuses on how much "protection" etc. the tank is able to provide. Even if DPR and Nova damage are also in a lab, I think they are closer to simulating combat effectiveness than DTPR. Even if you have to get a bit subjective, it might be cool to just see which you think are the actual best tanks at tanking.
So watching this video brought up for me the distinction of “Sustained tanking” and “Nova Tanking”. Would love to hear if you think this is a useful distinction. A sustained tank, would always, or nearly always have their protective and survivability features available while a Burst Tank would have limited resources used to protect their allies and survive themselves. A character that uses the Shield spell, or the Rage feature, for survivability would be two examples that come to mind of a Burst tank, but I’m sure there are plenty of others.
Undead lock / Conquest Paladin - PAM / Sentinel / Shield Bash…. Maybe 1 level of rogue for expertise. Maybe being a bugbear for extra reach to control out to 15 feet of movement? Knocking things down so they can’t move closer or just fear I. General paired with repelling blast and sentinel. Or totem Barb / Dao Lock. Damage resistance and Armor of Agathys. Spike growth zoning and damage with Repelling Blast. Turn it into a Grappler too - Simic Hybrid for double grappling. 1 level of Rogue for Athletics Expertise maybe.
It's wild to me that 5e doesn't have much in the way of taunts, and only a handful of ways to keep an enemy attacking you. I haven't had any experience with PF2e yet, but in PF1e there were multiple feats and spells that allowed you to taunt enemies or take hits. There was the paladin 1st level spells "Compel Hostility" and "Knight's Calling", the feat "Antagonize" that gave you different benefits if you used Intimidate or Diplomacy on a target creature, the fighter "Pin Down" feat (similar to Sentinel), and even the tiefling only Suicidal trait that let you jump in front of an attack. It was so easy to make tank characters in that system. Heck, there was even the Stalwart Defender prestige class (called the Dwarven Defender back in 3.5) that was a dedicated tank "class". I'm hoping PF2e carried some of the 1st edition stuff over. With "6e" coming out next year, it's already too late for 5e to do something so dedicated.
Love your videos, dude. Question: Do you take recommendations for builds? Or offer help at all? I've been working on a unique character concept for a while and it has so many options that I'm having a hard time settling; I'd love to see if you thought it was interesting too.
@@DnDDeepDive Awesome! So grateful. I'll try to keep it succinct. Firstly, this is definitely a build that, like you mentioned recently, will be hard to quantify on paper but rocks a cool theme and might, with your help, be good enough to play. So this build was born when I realized the potential synergy between the spell Stinking Cloud and the poison immunity that comes with the Yuan-ti Pureblood race. Cloud certainly has its weaknesses, particularly that enemies will usually just run out of it without anything lost. There are a lot of lockdown spells that can synergize with it usually with a friend's help, but a Yuan-ti player is in the unique position to stand inside it harmlessly, opening up a variety of options like grapple/shove to keep things trapped in it. Start with a caster that gets the spell, throw in Blind fighting to capitalize on the heavy obscurity of the area and you have a walking cloud of poison gas that has consistent advantage on its attacks and against which enemies have consistent disadvantage, as well as a desperate need to run away from. Hilarious, right? Also as a bonus it shuts down spellcasters hard by blinding them while not stopping you from casting your spells on enemies (within 10 feet). The core of the idea is a frontliner that keeps their enemies in a cloud of poison gas and gets stronger when they're inside it. My priorities, in order of most to least, are: -AoE poison spells that my char. is immune to, e.g. Poison Cloud, Cloudkill -Ways to lock down enemies inside it, e.g. grapples, booming blade, slasher feat, diff. terrain, forced movement -Ways to capitalize on the effects of the cloud, e.g. blind fighting + extra attack, Spell attacks that can be rolled with advantage from within 10 feet, ----Ideas: (would love suggestions on which if any of these you'd get behind, or how you'd change or add to them) -Fighter 1/melee bard 6/? Valor/Swords Bards get Cloud, grapple expertise and extra attack, fighter 1 gets armor and blind fighting, this build seems fine and gets me what I want. Could go battlemaster after getting cloud to get grappling strike, and though I'm not experienced with tier 3+ play, i'm sure there are other cool options later on. My instinct on this one is that the strategy will just die off at later levels as more things get poison immunity and higher CON saves, but at worst it's just bad fog cloud. Maybe throw in hexblade 2 for EB and CHA attacks? -Fighter 1/Scribes wizard X It occurred to me that there may not be a lot of poison AoE spells in the game by default, but that doesn't mean there can't be. With Scribes, my character can stand in the middle of a massive Poisonball, or summon a wall of poison, walk through it, grapple a guy and then walk back. Honestly I've never played wizard so I'm sure there are greats spells that could be combo'd with self-immunity to the damage from them, but I guess at that point you're almost an evocation wizard. No extra attack except with more fighter levels and only way later but you get blind fighting, booming blade and sentinel for melee lockdown, which ain't bad. Could also go bladesinger for extra attack and cantrips but then you lose the cool Scribes potential. Fighter 1/ Aberrant Mind Sorc X The other way to transmute a spell to poison damage is with metamagic, which practically amounts to the same as the previous build except for a cost, but with an important difference: Aberrant Mind Sorcs get Hunger of Hadar, which is probably an improvement over Cloud. You keep the blinding without being blinded, gain damage without being damaged, and get difficult terrain thrown in for free. You lose the "CON save or lose your action" effect but an action taken in Hunger of Hadar is wasted anyway. Again, could go BM for Grappling Strike, maybe dip bard for Athletics expertise for grapples. Sentinel would also be a very strong consideration to lock guys down even harder, but there's like 5 different lockdown mechanics at least, it's really difficult to see the best one. Also A.M. Sorc shuts down casters even harder because their Hunger can't be counterspelled and once they put a caster in Hunger, the hope is that they won't be much of a caster anymore. So if you've suffered to sit through all this and you're still into it, first of all thanks again! Secondly what do you think? Any potential? Any of these builds sound best to you, or do you have an alternative? Or perhaps cool additions you can think of that might make it all come together? Anything would be greatly appreciated.
@@DnDDeepDive Well shoot, that's exciting. Glad you dug it :) No rush or insistence on your deliberations, obviously, but yeah, can't wait to hear your thoughts when they're ready! Hope you're having a great one. P.S. Don't hesitate to use or change/style the idea however you want; "One candle is undimmed by lighting another" and all that.
@@DnDDeepDive had another idea to spice the build up a little, thought I'd share to see if it caught your eye: using a net. Normally the net sucks in that by default you can only use it at disadvantage because it's always either the longer range bracket, or the enemy is 5 feet away, which grants disadv. to ranged weapons anyway. I'm sure if your DM is cool they'd homebrew you a magic net at some point but not taking that for granted, there is a way to lose the disadvantage, and even get advantage: if the enemy is blind, the close-range disadv. On ranged weapons doesn't apply. So here's an example play with an Ab. Mind sorc 5/battlemaster 3 with sentinel: You see three enemies somewhat close to each other and close to you. You run up to enemy A, grapple it, drag it to within 5 feet of enemy action surge cast stinking cloud or hunger of hadar on yourself and the group, transmuting it to poison. Then you bonus action quick toss a net at enemy C, with adv. If they're 5 feet away. A and C are locked down if you succeed, enemy B is locked down if you hit with sentinel Opp. Attack. If the spell is HoH, even if they escape restraint, they're still a full turn of movement away from escaping Hunger. In an ideal world, on turn one you've blinded, trapped and completely hamstrung 3 enemies for a lvl 3 spell and a short rest resource. Throw in the ambush maneuver for initiative and you can even stack how often you go move before your foes. How's that sound? I'm so eager to hear your thoughts when you get around to checking it out in detail. No rush though obviously but yeah, some more food for your thoughts I hope. Take care!
Henlo, I'm still new to D&D and was trying to put a thought I had into practice. The Nerd Rage, combining a barbarian with an artificer. Has anyone here done something like that before? Any tips?
Oath of Ancients (at least 7) Ancestral Guardian (taunt) or Totem (bear can't be beat) (3 levels of either, up to 6 on AG), Yuan-Ti (pure) -pros: not very MAD (cha, con, str), adv on saves against magic (+cha mod to saves, aura 10 ft), resistance to damage from spells (10 ft aura); taunt ability (to force target you, while raging) or resist all damage (while raging); high health pool; spells (such as ceremony, aid, warding bond, death ward, and other instantaneous or non-concentration spells); if AG (and 6 levels) you can reduce damage an ally takes by 2d6 (after applying resistance if they get hit at disadvantage); immune to poison (and it's condition); dark vision to 60 ft; don't need beefy strength (13 required to multiclass) -cons: rage is limited, can't cast spells while raging, can't wear heavy armor (although, half plate and shield isn't looking too bad); 2 stats need to be balanced to be effective (cha for aura of protection, and con for health; although taking a 16 isn't too penalising); probably not a lot of feats (because you have to boost cha)
Ancestral guardián x/echo knight3 multiclass is still the best tank I’ve played. Grabbed gift of the chromatic dragon for further damage mitigation. Slaps. Support Tank Barb is a lot of fun!
I have a Tank I'm playing/building and I don't THINK you have one like it, so kinda' wanted your thoughts on it. V Human Barb (Ancestral Guardian) 6/Fighter (Battle Master) 4, taking Shield Master at level 1 and Skill Expert (Athletics) at 4. Even at level 2 it seems to be doing what I want (I've recently been hit for 36 damage, rounded down to 16, keeping my allies safe), but I'm wondering am I missing a trick?
I hope next week’s build uses gift of the ever living one. I am playing a moon Druid/celestial Warlock rn and would love to see your take on a build like that.
I had the absolute pleasure of running the Bladesinger tank build at level 15 for a one shot. Let me tell you it's the real deal - my AC was so good I purposely took attacks of opportunities to steal enemy reaction to add in extra protection to my party
Please make a teleporter Gish build (preferably with Horizon Walker)! I’m making one and so far I’m thinking Human (Mark of Passage), Horizon Walker 11+, Fey Touched. I’m very interested to know what you come up with. I really enjoy your videos!
I think that the problem with armor class is that most DMs, myself included, tend to not target the players with high armor class. It is a little sad but the monsters aren't dumb and they hate to hit things that deflect all their blows.
That is why as a DM I always factor a monsters intelligence in combat… if they are trained tactical fighter they focus weaklings or healers if it’s a mindless beast it attacks the closest target or if something damages it greatly then it may go for them evening risking opportunity strikes to do so. But if that Big damage person is slippery with say misty step it maybe tire of chasing it easily and go back to closest target.
What alternative class is recommended for the Abjuration Tank if you don't have Warforged as an option? I think we are getting Tasha and Xanathar for the next campaign.
Alternatively to revisiting the Bear Totem barb, seeing as they're almost a hybrid build, I think it would be neat to see how they Fair on the sustained dpr tier list
I hit the like button before she was in the frame, scout’s honor
I did too
Ditto!
I hit the like button while the video loaded.
I think this was an interesting exercise, and ironically matches a concept I just learned about in psychology... As Spock would say, "Fascinating..." 🤔 (also liked it before the intro faded out 😆)
Hitting the like button is always the first thing I do, especially when watching this channel
Your Bladesinger Tank is probably the most fun I've ever had in melee. Thanks for the amazing content!
An actual taunt ability that uses intimidate against wisdom saving throw or something like that would be awesome
isn't that just fright (but having to attack you instead of running away)?
As roleplaying IS gameplay in D&D, if our foes are humanoid and speak a common language my tank just says "Hey I recognize you guys, your mom used to swing by our barnyard to flirt with the farm animals." and then just request a persuasion check from our DM. Usually works like a charm because it seems even kobolds love their mommas.
After starting the video my GF asked what a tank is, I paused and explained for a few mins, unpaused the vid and then you described what a tank is 😂😂 love it
I’ve said this on a few videos, but your content across this series and others has been an absolute joy to go through. I’ve been listening while doing my mindless work labor for over a year now and this was a lovely trip down memory lane. Keep up the great work! Thanks for being a welcoming voice into optimizing. The take of powerful niche builds instead of just the most powerful bar none builds speaks deeply to what I enjoy in any type of gaming. I couldn’t ask for a better source of inspiration and healthy escape.
I rushed throught Curse of Strahd with your "TANKADIN" like it "Rolling stone", was a lot of fun thanks!
hehe, playing a tankadin in curse of strahd atm :)
I have such a love for tank/support builds, and I’m glad you give them that respect on your channel. My logic is that, yeah, I know I can optimize any type of character I want, but if I optimize for damage (both sustained or nova), other people at the table feel outclassed. But when I’m playing a tank, I can be right in the center of every combat and be relevant on every turn, without anyone feeling like stepping on their toes. I have a T4 Bladesinger, a T3 Stars Druid, and a T2 Mounted Battlesmith, and they’re as beloved by my tables as they are by me.
Keep doing what you're doing! Love the content! Tanking is a lot of fun, I think AC is my favorite stat in dnd 😅
Just to be clear. I hit the like because your Tank builds are my favorite!!! Sad I dont play enough to be able to play them all!..... and now there is another one on the way!!!. Wooooooooo!
Hmmmm... if your wife plays DnD too, why not ask her to help film the team-up builds with you? So you'd both go over 1 character each and discuss inbetween maybe? You'd be an unstoppable adventuring duo ❤
Edit: it might also help with camera shyness if ur doing it together? Idk, just a suggestion so that she can be on the channel outside of the silvery barbs mob 😂
Alas! She does not :).
@@DnDDeepDive bah! We'll have to settle for cameos then :D
@@DnDDeepDive She does not *yet*.
It's inevitable!!
@@DnDDeepDive Now I'm curious, why doesn't she? I found out my wife likes some aspects of it, like making backstories, character personalities, and even their looks but has a hard time with the mechanics of builds. So I simply ask her "what would you like your character to do?" Once she tells me, I design the character to be as close as she imagined it, and present it. She's been happily playing a Centaur Zealot Barbarian with the mobile feat for constant charging attacks and is having a blast!
I'd love to see your attempt at making a College of Spirits bard; I love the idea of a paranormal investigator giving his allies inspiration using an ouija board and messages from the beyond. However, with the randomness inherent in the subclass, I'm unsure how to build a reliably effective character.
Im late to the comment game here, but my group finished a one shot last night where I ran the Tankadin at level 6 and I wanted to report back! Also, I wanted to provide an honest account but please dont view what I am saying as a criticism of you. I think that this channel is fantastic and love your videos. This is the second character build I have tried in a game and the tankadin was a lot of fun to play!!
Overall, I think that the build worked really well, although I think it might work better at higher levels (at level 6, with that first dip, and missing Paladin 6, there were some features missing). I also rolled like hot garbage most of the time, so there's that too. I did end up with three magical items for the adventure but not until everything had been rolled and approved, Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, a +1 warhammer and a staff of healing (which we got mid adventure). One more note, our DM is awesome and definitely tailored some challenges for our group.
We had 4 combat encounters, with two short rests and one full heal from a temple in the middle. So while we were able to get hit points back to full each time, our spell slots were gradually running out over the course of the adventure.
Pros:
For most mundane attacks, I was really tanky. Our first encounter was a crew of skeletons - most of which couldnt hit me. That said, because of issues that Ill list in the cons, I was out of the fight for almost four rounds and a party member went down. There was another enounter where we were ambushed by assassin rogues, I took four arrows with the assassination feature, was able to SoF and Shield my AC upto 28, so only took one of those on a critical hit, taking me from 56hp to 9hp. But nothing else hit me for the rest of the fight. In our final boss battle, I took a cone of cold to the face and survived. I went down because I got hit by a meteor (thats a whole story for itself).
Healing worked out here. I was teetering on taking a cleric instead (the other two party members were a warlock and a sorc) but didn't want to have three main casters without some form of tanky boi doing the work. Healing word was great for picking up downed friends. In the final fight we had two people down, and the channel divinity feature "Turn the Tide" was really helpful here and super dramatic. Lay on hands was a good supplement for getting everyone to full health with the staff of healing doing the bulk of work after our assassin encounter.
The rolepplay aspect - the backstory I built for this guy was a knight of the round table / judge dredd concept. The flavour of this character worked really well.
Cons:
This felt at times to be a "one trick pony" at times. My thing was AC and a little in the way of conversation. I probably would have died without the extra hit points from increasing CON but the CHA scores weren't as high as needed to compensate for my garbage rolls last night and I failed some social rolls that ended up going the way of combat as a result.
On that note, the saving throws for this character were pretty bad. Thats really how I ended up taking most of my damage - the creatures we faced had options for attacks requiring saves in lieu of AC attacks. I missed a dex save in an encounter and ended up falling into water in our first encounter. It took about 4 rounds to be able to get out and by then my team mates were hurting.
You mentioned the taunt aspect, so ill not harp on that, but because of that, mobility was an issue too. If I wanted to get anywhere quick, I needed to use the dash action, which left me without being able to attack. Two of our encounters - one against rogues that would hide and move (low perception meant I wasn't able to find anyone), the other against high level mages who could misty step or fly, meant that I wasn't able to get to them and meet them face to face or compel them to attack. But what I could do was try and put myself in the way of things as much as possible or switch to healing where required to run that aspect.
This was a really fun concept to try out and Ill definitely look at some of the others to see if there is something else I can run for the future. I will say that the other build I have run from your channel was the tempest cleric/storm sorc at level 11, which was an amazing play through - but am wondering now how this paladin would have run at a higher level?
Thank you so much for all that you do! This channel is amazing and I love your work!
Michael
Predictions for next week's build: 1. Tank built around a class that hasn't been the focus yet (Warlock, Cleric) or 2. A wacko tank concept that came together against all odds that'll blow our lids off
Amazing intro. I was looking for tank builds and kept getting the bearbarian and things of that nature and i said "whats stopping the DM from just..not attacking you?" I ended up looking at every subclass of the fighters and barbarians and setting on the Ansestral Guardian. Made him a Dhampir with the charger feat. Drop to half health heal for 15 baby
Glad to see you are having fun looking back at your work colby, i hope you keep enjoying what you do
dude your so upbeat and charming all the time and ur smile is infectious
I just checked the channel to see if you had posted anything! Hype!
I like all your videos, but I laughed as I hit the button this time. Seems like you have a lovely family.
Always love your videos.
With the One Dnd grapple changes, it could be nice to see you play around with that to make a tank without the typical taunts.
I'll also reference you to a comment I made on your mount and blade build where you can bump the survivability of both characters massively if the mount has a soft taunt
Colby's new builds will be my #1 reason to enjoy 1DnD.
I’d like to feed you an idea. For Halloween season maybe consider doing monoclass builds? Like just milk as much as you can out of a class. Because for a compulsive multiclasser what is more spooky than monoclassing? 😂
That's actually pretty funny, though to a large extent that material is already out on the net.
I lol'd
I'm currently running a Battle Smith tank. The level 20 goal is 12 levels of Artificer (Battle Smith), 4 levels of Fighter (Cavalier), and 4 levels of Wizard (War Wizard). My DM is going to allow me to use the INT modifier instead of STR for the Cavalier's bonus action retaliation attack. I made the case that as I use INT as a combat modifier, I should use that as the metric of how many times a day I can use it. The War Wizard was for Arcane Deflection and INT modifier bonus to initiative.
Came here to see what could be done with the dhampir bite, and could see the quality of the thinking - despite not wanting to focus on tanking at the time. Been a regular since. 🎉
One of my favorite tank moments was very simple, we were attacking a volcano base of an elemental fire lord and we break into the inner ring of their base, immediately we realize we're outnumbered, a dozen Azer to our group of 5, Once we're thru the door, the Barbarian-Warlock and I, the Jedi-like Sorcadin down our enlarge potions and go to work. He leads the group south towards 6 and I head north. It takes him and the group of Tempest Cleric, Brute Fighter and Lore Wizard about three rounds to finish off their side, doing damage and healing from the fire splash damage to clear that end, on my end, it's them missing me and me missing them and I was glad they did because I didn't want to take the splash damage. Still, because of my enlarged size I was able to hold up those 6 Azer in a decent size hallway for those three round and wait for the party to came back to help finish them off. There were things I could have done to increase my chance to hit like unleash my Sacred Weapon or switch to bless, but it wasn't about doing damage, it was about holding up half the enemies for the rest of the party so they could fight six on four instead of twelve on five :) I was very proud of myself, I didn't even need to pop shield :) plus the aforementioned, if I hit them, I would have taken a decent chunk of sustained damage for my efforts.
Great work! I actually like the consistency in the method but maybe some considerations are necessary:
1. You should take Shild Master feat more often. As you said in your rogue build, its great against fireballs!
2. As for the barbarian with polearm instrad of Shild, dealing high damage with good positioning is basically a taunt
3. AC overperforms for 2 main reasons:
- Shild spell and other limited resources are basically limitless in your calcularions
- Your enemies dont have a great hit roll, like giants of similar CR would have. A party of optimized characters show really challenged by their DM fights CR 4 creatures até level 1 and CR 10 at level 4, when that's the kind of dynamic you have, AC is secondary against a +11 to hit a low lvl player.
4. Summoning / taking space is not a greatly apreciated tactic. You should have to change the method or create a New category... But its odd to let out onevof the best ways to tank
5. Likewise control is kinda underapreciated in your builds, its not gonna show in the math, but its similar to getting a nice soft taunt, doest show on math but its important for the build. *Instead of taking a 3 level dip in artificer in every build maybe you should consider more spells as 'taunts'. If you make your party fly against a melee enemies they Will attack you! But we kinda dont think of a 4th level fly as "taunt". A good combination of 3 or 4 spells is actually farly better and more versatile than any taunt feature you would have to invest 3 level in spell progression to get.
5b) To that point, Undead warlock is a great dip for tanks, even better for ranged or raging ones. With the new dragonborn combos greatly for AoE concentrationless fear
6 *(and maybe the most important and more conter intuitive)* Having played some ancestral In my life, the best way to actually tank is to AVOID damage, (probably the same for armorer). If ALL YOUR PARTY has resistence agains any attack and attacks are made with disadvantage you what the target to attack them! Not you!! Any half optimized character os reasonably 'tanky' and gets really tanky with a ancestral Guardian protecting concentration (with resistence the DC hardly passes 10) and dobling the HP; not to say about temp HP and armor of agathys/peace Cleric combo. Ancestral Guardian should use a bow! Or get a fast horse to lend the hit and desingage (or echo) or get sentinel and Centaur and be Mounted by the paladin with high AC! Now your forntline is imortal and you get 4 heavy armor attacks (extra attack; bônus action e reaction with sentinel when the pally gets the attacks from you)
...
There are quite a lot of ways to tank in dnd and i hope to see a New category of tank that includes summoners and controllers. Or at least that they participate using the current method and the comments makes the math sustainable
Keep the great work!!!
I used the bones of your armorer build for one of my favorite characters I've ever played. Thanks for that.
adorable! Hello Mrs. Colbys' . Great stuff keep it up
Tank/bruiser is my favorite archetype not just in D&D, but in all games in general. From all of your builds, my fav is Clockwork Soul/Armorer, hands down.
By the way, you guys look like a wonderful couple together!
I agree with you on everything except the CWS/Arm.
I had an idea for a tank that I tried at one point, not sure how well it works. Basically the idea was you go Armorer Artificer 10, Mercy Monk 7. You take Dwarven Resilience and Durable, and use Patient Defence to gain HP through your Hit Dice. At Artificer 10 you also take the Periapt of Wound Closure to make the healing even more ridiculous. The extra Monk levels are mostly for the extra Ki as well as for Evasion. Not sure where the last levels go honestly.
What an adorable couple!
Thanks!
Perfect timing! I just started reviewing your tank builds. Plus, your wife is in the video.
Love that rogue tank. I almost played something similar, but I haven't played a tank yet.
I watch videos of yours even if i never plan to play the build myself. Such good content.
I like the idea of a dhampir tank. Utilizing the bite attack to regain hit points…i was thinking paladin
You should do an April fools video where your wife pretends to be you and presents the builld as normal.
Sounds good
Love ya man. Best d&d content out there.
Great channel. Great energy. Love it.
as someone that only plays tank, I appreciate your work 🤩
Doing a great job with your Pathfinder builds. I've been doing a similar thing too. I tend to like wilderness classes myself including Ranger, Barbarian and Druid.
Can you do a BarBEARian next?
I feel like there needs to be a tank that also tanks/taunts spellcasters. It'd be cool if there was a tank that let their allies had advantage on saving throws if they placed the taunt on the spellcaster. I'd love to play something like an ancestral guardian in that case.
I actually homebrewed a Dancer Rogue subclass that could taunt a spellcaster.
Taunting a spellcaster is extremely difficult, but tanking them can be more easily done by choosing a magic resistance race such as satyr, yuan ti, or gnome
I've been playing a hexblade swordsbard satyr eats makes for breakfast.
I played a Dhampir death cleric(5) hexblade(1) Ancients Paladin (14) in a battle Royale one shot, and my DM allowed me to use the spell vampiric touch as an upgrade for the dhampirs bite, and since the bit is a simple melee weapon attack, I was allowed to stack divine smites, that's would crit on a 19 or 20 with the hexblade curse. That character was filthy, and I never died.
I love your vids and hope you have a wonderful day! Thank you.
Liked because family is everything. Ha! Love the content.
The only Tank build I've ever tried in 5e was a monoclass Conquest Paladin and it worked great! Felt nice to control the battlefield through fear and forcing enemies to work around my positioning, like a nice chess battle with the DM. Gives a ton of space to your party members to work with.
Have you ever tried that class? Or thought about it?
You ask if it’s good to split a video in Part 1 and Part 2, when Part 2 gets way less klicks.
Yes! Because Viewer Binding by Watchtime is by far the most important stat for the algorithm. So viewer who would leave you in a huge Video may end it but do not klick in the second part, but those who klick on the second part are willing to watch this topic even longer and might even complete the second part too.
"Armor class is king".
Based on the current Dungeon of the Mad Mage campaign my friends and I are about to wrap up, I have to agree. We've managed to turn my Eldritch Knight into an untouchable wrecking ball. At one point, we pushed his AC to 34 (+5 Dex, +1 Shield, +1 Half-Plate [with Medium Armor Master feat], Haste, Fizban's Platinum Shield, Shield of Faith, and casting Shield). It is an absolute rush to have the DM ask "this creature has a +15 to hit, why can't I hit you?".
I love your builds so much. I'm one of those people who enjoys building characters almost as much as playing the game so I'm definitely in the right place. I was wondering if you could make a character (or have made a character I missed) that, rather than being a front line fighter, stays back and gives disadvantage to enemies/advantage to friends?
There's a hobgoblin helper build that may be close to what you are looking for.
AWWWWW you guys are adorable! Another great video I definitely don't watch as an ASMR!
You've inspired me! What about a tank that's a mix of Cavalier and Druid? The idea being to focus on the battlefield control aspect of tanking. Guess you would get the added benefit of shape-shifting as well. Not sure how thid would go, haven't played dnd in about 20 years and am getting back into it.
Hey Colby! I'm just getting into d&d with my kids. We don't have any books yet but are using D&d beyond; do you have any builds that just use the base game?
I would love to see a 'vanilla' opti build.
Thnk you for the video. So many creative and cool ways to protect my friends
I don't remember did you use mounted combatant on your battlesmith tank that way you can force enemies to attack you while you have Sanctuary going so you don't take any damage and the only damage that your Mount would take would be area of effects if they fail?
Your show is so clean and informative and fun… why don’t you have 100k yet? Hello, Mrs. Homelander. 😂
Funnily the best 'tank' experiance I've had was actually with one of your very first sustained damage builds, the fightarian. I swapped to guardian barbarian and have thoroughly enjoyed running around being a pain in the plans of the enemy. Although thank goodness we run a paladin and cleric in our party, I spend more time unconcious than I do fighting!
I’m playing a Bladesinger Tank in a campaign right now just got to level 3 artificer, still debating on if I want o take 3 levels of Psi Warrior after I get to Bladesinger 6 to help reduce damage to teammates as well as the other bonuses of taking fighter
That was cool to see your wife haha. Thanks for all your hard work man. Been loving this
Have you ever considered using fathomless warlock using guardian coil and grasping tentacles features for tanking? using the possible group controll and damage reduction to increase the survivability.
For a damage build I want to recommend whisper bard 3,fighter2, spore druid 2, gravecleric8, pally 2..... Half high elf for booming blade early without feat . Point buy for 14 str ,14 con, 15 wis, 12 char. racial to Str and Wis... heavy armor and shield for defense. Spells :Spirit weapon, Guardian of Faith, spirit guardians, Thorn whip for forced movement or placement of enemy and Shillelagh. Note Guardian of Faith doesn't have a limit of 1 so you could cast multiple with overlapping coverage, but your already taking 2 rounds to set up. First round spirit guardian, spirit weapon... round two guardian of faith, spirit weapon.... round 3 Mark with grave curse ... action surge... booming blade/smite(booming blade is made with a melee weapon attack), Only get 1 attack no reason to wait for crit to smite on other turns., spirit weapon. You could skip the guardian of faith and booming blade faster, but I'm always casting it .... at the very least to protect squishy friends. Wild shape is an option but really using druid for move take damage stay take damage like spirit guardian.
I have been toying around with a character build, that makes a good tank with good TPK management. It's a shadar-kai, 8th level Eldritch Knight & 12th level Divine soul sorcerer using shadow blade, and with the ruling by wizards of the coast. It makes it a good DPR build as well using booming blade, and twin spell.
If you want, I can email you the write up.
There's a "cleric tank" in the Tank Comparison Chart. Is this the next build?
Shhhhhhhh! 😉
Genius idea! Hi Mrs Colby!
Pls make a trapper character that baits enemies following them and stepping in prepared traps and stuff that would be so unique
That's hard to make happen in game, tho. Unless your character has the time to prepare beforehand, it's useless. And if you're in a dungeon, that won't happen. A fight broke out in the city? Not happening as well.
She had the full "why do I put up with his shenanigans" face going, lol.
any ideas on geeting a taunt like goading attack with 3 lvls in fighter or another way?
Thanks for the videos!! i would love to see a Gunslinger optimized!
Here's a concept:
Interception fighting style conquest paladin with the metamagic adept feat, twinned spell, and compelled duel.
Just as a basic thing to work from, would this he good or absolutely horrible?
You had me at "I just took a hike and I'm all sweaty."
I wasn't going to watch this video, but something about the video compelled me to both like and watch this. Weird...
😂😂
My favorite Tank by far is the Naked Bladesinger, Barbarian 1/Bladesinger 2+. Just go all in on Con, Dex, and Int, for a sustainable AC in the 30’s and all the spell utility.
Second place goes to the Mark of Warding Dwarf Armorer 4/Abjurer 2+. The over 630+ “hit points” to burn through due to Durable and Dwarven Fortitude while passively blasting via Armor of Agathys is for you, not so much for everyone else at the table.
But you cannoy caste or use spells while Raging to halve HP. Can you Bladesing?
@@PalleRasmussen Yep! Bladesong is not a spell, and is therefore unrestricted by Rage.
@@PalleRasmussen
It’s for the Unarmored Defense, Con save, and the d12 hit die. Rage is what you use after you’ve run out of all other options.
With these tank builds and the limited options available to get a soft taunt, I always end up thinking, there's gotta be a way to get a soft taunt going via some sort of spell, right? Compelled duel seems purpose designed for it, but of course it has its drawbacks. Maybe bless on everyone except yourself if you're facing a saving-throw-based enemy? Some kind of powerful AOE support spell that you can have all of your squishy friends stand in while you stand out front outside of the AOE?
Based on how well the quickened blade ward worked for Clockwork Soul, my guess for the next tank build is something that takes advantage of the reworked Earth Genasi from MoM. Maybe with heavy armor master to help nullify some of the damage that's already resisted.
I'd be really curious where treantmonks Ancestral Guardian/Echo Knight/War Mage tank would rank, it's a tank build I've been interested in trying out, I'm just not sure how I feel about so many wizard levels...
As someone who DM's at least as often as I play (and often much more). The best "soft taunt" in the Game, is Reckless Attack. If a Barbarian attacks recklessly, opening themselves up to counterattacks with advantage, then I will almost always have the nearest melee opponents, and even some ranged, attack that Barbarian. It simply makes the most sense from an in game perspective, the crazy guy with the big axe is obviously dangerous, but he's also reckless and making himself easy to hit, so take him down ... the enemy doesn't know that he has "resistance" to damage, or a the biggest "Hit Dice" in the game. They only know that he has massive holes in his defense.
Opposite to that, if a Character has super high AC, and is next to impossible to hit, then I'll have a couple of people try and occupy them, whilst focusing fire on Characters that can actually be harmed. If you want to "Tank" you have to be able to take a hit, not duck, dodge, or deflect every single attack.
Well I always view your videos but the wife cameo was a bonus that earned a like, plus I love tanks so win/win/win
Would love to see a tank ranking that focuses on how much "protection" etc. the tank is able to provide. Even if DPR and Nova damage are also in a lab, I think they are closer to simulating combat effectiveness than DTPR.
Even if you have to get a bit subjective, it might be cool to just see which you think are the actual best tanks at tanking.
Lovely opening ^^
Love it!
Hmm, how do you think the rogue tank would work mixed with your new STR based rogue build instead... 🤔
Your fam is friggin adorable
So watching this video brought up for me the distinction of “Sustained tanking” and “Nova Tanking”. Would love to hear if you think this is a useful distinction.
A sustained tank, would always, or nearly always have their protective and survivability features available while a Burst Tank would have limited resources used to protect their allies and survive themselves.
A character that uses the Shield spell, or the Rage feature, for survivability would be two examples that come to mind of a Burst tank, but I’m sure there are plenty of others.
you can take gem dragonborn to give bear totam res to sy damage
Undead lock / Conquest Paladin - PAM / Sentinel / Shield Bash…. Maybe 1 level of rogue for expertise. Maybe being a bugbear for extra reach to control out to 15 feet of movement? Knocking things down so they can’t move closer or just fear I. General paired with repelling blast and sentinel.
Or totem Barb / Dao Lock. Damage resistance and Armor of Agathys. Spike growth zoning and damage with Repelling Blast. Turn it into a Grappler too - Simic Hybrid for double grappling. 1 level of Rogue for Athletics Expertise maybe.
TANK BUILD NEXT WEEK LETS GO
I like that what you’re saying is you wish 5E was more like 4E because it had better tanking mechanics.
It's wild to me that 5e doesn't have much in the way of taunts, and only a handful of ways to keep an enemy attacking you. I haven't had any experience with PF2e yet, but in PF1e there were multiple feats and spells that allowed you to taunt enemies or take hits. There was the paladin 1st level spells "Compel Hostility" and "Knight's Calling", the feat "Antagonize" that gave you different benefits if you used Intimidate or Diplomacy on a target creature, the fighter "Pin Down" feat (similar to Sentinel), and even the tiefling only Suicidal trait that let you jump in front of an attack. It was so easy to make tank characters in that system. Heck, there was even the Stalwart Defender prestige class (called the Dwarven Defender back in 3.5) that was a dedicated tank "class". I'm hoping PF2e carried some of the 1st edition stuff over.
With "6e" coming out next year, it's already too late for 5e to do something so dedicated.
Love your videos, dude.
Question: Do you take recommendations for builds? Or offer help at all? I've been working on a unique character concept for a while and it has so many options that I'm having a hard time settling; I'd love to see if you thought it was interesting too.
Here is probably the best place to do it :)
@@DnDDeepDive Awesome! So grateful. I'll try to keep it succinct. Firstly, this is definitely a build that, like you mentioned recently, will be hard to quantify on paper but rocks a cool theme and might, with your help, be good enough to play.
So this build was born when I realized the potential synergy between the spell Stinking Cloud and the poison immunity that comes with the Yuan-ti Pureblood race. Cloud certainly has its weaknesses, particularly that enemies will usually just run out of it without anything lost. There are a lot of lockdown spells that can synergize with it usually with a friend's help, but a Yuan-ti player is in the unique position to stand inside it harmlessly, opening up a variety of options like grapple/shove to keep things trapped in it. Start with a caster that gets the spell, throw in Blind fighting to capitalize on the heavy obscurity of the area and you have a walking cloud of poison gas that has consistent advantage on its attacks and against which enemies have consistent disadvantage, as well as a desperate need to run away from. Hilarious, right? Also as a bonus it shuts down spellcasters hard by blinding them while not stopping you from casting your spells on enemies (within 10 feet).
The core of the idea is a frontliner that keeps their enemies in a cloud of poison gas and gets stronger when they're inside it. My priorities, in order of most to least, are:
-AoE poison spells that my char. is immune to, e.g. Poison Cloud, Cloudkill
-Ways to lock down enemies inside it, e.g. grapples, booming blade, slasher feat, diff. terrain, forced movement
-Ways to capitalize on the effects of the cloud, e.g. blind fighting + extra attack, Spell attacks that can be rolled with advantage from within 10 feet,
----Ideas: (would love suggestions on which if any of these you'd get behind, or how you'd change or add to them)
-Fighter 1/melee bard 6/?
Valor/Swords Bards get Cloud, grapple expertise and extra attack, fighter 1 gets armor and blind fighting, this build seems fine and gets me what I want. Could go battlemaster after getting cloud to get grappling strike, and though I'm not experienced with tier 3+ play, i'm sure there are other cool options later on. My instinct on this one is that the strategy will just die off at later levels as more things get poison immunity and higher CON saves, but at worst it's just bad fog cloud. Maybe throw in hexblade 2 for EB and CHA attacks?
-Fighter 1/Scribes wizard X
It occurred to me that there may not be a lot of poison AoE spells in the game by default, but that doesn't mean there can't be. With Scribes, my character can stand in the middle of a massive Poisonball, or summon a wall of poison, walk through it, grapple a guy and then walk back. Honestly I've never played wizard so I'm sure there are greats spells that could be combo'd with self-immunity to the damage from them, but I guess at that point you're almost an evocation wizard. No extra attack except with more fighter levels and only way later but you get blind fighting, booming blade and sentinel for melee lockdown, which ain't bad. Could also go bladesinger for extra attack and cantrips but then you lose the cool Scribes potential.
Fighter 1/ Aberrant Mind Sorc X
The other way to transmute a spell to poison damage is with metamagic, which practically amounts to the same as the previous build except for a cost, but with an important difference: Aberrant Mind Sorcs get Hunger of Hadar, which is probably an improvement over Cloud. You keep the blinding without being blinded, gain damage without being damaged, and get difficult terrain thrown in for free. You lose the "CON save or lose your action" effect but an action taken in Hunger of Hadar is wasted anyway. Again, could go BM for Grappling Strike, maybe dip bard for Athletics expertise for grapples. Sentinel would also be a very strong consideration to lock guys down even harder, but there's like 5 different lockdown mechanics at least, it's really difficult to see the best one.
Also A.M. Sorc shuts down casters even harder because their Hunger can't be counterspelled and once they put a caster in Hunger, the hope is that they won't be much of a caster anymore.
So if you've suffered to sit through all this and you're still into it, first of all thanks again! Secondly what do you think? Any potential? Any of these builds sound best to you, or do you have an alternative? Or perhaps cool additions you can think of that might make it all come together? Anything would be greatly appreciated.
@@michaellewis1671 cool concept! Going to have to put it on my to do list and take a longer look :)
@@DnDDeepDive Well shoot, that's exciting. Glad you dug it :)
No rush or insistence on your deliberations, obviously, but yeah, can't wait to hear your thoughts when they're ready! Hope you're having a great one.
P.S. Don't hesitate to use or change/style the idea however you want; "One candle is undimmed by lighting another" and all that.
@@DnDDeepDive had another idea to spice the build up a little, thought I'd share to see if it caught your eye: using a net. Normally the net sucks in that by default you can only use it at disadvantage because it's always either the longer range bracket, or the enemy is 5 feet away, which grants disadv. to ranged weapons anyway. I'm sure if your DM is cool they'd homebrew you a magic net at some point but not taking that for granted, there is a way to lose the disadvantage, and even get advantage: if the enemy is blind, the close-range disadv. On ranged weapons doesn't apply.
So here's an example play with an Ab. Mind sorc 5/battlemaster 3 with sentinel:
You see three enemies somewhat close to each other and close to you. You run up to enemy A, grapple it, drag it to within 5 feet of enemy action surge cast stinking cloud or hunger of hadar on yourself and the group, transmuting it to poison. Then you bonus action quick toss a net at enemy C, with adv. If they're 5 feet away. A and C are locked down if you succeed, enemy B is locked down if you hit with sentinel Opp. Attack. If the spell is HoH, even if they escape restraint, they're still a full turn of movement away from escaping Hunger. In an ideal world, on turn one you've blinded, trapped and completely hamstrung 3 enemies for a lvl 3 spell and a short rest resource. Throw in the ambush maneuver for initiative and you can even stack how often you go move before your foes. How's that sound?
I'm so eager to hear your thoughts when you get around to checking it out in detail. No rush though obviously but yeah, some more food for your thoughts I hope. Take care!
Henlo, I'm still new to D&D and was trying to put a thought I had into practice. The Nerd Rage, combining a barbarian with an artificer. Has anyone here done something like that before? Any tips?
Oath of Ancients (at least 7) Ancestral Guardian (taunt) or Totem (bear can't be beat) (3 levels of either, up to 6 on AG), Yuan-Ti (pure)
-pros: not very MAD (cha, con, str), adv on saves against magic (+cha mod to saves, aura 10 ft), resistance to damage from spells (10 ft aura); taunt ability (to force target you, while raging) or resist all damage (while raging); high health pool; spells (such as ceremony, aid, warding bond, death ward, and other instantaneous or non-concentration spells); if AG (and 6 levels) you can reduce damage an ally takes by 2d6 (after applying resistance if they get hit at disadvantage); immune to poison (and it's condition); dark vision to 60 ft; don't need beefy strength (13 required to multiclass)
-cons: rage is limited, can't cast spells while raging, can't wear heavy armor (although, half plate and shield isn't looking too bad); 2 stats need to be balanced to be effective (cha for aura of protection, and con for health; although taking a 16 isn't too penalising); probably not a lot of feats (because you have to boost cha)
Ancestral guardián x/echo knight3 multiclass is still the best tank I’ve played. Grabbed gift of the chromatic dragon for further damage mitigation. Slaps. Support Tank Barb is a lot of fun!
Hey. When you going to do another team up build?
I LOVE the team ups! My group usually does a theme for our one shots, so adding a team up on top if it is awesome.
😂
Hey Colby ❤️
Hello Misses Colby's Wife, it is a pleasure to meet you!
I have a Tank I'm playing/building and I don't THINK you have one like it, so kinda' wanted your thoughts on it. V Human Barb (Ancestral Guardian) 6/Fighter (Battle Master) 4, taking Shield Master at level 1 and Skill Expert (Athletics) at 4.
Even at level 2 it seems to be doing what I want (I've recently been hit for 36 damage, rounded down to 16, keeping my allies safe), but I'm wondering am I missing a trick?
Colby, could you make a Armor of Agathys tank at some point? A warlock/paladin/sorcerer of sorts? Or have you maybe done that already?
great video!
What about if you don't wanna use magic? What would that tank would be? Like a fighter/ Rouge mix?
I think the Rogue Tank would make a good place to start…
I hope next week’s build uses gift of the ever living one. I am playing a moon Druid/celestial Warlock rn and would love to see your take on a build like that.
I had the absolute pleasure of running the Bladesinger tank build at level 15 for a one shot.
Let me tell you it's the real deal - my AC was so good I purposely took attacks of opportunities to steal enemy reaction to add in extra protection to my party
Please make a teleporter Gish build (preferably with Horizon Walker)!
I’m making one and so far I’m thinking Human (Mark of Passage), Horizon Walker 11+, Fey Touched. I’m very interested to know what you come up with.
I really enjoy your videos!
I think that the problem with armor class is that most DMs, myself included, tend to not target the players with high armor class. It is a little sad but the monsters aren't dumb and they hate to hit things that deflect all their blows.
Well, a lot of monsters ARE dumb, it's situational. Certainly not always though.
That is why as a DM I always factor a monsters intelligence in combat… if they are trained tactical fighter they focus weaklings or healers if it’s a mindless beast it attacks the closest target or if something damages it greatly then it may go for them evening risking opportunity strikes to do so. But if that Big damage person is slippery with say misty step it maybe tire of chasing it easily and go back to closest target.
What alternative class is recommended for the Abjuration Tank if you don't have Warforged as an option? I think we are getting Tasha and Xanathar for the next campaign.
Alternatively to revisiting the Bear Totem barb, seeing as they're almost a hybrid build, I think it would be neat to see how they Fair on the sustained dpr tier list