Tanks are weird thing in d&d because they don not really exist. The most tank things are Ancestral guardians, cavaliers, armorer, and maybe oath of crown. I really want to make a tank. Like something that plays off cavaliers abilities and ancestral guardian's abilities. But it should also have survivability and ways to reduce damage. abjuration wizard and clock work soul sorcerer. I would really like to hear some ideas like multiclasses, feats, and races.
Bonus points if you figure out away to increase ferocious charge and warding maneuver (cavalier)
My best suggestion would be this build, because it has high AC to prevent taking hits, high saving throws to prevent some damage from spells/breath weapons, high HP, and armorer also gives you a way to get additional temp HP, as well as make it harder for your other party members to get hit. You can self-cast cure wounds to heal, and absorb elements to reduce damage from elemental attacks.
Lvl 20 warforged guardian armorer artificer. Take infusions: enhanced defense, repulsion shield, replicate magic item(cloak and ring of protection), fighting initiate feat for defense fighting style, potentially take gift of the metallic dragon for +6 to AC as a reaction.
Ability scores: 16 str, 10 dex, 14 con(replicate magic item amulet of health for 19 con), 20 int, 8 wis, 14 cha.
Final AC with no extra magic items: 20(plate armor + enhanced defense), 23(repulsion shield), 25(cloak and ring of protection), 26(fighting initiate), 27(integrated defense). Reliable AC of 27, 33 AC as a reaction. (Fun fact: this same build can also give you +8 to all saves due to cloak and ring of protection + soul of artifice + all six attunement slots filled by infusions.)
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Pokemon Master, Hero of Hyrule, Jedi Knight, Minecrafter, Celestial Being Beyond Comprehension, Bounty Hunter, Salmon Runner, Nailmaster, Yarn Yoshi Enjoyer, Animal Lover, Math Rock Roller, Nerd King in all Aspects.
(And, of course, Dragon Tamer. It is in the name, after all)
Tanks are weird thing in d&d because they don not really exist.
This is true and it is for good reason. Tanks are incredibly boring in D&D, so they are honestly bad for the game. See every character has to have a trade off so if you have high survivability you generally have poor damage output, this is to ensure every character has a niche and a chance to feel cool in battle. So if you go all out tank that means that's all that you are good at, what this means in play what your character is good at is making it so that nothing happens: spells don't take effect, damage isn't dealt, enemies don't move, but you aren't very good offensively so you likewise don't do much on your turn either, you don't move very fast, you don't do much damage, you don't change the battlefield or enemies. This makes combat really ****ing boring for pretty much everyone. Since D&D combat is already slow and can be kinda boring, making it even slower and more boring generally isn't desirable.
For an illustrative example, if your party is fighting a dragon:
The Rogue's hero moment is running between the legs of the dragon and landing a massive sneak attack into the dragon's backside, or climbing up onto the dragon's head and stabbing it in the eye ball.
The Mage's hero moment is catching the dragon in a magical net and dragging it to the ground, or transforming the dragon into a harmless bunny.
The Barbarian's hero moment is grabbing the dragon by the tail holding it fast, or leaping 20 ft high and slashing into the dragon's underbelly with their massive axe.
The Tank's hero moment is... standing still while the dragon scratches their armour.
Bonus points if you figure out away to increase ferocious charge and warding maneuver (cavalier)
There os no way to improve Warding Maneuver at all and TBH it's a pretty bad feature, interception or protect fighting styles, the Battlemaster's Brace manevuer are all probably better features than Warding Maneuver. Ferocious charger you just want to take 3 levels of Swashbuckler Rogue so you can more easily run back and forth to ensure you can trigger it on each turn.
I have been reading some more things and you could buff warding maneuver by taking 3-5 levels in valor bard you can your bardic inspiration die away and use warding maneuver and then give your teammate up to 14-16 ac and resistance. So if something like final boss gets like 27 your teammate can survive it. You could also buff ferocious charge by taking 2 levels enchantment wizard to use ferocious charge then hypnotic gaze to both prone and incapacitated the creature. The creature wouldn't be able to get up, take reactions, or actions. While vigilant defender could allow us to use a opportunity attack to when a creature leaves our range, so we wouldn't have to use our action to attack but hypnotize.
I have been reading some more things and you could buff warding maneuver by taking 3-5 levels in valor bard you can your bardic inspiration die away and use warding maneuver and then give your teammate up to 14-16 ac and resistance.
You are just as likely to give them +2 AC as +14 AC and it is costing you 2 limited resources to do so, and yes you could give them resistance to the damage from 1 attack, alternatively you could cast Warding Bond on them and give them resistance to all damage from all attacks, or use Protection Fighting Style to give the enemy disadvantage (equivalent to ~ +4-5 AC) every round all day long.
So if something like final boss gets like 27 your teammate can survive it.
Probably not, as that is probably a critical hit and neither Warding Maneuver nor Valor Bard's BI do anything against a critical hit, but Protection FS is very likely to prevent the hit from being a critical.
You could also buff ferocious charge by taking 2 levels enchantment wizard to use ferocious charge then hypnotic gaze to both prone and incapacitated the creature.
Nope you cannot, not unless you also have a Scimitar of Speed, because for Ferocious Charger you must make an attack immediately after moving 10 ft towards the target that means you must do this on your turn and the only way to attack on your turn is with the Attack action unless you have the Scimitar of Speed which allows you to Attack as a bonus action regardless of what you do with your action. I suppose you could also do it if you also have Haste cast on yourself but that requires set up to pull off.
Opportunity attacks are only triggered if the enemy willingly moves out of your reach which can only happen on their turn (or immediately after being hit by Dissonant Whispers), so you cannot have an attack of opportunity occur immediately after you move 10 ft towards them.
But even then, what's the benefit? Hypnotic gaze ends immediately if the victim takes damage so you and your allies can't attack them while they are prone & hypnotized or it will break the hypnotism, so what's the point of them being prone?
Shield Master is generally a better option if you want to Prone an enemy since you can do it as a bonus action whenever you take the Attack action thus don't need to worry about yourself taking attacks of opportunity or limited space of some combat maps.
I have been reading some more things and you could buff warding maneuver by taking 3-5 levels in valor bard you can your bardic inspiration die away and use warding maneuver and then give your teammate up to 14-16 ac and resistance.
You are just as likely to give them +2 AC as +14 AC and it is costing you 2 limited resources to do so, and yes you could give them resistance to the damage from 1 attack, alternatively you could cast Warding Bond on them and give them resistance to all damage from all attacks, or use Protection Fighting Style to give the enemy disadvantage (equivalent to ~ +4-5 AC) every round all day long.
So if something like final boss gets like 27 your teammate can survive it.
Probably not, as that is probably a critical hit and neither Warding Maneuver nor Valor Bard's BI do anything against a critical hit, but Protection FS is very likely to prevent the hit from being a critical.
You could also buff ferocious charge by taking 2 levels enchantment wizard to use ferocious charge then hypnotic gaze to both prone and incapacitated the creature.
Nope you cannot, not unless you also have a Scimitar of Speed, because for Ferocious Charger you must make an attack immediately after moving 10 ft towards the target that means you must do this on your turn and the only way to attack on your turn is with the Attack action unless you have the Scimitar of Speed which allows you to Attack as a bonus action regardless of what you do with your action. I suppose you could also do it if you also have Haste cast on yourself but that requires set up to pull off.
Opportunity attacks are only triggered if the enemy willingly moves out of your reach which can only happen on their turn (or immediately after being hit by Dissonant Whispers), so you cannot have an attack of opportunity occur immediately after you move 10 ft towards them.
But even then, what's the benefit? Hypnotic gaze ends immediately if the victim takes damage so you and your allies can't attack them while they are prone & hypnotized or it will break the hypnotism, so what's the point of them being prone?
Shield Master is generally a better option if you want to Prone an enemy since you can do it as a bonus action whenever you take the Attack action thus don't need to worry about yourself taking attacks of opportunity or limited space of some combat maps.
First of all action surge allows you to attack and use another action. The advantage comes in if it is the last creature left which it very much could be allowing you to attack it. Vigilant defender allows you to attack any enemies trying to move through your attack range. If your a bug bear with a halberd you can get quite a few opportunity attacks while also keeping your hypnotized creature hypnotized. However, I do agree with you on the shield Master part.
Vigilant defender allows you to attack any enemies trying to move through your attack range. If your a bug bear with a halberd you can get quite a few opportunity attacks while also keeping your hypnotized creature hypnotized.
How? Please explain this to me. Because:
1) Hypnotic gaze must be used on your turn 2) opportunity attacks requires the enemy to willingly move - vigilant defender or not 3) enemies do not move on your turn Therefore you do not get an attack of opportunity on your turn.
If the target is the only enemy on the battlefield then what is the rest of your party doing while you are hypnotizing it? Just sitting around twiddling their thumbs?
Hypnotic Gaze can only be used against any particular enemy once per day, so no matter what it only gives someone one "free" hit on them before they are unhypnotized. Similarly, the DC for Gaze is based on your Intelligence, if you are a "tank" you want to max your Constitution, if you want to actually hit something you want to max your Str/Dex, so your Intelligence is going to be a maximum +2 so it's highly likely the enemy just makes the save and your Hypnotic Gaze does nothing at all.
If you want to be a Hypnotic-Gaze using "tank" then you need 3 levels of Armour Artificer anyway so you can dump your STR and still wear heavy armour and make melee attacks with your INT. You'll be terrible at knocking people prone though since those saves are based on your STR, unless you are using 2014 rules then you can take Skill Expert for Expertise in Athletics to be decent at Shoving even with low STR, then take Shield Master because as discussed above it's better and easier to get. Then dip into Enchanter Wizard for the Hypnotic Gaze and spend the rest of your ASIs maxing out your INT and CON, that way you'll at least get 50% chance of hypnotizing the target, though you need to spend an action each turn maintaining it so you'll essentially be doing nothing other than keeping one enemy hypnotized in combat at a level when a regular wizard can hypnotized a whole horde using Hypnotic Pattern. So you're not so much a martial, as a big pile of metal that hypnotizes one enemy at a time.
Ok if an enemy tries to wake up the creature they either get attacked on my next turn or they both get attacked next turn by opportunity attacks. And of course it is 2014 rule or I wouldn't be able to get hypnotic pattern at level 2.
You just need to deal damage to them to wake them up, so one arrow, one magic missile dart, hitting them in an AoE damaging effect, etc.. works just fine to wake them up. Or if they use anything that pushes you away from them, that also works. Hypnotic Gaze is very easy to break. But most of the time they wouldn't bother because, you have to use your Action each turn to keep them hypnotized so it's basically a one-for-one trade - you are using an action to stop one enemy from using an action.
Tanks are weird thing in d&d because they don not really exist.
This is true and it is for good reason. Tanks are incredibly boring in D&D, so they are honestly bad for the game. See every character has to have a trade off so if you have high survivability you generally have poor damage output, this is to ensure every character has a niche and a chance to feel cool in battle. So if you go all out tank that means that's all that you are good at, what this means in play what your character is good at is making it so that nothing happens: spells don't take effect, damage isn't dealt, enemies don't move, but you aren't very good offensively so you likewise don't do much on your turn either, you don't move very fast, you don't do much damage, you don't change the battlefield or enemies. This makes combat really ****ing boring for pretty much everyone. Since D&D combat is already slow and can be kinda boring, making it even slower and more boring generally isn't desirable.
For an illustrative example, if your party is fighting a dragon:
The Rogue's hero moment is running between the legs of the dragon and landing a massive sneak attack into the dragon's backside, or climbing up onto the dragon's head and stabbing it in the eye ball.
The Mage's hero moment is catching the dragon in a magical net and dragging it to the ground, or transforming the dragon into a harmless bunny.
The Barbarian's hero moment is grabbing the dragon by the tail holding it fast, or leaping 20 ft high and slashing into the dragon's underbelly with their massive axe.
The Tank's hero moment is... standing still while the dragon scratches their armour.
I think this is unreasonable of you to say. You think that 'tanks' are boring (I agree, for the record), but that is entirely subjective. If someone envisions their character as the rock that water breaks on, that's not wrong and it's not bad for the game. For the tables I have played at, there would be zero complains about someone who WANTS to be a meat shield. There would be zero complaints about damage being left on the table for the other party members to do instead.
There'd certainly be complaints if someone were forced into the role, but we've had plenty of people who've wanted to be on the front lines, hard to hit, and willing to sacrifice damage for it. The only time I've seen it become a problem was back in 4e. We had a player who built a warden who AOE marked, then did total defense. DM got frustrated, and started using reach weapons, casters, and archers more; problem solved. Enough melee mobs were thrown in so that the warden still felt useful.
5e doesn't have nearly the same kind of tools to force "aggro" that 4e did, and thus is even less problematic to deal with.
As for the OP's question, off the top of my head, Cavalier as you mentioned is likely the top contender. A decision would have to be made between reach weapons and shield. Sentinel may help, though I'd have to refresh my memory as to how much it would help once Cavalier's features are baked in. I'd probably take a dip in barbarian to get rage; the resistance will help when you're trying to force people to beat on you.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
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Tanks are weird thing in d&d because they don not really exist. The most tank things are Ancestral guardians, cavaliers, armorer, and maybe oath of crown. I really want to make a tank. Like something that plays off cavaliers abilities and ancestral guardian's abilities. But it should also have survivability and ways to reduce damage. abjuration wizard and clock work soul sorcerer. I would really like to hear some ideas like multiclasses, feats, and races.
Bonus points if you figure out away to increase ferocious charge and warding maneuver (cavalier)
Barbarians exist???
My best suggestion would be this build, because it has high AC to prevent taking hits, high saving throws to prevent some damage from spells/breath weapons, high HP, and armorer also gives you a way to get additional temp HP, as well as make it harder for your other party members to get hit. You can self-cast cure wounds to heal, and absorb elements to reduce damage from elemental attacks.
Lvl 20 warforged guardian armorer artificer. Take infusions: enhanced defense, repulsion shield, replicate magic item(cloak and ring of protection), fighting initiate feat for defense fighting style, potentially take gift of the metallic dragon for +6 to AC as a reaction.
Ability scores: 16 str, 10 dex, 14 con(replicate magic item amulet of health for 19 con), 20 int, 8 wis, 14 cha.
Final AC with no extra magic items: 20(plate armor + enhanced defense), 23(repulsion shield), 25(cloak and ring of protection), 26(fighting initiate), 27(integrated defense). Reliable AC of 27, 33 AC as a reaction. (Fun fact: this same build can also give you +8 to all saves due to cloak and ring of protection + soul of artifice + all six attunement slots filled by infusions.)
Pokemon Master, Hero of Hyrule, Jedi Knight, Minecrafter, Celestial Being Beyond Comprehension, Bounty Hunter, Salmon Runner, Nailmaster, Yarn Yoshi Enjoyer, Animal Lover, Math Rock Roller, Nerd King in all Aspects.
(And, of course, Dragon Tamer. It is in the name, after all)
#BRINGBACKNATIONALDEX
This is true and it is for good reason. Tanks are incredibly boring in D&D, so they are honestly bad for the game. See every character has to have a trade off so if you have high survivability you generally have poor damage output, this is to ensure every character has a niche and a chance to feel cool in battle. So if you go all out tank that means that's all that you are good at, what this means in play what your character is good at is making it so that nothing happens: spells don't take effect, damage isn't dealt, enemies don't move, but you aren't very good offensively so you likewise don't do much on your turn either, you don't move very fast, you don't do much damage, you don't change the battlefield or enemies. This makes combat really ****ing boring for pretty much everyone. Since D&D combat is already slow and can be kinda boring, making it even slower and more boring generally isn't desirable.
For an illustrative example, if your party is fighting a dragon:
There os no way to improve Warding Maneuver at all and TBH it's a pretty bad feature, interception or protect fighting styles, the Battlemaster's Brace manevuer are all probably better features than Warding Maneuver. Ferocious charger you just want to take 3 levels of Swashbuckler Rogue so you can more easily run back and forth to ensure you can trigger it on each turn.
I have been reading some more things and you could buff warding maneuver by taking 3-5 levels in valor bard you can your bardic inspiration die away and use warding maneuver and then give your teammate up to 14-16 ac and resistance. So if something like final boss gets like 27 your teammate can survive it. You could also buff ferocious charge by taking 2 levels enchantment wizard to use ferocious charge then hypnotic gaze to both prone and incapacitated the creature. The creature wouldn't be able to get up, take reactions, or actions. While vigilant defender could allow us to use a opportunity attack to when a creature leaves our range, so we wouldn't have to use our action to attack but hypnotize.
You are just as likely to give them +2 AC as +14 AC and it is costing you 2 limited resources to do so, and yes you could give them resistance to the damage from 1 attack, alternatively you could cast Warding Bond on them and give them resistance to all damage from all attacks, or use Protection Fighting Style to give the enemy disadvantage (equivalent to ~ +4-5 AC) every round all day long.
Probably not, as that is probably a critical hit and neither Warding Maneuver nor Valor Bard's BI do anything against a critical hit, but Protection FS is very likely to prevent the hit from being a critical.
Nope you cannot, not unless you also have a Scimitar of Speed, because for Ferocious Charger you must make an attack immediately after moving 10 ft towards the target that means you must do this on your turn and the only way to attack on your turn is with the Attack action unless you have the Scimitar of Speed which allows you to Attack as a bonus action regardless of what you do with your action. I suppose you could also do it if you also have Haste cast on yourself but that requires set up to pull off.
Opportunity attacks are only triggered if the enemy willingly moves out of your reach which can only happen on their turn (or immediately after being hit by Dissonant Whispers), so you cannot have an attack of opportunity occur immediately after you move 10 ft towards them.
But even then, what's the benefit? Hypnotic gaze ends immediately if the victim takes damage so you and your allies can't attack them while they are prone & hypnotized or it will break the hypnotism, so what's the point of them being prone?
Shield Master is generally a better option if you want to Prone an enemy since you can do it as a bonus action whenever you take the Attack action thus don't need to worry about yourself taking attacks of opportunity or limited space of some combat maps.
First of all action surge allows you to attack and use another action. The advantage comes in if it is the last creature left which it very much could be allowing you to attack it. Vigilant defender allows you to attack any enemies trying to move through your attack range. If your a bug bear with a halberd you can get quite a few opportunity attacks while also keeping your hypnotized creature hypnotized. However, I do agree with you on the shield Master part.
How? Please explain this to me. Because:
1) Hypnotic gaze must be used on your turn
2) opportunity attacks requires the enemy to willingly move - vigilant defender or not
3) enemies do not move on your turn
Therefore you do not get an attack of opportunity on your turn.
If the target is the only enemy on the battlefield then what is the rest of your party doing while you are hypnotizing it? Just sitting around twiddling their thumbs?
Hypnotic Gaze can only be used against any particular enemy once per day, so no matter what it only gives someone one "free" hit on them before they are unhypnotized. Similarly, the DC for Gaze is based on your Intelligence, if you are a "tank" you want to max your Constitution, if you want to actually hit something you want to max your Str/Dex, so your Intelligence is going to be a maximum +2 so it's highly likely the enemy just makes the save and your Hypnotic Gaze does nothing at all.
If you want to be a Hypnotic-Gaze using "tank" then you need 3 levels of Armour Artificer anyway so you can dump your STR and still wear heavy armour and make melee attacks with your INT. You'll be terrible at knocking people prone though since those saves are based on your STR, unless you are using 2014 rules then you can take Skill Expert for Expertise in Athletics to be decent at Shoving even with low STR, then take Shield Master because as discussed above it's better and easier to get. Then dip into Enchanter Wizard for the Hypnotic Gaze and spend the rest of your ASIs maxing out your INT and CON, that way you'll at least get 50% chance of hypnotizing the target, though you need to spend an action each turn maintaining it so you'll essentially be doing nothing other than keeping one enemy hypnotized in combat at a level when a regular wizard can hypnotized a whole horde using Hypnotic Pattern. So you're not so much a martial, as a big pile of metal that hypnotizes one enemy at a time.
Ok if an enemy tries to wake up the creature they either get attacked on my next turn or they both get attacked next turn by opportunity attacks. And of course it is 2014 rule or I wouldn't be able to get hypnotic pattern at level 2.
You just need to deal damage to them to wake them up, so one arrow, one magic missile dart, hitting them in an AoE damaging effect, etc.. works just fine to wake them up. Or if they use anything that pushes you away from them, that also works. Hypnotic Gaze is very easy to break. But most of the time they wouldn't bother because, you have to use your Action each turn to keep them hypnotized so it's basically a one-for-one trade - you are using an action to stop one enemy from using an action.
I think Artillerist/Armorer makes a nice Tank:
Booming Blade for offence, shield, absorb element for defence, flash of genius for great saves, Armor of strength for insane grappling.
Attack: [roll]3d20dl2+6[/roll] Damage: [roll](if([roll:-1:critical], =0, 1d8, 2{1d8}.expand()))+4[/roll] Sneakattack: [roll](if([roll:-2:critical], =0, 2d6, 2{2d6}.expand()))[/roll]I think this is unreasonable of you to say. You think that 'tanks' are boring (I agree, for the record), but that is entirely subjective. If someone envisions their character as the rock that water breaks on, that's not wrong and it's not bad for the game. For the tables I have played at, there would be zero complains about someone who WANTS to be a meat shield. There would be zero complaints about damage being left on the table for the other party members to do instead.
There'd certainly be complaints if someone were forced into the role, but we've had plenty of people who've wanted to be on the front lines, hard to hit, and willing to sacrifice damage for it. The only time I've seen it become a problem was back in 4e. We had a player who built a warden who AOE marked, then did total defense. DM got frustrated, and started using reach weapons, casters, and archers more; problem solved. Enough melee mobs were thrown in so that the warden still felt useful.
5e doesn't have nearly the same kind of tools to force "aggro" that 4e did, and thus is even less problematic to deal with.
As for the OP's question, off the top of my head, Cavalier as you mentioned is likely the top contender. A decision would have to be made between reach weapons and shield. Sentinel may help, though I'd have to refresh my memory as to how much it would help once Cavalier's features are baked in. I'd probably take a dip in barbarian to get rage; the resistance will help when you're trying to force people to beat on you.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha