Castatra's page

Synthesist. Extra arm evolutions. Profit.

Someone had to do it..

Taking the focus off of combat for once, let's build the ultimate skill-build. Of course skills like Intimidate and Acrobatics will remain useful in battle, and remaining combat relevant is certainly a plus, but not the focus. It might be a lot to ask but if it were easy it wouldn't need optimizing. ;)

What I'd like to see is an amazing party face, a top-notch diplomat and a bluff with no equal. A practiced skill-monkey, perceive and disable any trap, a stealth capable of hiding in the smoke from a tea light candle and pickpocketing the sod who lit it. Street smart and book smart, knowledge of all things one could ever consider useful, and many things that couldn't be. Essentially, we want this master-of-all-trades to be as good at as many useful skills as is possible.

The earlier, the better, but any level build is fine. Let's see what the optimized out of combat character is capable of. Have at it!

-Atra

Lol. Well these last few concepts have been great. I think it really helps to explain the concepts behind the character's creation and the proposed tactics and features of it. It can seem obvious to the builder but it's harder to just look at a bunch of feats and archetypes trying to find it's potential without that summary. Bravo, and keep 'em coming!

We're still lacking the druid. Possibly a summoning focused build with a way to dip some better arcane control spells and a more durable disposition through wild shape? More vulnerable than the in your face battle-bot builds alone but companion and summons for enemy distraction and some battlefield obstructions could provide good options for preventing focused attacks on the squisher folk. Maybe more a wizards role, but we gotta attempt some druid love. :P

Very nice, first build I've seen using Bodyguard and In Harm's Way. Is there a way you overcome the adjacent requirement? Or a reason it isn't as circumstantial as one would assume? Sometimes things that may look good or sub-par on paper end up being a lot better or worse in actual play. Either way, great build to focus ally protection through mechanics.

Trip builds are pretty popular it seems to try to get reach and disable enemy actions, but it has been addressed as something very difficult to keep useful in higher levels so a little harder to justify. Certainly has it's merit up until mid-levels though.

Past that, I think healing potential makes one of the best rationalizations so far in why you may be prioritized. However, it does get a little gray in actual play. If you look at it from the other side, facing a heavily armored opponent who can heal and trying to protect the squishies, there are a few things to consider.

1. How much of a threat are the squishy ones vs. the healbot? Usually far more so, and especially considering when a creature spends it's own turn healing and not threatening, effectively taking itself out while mending allies.

2. Can I out-damage the healing? This is relevant to the last question because it's normally a resounding yes, which makes the idea of a healer wasting turns even more attractive.

3. How much harder will it be and how much longer will it take to dispose of the heal tank than the squishems? Even more subjective but normally the tank is far more difficult to take out, and unlike a video game, death is pretty permanent in a single encounter scenario. Meaning the paperskins who are acting as actual threats would usually be prime target once again.

I'm hardly the first to say it and the reasons are many that there are usually better things to do with a turn than in-combat healing.

However, the durable builds who can heal with a move action certainly pose the best argument for being a priority tank as they circumvent a lot of the traditional problems that encounter healing posed. I like that.

The point Riuken just mentioned has been brought up a few times but hasn't been very well addressed by the majority of builds. Don't misunderstand, most of these suggestions have been great and meet the general idea of a tank superbly. Usually when one thinks tank it immediately conjures up an idea of hardy durability and survivability, usually with a splash of martial competency, and that model has been executed and shown through an impressive number of classes and separate approaches flawlessly. The aggro aspect is a very important consideration though and could use a little more emphasis.

That said, the primary ways I know of to focus on that more are few. I expect a lot of responses to the incentive, at least mechanically, would be Compel Hostility and/or "the same build I posted...plus Antagonize." So in order to avoid pigeon-holing the matter in such a way, the best way I think to approach it is through a less "rules make them attack me" way, simply because there are so few and effective, and more through simple rationalization.

Explain the builds tactics, what options you have to stop an enemy attempting to charge your feeble friend, and ultimately what reason a GM would realistically focus attacks on your self-healing adamantium reinforced tank of invulnerability and doom apart from just trying to make you feel special because that's why you built him that way. Why, tactically, would an enemy either want to or be forced to contend against you, when it's a clearly better idea to treat you like a smelly boulder they know they'd chip a tooth on and go for the juicy dude with just enough armor to give a satisfying crunch when it eats them instead?

So as it stands we're looking primarily at Fighter, Monk, Barbarian, Magus, and Paladin. When I get to my computer I'll attempt to flesh out the general ideas each can take, including lesser mentioned classes like Samurai and Cavalier. From there, maybe we can agree on some unavoidably arbitrary measurements of a community definition of 'tank' to test in order to systematically deduce a best tank, or at least narrow down the potential contenders. I think Riuken's rules work fine; shaping them into a measurable form may be a challenging endeavor though. Ideas certainly welcome.

Well, I'll agree to disagree if need be, but it really isn't so much a personal opinion as it is the basic game intentions. Wizards are stereotypically the first class one thinks of when thinking of the term 'squishy', the very thing the tank should be prioritizing to protect more often than not.

I alluded to the idea that the wizard can become a pseudo-tank if necessary but that's not the idea here. A wizard isn't meant to be a tank and it shows. Where you can argue that at higher levels the % chance, concealment, etc. means of damage prevention is more effective than AC, you're still dealing with a vastly inferior hp pool.

Without even considering those points, this thread is meant to pursue the best tank, not the vaguely passable. Not counting the inability to tank at all in earlier levels and the lowest hp achievable, the most potent point to make is that not only do you need to stack multiple buffs that take both actions and resources, both of which are better suited being spent on whatever your wizard focuses on (battlefield control, blasting, save or suck, and really almost anything but pure unadulterated survivability), but the majority of other, almost always innately meatier, builds are combining static class abilities and feats that mitigate the type of circumstantial bonuses your focusing entirely on exploiting. Hp, intrinsic deflections, constant damage reduction, etc.

I love the wizard, but he can't do it all, and frankly, has better things to do, especially in this case where he just sucks at the alternative: for arguments sake, sucks relatively to classes built for it at least.

@Fuel- Where the ACME reminiscent wizard-in-a-box idea was both hilarious and very imaginative, a typical wizard just buffing the crap out of itself, especially with a good amount of short duration spells which means it'd take multiple turns even with quickens, and then sending him into the front-lines to take the majority of attacks is a lot harder to realistically accept.

Without the obvious faults, I did also suggest the build make a viable tank from 5+. Where a wizard, after enough manipulation, can pass as a tank..sort of.. an average wizard with average buffs in any campaign like those you named is not a tank. By the time you cast those spells, you're doing so to keep your Jell-O-like body alive, not to run into the center of the fray.

I really love the differentiation in approaches, specifically attack negation focus like Psion-Psycho's last build, high durability through hp and and DR, and the focus of control through reach and prevention, but few of these actually motivate enemy attention. I think it's interesting that I was originally answered with "antagonize, antagonize, antagonize" but it has yet to come up in any subsequent builds past the first couple replies.

(cut me off) .. community, monks seem to have a place in competing for the title. The heavy armor classes expectedly have the majority, but it's hard to choose a standalone really. Synthesist at this point is almost universally accepted as broken, but at least it's easier to pull off on an unaware GM than master summoner is at a glance.

Interesting so far, does anyone feel that any of the realistically reasonable builds so far truly outshines the others?

Wow... Well at least, for the most part, I can take solace in the fact that I'm not exactly on my own when it comes to having trouble defining a standard optimized class that best fits the tank role. In the last few hours since my last post I've gotten Paladin, Samurai, a few fighters, a couple summoners, rogue builds, and monk builds. Certainly says something all on it's own.

The increasingly more enlightening realization that a great many classes can successfully fill such a typical and almost trite party role, intriguing as it is, aside, I do have some, what I believe to be fairly reasonable, issues with a couple of them that I'd like to address. First being the master summoner. Where expendable meat sacks are a viable and creative way to approach the tank theme, the master summoner specifically is a hard class to justify in a non-solo campaign, though the thought behind it's mechanics are still able to be duplicated in a more balanced manner in any campaign by other classes/alternatives.

Another, and far less restricted, suggestion that came up multiple times but I have some trouble really considering is the trip build. Setting aside and understanding that defeat and/or crippling is a great way to keep damage off of your paper-skinned companions, it's only truly viable for so many levels. When at latest the higher mid range level challenges will consist of mostly foes that can't be tripped, it's simply an impending inevitability that you're meticulously focused build loses all relevance. A superb build from low to mid, hard-pressed to be as useful past that.

Weird as it is, with all the established monk-hatred ingrained in the CharOp

@Ranger- the Paladin and Inquisitor seem to approach the same issues but in very different ways. I'd love to see how each approach them over a series of levels.

Would most consider Paladin, from a vanilla view, the standard option tank?

To respond to the two that posted while I was writing (again, on a phone, takes a fair bit), misunderstood monk- this was the class I had in kind when I mentioned attack deflection, through crane style. And Riuken, barbarian was what I was thinking when I said damage reduction.

So considering responses so far, maybe a Monk/Barbarian with the aggro feats brought up prior?

Lol @ Fuel. Good idea, and honestly probably something that would be applauded for ingenuity at most tables, but will only be allowed to go on for so long and can't exactly maintain any real tank-hood. Wonderful cunning, inferior sustainability and aggro.

The eidolon is an interesting option, I actually, after all the optimization, consider the summoner a top melee contender (especially synthesist), but I hadn't really considered it for tanking. It's made especially effective by the -relatively- low cost of your eidolon actually being brought to 0 also.

Cavalier was so far at the top for me with tanking in mind, although, without having seen it in play, is made to seem somewhat reliant on party composition.

Good responses so far.

Oddly enough, searching the boards for the word "tank" turned up nothing. As is, I have a pretty good idea of what classes in Pathfinder best fall into certain roles from an optimization standpoint, relatively arguably, of course.

The role of tank eludes me though. Where logically a class proficient in heavy armor would be the immediate go-to for a prime tank role, it's not necessarily the case, with class abilities akin to certain attack deflections and damage reduction to consider, and even if innate heavy armor prof. classes are ultimately the best, there are a fair amount of classes that fall into that category, with multiple options in each.

So, that being the case, what class/PrC do you consider the most efficient tank, and under which options available through the PRD make it so? To keep it less subjective, I'll add the stipulation that everyone defines their own idea of 'tank' and should be capable of fulfilling that definition from roughly levels 5+.

I look forward to your responses and, hopefully, builds in regards to this.

(also, brand new to the forums and posting from my phone, so please excuse any spacing or subsection designation errors this thread may have. Thanks.)

-Atra