TheWayofPie's page

The first time I read about focus powers, I laughed so hard it startled people nearby. I was CACKLING. "They did it! Pathfinder has looped around to being the game that it was the substitute for!". Something is so perfect about the full circle nature of it.

If we're getting obscure enough to get to the 4e style Runesmith, I hope one day we can get the 4e Ardent. It had a really strong thematic and roleplay hook built right into its mechanics, which PF2E tends to do well especially lately. You were a psionic "emotions knight"- your psychic powers weren't focused on raw intelligence and mental control, but about absorbing and projecting emotions.

You walk by the funeral of a man you've never met, and you pick up their emotions so hard that you start crying too. But it also means that you can force enemies to become so depressed they can't even bother fighting for their lives in combat, or inspire your teammates with so much of each other's adrenaline that everyone can shrug off exhaustion and injury.

It clearly started off as just the combination of "power source + team role" that all 4e classes are- a "Psionic + Leader". But it has such amazing story potential! Such fun themes!

And it didn't hurt that their mechanics were fun, too! You attack so much based on raw psionically powered enthusiasm or seriousness, you use charisma to attack.

I liked how the class it was 4th Edition's version of Star War's Battle Meditation. A PF2e version of the Ardent can smash that and the Battlemind into one full class easily.

Man I’m really hoping Guardian got the craziest playtest to final rework in history. It was just a mess. I really want another out of the box Defender that isn’t Reach/Shield Fighter, Wood, Kin or “Good” Champion.

I have full faith in Commander. Despite Strike Hard being way too good, the class was incredibly fun to play.

Some good Fury Barbarian feats would be nice. xD

Would be interesting to see class archetypes for Investigator or Ranger that tie more into warfare. Would also want to get a Bard class archetype similar to Battle Harbinger.

And finally more combat skill feats for undercooked skills. Survival seems like a good candidate for War themed combat skill feats.

A shame, because no frills jus pure martial rage is my favorite Barbarian.

Sucks that 90% of Barbarians are some form of magic and that the one that isn’t is just barely supported and cursed with worse damage and no upsides. D&D 5e also had this issue with the Berserker being very mid.

Speaking as an organized play GM with lots of gaming experience—no class goes down in fights more often than rogues. I have numerous players who’ve complained that they go down in nearly every fight that doesn’t have a dedicated healer buffing them.

I don’t mind that they eventually get three good saves.

Hmm

Frankly, the players weren't playing Rogue correctly. Rogues don't go down faster in any significant way compared to other d8 classes. This is not a knock on them, as it takes time to get good at playing any class. And at low levels lets be frank everyone is going down fast. Even the Barbarian can get snuffed by a +1 monster's critical hit.

They should be skirmishing around the battlefield, especially when fighting higher-level foes. Against lower-level foes, they are immune to being flatfooted. They also have solid saves and do excellent damage. When they can't do damage, they have plenty of skill feats to do something else. They have DEX so they can easily retreat to the backline, hide to get flatfooted, drop their weapon and then use quick draw to apply sneak attack. Thus, they are one of the best switch hitters.

My Rogue player has gone down the least in my current campaign. And now they at high levels with legendary sneak and foil senses it is pretty much in the best interest of enemies to ignore them. They're pretty much the MVP.

This buff won't help most society players anyway as very rarely are characters hitting 9th level. This feature is coming online at a time where Rogues have found ways to be able to avoid being in the thick of things and are starting to pile on more and more damage. They don't need the help. The class is well designed and already top tier.

I think this game is going to have some very nice immersive sim qualities or at the very least allow for some very varied encounters and solutions.

They are letting characters jump, climb, and create ways to climb when you are normally can't. And then eventually players will be flying around. I also believe one of the lead designers said (when asked) that they are making the game heavily system based so if you manage to get somewhere that would be incredibly unlikely, that the game will be able to account for it.

I wouldn't be surprised if maybe they get inspired by the Make an Impression/Attitude systems to do a basic disposition system like Morrowind or Oblivion.

I'm not expecting Baldurs Gate 3 or Tears of the Kingdom levels of systemic driven gameplay: but just having a basic generic persuasion system, a stealth system, spells, and vertical movement, should make this game at least move it towards the level of design.

As opposed to a modern Bioware game or CD Project game which go for a traditional scripted game design.

A monk class archetype, that lower's attack proficiency to let them become legendary in unarmored defense, allow the monk dodge tank to be fully realized.

The monk already gets legendary in unarmored defense.

I think most games with indepth character creation and heroic fantasy like PF2e should just adopt the Fabula Ultima approach: You choose when your character dies. If you choose for your character to live the bad guys advance plans. If you choose for your character to die it decelerates the bad guys plans as you sacrifice yourself.

Maybe in PF3e we’ll see something like that.

One of my players is playing a Swash and has a tekko-kagi. Agile + Freehand + Disarm is decently solid as he's always drawing and throwing bombs.

I also played a Swashbuckler that used Scorpion Whip for reach with Guardian's Deflection and then Reactive Strike. Disarm + Finesse + Trip with one-hand is a very good set of traits.

TheWayofPie wrote:

Swashbuckler trades the versatility and damage of a rogue for better survivability and being exceptionally good at skills in combat. Any roll with the Bravado trait gets a +1 circumstance bonus. At 9th level it increases to +2.

This is correct but also-

It's kind of wild to me that "worse damage but better at certain skills" is the direction they took the swash relative to the rogue.

It is a little strange.

I guess they decided Skill Versatility vs Skill Specialization.

Hello people, a question, playing with Swash, what should I expect from the class?What would be its cornerstone, what makes it unique? Damage? Support? Maneuver? You know that kind of thing? In a game using FA for example, can I play healer with Swash? Grateful!

Swashbuckler trades the versatility and damage of a rogue for better survivability and being exceptionally good at skills in combat. Any roll with the Bravado trait gets a +1 circumstance bonus. At 9th level it increases to +2.

So first off you need to decide if your Swashbuckler is going to focus on damage or not. If they are you need to decide if you’re going for one bit hit or multiple attacks.

For big hits you want to get the biggest damage die or a trait like deadly or fatal on your weapons. Make sure you apply conditions and get flat footed. Your go to finisher will likely be Bleeding Finisher at 8th level.

Or you can go Normal + Finisher. This DRP focused Swahbuckler highly values an agile weapon and Combination Finisher and Precise Finisher feats.

If you don’t want to focus on damage you can focus on maneuvers and the variety of Bravado actions Swashbucklers gain to debuff their foes. A favorite of mine is taking Goading Feint, Enjoy the Shadow and Antagonize to debuff the hell out of an enemy and force it to come to you. Combine Reactive Strike, Trips, Disarms, and Grapples to turn yourself into a Defender. A Swashbuckler who really wants to forgo damage all together eventually gets Derring-Do to roll twice on their debuffs/control/tanking abilities.

As for a Healer Swash there is no innate synergy besides a Finisher that gives temporary hit points to the party. If you did want to play one you would take Rascal Style to not have to increase Charisma or Strength at all. Just focus on Dex, Wisdom, and Con. Then grab the Medic Archetype, and eventually Blessed One.

Here is a good off-tank build.

Style: Braggart

STR +2, DEX +4, CON +1, WIS +0, INT +0, CHA +2

Natural Ambition: Disarming Flair (Another way to get Panache)/You're Next (Probably will Errata'd to work like Remastered Rogues)
Level 1: Extravagant Parry
Level 2: Antagonize
Level 4: Enjoy the Show (Wording Allows Acrobatic Performer to work if you want to)
Level 6: Reactive Strike
Level 8: Filler (Probably Stunning Finisher if you're leaning on disabling enemies)
Level 10: Reflexive Riposte (if you want to punish more on miss)/Derring-Do (if you want to lean more into your debuffs)

They’ve always been that way by default in PF2e. I don’t know why the One-Hit playstyle is being touted as a new thing.

That being said if you want flurry of attacks Swashbuckler one would take Combination and Precise Finisher at the earliest opportunity. My only gripe with it is Combination Finisher should be an earlier feat. Like 2nd or 4th level to get the build online early.

Flurry style Sashbucklers also want to take advantage of the agile trait and pick up The Bigger They Are at later tier 3 play.

And finally Eternal Confidence at 19th level allows Confident/Precise Finisher to apply to all other Finishers. This is when you would grab Perfect Finisher to maximize the chance of your MAP attack working. Then the new 20th level feat that lets you do two Finishers at once and even apply Bravado to the strike.

Even without those feats Normal Strike + Confident Finisher tends to do more DPR than just a Confident Finisher.

Swashbuckler Dedication should at the very least give a nerfed Panache speed bonus. I imagine they wanted to avoid making other classes using the panache skill buffs better than Swashbuckler, but just getting nothing from it sucks.

I do agree that Investigator can fumble pretty badly if the player does not bother to prepare extra things they can do. I would say that it is not unlike a caster in that sense. That being said, every subclass is dedicated on an activity to focus on.

But remaster did lead the player to this conclusion better because of Skill Strategem.

And of course, the subclasses always did this pre-remaster.

Alchemical Sciences to prepare useful alchemical elixirs and tools.
Empiricism to Recall Knowledge efficiently.
Forensic Medicine to be a solid martial healer with little investment.
Interrogation to focus on Charisma skills.

And GM fiat is a small problem. I saw a YouTube comment that said they're only allowing Investigators to use free action DaS against mini-bosses or above which is absolutely ridiculous use of GM fiat.

I GM'd forgetting about the free action devise and my new player said she said she would rather just not use it anymore with how punishing that ability feels.

A GM should for the most part reward the free DaS as long as the investigator player is playing the investigation minigame. It is good role and rollplay. Players are rewarded heavily for indulging in the class fantasy. That is good design, even if it relies on fiat that a game like this tends to avoid.

While not as blatantly an upgrade as the new Swash is, I like it a lot and the class has a good place in the game now.

But anyway, maybe I should just make an Investigator thread before I go off topic.

Yeah, that +1/+2 to skills with the bravado trait is IMO more than enough to compensate having less damage than a rogue.

Investigators in the other hand...

Remaster Investigators also get +1/+2 and supposedly eventually +3. Their Devise a Strategem is actually much more lenient that it was before upon further examination. So as long as they are proactively behaving as an investigator, they should almost always have a free action DaS.

Investigators aren't about damage anyway. They are about being proactive during quests and in doing so are able to use their superior intellect to foresee how their offensive action will go. The vast majority of the time, a remastered Investigator should only have to pay the action cost if they aren't behaving as they should.

Wizards confused on why they don't get that same nice Recall Knowledge feat from Arcane Bloodlines.

I’m cool with tankier and less damage as the Swash’s thing. They also always have +1 or +2 circumstance to any check with bravado trait making them the “Skill Focus” class when it comes to Strength, Dexterity, and Charisma.

BadLuckGamer just dropped the giga sized Swashbuckler video.

This is the most buffed class in the system. Swashbucklers are now way less one trick pony thanks to the huge variety of bravado traits. A very noticeable feat is one that lets you draw a weapon and perform a finisher in one action. And it can be any finisher you qualify for.

Karmagator wrote:

Guntermench wrote:

It was always a good class. Really didn't need like 6 separate buffs.

It was always an ok class, with lots of little and not so little problems. These buff look like they really make it shine, so I'm happy.

I dunno, I played the class for three years in multiple games and still don't think it really needed any of this. Let alone all of it.

Your in the minority. Swashbuckler being my first class I must say it is quite mediocre in performance until high levels when Skills start outscaling DCs and they start getting good outlier feats like Bleeding Finisher.

Yeah these Fury feats are awful. So once a day I can reduce single digit damage? Nice!

I don’t know why Fury just can’t catch a break.

TheWayofPie wrote:

they do get auto scaling to Acrobat or their style skill.

It's not quite auto-scaling. They get an additional skill increase at 3rd, 7th and 15th level and can use those only on acrobatics or their style skill. You don't need to spend all those increases on the same skill.

(You will likely end up doing it regardless, but you don't have to.)

You’re right. It’s even better.

And funny enough it’s pretty much exactly like the homebrew I made for the game I’m running.

Good news saw on reddit that +1 circumstance bonus to Bravado checks increases to +2 at 9th level. On top of that they do get auto scaling to Acrobat or their style skill.

This pretty much means that when it comes to their style they are best in game in using those skills in combat.

I also imagine that it’s not really a thing developers are able to Yay or Nay easily. Developers are a little concerned about their calls being used as a bludgeon. So if it’s a mistake, it makes sense that they’d rather not confirm or deny.

Even if it was on purpose I’ve removed it from my games. Rogue is already an awesome class and it doesn’t really need it.

It seems like some designers assigned to Player Core have had more time and desire to change classes than others.

Ranger is just sitting there confused as heck, while Wizard is wondering why it’s other subclasses besides Universalist exist.

Barbarian and Rogue are just laughing at how much murder they got away with. My old Barb wasn’t exactly struggling!

Holy s#&%. No -1 is going to be insane. Being able to rage in an encounter even with no enemies also makes for some fun victory point shenanigans. Hell a social encounter punctuated by a timely rage is a good roleplay opportunity.

At 33:05 BadLuckGamer showed off Elegant Buckler. On a critical miss with your Buckler up you gain panache. I imagine the free-hand version of the feat will be very similar.

Just like the Rogue it seems that you'll have near-perfect uptime on Panache with all these feats.

Things are looking very interesting. Looks like I'll be able to drop most of the homebrew I cooked up for the campaign I'm running.

Yup. I recall everyone liking the Swash’s mechanics on a quick glance and the other classes being so obviously poor in their designs.

What if Opportune Riposte proc'd on a CF normally, but on a F if you had panache?

=)

Great minds think alike.

Adding one more item to the Things I’m Still Hopeful Might Make It:

Opportune Riposte triggering on a miss instead of a crit miss. Or advancing automatically at some point to occur on a miss without having to take an extra feat to enable that.

I recommend this homebrew. I’ve had my player’s Swash using this for months. The only condition is that to work on a miss you need to have Panache giving reason to hold on to it.

Considering Opportune Backstab exists it’s not even OP. Especially since you can’t finisher off it innately.

TheWayofPie wrote:

almost all new action games have such solid move design that you can’t spam one dominant strategy or have a system that punishes you heavily for doing so.

That can't possibly be true.

There are way too many people out there who enjoy and prefer "spam X to win" gameplay. Designers wouldn't just abandon that segment of the marketplace entirely.

Who are these spam enjoyers? Never met them and don’t know many games the play like that now. Clicker games and idle games are like the closest thing I guess but that’s not even the same thing.

I mean if you have some game examples I’m all ears.

And if fighting games are mentioned, spam only works if someone doesn’t know how to deal with a strategy. Good players can’t be beaten by using the same move over and over again unless the skill and knowledge gap is immense.

TheWayofPie wrote:

And in a videogame context, I do not remember a single action game stylish protagonist that was a spammer.

Really? You don't find a combo of button pushing that works really well and use it over and over again? Personally I think a lot of videogames are hugely repetitious. Movies and books can have their protagonists succeed by using different tricks all the time, but in these cases the author/director decides the outcome - not a heuristic. Deus sine Machina. :)

I think "many many action options that are equally good at beating the same opponent" is a very praiseworthy and ambitious goal for a TTRPG to have, but it's also difficult to design. I look forward to bravado creating more variety in skill use to create panache, but I'm guessing that no matter how many options Paizo gives us, acrobatics - i.e., "move across the battlefield in a way that gives me a bonus or them a penalty" is always going be a contender for MVP panache generator. It's just hard to avoid. Likewise for other tactics where a PC has invested so many proficiency and attribute bumps in it that they are 20-40% more likely to succeed at it than some other action: that's now the "repeat button combo" for them. Repetition of good tactics is probably not something a rules-heavy TTRPG can escape. You need a more 'theater of the mind' approach to get that.

***
The precision immune thing has not been addressed by the preview. I'm not sure it will be by PC2. We will have to see. As one of the other posters cynically noted, we may get lots of new and different ways to create a damage bonus to which many things are immune.

Pathfinder typically does it well enough thanks to monster design and solid feat design (for the most part). A well designed battlefield also prevents spam.

But yes as another poster mentioned videogames are much more well designed now and almost all new action games have such solid move design that you can’t spam one dominant strategy or have a system that punishes you heavily for doing so.

A Swashbuckler who does not max Acrobatics and the key skill for the fighting style they chose sounds odd to me.

If the player does not want to play a PC that maxes those, why play a Swashbuckler ?

That's exactly the point. It is a non-choice. You get the same increases as everyone else and they're all going to be going into the same exact skills.

Swashbuckler pre-remaster is a mess because you are spamming the same two skills to get panache.

Which gets me to another slightly related point. Wouldn't a real swashbuckler spice up their rotation?

And in a videogame context, I do not remember a single action game stylish protagonist that was a spammer. Dante is pretty much a swashbuckler in spirit with his fighting style. He isn't getting SSS rank by using the same abilities over and over again. You are rewarded for trying to be as cool as he is in cutscenes. One of his ultimate moves in DmC 5 can't even be performed work if you aren't at a high style ranking.

I hope Bravado feats alleviate this skill spam feeling. Having other activities to generate panache and not be shut down by mindless precision immune foes would be incredible.

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

It feels like many people forget how classes are designed in PF-2E. The Swashbuckler is and this might sound crazy to some. NOT a skill class, it's a combat first class like Fighter, Barbarian and Ranger. It doesn't fill the skill archetype like Rogue, Investigator or Thaumaturge. That is where you guys are missing why they don't get auto-scaling skills. I won't lie and say Inventor isn't weird for breaking the mold with auto-crafting.

Even the Playtest Commander is skill-forced with auto-warfare lore and high INT. Most 8 Hit Point classes that aren't magical are skill focused, having 10 Hit Points means your a full combat martial.

The issue with Swashbuckler is not that it should be a Skill class. It's that it has two skills that you are essentially locked into. Acrobatics and whatever the skill is for your Style. With base skill increases, you don't have room to increase another skill to Expert until 11th level. They have less skill flexibility than a Fighter. Braggarts are Intimidation and Acrobatics until 11th level, etc. Maybe Bravado will make it less automatic to take Acrobatics on every build, but as it stands before the remaster, this is where we are. The way around that is taking the Acrobat dedication to get scaling Acrobatics and at least free up one skill choice.

Part of the design of 2E was to encourage players to take options to do a lot of different things. Designing a class that has more than half of its Skill increases locked into two skills is counter to that idea.

Exactly. Even Barbarians and Fighters aren't trying to gun for Athletics all the time. I'm currently playing a Recall Knowledge Fighter who's going all in on Lores and Occultism leveraging their level 1 Recall + Strike feat to give info on various baddies.

But Swashbucklers are dependent on their Skills especially lower levels to get the Panache going. Which means we can forget about Swashbucklers attempting to deviate from the same skill choices. They are so monotonous to build for other roles. All that high dex but struggles to be able to invest in Thievery or Stealth because they want to boost their Style skills.

I suppose so but I very much enjoy the fact that PF2e has a LOT of purely martial classes. Pure martials, focus martials, optional focus spell martials, wavecaster martials. It’s very nice. Especially when typically d20 likes to splash spellcasting to everyone while limiting anything cool non-magic can do.

A Spell Commander class archetype sounds like it’d be pretty nice.

Taunt not being a subclass choice or a choice for multiple classes is just a bad play.

There are so many different thematic and mechanical flavors of a Guardian that it is begging for a subclass. I agree with Lightning Raven on everything except making Taunt magical, because currently it doesn’t do anything that couldn’t be described as non-magic. It doesn’t force the enemy to do anything.

But it does suck to use.

Also the points of Barbarian, Bard, Fighter, Swashbuckler, Rogue all seem like classes that would want to use it. Especially Swashbuckler who has it’s own (mechanically and thematically superior) version of Taunt in Antagonize.

I would just rather split outwit into a secondary subclass choice much like wizard has two sets of choices. One for Charisma, one for Stealth, and one for Recall knowledge. That way you don’t have to worry about sacrificing your damage for utility.

And then allow Rangers to use Hunt Prey and do something else when anyone drops their prey to 0 HP as a reaction.

Hunt Prey and Stride/Sneak/Take Cover.
Hunt Prey and Bon Mot/Demoralize/Create a Diversion.
Hunt Prey and Reload.

I'm inclined to agree. Was in a playtest yesterday playing with a Guardian and Taunt + Intercept Strike looked really underwhelming. The Guardian's main contribution was using Hampering Sweeps and Tripping. He was very useful, but his main class features were basically non-existent.

That is insane. I have never encountered something like that before, but then again most of my PF2e gaming has been me being in the same 1-2 groups.

Guardian not being as accurate as Mental Stat Martials at certain levels such as Inventors, Thaumaturges, and Commanders is pretty much insane. You’re telling me a g!~ d%*n inventor is more consistently proficient than weapons as a heavily armored melee warrior?

Meanwhile the Warpriest laughs with it’s full sweet of spells and relatively high defenses, access to heavy armor , and a defensive mechanic known as “Heal”. This allows them to be more versatile and more generally effective than a Guardian. Once enemies know he can heal they focus on him drawing aggro. And they use Shield Block and other abilities to keep himself safe.

The fiction doesn’t make sense. And right now the Guardian not only needs to stand our from the Champion, but to the Warpriest, and the Fighters who take Hampering Sweeps.

TheWayofPie wrote:

Pistolero doesn’t lag that bad. It really isn’t a big deal to have a secondary stat for a subclass. Needing Cha is the least of a swashbuckler’s concerns.

Skills especially scale incredibly fast and become way more accurate than Strikes or DCs.

Yup, their numbers can be higher. And consequently, the benefits/reward are balanced with the consideration of that higher number.

When players have the ability to opt-in to a subclass with an extra attribute or skill catch, that's great.

It's not great if that were to be the baseline required by the class.

Agreed. Secondary stats should be opt in.

Pistolero doesn’t lag that bad. It really isn’t a big deal to have a secondary stat for a subclass. Needing Cha is the least of a swashbuckler’s concerns.

Skills especially scale incredibly fast and become way more accurate than Strikes or DCs.

Also, since we're talking class fantasy I think Taunt is a pretty distinct dividing line between (let's call them) "Strong Silent Guardian" and "Loud Boisterous Guardian" archetypes.

For example:

Strong Silent Guardian

* Serious-type defender who stares you down over the edge of their shield

* Black suit and sunglasses bodyguard who never speaks but competently intercepts any threat to their charge

* Badass who waits for the enemy to make the first move, confident they can react to anything

* Person holding a chokepoint so the timer can finish or their charge can escape, not necessarily interested in harming the foes

Loud Boisterous Guardian

* Crazy sunovagun who doesn't care if they take damage, and grabs blades and mocks their opponents

* Action hero who says something like "pick on someone your own size" and for some reason the enemy does

* King's champion who challenges foes in front of a crowd, relying on social pressure to keep their attention

* Animal expert who catches the attention of the dangerous animals so the park patrons can escape

* Desperate protagonist trying to sacrifice themselves by appealing to the enemy to kill them instead

Anyone else seeing these as two separate types? One I can easily see trying to influence their foes into changing targets while the other feels much more likely to assume that influencing their foes' decision making is too unreliable. Also interesting to note how much Charisma is involved in fantasy scenarios where a Taunt is appropriate and effective.

Sounds like you pretty much described what the actual Guardian subclasses should be. Right now both features are undercooked because it’s trying to fulfill two separate fantasies at the same time.

I would be open for a Performance option but not as the way to build all Guardians. In fact I think most people would prefer a Demoralizing Guardian if they were going for CHA.

But I’d also rather have that domain be the Remaster Braggart Swashbuckler’s thing. Sounds more their flavor.

Somewhat unrelated but as someone who saw pretty much every Gunslinger class in play for an extensive period of time Pistolero is the best. They don’t have to get in melee and are less repetitive in their game structure than a Sniper.

My ideal guardian baseline would be the "bad penny" that somehow keeps ending up between the enemy and their target to disastrous consequences. A guardian should interpose themselves, getting in the path of harm and punishing the offending attack harshly. They should be characters who can honestly say "Crash upon me and be broken!" or "You try hurt friend, me not let!" They should end many combats covered in axes and arrows meant for the wizard, with a bloody and grateful grin on their face when they see their friend is unharmed, even though they themselves are barely conscious.

A lightly-armored trickster guardian who uses taunts to actively draw fire would ALSO be great, and is a classic roguish hero archetype, but it at least needs to be its own guardian path instead of crammed into the guardian core.

You know what yeah. Taunt totally fits a lightly armored a!#+*$@ using throwing weapons or other weapons to piss of their foes. But also I can see a reworked Braggart Swashbuckler focusing on that.

I will hop in and say if Taunt says in it should work against mindless target.

Nothing worse than being a Braggart Swashbuckler fighting mindless enemies with precision immunity. Rather the Guardian didn’t have to deal with that.

Does the "Tank" class really require a way to impel an opponent to attack them and not someone else? I know that's what happens in video games, but positioning and movement is so important in PF2 couldn't we do a "tank" class solely by controlling an enemy's position and ability to move?

Like if we decided to make a class tank with:
- Enemies you are engaged with cannot easily disengage.
- Enemies you are engaged with suffer negative repercussions if they attack anybody except you.
- Prevent enemies you are engaged with from making reactions that target your allies, so that your allies can move away from danger.

That feels tanky enough to me, avoids the "why do I want to lower my AC on a class that is supposed to be defensive" problem, and feels like a more fertile design space. Like the "tank from the back line" idea is funny, but wouldn't it be more fun to be the safest person in a dangerous place?

That’s pretty much how the 4e Fighter worked and it was incredible.

For those not in the know:

4e Fighter marked anyone with an attack whether they hit or miss. They put the penalty to enemy attacks against anyone they hit. This prevented the awkward Taunt this playtest had. And this made it that the Fighter’s attacks were so hampering that it prevented enemies from escaping and thus that enemies could not afford to not focus on her.

They would attack enemies that damaged their allies AND enemies that shifted (4e version of Step). This made it worth risking an enemy opportunity attack because then the Fighter could react to it with their own attack!

And they also had the most accurate opportunity attack/reactive strike if they invested in Wisdom.

This made 4e Fighter super sticky. The Guardian is not quite there.

We’ll see. I wanna playtest it and see what I can do with it.

I think it’ll be pretty hard for Champion to be worse Guardian. Especially if they back off on making multiclassing Champion so poachable. Like making Champion Reaction higher level for starters.

Champion has Lay on Hands and a very very useful reaction.

All Guardian has to do to be different is to being able to Stride to intercept the blows and use it’s superior AC to nullify attack and resistances so it takes even less. Right now it’s too slow to defend most of the team and relies on the party not flanking and being in fireball formation. It is too poor offensively once midgame kicks in. And to top it off it is no better than Champion, Fighter or Monk in AC in the early game. Which makes it worse when it taunts instead of being even. That means a critical hit from a boss is likely. And we all no early game meta Full to Zero Hit Points is very likely in those encounters.

4e had Fighter, Paladin, Warden, and Swordmage as defenders all playing differently from one another.

Fighters focus on marking with any attack they make even if they miss. This makes it easy for them to poach huge AoE powers from other classes and mark with them. And their Opportunity Attacks are the best in the game. Not obly that out of all Defenders they dealt the most damage. However, in exchange they can only punish one mark a turn.

Paladins mark by challenging their foes into combat and they must attempt to attack them every round keep them challenged. But they also have powers that place unique marks called Divine Sanctions that punish by damage enemies with radiant. Paladins could be built towards damage early game but their most common secondary role was support.

Wardens are AoE markers that focus on setting up strange difficult terrains around them. Anyone near them on a tuen is marked and he locks people in his vortex. These terrains also gave them super forms based on primal aspects of nature. Imagine a Barbarian who goes full in on defense and leans extra hard on becoming one with elemental energies. Imagine they made class that was that level 2 Guardian feat.

Swordmage was about setting up a mark that when violated made them teleport to the enemy to punish them, put up a shield to reduce the damage (like champion), or immobilize them from range. They also had the best access to damage types and were the ones that benefited the most form lighter armor and having a free hand. And on top of it their mobility was surprisingly good.

And while Fighter was considered the best the difference was super small in practice. 4 very different classes in play.

Guardian should not struggle to find a niche or steal it from Champion as we have other game’s designs to inspire multiple unique “tanks”.

Threat technique probably shouldn’t be a choice. It should just be both. That way you feel like you win regardless of what the enemy does.