Hi Guys,
I have been away for a few years but getting my head back into PF.
I have previously written a few guides in the past.
-TWf for fighters
TWF for Rangers
and a Magus Hexcrafter Guide.
Currently playing a Sword n Board Intimimancer/Trip monkey in a Rappan Athuk game to great effect.
Also made an awesome Paladin Beatstick and I wrote the origonal CAGM Barbarian for Trinam's Barbarian Guide.
I like to make chars with Crazy High AC (or DR) and great saves.
Basically Tanks. Cause they are impenetrable and Carry a Big Gun.
I was wondering if anyone would like to contribute to a Guide for Tanking in PF?
I can write a pretty good one but I have seen a few crazy awesome builds.
So if you want to conribute- post your builds here.
20 pt buy.
and they have to be able to do their trick by level 12 at worst.
You don't have to be sword and board.
My definition of a tank is ability to take or ignore a ton of Hits and be able to do big damage at the same time.
Taunt mechanics are nice but not required.
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Tanking is definitely about being able to "take" a lot of hits, but of course combat is more complex than that.
A big heavily armored fighter with a tower shield can still get burned to a crisp with a few fireballs, or, worse, completely taken over by a dominate person.
I've always viewed "tanking" as being able to waste an enemy's attempt at harming you and your party. If the enemy wizard casts dominate person on you and you only fail the saving throw if you roll a nat 1, that too is tanking, to me. The best is when you play a character up like they have poor saves vs X, and then just shrugging off whatever comes your way.
Strictly looking at tanking single target attacks that deal hit point damage, however, is the more traditional approach, and there's two ways Pathfinder characters primarily go about doing it:
High Constitution tanking: The call to all traditional barbarians out there, High Constitution tanking is relying on having the hit points to outlast the fight, regardless of what type of fight it is. This is the easiest, mechanically, but also a bit more risky if you find yourself being unable to avoid even the weakest of attacks- they really add up. Primary feats include Raging Vitality, Toughness, and Fortified Armor Training. Primary magic items are pretty much just a Con belt as high as possible. Even with this tanking style, don't ignore armor class entirely!
High Armor Class tanking: This typically involves fighting styles like fighting defensively, racking up dodge bonuses, and investing in a lot of high end magic items, rather than specifically being a martial class. To that end, basically any class has potential to be a high armor class tank, though typically D6 hit dice classes don't have the hit points to survive the hits that do go through. Good armor class is typically 20+character level. Feats you can look at are Dodge, Mobility, Crane Style, Osyluth Guile, Shield Focus/Greater Shield Focus. Items you want to look at are ring of protection, amulet of natural armor, shield bonuses (UMD a wand of shield), armor bonuses (Bracers of armor or Mage Armor if you're prohibited, enhancement bonuses to existing armor if you aren't), Belt of Dexterity.
Characters that can do both are quite powerful defensively, and I'd call out Paladins specifically as being capable of not only both styles of tanking, but also the saving throw tanking that I mentioned earlier.
That all being said, this is my current fave tank. She has good saving throws, good AC for her level, high hit points, and can hit like a truck. Here's my current Phytokineticist spirited charger build:
Alternate racial traits: Adaptable Luck, Outrider
Str 7 (9-2)
Dex 20 (16+2, +2 enhancement bonus)
Con 17 (+1 @lv4)
Int 12 (+2 Enhancement bonus)
Wis 10
Cha 13 (11+2)
Traits: Fate's Favored, Andoran Freed Slave
1) Weapon Finesse, Phytokinesis, Kinetic Blade
2) Elemental Whispers(Hedgehog, +2 will saves, and, because why not, Sage Archetype)
3) Skill Focus: Kn(Nature), Extended Range
4) Merciful Foliage (For the times you don't want to murder someone)
5) Eldritch Heritage(Arcane) (To get a Mauler archetype Hawk familiar), Entangling Infusion
6(Sohei bonus feat) Spirited Charge
With Elemental Defense going, at this level I have 26 AC (5 Armor [+1 Mithral Chain shirt], 1 shield [Masterwork Buckler], 1 size, 5 Dex, 3 Nat Armor, +1 Deflection [ring of protection])
She rides around on her Mauler hawk (UMDs a wand of Ant Haul, and has a Int headband tied to the Fly skill to ensure that the Hawk is capable of hovering and is able to carry the rider) and uses spirited charge with her kinetic blade to deal 6d6+16 damage. She is eventually going to take Mounted Combat, Ride-By Attack, and at 11th level retrain out of Sohei to get full levels in Kineticist and take Spirited Charge normally. At Kineticist level 7 she will be expanding her element into Cold, for a elemental touch blast, a decent composite blast (Winter), and Expanded Defense for even higher AC with a water shield.
The basic dervish dancing, shocking grasp magus would seem to fit this description. Their AC/saves can get pretty high (+ mirror image possibly) and shocking grasp does the damage. Does this fit your definition or does required buffing render them not tanks to you?
A thread full of people saying tanking is a subpar strategy and doesn't work in pf. meh
The way I view it, tanking is a subrole- as in "I am a tank AND X".
For example- paladins are tanks AND healers AND major damage dealers. They are shining examples of multiple ways to be useful as a tank.
As a damage dealer- they make it so that the enemy cannot ignore them (or they are pounced for doing so). Because there are only a few methods to aggro (and most of them are require too many resources/specialized builds or they are unreliable), you have to make enemies WANT to attack you. Take a paladin- an evil dragon or lich would be a fool to leave themselves in smite/full attack range of a paladin while they go after the squishy wizard. The paladin makes himself a threat that cannot be ignored. And even when attention is brought onto the paladin, he can survive adn keep on dishing out damage. Pouncing barbarians fill a similar role- they chase down enemies that try to ignore them.
As a healer- they take advantage of the fact that they are the least likely ones to be taken down by attacks/effects. When the enemy does an AoE paralyze spell, a paladin that made his save can just walk on over and start to use lay on hands/mercies to get the other party members back to full condition. And that could save the party from a TPK, as it allows them to get the casters, damage dealers, etc back into the fight.
There are various methods to accomplish "AND X"- buffing, summoning, battlefield control, etc. The general point is that you are tough enough to salvage the situation when things go poorly, or you are tough enough to go into the fray and do your main task.
Tanks are important in pathfinder (you will notice and suffer if the entire party is made up of squishy characters), but it cannot be your primary role like in many MMOs.
Sword n Board Paladin is probably one of the most quinessential tank-style builds you can go. Really good AC/Saves + respectable health + self-healing/condition removal + deals a metric crapton of dmg to anything evil.
Doesn't matter if you focus on LoH/Mercies, melee prowess Feats, or w/e, you're going to be tough as nails and put on the hurty hurt.
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Tanks are important in pathfinder ... but it cannot be your primary role like in many MMOs.
I respectfully disagree in the sense that nobody wants a rogue in their party that ONLY does Disable Device.
If someone rolls into a game saying that their rogue can handle traps REALLY well, but can't do anything else well at all... well why would you have that rogue in the table when you can have a rogue be competent in both trapbreaking AND spring attacking or other roles?
If a person walks into a game and proudly declares that their character is completely useless except in this one situation (I can take hits really well! but I deal 1d6+Str mod in damage and thats it :) ) nobody else is going to really want them at that table. Doing well in combat is kind of the only exception, and that's really only true if you're only doing dungeon crawls at your table.
Building a proper tank requires drawing aggression. Otherwise you're not tanking. It doesn't matter if you CAN take hits if you never do. You've already gave some examples of how Paladins and Barbarians punish those who don't pay attention to them, and that is successful tanking. In MMOs traditionally you hold the block button and tap your aggro ability and call it a day. In Pathfinder you have to work a little harder to make tanking your primary role.
As an example of a character that would draw aggro without needing to deal tons of damage, I've drawn up (Unfortunately, haven't played) a Halfling Monk/Paladin that can get crazy high AC (50+ vs smite targets) but deals a whopping 1d4+dex damage against enemies. The kicker though is that he's able to provide somewhere around +12 AC to adjacent allies. That's a primary AC tank if I ever saw one.
Sword n Board Paladin is probably one of the most quinessential tank-style builds you can go. Really good AC/Saves + respectable health + self-healing/condition removal + deals a metric crapton of dmg to anything evil.
Doesn't matter if you focus on LoH/Mercies, melee prowess Feats, or w/e, you're going to be tough as nails and put on the hurty hurt.
I would say sword and board paladin with..is it sacred shield that changes smite to the DR aura?
The high guardian fighter, with a reach weapon/trip focus and combat patrol is another solid tank build (manages to feat starve a fighter though)
I expect you could do something similar with aberrant bloodrager.
For merely tough but still able to put forth enough damage to be a threat I'd say Invulnerable rager barbarian and metamorph alchemist lead the pack.
And here I thought the thread was about tanks.
Panzer tanks
Abaraham Tanks
etc.
We have guns, and I thought the added tanks.
Sigh....
/cevah
And here I thought the thread was about tanks.
Panzer tanks
Abaraham Tanks
etc.We have guns, and I thought the added tanks.
Sigh....
/cevah
I can think of some tank tank builds. Mostly, it is a gunslinger with rather high AC- you don't really have to dedicate much- just use a hand cross bow and a buckler/light shield (so you can still reload).
The really funny part is when you get point blank master and crossbow mastery, and you can fire from melee range without any problems. Those are nice feats for a ranged character anyaway (no one likes getting in a giant's reach). Maybe add some cavalier levels and mount feats into that. You can eventually become a high mobility tank.
For reference to the original thread- this is still a valid pathfinder tank. Gunslingers have good fort, fantastic reflex, and they somewhat patch up the poor will save. Add some AC, and they are durable. They serve as "ranged damage dealers" as well as tanks, which still makes them a good target for enemies (even when you make things silly by removing AoOs as a factor).