Tank you very much: Protecting your friends with the power of swords


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Lets talk about Tanking in P1 and P2.

First thing I want to get out of the way is that I am not talking about aggro management as has been introduced to us by MMOs and other such games. We've never really had aggro in Pathfinder, and if we did it would be a mind-effecting effect so would not be that reliable :p

However, Pathfinder 1 has always had the ability to play a tank in the sense of a martial controller. A spell-casting controller makes areas of the battlefield unpleasant for enemies to enter. For example: casting grease means that enemies need to move away from it or risk repeated reflex saves. A martial controller accomplishes this with by managing 2 factors:

1. Being able to take more punishment then the average PC
2. Making the area near them unpleasant to be in

A straightforward barbarian build is partway a tank already. Enemies don't want to stand near the barbarian because he will full attack them, they don't want to even pass near him to get to softer targets because he will AoO them. A more tank focused build might wield a reach weapon and have ways of preventing enemies from leaving their threatened area. E.g. they might take the Stand Still feat.

However it's accomplished, the existence of a tank role makes combat more interesting because positioning is more important for everyone involved.

Now let's get to some playtest experiences! (spoilers for Doomsday Dawn 1 ahead)

I wanted to build a tank for this adventure since I like playing martial characters and I like battlefield control. For the first few encounters I played a monk, but the last two encounters took place on a different day and my DM let me switch out for a fighter.

As a monk I was disappointed in my ability to control pretty much anything. The lack of an attack of opportunity was really striking and the lack of AC meant that I was more of a glass cannon.

So since I missed AoOs, I figured I'd switch to a fighter with a reach weapon! It felt pretty good to wade into the middle of a bushel of goblins and have them care that I was there. Walking up to a spell-caster meant that he couldn't avoid an attack from me and cast a spell (because he would need to Step twice). Unfortunately, I was still basically as squishy as anyone else. My AC was maybe a point or two higher then other people and I had a few more HP, but there was no way I could reliably survive a round of focused fire from 4 goblins and 1 commando. Since I was the only front-liner in the party and I won initiative I was almost guaranteed to be focused down. I only survived because the goblin caster got greedy and ignored me to cast burning hands at my allies.

In the final boss fight of the dungeon I tried to protect my comrades by going mano-a-mano with the vampire/hobgoblin thing. My AoOs again felt good for taking out the dire rats, but the boss's attack bonus and damage was so high that I went down in two rounds. He then proceeded to fight 1v4 against the rest of the party and kill them all.

Conclusions
I think that there is not enough of an ability to specialize in different areas of combat. Everyone has about the same AC, ability to hit and to a lesser extent damage. For long term interest in the game, I feel it is critical for there to be different ways to contribute to combat.

I kind of like that AoOs are rare because more creatures provoke them, though I think that's more to do with the 5ft-step not being free then anything about who gets to use them. I think that every class interested in being in the thick of things needs a way to control the area around them. This could be something unique to each class, or the attack of opportunity, but it has to come online at level 1 because it is critical to the tactics of pathfinder combat.

Finally, I think as it stands now a pathfinder 2 party needs 2 front-liners that can trade enemy focus between them with careful positioning. My friend also suggested that a cleric with the Healing Hands feat could sort of do the same thing by using his absurd amount of free healing to keep the party's primary tank up and kicking round after round. This isn't really good or bad. Just an observation.

This may change at higher levels but because progression is pretty linear my intuition says it should remain true. We will see :)

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