Reworking The Guardian Part 1: The Taunt Mechanic

[emptyptr_97]

Hi, the past few days I had to think about about the Guardian, some of the issues the class has as it is right now, and how I would go about fixing them. I had a lot of (What I think to be) cool ideas and now want to share them across a few posts on this sub. This post is one of those. I will first write down the ideas I had as rules, and then later add some comments explaining my thoughts and reasoning behind those ideas.

Disclaimer: This is not me saying that this is what the Guardian SHOULD BE. I also don't claim that these changes would even necessarily be for the better. My goals with these posts is not to dictate how to make the Guardian properly. My goals with these posts is discussing potential issues with the Class (many of which have already been pointed out, some of which I haven't seen discussed much), talking about potential ways of fixing them and discussing game design in general, but primarily, my goal with this is just to share and discuss some cool ideas I had because I love homebrewing :). And how knows, maybe a Paizo designer stumbles across one of these and takes some inspiration, but that would already be far more than I would hope to accomplish.

Here is a list of all parts:

Reworking The Guardian Part 1: The Taunt Mechanic
Reworking The Guardian Part 2: Class Options
Reworking The Guardian Part 3: Class Mechanics & Subclasses

This will be the shortest post. Here I just go into how I would handle the Taunt mechanic. I would introduce it as a separate condition.
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First I want to introduce the following as a condition:

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Taunted

If you are taunted, you are so by at least one given creature (Unless otherwise specified the creature that gave you the condition). You need to be aware of that creatures presence, otherwise you aren't taunted.

The taunted condition always includes a value. You take a circumstance bonus equal to this value to all your checks and DCs made to affect the creature you are taunted by with a hostile effect. This bonus does not apply however if it would turn a success into a critical success, or a failure into a critical failure.

In return, you take a circumstance penalty equal to your taunted value on checks and DCs made to affect any other creature you are not taunted by. If a hostile effect includes the creature you are taunted by in its area, this penalty can only turn successes into failures or failures into successes.
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Comments

I changed "Taunt" from being an ability to a condition because I want to base multiple other abilities and class features on the Taunt mechanic. I think you could get really creative with Feats and class options that way and I already had some ideas (As you can see in other posts of mine if you are interested).

I also made some changes to how Taunt works to make it less punishing to use, while still keeping its original risk/reward dynamic. These changes include the following:

* Making the bonus unable to cause crits: This has, in my opinion, multiple positive effects

** Firstly, it just makes it a lot less punishing to use while still playing into the "I take hits for you" fantasy. Being crit always sucks, even for a tank (Ask your Barbarian), but this makes it so that, while you will take more hits, those hits will be ones you generally can take with your high HP and resistances.

** Secondly, this synergies well with your innate resistances against damage, because resistances are a lot better against smaller chunks of damage.

* Making the condition an overall win: A +1 that can only turn normal failures into normal successes is half as impactful as a normal +1, meaning that overall the ability is more of a benefit than it is hindrance. This allows this condition to be used more as a core part of the class rather than a mechanic that only works in niche situations.

* Making the ability still be useful if an effect includes the Taunting creature: I don't think that including the Taunting creature in an effect should just completely turn off the ability. Firstly, this feels really bad as the Guardian, and secondly, this leads to a weird counter synergy, where you want to be close to your allies in order to use some of your other abilities, but also want to be as far away as possible in order to not include them in AOEs. I think having AOEs be a consideration that a Guardian must make (And thus having to balance between being close to allies and keeping a bit of distance) could be interesting, which is why I kept a less punishing form of it (As discussed earlier, what I did effectively halves the impact of that bonus), but honestly, I could also get behind completely removing that line too. It would also simplify this already quite complex condition.

[Mellored]

If your going to make Tauntes a condition, then it should be a basic action anyone can do.

And I don't see how a Guardian would do it better than a Bard or Swashbuckler.

IMO
Remove Taunt as a core feature (could keep it as a feat).

Replace with Titan Wrestler, scaling Athletics, and some kind of Immobilize / Trip / Grapple / Disarm.

I.e.

Contain Foes
You make it difficult for enemies to move away from you once they have gotten close. Until the beginning of your next turn or until you move, whichever comes first, foes within reach of the weapon you are wielding or your unarmed attack can’t use move actions to move outside of the reach of your weapon or unarmed attack unless they succeed in an Escape action against your Athletics DF.

[emptyptr_97]

Mellored wrote:

If your going to make Tauntes a condition, then it should be a basic action anyone can do.

And I don't see how a Guardian would do it better than a Bard or Swashbuckler.

IMO
Remove Taunt as a core feature (could keep it as a feat).

Replace with Titan Wrestler, scaling Athletics, and some kind of Immobilize / Trip / Grapple / Disarm.

I.e.

Contain Foes
You make it difficult for enemies to move away from you once they have gotten close. Until the beginning of your next turn or until you move, whichever comes first, foes within reach of the weapon you are wielding or your unarmed attack can’t use move actions to move outside of the reach of your weapon or unarmed attack unless they succeed in an Escape action against your Athletics DF.

I don't really see the problem with treating it as a condition to be honest. Less importantly, many, if not most conditions can not be applied be everyone (Although they can be applied by multiple classes, so I still see your point).

What I meant however, was not that it should be added as a core condition, but that I only want to treat it as a condition, while keeping it as a class feature. I don't see what speaks against just defining this condition in the "Keyword" section for example. If you wanted to you could in later books also seamlessly make it into a core condition and give other classes ways of inflicting/using it.

In regards to making it optional, that is basically exactly what I did. If you are interested, you can read more about it in part 2.

[Gortle]

Mellored wrote:

If you are going to make Taunted a condition, then it should be a basic action anyone can do.

And I don't see how a Guardian would do it better than a Bard or Swashbuckler.

Agreed

Mellored wrote:

IMO

Remove Taunt as a core feature (could keep it as a feat).

Replace with Titan Wrestler, scaling Athletics, and some kind of Immobilize / Trip / Grapple / Disarm.

I.e.

Contain Foes
You make it difficult for enemies to move away from you once they have gotten close. Until the beginning of your next turn or until you move, whichever comes first, foes within reach of the weapon you are wielding or your unarmed attack can’t use move actions to move outside of the reach of your weapon or unarmed attack unless they succeed in an Escape action against your Athletics DF.

Athletics in itself is not enough to justify a new class as we have so many athletics classes as it is. This stickiness is interesting though.

[Mellored]

Gortle wrote:

Mellored wrote:

If you are going to make Taunted a condition, then it should be a basic action anyone can do.

And I don't see how a Guardian would do it better than a Bard or Swashbuckler.

Agreed

Mellored wrote:

IMO

Remove Taunt as a core feature (could keep it as a feat).

Replace with Titan Wrestler, scaling Athletics, and some kind of Immobilize / Trip / Grapple / Disarm.

I.e.

Contain Foes
You make it difficult for enemies to move away from you once they have gotten close. Until the beginning of your next turn or until you move, whichever comes first, foes within reach of the weapon you are wielding or your unarmed attack can’t use move actions to move outside of the reach of your weapon or unarmed attack unless they succeed in an Escape action against your Athletics DF.

Athletics in itself is not enough to justify a new class as we have so many athletics classes as it is. This stickiness is interesting though.

Well it could be an Escape against your class DC.

But I still kind of feel like all the athletic maneuvers would fit really well with the guardian, and having it scales will let all the class feats interact with them (i.e. Flying Tackel)

[Bluemagetim]

What I thought might be a good way to go is apply the stickiness to anything with the guardians reach that deals damage to the guardian. Making that stickiness last for a turn.

This does make it reactive instead of proactive like hampering sweeps but the guardian has a build in way with intercept strikes to take damage for allies.

[Angwa]

Yeah, I would make the Guardian around stickiness as well.

In our playtests the only guardian build which seemed to work reasonably well were the ones doubling down on hampering strikes and ignoring taunt and intercepting strikes. This culminated in a completely ranged party with a Guardian who had Winter Sleet (now nerfed, alas)...

[emptyptr_97]

Bluemagetim wrote:

What I thought might be a good way to go is apply the stickiness to anything with the guardians reach that deals damage to the guardian. Making that stickiness last for a turn.

This does make it reactive instead of proactive like hampering sweeps but the guardian has a build in way with intercept strikes to take damage for allies.

I think the "sticky" Guardian should be one of many ways of playing the Guardian. Personally, I think that the scope of the class is too narrow right now and closer to an archetype than an actual class. The Guardian should, in my opinion, be an exploration of many protective styles, with players being able to choose how they protect their allies. Be that Taunting their enemies, Intercepting Strikes or, as you say, being a "sticky" wall between their enemies and their allies. If you are interested you can read the other parts of how I personally suggest to accomplish this.

With that being said, while reactive options are are good, I think we should still make sure that the Guardian has a ot of proactive options as well (Because that tends to be more engaging I think), which is why I made a slightly nerfed version of Hampering Sweeps a class feature instead of a feat.

[The-Magic-Sword]

emptyptr_97 wrote:

Hi, the past few days I had to think about about the Guardian, some of the issues the class has as it is right now, and how I would go about fixing them. I had a lot of (What I think to be) cool ideas and now want to share them across a few posts on this sub. This post is one of those. I will first write down the ideas I had as rules, and then later add some comments explaining my thoughts and reasoning behind those ideas.

Disclaimer: This is not me saying that this is what the Guardian SHOULD BE. I also don't claim that these changes would even necessarily be for the better. My goals with these posts is not to dictate how to make the Guardian properly. My goals with these posts is discussing potential issues with the Class (many of which have already been pointed out, some of which I haven't seen discussed much), talking about potential ways of fixing them and discussing game design in general, but primarily, my goal with this is just to share and discuss some cool ideas I had because I love homebrewing :). And how knows, maybe a Paizo designer stumbles across one of these and takes some inspiration, but that would already be far more than I would hope to accomplish.

Here is a list of all parts:

Reworking The Guardian Part 1: The Taunt Mechanic
Reworking The Guardian Part 2: Class Options
Reworking The Guardian Part 3: Class Mechanics & Subclasses

This will be the shortest post. Here I just go into how I would handle the Taunt mechanic. I would introduce it as a separate condition.
___________________________________________________________________________ ____________

First I want to introduce the following as a condition:...

Just wanted to chime in and say I like the idea of a taunted condition as something other abilities can hang directly off of.

[siegfriedliner]

I think a class feature that gave a +2 circumstance bonus to Hit taunted enemies that attack your allies and gave a +2 damage bonus to per dice (in a similar vein to implement empowerment) to such attacks would do wonders in patching the guardians accuracy issues and make taunt a core part of the the classes play (similiar to device stratergem for the investigator).

[emptyptr_97]

siegfriedliner wrote:

I think a class feature that gave a +2 circumstance bonus to Hit taunted enemies that attack your allies and gave a +2 damage bonus to per dice (in a similar vein to implement empowerment) to such attacks would do wonders in patching the guardians accuracy issues and make taunt a core part of the the classes play (similiar to device stratergem for the investigator).

Hmm, potentially a good idea, but I'd be careful with giving the Guardian an accuracy bonus, because it means that they will be MORE accurate than normal martials on most levels. Could see the damage thing as a main class feature though. Although I am not sure if there is a good way of adding that to my homebrew version, because I pushed for Taunt being an optional class feature.

The thing is, I consciously chose to have the Guardian be a little worse at attacking and to not speed up his attack progression (Although I do think they should level up not more than 2 levels behind other classes, I do think is fitting for the Guardian to actually be a little slower). I think its thematic for the class to be super hard to hit at the levels at which other martials would be better at attacking. Assuming that that specifically is actually a problem then you should just trade back the normal attack progression for the faster armor progression instead of compensating indirectly imo. Otherwise its an intentional tradeoff and the Guardian should not be as good at attacking.

[emptyptr_97]

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Just wanted to chime in and say I like the idea...

:)