If you peruse any RPG forums, you’ve perhaps come across more than a few threads about wanting to be a “tank”. You’ll see builds where you have AC approaching triple digits, saving throws not seen on anything less than CR40, and Hit Points to outlast the heat death of the universe. However, this is only one aspect of tanking. Anyone familiar with MMOs knows there’s a lot more to it than simply being able to take a hit. You need to be able to be self-sufficient, durable, flexible, and you need to give those baddies a reason to hit you instead of those tasty squishies in the back.

The Holy Trinity

If you’re ever concerned about what roles need to be filled in a combat-oriented party, think only of the Holy Trinity. You have your damage dealers that make the enemy numbers go down until they take a nap. You have healers that keep the damage dealers alive, and you have the tank that lets the damage dealers focus on their job by keeping the enemies off them. This is what we’ll focus on accomplishing in this article.

The ABCs of Tanking

For those of you familiar with MMOs, many of these terms will be familiar, so please bear with me, as I will assume the reader is channeling their inner Jon Snow.

Tanks need three fundamental attributes to play their role effectively. First, they need to be able to take a hit. This means absorbing, dodging, blocking, and/or shrugging off damage and crowd control that comes their way. They also need to be able to generate threat and be as self-sufficient as possible so the healers of your group can focus on keeping your damage dealers alive.

Threat

Your primary job as a tank is to generate threat. In video games, this is done through abilities that specifically generate high amounts of threat or “taunt” abilities that automatically cause the target to attack you, such as the Warrior’s Taunt in World of Warcraft. Most tabletop RPGs don’t have this sort of mechanic, because each enemy is in control of the Game Master, who can choose how they act, regardless of how many racial epithets your Fighter throws their way. You might be able to get the mindless zombies or rabid wolves to attack you, but the cunning wizard or stealthy assassin has no such inclination to throw themselves at the walking wall of steel.

So how do you generate threat in a tabletop RPG? The same way you would in a real fight. Make it dangerous for your enemies to ignore you. You can dish out a respectable amount of damage yourself, lockdown your enemies with crowd control, or bring something else to the fight that would make you a priority target. Combat maneuvers like tripping and grappling, spells that debuff, paralyze, or slow enemies, and other abilities that limit your enemies’ movement and offensive capabilities are all viable options for making yourself a threatening target.

A big part of bringing threat also means you need to be able to position yourself correctly. Sometimes merely standing between your allies and the enemies is enough, but other times the enemies will have abilities that make them difficult to stand in the way of. In these cases, consider how mobile you are and what you need to do to deal with enemies you are likely to encounter in the campaign. If there are a lot of flying enemies, consider investing in ranged weapons, spells, or even flight yourself. If you are dealing with a lot of ranged characters or spellcasters, consider how you are going to close the gap and interfere with their plans to kite and outrange you.

Absorbing Damage

Now that you’ve got the enemy’s attention, you’d best be able to handle all the pointy ends that are looking to find their way into your fleshy bits. You’ll also want to have tools to deal with the crowd control from your enemies that will eventually come your way and prevent you from doing your job as a tank.

In D&D, being able to handle the damage coming your way can take many forms. Armor Class to deflect the physical blows, saving throws to avoid the spells and abilities, self-healing to lighten your healer’s burden, and immunities so you can stride through the flames unscathed.

What to Play?

Most of my experience comes from Pathfinder and 5e D&D, and while this advice will be system specific, you can take cues from what is said here to inform your decision about what to play to be an effective tank in other systems as well. Both D&D 5e and Pathfinder’s base classes function effectively similar, so all of the following section is applicable to both systems.

There is no question here. Paladins are the uncontested kings of tanking. They’ve got enormous pools of HP, incredible Saving Throws, spells that gives them a good amount of utility, mounts that gives them a wide variety of movement capabilities, respectable damage, and more self-healing than most healing classes. You also get a decent amount of immunities to some of the nastier effects that may be coming your way on top of other ways to eliminate them in yourself and others.

Coming in a close second is the Barbarian. You’ve again got the huge health pool combined with some pretty decent saving throws that are both further enhanced by Rage. You also output a monstrous amount of damage for how durable you are, making you nearly impossible to ignore on the battlefield. The greatest weakness of the Barbarian is the lack of armor leading to them being a bit of a burden to healers in slug-fests without any way of efficiently sustaining themselves. Their movement options are also fairly mediocre.

Druids and Clerics, while having less HP and being a “caster” class, also make very effective tanks with tons of spells that limit your enemies’ capabilities to do damage, self-sustain through healing, and good saving throws.

Fighters can perform the role of tank effectively, with a great amount of potential utility with their combat feats, but suffer from the same problems as the barbarian with regards to certain saving throws and movement.

I won’t go into all the options available to what I’ve presented here or the plethora of other tank-capable classes in supplemental material, but I’m certain at this point that you are well equipped to evaluate them on your own. Good luck in your games, and keep those squishies safe!

Chris Sampson

The Game Doctor