How to Play a Tank in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

before we jump into this week's episode a quick message from our sponsors this week's episode was sponsored by rune Smith and elder man see they have just launched their brand-new Kickstarter which is live now until March 20th 2024 stibbles codex of companions rune Smith is a fellow youtuber and create some amazing content you can check out over on his channel I'm sure that his Kickstarter is going to be a great companion piece to the amazing content he already puts out this new tome for the fifth edition of the world's greatest role-playing game brings over 70 new creatures to the game all of which can be companions for your player characters the book is packed with new feats spells monsters including feats which give almost every class the option to gain a powerful familiar or companion which can aid you in combat exploration and more the team at elder man Z has got some amazing and adorable artwork for some of these creatures including the Banzai nth so check out stibbles codex of companions which is live now on Kickstarter until March 20th 2020 you can follow the links in the description below to get in on the Kickstarter and if you happen to miss out those links we'll also have the latest news and updates for how you can pick up the book after the Kickstarter is all over and now onto this week's episode greetings my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything Dungeons and Dragons including advice for players and guides for Dungeon Master's we upload new videos every Thursday so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are taking an in-depth look at how to play a tank as your player character in Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition we're gonna look at a lot of the tactical options to survive the enemies and protect your allies we're gonna look at different classes spells and feats that you may want to consider when building a tank in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition there is so much to discuss for this essential and classic archetype so let's get rolling so as we go in to discuss a tank what is a tank and how does it work in the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons well a tank just isn't a big giant modern war machine with a huge battle cannon and a ton of armor but the metaphor is pretty apt the term tank comes from a lot of war games and online role-playing games and does kind of flow through the worlds of tabletop gaming as well and a tank basically describes the toughest beefiest member of a army or a party of characters the one who's going to be on the front lines of battle absorbing enemy attacks possibly dishing out some damage as well but the key element of the tank is that they are that protective force that is the shield between the enemy attacks and the really vulnerable parts of an army or party tanks are made popular in RPG video games and you can find that archetype in almost any type of video game that you play that has character selections there's always the tank class but the tank class in a video game differs a lot from the tank class in Dungeons & Dragons and that mostly has to do with the fact that there is a DM controlling the monsters when you play Dungeons & Dragons meaning that the monsters don't have to follow the same rules and guidelines that they would in a video game and instead can be much more tactful and have a human brain controlling them tanking works in video games because the enemy AI is Dror dinerral ii predictable most games use an agro mechanic to determine how the computer-controlled enemies will attack the player characters and this allows that classic tank healer damage dealer trifecta to emerging computer role-playing games this doesn't work in Dungeons and Dragons because the dungeon master can up end the entire thing well prior editions of Dungeons & Dragons particularly 4th edition but to some extent third edition have explored mechanics similar to an aggro mechanic and tried to foster this level of predictability so that a tank to be that defensive bulwark very little of that remains in 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons so tanking and D&D 5 e is much more about surviving enemy attacks and making smart positioning and using really good tactics to control the field of battle we've broken the tank into two separate guidelines that we're gonna talk about in depth the first one being survivability your ability to survive taking hits and being able to withstand the frontline of combat we're also going to talk about protecting your allies which is the tanks other job on the battlefield being able to close off the lines of combat stopping the enemies from getting to your allies and controlling the battlefield finally while tanking is a very combat focused role never forget how can a role-playing such as intimidations threats or playing on your enemy's ego can be a factor in Dungeons & Dragons something that you can't rely on in a computer role-playing game let's take a look at the best ways to survive your enemies when we look at 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons there are a lot of different classes to choose from 12 in the core rulebook 13 now if you include the artificer and when you look at all of them there are some key components that you want to look specifically for when choosing which one of these is going to make the best tank and the first thing that I think we want to pay attention to is hit points absolutely I think a tank needs to have a very high hit point pull whether you're getting this high hit points from a really high hit die like the d-10 of the fighters Rangers and paladin's or even the d12 of the Barbarian it's gonna get you a lot of way there but you're also gonna want a really good Constitution score keep in mind that there are classes out there that actually get bonuses to their hip points beyond just the hit die and the Constitution score things like the hill dwarf get extra bonuses to their hit points which can be really helpful when you're designing a tank the reason why hit points are so important is simple if you're dead and dying on the ground you can't protect your allies if you don't have the hit points to survive enemy attacks you're not gonna be able to stay in the game aside from hit points the other thing that's gonna make a major difference in your ability to withstand attacks is going to be your armor class you need to make sure that you're capable of wearing really decent armor so that you can bump that AC up as high as you can having a lot of hit points is great but if your armor class can stop you from reducing your hip points anyway then that's even better having both of these things high makes both of them better it should never be a choice whether you want a higher armor class or high hit points if you can get both which you can many classes like fighters and barbarians are capable of wearing full plate armor or even half plate armor and slapping on a shield and while there are other class features like unarmored defense and other ways of getting very high armor class using your dexterity score in general I find that the highest AC is almost always achieved with plate armor a shield and perhaps other magical effects there are some other really complex ways for very high level barbarians to make the most of unarmored defense to get a very high armor class but you want to know the fastest way to AC 20 it's played armor and a shield but every solid piece of armor always has a gap in it and that is going to be your saving throws and this is the bane of some tanks you need to have good saving throws because aside from being able to get pummeled with weapons eventually you're going to be dealing with spells and area of effect damage and different creatures that can breathe fire or throw acid there's all sorts of other types of damage that can happen and you as the tank need to be able to stand up to it I hear from Dungeon Master's all the time who are intimidated by the high AC of tank characters the after mentioned magic full plate plus magic shield yielding a C's in the low to mid 20s being almost impossible to hit and so let's say have you think gonna look at that tanks dexterity saving throw lately because there's a lot of damage dealing spells and other effects from fireball to Dragon's Breath to lightning bolt spells and even a few can trips that target not the armor class but have the foe make a dexterity saving throw these effects can deal a lot of damage and up and the entire tanks defensive strategy so not only gives a tank have to have a plan for the very scary wisdom and charisma saving throws you've got to have a plan for your dexterity saving throws to because you're gonna take a lot of conventional damage that way there are some great feats that you can take to really sure up your defenses as a tank I'm thinking of things like resilient and lucky just to make sure that you can make those clutch saving throws yeah I'm be really tempted with any tank that you're probably gonna have proficiency and Constitution saving throws but you may want to consider taking a resilient for both your wisdom and dexterity because both of those things will be your undoing of course neither of those things will save you if someone tries to cast the banishment spell on you and considering you probably dumped your charisma score you might be out of luck on that one so watch out and hope here that you're friendly wizard brought counterspell there's a lot of other feats as well that you may want to consider to shore up your defenses one of my favorites if you're playing a tank is to take toughness which will just increase that hit point maximum even further aside from feats to shore up your defenses you also can look at some of the abilities like the fighters indomitable or one of the best the paladin's aura of protection which can really make those saving throws much better yeah I think that for paladins really have this great balance between their armor class their hit points and their saving throws which the barbarians kind of focus a little bit more highly on their raw toughness with hit points fighters on the other hand don't really have either rules they have to get by on just the indomitable feature fortunately fighters get more feets so spend those sweets on taking a resilient there's a few other perks that you may want to be on the lookout for to help you survive as a tank in combat one of the most iconic options to look for is damage resistance if you can find a way to build a tank that has resistance to fire damage or poison damage or necrotic damage these are three of the most likely options for you to get pummeled with in combat throughout the entire campaigns that you play in Dungeons & Dragons being able to gain resistance to these brings your survivability up exponentially of course most of the time as a tank you're also going to be taking weapon damage from bludgeoning piercing and slashing weapons and there is one easy and surefire way to gain resistance to these three most common damage types and that is take a couple levels of barbarian and go into a barbarian rage taking only half damage from the three most common types of weapon damage in the entire game is like doubling your hit point pool of course barbarians can further specialize by taking the bare totem barbarian gaining resistance to all damage that isn't psychic well they're raging so the bare totem barbarian is a very big frontrunner from for this methodology of just having a massive pool of hit points to survive this onslaught of damage again once you specialize so deeply into resisting or soaking up that much damage though that's when I get really worried that something's gonna start targeting your saving throws if that raging barbarian is taking half damage on everything fails a saving throw against dominate person well that's a whole new ballgame and now your tank is going to be a problem this is where you might want to be on the lookout for effects that protect your character against being charmed frightened and even possibly exhausted these are really really rare in the game but there are some class features in the barbarian and paladin subclasses that do give you advantage on saving throws against these kind of effects if not outright immunity you may also have to turn to your allies to help protect you with buff spells to protect you against these kind of effect sometimes a lot of these options go no further than picking the right race to play a tank with you can get some damage resistance by playing a tea fling or a samar there's a lot of different options in there to gain certain resistances that can really help out with your survivability I would put more points in for the dwarf who comes packed with poison resistance and if you're playing the hill dwarf getting the extra hit points that's a lot in one package it doesn't matter what class you chose now you might be tempted to shore up your weaknesses with your dexterity saving throws by multi classic or picking up abilities from the rogue or the monk or the Ranger like uncanny dodge and evasion these are effects that allow you to take less damage when you succeed a dexterity saving throw or even outright ignore the damage entirely I don't necessarily know if multi classing into rogue as a tank type character is the best course of action unless you have a very specific plan in mind but what you can do is consider taking the shield Master feet which does have a reaction ability that allows you to take no damage when you succeed a dexterity saving throw so for example when you get fireballed you're just gonna be able to shrug off all that damage if you succeed the save there is one other thing that can give you a slight edge as a survivor on the battlefields of Dungeons and Dragons and that is healing now we have a full video discussing healing right up over there so make sure to check it out keep in mind the healing is not efficient in Dungeons & Dragons however there are a few great options for certain classes that will give you a little bit of a healing boost to yourself giving you that edge to stay alive when you need it things like the paladin's lay on hands or the fighters second wind using these clutch abilities in the right moment will ease the pressure on your party's healer assuming you have one and allow you to stay in that game for a little bit longer I recommend using self healing abilities in a proactive manner don't wait until you are close to falling to use them use them when you're at about 50% hit points or more because if you are at that threshold where a couple good attacks or a critical hit could take you out of the fight it's too late now that we know how to survive on the battlefield we need to know how to protect our allies that's the main reason for bringing a tank onto the battlefield anyway is to keep everybody else alive and there's a few key components that we're gonna want to talk about to decide how to build the best tank ultimately as a tank you want to leverage your survival abilities because you are the one that's able to take the brunt of the enemy attacks you're more vulnerable allies like the rogue the wizard perhaps even the cleric can't stand up to the amount of damage that you are capable suffering so you want to be on the frontlines so that you take that damage instead but if you're not on the frontlines or the enemies can really easily get around you to your squishy allies all that toughness that you brought doesn't mean anything in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition there aren't a whole lot of options to get the enemies to focus fire on you specifically but there are a few abilities that you can look for to help out with drawing them towards you or punishing them if they don't and one of the first things we want to talk about is in our opinion one of the greatest combinations of feats that you can have in Dungeons & Dragons especially if you're trying to defend your party and that is the combination of Sentinel and pull our master in the November 2018 Arata the poll our master feet had the one-handed spear added to the eligible list of weapons this allows a tank character to benefit both from Sentinel pull our master well wielding a shield and a spear giving that classical archetype of the Spartan warrior or the ranked mass of shields and putting that front and center in Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition this is a fantastic combination to use as a frontline combatant whether you're playing a tank that's a fighter barbarian or a paladin not to mention that if you compare these with the before-mentioned shield master you now have a really really awesome combination combining Sentinel pull our master and shield master gives you a lot of options for how to do with incoming damage now you might be having trouble deciding what to do with your bonus action and reaction with all of these options but still you'll always have a solution to most problems if you choose correctly this is the key element of tanking that many people get wrong you need to be able to adapt for many situations when you take Sentinel pull our master and shield master you're left with a plethora of options for what your character can do with their bonus action action and reaction that's the point it means that no matter what your enemies do you will have a response if your enemies choose to come in and engage you you can use polar masters to attack them with your reaction if they try to get away from you you'll be able to use your regular opportunity attack to attack them and stop them dead in their tracks thanks to Sentinel if you just want to pummel your enemies with damage you'll be able to use polar master to stab them an extra time with your bonus action if you need to keep your enemies in place you can use shield master to knock them prone or shove them giving them a harder time to get to your allies XANA thar's guide to everything introduced the path of the ancestral guardian for barbarians which gives them a lot of cool options for punishing enemies and defending their allies similarly there's many battle master maneuvers such as repost and trip attack that fighters can use to help control their enemies on the battlefield as well don't discount the paladins who can really get in on this action as well with some amazing spells like thunder smite their ability to Throwdown smites can really just end combats one of the key elements of being a tank is that you yourself need to be a threat on the battlefield if your enemies are ignoring you you need to be a problem for them being able to dish out a good amount of damage at the right time to the right enemy is also very important to protecting your allies and surviving yourself an enemy can't do much to you if they're dead there are spells like compelled duel and battle master maneuvers like doting attack that somewhat force an enemy to fight you but you might just be able to roleplay that out and go to your enemies by acting like a braggart and brute on the battlefield very important aspect of playing a tank in Dungeons & Dragons is controlling the battlefield with your movement and positioning this is something that a lot of people don't take into account when building a tank they're just looking for hip points survivability and getting into the front lines but being able to be in the right place on the battlefield at the right time positioning yourself into a bottleneck or stopping lines of fire to your allies are all very important to playing a good tank it's not about seizing the enemy's position it's about seizing the most beneficial position on the battlefield itself and that's where you want to pay attention to the lay of the land and the terrain that you are in when you are fighting if you're in a cramped dungeon using the fact that there are closed dungeon corridors doors and columns to block areas where your enemies want to move through if you are fighting in a cavern system what are the key entrances and exits not every battle is just fought in an open field and even the ones that are things like height positioning and even difficult ground can still be a factor in determining where your enemies can go as a tank you're not necessarily wanting to rush forward to engage your enemy where they are that's fighting on their terms find the best position on the battlefield by looking at where your opponents want to go stop them from going where they want to go that is the key to controlling the board just like in war the key here is to drop the best battle line and this is also where teamwork is going to play a major part you being the tank on the battlefield you will be relying on your allies to get you into an advantageous position keep you alive and keep you fighting more so you want to know where your allies want to go if you have a rogue or a ranger or a monk who is a skirmisher type character they do want to get into the backline they want to be the ones that are going after the enemy wizards if you have a cleric or a college of Valor bard or another kind of enough frontline character they might be able to help you hold that battle line and finally you want to know what spells your wizard has in their arsenal spells like web and wall of force can create those bottlenecks if they don't already exist on the battlefield so part of being a really good tank is being a really good commander and knowing how to use your allies abilities and working with them to get them where they need to be so sometimes in a battle as a tank you don't necessarily just want to rush forward as close as you can to the enemies because maybe your allies don't want to go there I have seen a barbarian single-handedly take down a legion of giants because of well placed walls of fire and walls of force it was really cool to see and just shows you how well some simple teamwork can benefit the whole party I mean my favorite is leaving the barbarian inside the force gauge the playpen a lot of Tanks have low mobility and low initiative and I think that as a tank you need to have a trick up your sleeve as well if you're a paladin with the oath of vengeance you have misty step and dimensioned or if you are a totem barbarian you can take it higher levels animal totems that give you the ability to fly so having some kind of ace in the hole I think is really important often this is where I think a lot of people underestimate the eldritch night because the eldritch Knight can bring things like the shield spell and absorb elements and misty step as well these things can save them and be that ace in the hole that a tank needs not only that but if we're looking at some of the classes that get access to a lot of feats like the fighter or really just if you're looking at feats in general taking something like alert to deal with that low initiative score oftentimes as a tank you want to be going close to the beginning of combat so that you can get into that advantageous position before the rest of your party has to maneuver around or maybe you can get your hands on a sentinel shield which will also help out with that initiative role for those strengths based characters who have a +12 initiative not every battle is going to be a bunch of orcs and odors run straight at your party and you need to be able to adapt to new situations particularly at higher levels of play where enemies are gonna start pulling out all the stops and using some really really nasty tricks on you one of the major downfalls of a tank on the battlefield is ranged attacks and flying foes when you're setting out to create your tank you need to keep in mind that you will be facing enemies who will be pummeling you with ranged attacks or up in the air where you can't reach them you should try to have a strategy against these or at least tell your allies that this is your weakness so that they can help strategize how to approach a battle with these types of enemies yeah a bunch of archers standing on a castle wall are not going to be something that you can protect the party wizard from so someone else in the group is probably going to have to be the one that deals with that problem because you can't get there you can't say them from that worse than ranged attacks and flight higher level out enemies might even have teleportation abilities and they can just zip right past you and start beating up the wizard so if you're worried about all of these weaknesses you might think that it's a good idea to group your party close together so that you can protect all of them until people start hitting you with fireballs another area of effect spells and you realize that this was a terrible idea and this is also one of the things to look out for at some point in your years of playing Dungeons and Dragons you're gonna get to fight a dragon and you're gonna have to deal with their dragon's breath oftentimes parties like to spread out so that two characters can't be hit by the dragon's breath but this means that now the dragon can fly around and pick off individual player characters because you can't protect them from that so you need to be aware of your enemy's mobility and their ability to use area-of-effect attacks sometimes at the same time it's also important to note that it is really hard to fight what you can't see and this is why darkness and invisibility are other things to be aware of when you're playing a tank because they will make it extremely difficult to protect your allies against something that you don't know is there sometimes invisibility can allow enemies to escape from you because you can't make opportunity attacks against creatures that you can't see if a foe magics up a bunch of their allies they become invisible they might be just people run right past you using that invisibility as effectively as teleportation can sometimes you might face a dreaded enemy who is both flying and invisible and has ranged attacks they do exist and it can't happen what are you gonna do about that situation be on the lookout for spells that have mind-altering or control effects or can incapacitate you these can be the death of any tank all of these things are dire situations and they are things that you alone as a tank can probably not protect your party against so you will need to make a plan for this with your allies working together around the tank is so essential to making this archetype work you can invest so many feats you can take every single defensive feat in the game and be a pinnacle of survivability but if your allies do not work with you as the tank you're just gonna be rushing forward into battle and the enemy is either gonna ignore you completely or chew you up like scrap metal so at the end of the day we've talked about a lot of different options but which combination of races classes abilities feats subclasses is going to make the best tank Monti and I have kind of decided on ours what did you go with I think a mountain dwarf fighter barbarian would be my pick I think that I would go on the barbarian side maybe take two or three levels of barbarian and go with the bear totem just to get the flat damage resistance to everything and then from there I would take a bunch of levels in battle master fighter so that I could get pull our master Sentinel shield master and then start packing up either the highest ability scores I can get in my strength or Constitution or maybe shore up my resilience is with the resilient feet I went a little bit of a different route and I was really interested in the mountain dwarf as my option but the variant human and being able to pick up more feets just really spoke to me I went with a variant human paladin oath of vengeance who took the Sentinel Pole our master has the spear and the shield shield master and this way I can dish out a decent amount of damage I could throw out those mites but I can also block enemy attacks throw down a little touch of healing when it's needed and really I feel like the Paladin is the protector out of all the different classes you haven't shoes the Barbarian the fighter and the Paladin make classic tanks no matter what subclass you choose but I have seen some people do some really interesting things with circle of the moon druids as well as blade singer wizards and i'm starting to hear some rumblings of people doing some cool things with artificers as well so I'm very curious about that war forged might be another really cool race option to to throw into the mix for either of these I have been speculating on a war forged paladin for some time and I'm very interested to see just how tanky I can make them yeah I think there's some real great options and as long as you follow those core premises when building your tank think about how you're going to survive but also how you're going to protect your allies and never forget that it is a yin and yang between these two elements if you invest too heavily in your character in one you might be compromising your ability to do the other and a tank needs balance between these two things in order to succeed in D&D v e so this has been a look at playing a tank in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition if there's any concepts or ideas that you feel we missed tell us about them in the comments below if you're enjoying our show please consider supporting our work on patreon you can find out how by following the links in the description below don't forget to check out our live play shadows of dragon hime which airs Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we have plenty more guides on how to play the various archetypes and Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition right over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 377,560

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: j-ulXqChsdg

Length: 29min 54sec (1794 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 20 2020