Trying to Provoke Attacks

[TheDarkSaint]

I have a PC who wants to draw attention away from the party and have enemies focus on him. I could use some ideas on how to make that happen for him without some Deus Ex Macchina.

He's got a 4th level Crusader who's ready to go up to 5th. His dex is low, about 10, with a 10 in CHA. They are going to a town soon and some stat boosting eq will be avaliable, probably nothing over +3 for right now.

He'd like to stop enemies. We looked at a lock down for you, but with that low dex and being feat starved, it would probably mean blowing cash on Dex eq, dipping fighter 2 for feats to get to a lock down. (taking combat expertise, thicket of blades and stand still)

However, he's really interested in playing a sort of masochist fighter with Robloirs Gambit. The damage he'll take pairs up with his crusaders strike and he's got far more surviability than the other PC's. He wants all the badies to pound on him while the other 3 finish things off at range.

We thought about going Knight to provoke enemies to attack, but that means 4 levels of knight to get that ability and exta feats like Mounted Combat that aren't very flavorful or even useful to this dungeon run campaign.

I guess we're looking for options on how to answer this question.

How do we force enemies to go after this guy and leave the party alone? There are the role play options, but it is always nice to have a mechanic to back it up if something seems questionable or if we get stuck.

Ideas? PrC's? Feats?

Thanks!

[Xerlith]

Iron Guard's Glare?
I'm surprised he's not using it (or is he?). IN fact, any ability that penalizes NOT attacking him can go a long way in making the enemies do so.
There is the Goad feat, but...
We tend not to... speak about it.

[lsfreak]

Iron Guard's Glare is the best way, off the top of my head, to mechanically make someone want to attack him. There's also Overhwelming Assault (feat, PHB2), but it a) doesn't come into play until 15th level or higher and b) isn't all that great anyways. Karmic Strike and Robilar's Gambit make it easier to attack him, but it comes at a cost to the attacker and so is further in the realm of NPC-roleplaying that Iron Guards Glare imo. My personal preference for Robilar's builds is often to combine them with Stormguard Warrior to keep enemies from "knowing" what's going on; they won't attack once, get AoO'd, and choose to stop attacking, instead merely triggering extra damage for you on your attacks. But that alone requires like four feats to pull off (and a Dex he doesn't have), and if he doesn't want to dip warblade another two as well.

There's also getting immediate-action movement and using it to trigger AoO's on people moving to attack your allies, but that's not exactly something that's common. Off the top of my head, binders and using synchronicity abuse to get multiple readied actions per round would be the only way to really pull it off within the rules.

3.X doesn't really support "tanking," and what there is support for is either so bad everyone ignores it (Goad), or can only be done with a small handful of class- and/or feat-intensive builds, so that most tank builds look rather similar.

[ddude987]

When he hits level 5, thicket of blades stance, will help him stop opponents from getting to allies. He can take the feat stand still to stop opponents moving around. He should pick up a reach weapon too.