Deathless Tank Help?

[Jergmo]

Hello, Playgrounders. I will be playing in a game with some coworkers in which I will be playing a Deathless character, from Book of Exalted Deeds. The basic premise is my character is a knight which served a royal line, and was reanimated after the seal on his mausoleum was cracked (per instruction).

I need to make a character which fulfills the role of tank, through high survivability, control, and mobility.

There's no ToB or psionics, and no Dragon Magazine, which puts some limitations on the character build. I'm considering a shield-based fighter dip with... something? For things like Agile Shield Defense, Shield Charge, and the like.

Do I have better options on my plate, and what should I consider taking other than a 2-dip in fighter? My starting level will be 3, and I have the following attribute rolls: 11, 16, 9, 17, 15. I had another 9, but since I have no Constitution score, I just dropped one of the lowest numbers. I was thinking about Str 17, Dex 16, Con --, Int 15, Wis 11, Cha 9.

[Karl Aegis]

What exactly is a "role of tank"? Is that like being an animated object or a cardboard box with sand in it or something?

[Jergmo]

What exactly is a "role of tank"? Is that like being an animated object or a cardboard box with sand in it or something?

It's kind of like you're the clown at the mini golf course in Happy Gilmore.

[Karl Aegis]

It's kind of like you're the clown at the mini golf course in Happy Gilmore.

Okay, yeah, just animate a miniature golf course and you're set.

[John Longarrow]

Two of your biggest challenges will be getting enough HP to survive (no con, destroyed at 0) along with some way of provide a decent threat without getting squashed. Non-living melee isn't normally a good option because your role requires you to get hit and you don't have most of the resources to take those hits (high con).

I'd grab improved toughness as soon as you can. It gives you an extra HP per HD so it at least scales with you. Its not a great benefit but your stuck averaging 6.5 hp per level. Second would be figuring out what you'll be doing for the party besides melee. Figure out what else your party needs and work from there.

NOTE: For cheese, check with your DM about Barbarian and Rage. If he's fine with you being immune to fatigue rage wouldn't be bad on a non-living character.

I'd also check with your DM about the whole "Good will save, poor BAB" part of the entry. See if they will let you get the BAB and saves of the class(es) you take.

[MisterKaws]

Since 3.5 only has a small number of Taunt-like mechanics, with all of them being crap, tanks rely on methods to stop the enemies from reaching their allies, instead of methods to force them to not target their allies. There are pretty much only two ways to do this:


Stopping them from moving: The more complex one. You need to optimize your Trip, Bull Rush or Grapple up the wazoo to do this, and then find a bunch of feats to let you do those in pretty much any situation (knockback, knockdown, et cetera). Two of those - Grapple and Bull Rush - are out in your case because of your background as a K***ht(Unless you want to be a Goliath k***ht, which would be odd), and Trip is kind of meh without either abusing Tibbit or ToB Flashstep tactics to back it up. Also, casters do it better, because Forcecage.

Stopping them from living: The less... civilized one. Some guy in these boards also said something similar, but it was related to mages, and I have a really bad memory, so I don't remember it; I digress. The gist of it is: "If you have time to immobilize people and stop them from getting to your friends, why don't you just stab them in the guts and stop them from living?" Basically, being an ubercharger who kills all the frontliners in two rounds is even more effective than being someone who just holds them in place till the Wizard has time to cast Sleep or something on them. This tactic would just need some ubercharging optimization, and nothing else. You could even do this as a mounted combat build, which suits a k***ht pretty well.