Playing with a "Meat Shield" character

[ZorroGames]

After a game where my Mountain Dwarf Monk was the nearest thing to a fighter I started looking at a "Meat Shield" character for some durability in the party.

This build is just for short term use since this is still an ad hoc group for AL beginners but I used Variant Human with the Durable Feat at start up.

ST 15+1
DE 14
CO 14+1+1 from feat
IN 8
WI 10
CH 8

Chainmail, shield, flail (have the miniature,) Light CB, Folk Hero background...

Right now I have penciled in Dueling style but since it is designed to buy time for flashier characters to deal "death and destruction" I think I may switch to Defense.

Since this is a "fit the need" character that I may not even keep longterm what are your thoughts on the design?

[GlenSmash!]

You could go with Protection Style over Dueling. It's very thematic to cover your friend with your shield to protect him. The drawback is that it only works for one attack, so it loses a little steam as higher level monsters get more attacks.

Defense on the other hand works all the time. I like it for this reason.

Durable is not one of my favorite feats. I'd personally go with Heavy Armor Master over it on a Fighter.

That being said, my favorite Meat Shields are Barbarians. Using Reckless Attack practically screams "Hit me, not the other guys!"

[Specter]

Needless to say, a Barbarian dip would be nice.

Good feats to look for are Tough and Resilient (Wisdom).

[Sigreid]

Shield master is good for avoiding damage on a successful dex save.

[Hairfish]

For a tank wearing heavy armor, there's not much reason to have 14 dex. The small boost to initiative is nice, but you should generally be wading into melee instead of making ranged attacks. On that note, if you were in a situation where you'd make ranged attacks instead of closing with the enemy, you'd want a bow over a crossbow because you'd have to burn a feat in order to fire the crossbow more than once per turn.

As others have noted, barbarians make pretty good tanks. They get advantage on most dex saves against damage, making them a great candidate for the Shield Master feat. Go bear totem if you really want to focus on tanking (which works well in AL, where a lot of encounters give additional damage types to enemy melee attacks) or wolf totem if there are a lot of other melee PCs (the best defense is a good offense). The other totems don't have much to offer for tanks and berserker is more for offtank/dps against bosses. Battlerager (from SCAG) is good if you boost con, giving you 3-5 temp hp (effectively doubled against weapon damage) every turn.