Stickiest tank out of the box?

[jaappleton]

(Let me start by saying I’m specifically looking at non-Paladins. My group already has one, standard build for the nova. I’m looking to TANK)

We all know about feats like Sentinel.

We all know part of being a tank is high AC and high HP.

What I see many subclasses miss is the stickiness. A reason to target the tank as opposed to the squishy. Since not every fight is in a 5’ wide hallway, there needs to be a reason to target the tank. Right?

Ancestral Guardian Barb is pretty darn good, right out of the box.

Cavalier is pretty alright.

Any other ideas? What am I missing?

[nickl_2000]

Barbarian 2/ Moon Druid X with athletics proficiency is probably the biggest, stickiest, monster of a tank out there.

You get double the HP due to raging, you get decent AC due to barbarian unarmored ACs, you can be large or huge sized to literally get in the way between the squishies and the baddies. Also, the large/huge beasts high strength, good athletics skills, and advantage due to rage you can grapple pretty much everything in the MM.

[Bosh]

Don't underestimate grapplers. Hard to attack the squishies if you can't move.

[micahaphone]

You say no paladins yet oath of vengeance gives you a CD that lets you either root an opponent or halve their speed, and at 7 the ability to jog right alongside someone who's running away from you. Hold Person and Misty Step, too.


I personally love ancestral barb for being the "hey lookit me" tank. Double points for going tavern brawler to grapple more efficiently. Keep some hatchets on hand to throw for ranged aggro.

[jaappleton]

You say no paladins yet oath of vengeance gives you a CD that lets you either root an opponent or halve their speed, and at 7 the ability to jog right alongside someone who's running away from you. Hold Person and Misty Step, too.


I personally love ancestral barb for being the "hey lookit me" tank. Double points for going tavern brawler to grapple more efficiently. Keep some hatchets on hand to throw for ranged aggro.

We already have a Vengeance Paladin. No desire to touch a class that's currently being played at the table.

Ancestral Barb is currently what I'm leaning toward. It works very, very well and Barbs are something I enjoy playing.

[micahaphone]

Advantage on grapple checks is hard to pass up! and grapple attempts are a type of attack, so they do count for continuing your rage.

the only downside is that a grappler style is best suited to using a versatile or one handed weapon, so you can continue to smack the person you're grappling when you get multi attack. Or once again, Tavern brawler with a sword and shield means you can stow the sword then beat them up with the shield

[DevilMcam]

Any character with strong opportunity attacks also makes a good tank, because running pas you is painfull. Sneak attack, booming blade (bonus point if combined with warcaster).
Battlemasters with their CC manouvers (goading, frightening, tripping) also makes decent tanks.
The shield master feat let you shove ennemy for "free" resucing their movement by half.

Spiritual guardian is crazy strong as far as tanking goes.
A MI druid (shilellagh) warcaster arcana cleric, or a MI wizard (booning blade) nature cleric are also very scary tanks.

Spirit guardia aura reduce speed and deals constant damage, dodge as your action, whack with spirit weapon as bonus as reaction booming blade if they don't stay next to you.
Or they could disengage and loose their whole turn, fair enough.

There may also be fun to be had with a warcaster, xbow xpert point blank eldritch blaster since they can "multiattack" as part of aoo, and benefit from the EB invocations

[MinotaurWarrior]

You already acknowledged the best pure standard mundane tank, the cavalier.

Bugbear Valor bard (enhance ability / expertise athletics) or rogue / barb multiclass grappler let's you grab two people and hold them in place. I've personally had fun with this.

A forge cleric with spirit guardians up makes it harder for enemies to get to the back lines, and provides an incentive to attack them instead of anyone else on the front line.

Long Death Monk Hour of Reaping spam interposed between enemies and allies resembles tanking.

Shepard druids can conjure tanks.

[CheddarChampion]

What materials are available? UA? Ravnica?

Depending on how your DM runs stuff:
1. Life Cleric. If your DM has enemies try to slip past the tanks then they might consider you something to be slipped past towards. That's when you hit 'em with a spirit guardians + spiritual weapon combo.
2. Bladesinger. Same idea but more defense oriented. Mirror Image, Blur, Tenser's Transformation. Enemies that see through the ruse might start ignoring you, that's when you bring out the fireballs.
3. Battlemaster. Tripping attack helps you and for your Paladin buddy. Menacing attack restricts the movement of an enemy and makes it harder for them to hit. Goading attack provides incentive for them to focus on you.
4. Conquest Paladin. Tell the other paladin's player that you're not trying to step on their toes, you just want to have fun freezing enemies in terror.
5. If the goal is more "Hinder the enemies" and less "Hinder the enemies by standing near them" then maybe just go for a debuffer/cc build. I can definitely appreciate the cool factor of a tank though.
6. Classes/Subclasses that grant bonuses to allies. Wolf Totem Barbarian is a good example: making your paladin buddy more likely to crit is a threatening thing. If enemies want to stop it, they can attack your high AC buddy or they can attack you with the lower AC (at advantage because of reckless attack).
7. Any class with good defenses. If the DM understands you want to be the tank and they want you to have fun, they'll probably throw you a bone. Are you doing combat as sport or combat as war?

[Mutazoia]

What materials are available? UA? Ravnica?

Depending on how your DM runs stuff:
1. Life Cleric. If your DM has enemies try to slip past the tanks then they might consider you something to be slipped past towards. That's when you hit 'em with a spirit guardians + spiritual weapon combo.
2. Bladesinger. Same idea but more defense oriented. Mirror Image, Blur, Tenser's Transformation. Enemies that see through the ruse might start ignoring you, that's when you bring out the fireballs.
3. Battlemaster. Tripping attack helps you and for your Paladin buddy. Menacing attack restricts the movement of an enemy and makes it harder for them to hit. Goading attack provides incentive for them to focus on you.
4. Conquest Paladin. Tell the other paladin's player that you're not trying to step on their toes, you just want to have fun freezing enemies in terror.
5. If the goal is more "Hinder the enemies" and less "Hinder the enemies by standing near them" then maybe just go for a debuffer/cc build. I can definitely appreciate the cool factor of a tank though.
6. Classes/Subclasses that grant bonuses to allies. Wolf Totem Barbarian is a good example: making your paladin buddy more likely to crit is a threatening thing. If enemies want to stop it, they can attack your high AC buddy or they can attack you with the lower AC (at advantage because of reckless attack).
7. Any class with good defenses. If the DM understands you want to be the tank and they want you to have fun, they'll probably throw you a bone. Are you doing combat as sport or combat as war?

Also, what level are we building at? I know you want "out of the box" but some classes/sub-classes don't start to get tanky until they reach certain levels. For example a Battle Smith Artificer starts getting pretty tanky at Lvl 3 whereas the Artillerist takes a few levels to get good at taking (although the Protector canon giving everyone temp HP is more of a support position initially, and the Force Ballistas push back can keep things from getting close makes them more of an off-tank). The Armorer subclass, when it is finally made official, looks to turn you into Ironman so that's going to get tanky fast.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Armour artificer is pretty good.

Hexblade 2 /sorcerer X(starting sorcerer, probably divine or shadow) is pretty good:
you got the HP - armour of Agathis upcast with higher then should be able to be spell slot from font of magic.

You usually concentrate on an important spell to shoot down(like twin haste).

You deal enough damage with EB to be a threat.

Use a focus/empty hand with a shield, rust half plate for AC.

Make sure you have shield and absurd elements for survivability

I will take res wis so you will not be discarded too quickly (I will take it on every tank without wis prof).


Abjuration wizard also work well(usually deep gnome after level 4 or with the UA feat for a Armour of Shadows invocation).

A forge cleric for the +1 to armour and more tanking goodys at higher levels is nice(spirit guardians is a nice lockdown and a reason to attack you).
A like cleric if you want more HP instead of more armour.

You already mentioned cavalier.

A moon druid is also a good tank, tons of HP in wildshape and no one want to ignore the bear that have bear friends he sammoned/flaming spare/ferie fire or any other high impact concentration spell active.

[Mutazoia]

A moon druid is also a good tank, tons of HP in wildshape and no one wants to ignore the bear that has bear friends he summoned/flaming spare/faerie fire or any other high impact concentration spell active.

I would also suggest that a spore druid would make a good tank. Temp HP, extra poison damage to melee attacks, doing extra necrotic damage to any target within 10', and the later ability to raise spore zombies during combat as a reaction

[nickl_2000]

I would also suggest that a spore druid would make a good tank. Temp HP, extra poison damage to melee attacks, doing extra necrotic damage to any target within 10', and the later ability to raise spore zombies during combat as a reaction

This issue with this one is that I don't know how it is sticky. There is very little that encourages someone to stick close to a Spore Druid rather than move away from it.

[DevilMcam]

Even the bear Druid isn't very sticky.
You of course have a lot of hitpoints, but aside from level 2 and 3 where the bear is a better fighter than the fighter, what are you going to do when the troll decide to go thrash your sorecrer friend, bite him for 1d8+4 damage with your +5 to hit?

Any other martialish character would be doing more by level 4.

If UA is allowed the slasher or crusher feats would be decent tanks additions.

[Man_Over_Game]

(Let me start by saying I’m specifically looking at non-Paladins. My group already has one, standard build for the nova. I’m looking to TANK)

We all know about feats like Sentinel.

We all know part of being a tank is high AC and high HP.

What I see many subclasses miss is the stickiness. A reason to target the tank as opposed to the squishy. Since not every fight is in a 5’ wide hallway, there needs to be a reason to target the tank. Right?


Although you don't have bad logic, you're thinking about it like a video game, not a simulated world. Most monsters attack the first thing in range, and your front line are usually the people that die first. Stickiness isn't a bad thing, but you need to decide for yourself if it's worthwhile.

I myself played an Ancestral Guardian that was the only front-line character, and I might as well not have had a subclass as the enemies had no reason to target anyone other than me.


The big difference between the AG and the Cavalier is that the AG locks down a single target and is valid at range, while the Cavalier deals a lot of damage to enemies that ignore them. The AG is harder to play effectively but pays off big against bosses, while the Cavalier is a classic front-line, stand-there-and-take-it tank.

However, the trick to good tanking is learning to throttle how much damage you're taking compared to the rest of the team. You want everyone to hit 0 HP at the same time, so get tankier if you think you're going to get targeted, or get sticky when you think you're going to be ignored. From my experience, most tanks are the ones targeted without needing any extra convincing, so tankiness will generally be worth more than stickiness (which is why the Bear Totem Barbarian is so popular, despite being boring).

I am kinda disappointed by the options to "deflect" attention off of you with proactive, defensive buffs (like utilizing the Dodge Action more). I see 5e needing a lot more of this than the regular "Taunt" effects a lot of subclasses have.

[nickl_2000]

Even the bear Druid isn't very sticky.
You of course have a lot of hitpoints, but aside from level 2 and 3 where the bear is a better fighter than the fighter, what are you going to do when the troll decide to go thrash your sorecrer friend, bite him for 1d8+4 damage with your +5 to hit?

Any other martialish character would be doing more by level 4.

If UA is allowed the slasher or crusher feats would be decent tanks additions.

Grapple the troll and drag it away from your sorcerer friend. Bears are very strong and are large size

[stoutstien]

(Let me start by saying I’m specifically looking at non-Paladins. My group already has one, standard build for the nova. I’m looking to TANK)

We all know about feats like Sentinel.

We all know part of being a tank is high AC and high HP.

What I see many subclasses miss is the stickiness. A reason to target the tank as opposed to the squishy. Since not every fight is in a 5’ wide hallway, there needs to be a reason to target the tank. Right?

Ancestral Guardian Barb is pretty darn good, right out of the box.

Cavalier is pretty alright.

Any other ideas? What am I missing?

Battlesmith can be pretty darn sticky. Having a second body to eat up attacks and can cause disadvantage without eating your action economy is golden. You also reverse tank by giving out infusions to make everyone else worse targets that yourself. Once you get your SSI you can literally be sticky with nigh infinite webs

[jaappleton]

Mutazoia brought up Armorer, which gets a feature pretty identical to the Ancestor Barb with imposing DisAdv on attacks VS other party members.

Can we explore the Armorer and Ancestor side by side for a moment?

Only going until level 10 or so.


Armorer
d8 HD
Special weaponry that... might be able to get upgraded, DMs discretion? (Like 90% sure my DM will let me)
Heavy Armor & Shields
Spellcasting, including the Shield spell
Infusions
Temp HP as a bonus action
Basically just need INT & CON

Ancestor
d12 HD
Unarmored Defense
Faster movement speed
Harder Crits
Reckless Attack
Rage
Damage Mitigation via Reaction at 6
STR, CON, DEX all needed

Hmm.... Interesting stuff. Both are quite good. No secret one is a bit more MAD. Fairly tough call on this one. On one hand, Ancestor's features rely on Rage, which is a limited resource. Armorer's spells are, as well, but it still has its magic gear and stickiness without those resources. Armorer might... be superior?

[Mutazoia]

Mutazoia brought up Armorer, which gets a feature pretty identical to the Ancestor Barb with imposing DisAdv on attacks VS other party members.

Can we explore the Armorer and Ancestor side by side for a moment?

Only going until level 10 or so.


Armorer
d8 HD
Special weaponry that... might be able to get upgraded, DMs discretion? (Like 90% sure my DM will let me)
Heavy Armor & Shields
Spellcasting, including the Shield spell
Infusions
Temp HP as a bonus action
Basically just need INT & CON

Ancestor
d12 HD
Unarmored Defense
Faster movement speed
Harder Crits
Reckless Attack
Rage
Damage Mitigation via Reaction at 6
STR, CON, DEX all needed

Hmm.... Interesting stuff. Both are quite good. No secret one is a bit more MAD. Fairly tough call on this one. On one hand, Ancestor's features rely on Rage, which is a limited resource. Armorer's spells are, as well, but it still has its magic gear and stickiness without those resources. Armorer might... be superior?

You never run out of cantrips (although a never-ending supply of "mending" is better for the Battlesmith) and Armorer gives you 2 additional attunement slots at level 9 (that have to be part of your armor). And then you get another attunement slot at level 10. So by level 10, you can attune 4 normal items and 2 infused armor pieces. 6 attunement slots are nothing to sneeze at. Make one of your infused slots Winged Boots and you can fly around like Ironman

[Wizard_Lizard]

I mean if you are consistently getting in the oppositions faces and whacking them with a sword, then they're likely to target you.

[stoutstien]

You never run out of cantrips (although a never-ending supply of "mending" is better for the Battlesmith) and Armorer gives you 2 additional attunement slots at level 9 (that have to be part of your armor). And then you get another attunement slot at level 10. So by level 10, you can attune 4 normal items and 2 infused armor pieces. 6 attunement slots are nothing to sneeze at. Make one of your infused slots Winged Boots and you can fly around like Ironman

Small correction. You get two additional infusions at level 9. The base class does get more attunement slots with magic item adept, savant and cap stone.

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

How about a Nature Cleric? We can call him The Ant Lion.

Right out of the box, you have a shield and heavy armor to take the hits, and Thorn Whip to pull enemies to you.

You get Spirit Guardians at level 5 for even more stickiness and your signature tactic: Use TW to drag enemies to the center of your difficult terrain. Spiritual Weapon is a bit less important to you than other clerics, since you want to keep reeling them in, but a bonus action attack never hurts (you).

Useful ASIs, not necessarily in order: Wisdom==>20 (more hits, more damage), Warcaster (to use Thorn Whip as an opportunity attack but also better Concentration), Sentinel (more chances for an opportunity attack, plus a debuff), Resilient Con (because better Con saves are always good).

And when you're not doing this, you provide the usual cleric utility.

Anyway,

Ken

[Sherlockpwns]

I gotta lean into grapple for the idea of “sticky”.

A grappler can basically remove two enemies they can reach and I think there are several viable paths to build a wrestling master.

Obviously the key is a good athletics score, but there are other considerations.

Extra attack lets you grab and prone in a single round.
Any good bonus action or damage over time auras (spirit guard).

Some kind of attack that doesn’t use your hands (in case you grapple two things at once). For example vicious mockery is verbal only... lizard folk can bite, etc.

High AC and HP for obvious reasons.

Rogue 1 is a likely choice just for expertise. Maybe 2 for cunning action so you can move more. A fun extra is you can one hand throw daggers, potential letting you do decent damage at range while holding someone down.

Artificer 5 gets you enlarge and your casting focus can be your armor. Either artillerist and bonus action flamethrower the guy (s) you are holding or battle Smith and let your dog smack them around.

Clerics also rank high with sprit guardians and spirit weapons. You could in theory pin two opponents and take the dodge action while their go slowly melts away.

And of course, bards are an alternative for expertise, as are humans with prodigy at level 1, and Barbarians can be a non caster way to gain advantage.

You can really mix and match these for all kinds of fun though.

A simple prodigy human artificer with his armor, complete with shocking grasp gloves and faithful mechanical hound (or cannon), viable all the way to 20.

Or some monstrosity multiclass, lizard man forge cleric (5) mastermind rogue (4) battle master fighter (11), mixing together the ability to pin two enemies while still dishing out damage and using bonus actions to aid allies.

Your imagination is the limit! But as long as you have the key ingredients, you are basically guaranteeing 1-2 enemies are completely stuck with you... and it should work from basically level 1.

Of course if you start at higher levels, just wall of force thunderdome yourself in with someone! ;)

[micahaphone]

Some kind of attack that doesn’t use your hands (in case you grapple two things at once). For example vicious mockery is verbal only... lizard folk can bite, etc.



see, that's what Tavern Brawler is for. Now the guy in your right hand counts as a weapon against the person in your left!

[Satori01]

The Carmel Sticky Bun Warrior is the stickiest straight out of the box.

Any character sheet or tank toy owned by a 5 year old, can also be sticky, disgustingly sticky.

Wash your hands, Thomas!