Author: SQUIDHEADSS
When discussions of optimization come up, players frequently discuss filling roles within the party, and often gravitate towards the roles within the “Holy Trinity” of “Tank,” “Support,” and “Damage Dealer.” While D&D 5E does indeed have character roles, they do not follow the standards of the “Holy Trinity.” However, this role arrangement is well ingrained in the minds of players everywhere, due to exposure from Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs (MMOs), online discussions of D&D, and a variety of other means. Indeed, the role of “Damage Dealer” functions well to an extent in D&D, and “Support” works if the player understands that there is much more to support than healing (in fact, it’s generally everything but healing).
The role of “Tank”, however, does not function in D&D 5E as is popularly imagined, for two core reasons. Before this can be understood, however, it’s important to first define…
When people approach building tanks in D&D, it’s common to see choices like Path of the Totem Warrior (Bear) Barbarians with the Tough feat and maxing out Constitution. However, this is indeed not the way to create a tank! This is an example of confusing the means with the goal and misunderstanding the job of a tank.
The role of a tank is to get attacked so your friends don’t.
Knowing this, we can see the flaw in the plan of this Barbarian’s build, and understand its origin. In many video games, the primary obstacle to a tank fulfilling their role is their ability to survive hits. This is a result of video game enemies being computer controlled, and often rather stupid. For example, in World of Warcraft, the aggro system is designed specifically to cause enemies to attack tanks. In D&D, however, monsters are controlled by an intelligent human, and can make the most tactically advantageous decisions possible. (Of course, many DMs don’t have monsters make the best decisions possible, and simply being bulky while standing in front allows you to be a tank in less challenging games. However, as part of our Core Tenets, we assume a difficult game, and a component of this is that enemies act as if they want to win, trying to maximize their impact by making good targeting decisions.)
In a game with that hypothetical Barbarian build, there is little reason for the enemies to not simply walk right past them and attack other characters. The primary issue to tackle while building a tank in D&D, then, is how to draw fire from the enemy. Methods to do this include forcing enemies to stay up close to you, penalizing attacks against allies, reducing the damage that allies take, and threatening enemies who attack allies with damage or other harmful effects. However…
Tank options are rare (and the ones that do exist are fairly weak).
When looking at class features that encourage enemies to target their user, we find an unfortunate scarcity, and the ones that do exist are limited in a variety of ways. The most prominent will be listed below:
- The Armorer Artificer’s Thunder Gauntlets give enemies disadvantage to hit allies other than the Armorer. Unfortunately, Armorers do pitiful damage, have weak defensive options, need to be in melee, and offer no protection against things other than attacks.
- The Cavalier Fighter has a similar mechanic to the Armorer in Unwavering Mark, as well as an attack they can use against enemies that attack their allies. Unfortunately, the disadvantage now only applies if the enemy stays within 5 feet of you and the attack has a very limited number of uses each long rest.
- The Oath of the Crown Paladin can use Champion Challenge to slightly inconvenience enemies within 30 feet of you, but only once per rest, and only if they fail a saving throw. All Paladins have access to the compelled duel spell, which is limited to a single target, requires a failed saving throw, requires a spell slot and concentration.
- The Path of the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian has another similar mechanic in the Ancestral Protectors, which gives resistance to damage in addition to the disadvantage. Unfortunately, it only works while Raging, and can only apply to one creature per round. This subclass also has an additional way to protect allies from attacks and threaten enemies that attack them in Spirit Shield and Vengeful Ancestors, giving them the overall best “Tank” kit in D&D 5E, but all their features are limited by Rage, and the numbers on these other features are too weak, especially for how late they come online.
As we can see, the options to facilitate tanking in D&D 5E are few in number, and the ones that do exist have clear and severe flaws that limit their use. They also come with opportunity cost as far as hypothetical tank builds are concerned, as all of these classes have other subclasses that, while lacking the ability to draw fire, are sturdier than the true tank options, such as Battle Smith Artificer and Eldritch Knight Fighter, due to their access to shield, and Path of the Totem Warrior Barbarian, due to resistance to all damage other than psychic. This leads to many of the tank build options feeling half-baked; they have to spend so much on their method of drawing attacks that they lose access to options that allow them to better survive those attacks.
One more tanking option exists in the game, and it’s a universal mechanic that all melee characters have access to: opportunity attacks. However, much like the character build options mentioned above, opportunity attacks have a major problem that limits their usefulness. Opportunity attacks in 5E, outside of Tier 1, simply aren’t that threatening to an enemy trying to move away. This is because the primary method that weapon damage scales over level is with the number of attacks, which opportunity attacks never gain in greater numbers. (The Rogue’s Sneak Attack does allow opportunity attack damage to scale, but a class with d8 hit dice and light armor only struggles to fit into tank builds for obvious reasons.)
There are options to improve the control aspect of opportunity attacks, primarily the Sentinel feat. However, Sentinel has the problem of a high opportunity cost, as taking it early on means sacrificing large amounts of potential damage. In addition, the reaction you get when an ally is attacked only reaches 5 feet, and many enemies have longer reach. In addition, opportunity attacks do not trigger if enemies move within your reach, only when they leave it, meaning that an enemy can walk around and behind you with no threat. The biggest problem with opportunity attacks, however, is that they use a character’s reaction, which is also used by both powerful defensive tools like shield and absorb elements, as well as many of the tanking features of the aforementioned subclasses, meaning that all of these features cannot be used in conjunction with each other on a tank build.
So, the options for building tanks in D&D 5E are quite limited. However, there’s another problem for characters aspiring to fulfill the role of tank. Their job isn’t one that really needs doing!
With only basic optimization, there aren’t squishy characters that need tanks in order to survive.
Built into the assumptions of the tank role is that the tank character is able to survive hits significantly better than their allies. To the naive reader, it may appear that spellcasting classes, with their d6 or d8 hit dice and proficiency in at best light armor would be significantly squishier than martials with high armor class and d10 or d12 hit dice. However, we can easily fix this at little cost.
In order to increase our survivability on spellcaster classes, we need a few things. While it may seem like this is a lot, the reality is that most casting classes already have some of these components, and the others are easy to access. They are:
- Proficiency in medium armor and shields.
- 14 Dexterity and 14-16 Constitution.
- The spells shield and absorb elements.
With these pieces, we have a spellcaster who has 19 AC without magic items, increased to 24 with shield (which is enough that tier 1 monsters, who often have only +4 to hit, can only hit you on a natural 20), as well as protection from elemental attacks and a fair number of hit points. Although we’ll be 1 or 2 hit points per level behind a martial character with a similar Constitution, our higher AC and resistance from absorb elements will mean we take less damage overall, granting us more survivability than the martial attempting to be a “tank” for us!
Now, if you’re wondering how to get these survivability tools on a caster class, here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of common ways to get them:
- Spellcaster classes only need a high value for their primary Ability Score, meaning that with point buy, assuming a bonus to their casting stat and Constitution from their race (which is now universal thanks to Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything), they can afford 14 Dexterity, 16 Constitution, 16 in Intelligence or Charisma, and 10 Wisdom. (Those who want to dip into a class which requires a 13 in a different Ability Score will need to settle for 14 Constitution.)
- Any class can access medium armor by playing as a Mountain Dwarf (or Tortle, effectively) and moving their racial abilities as appropriate per Customizing Your Origin rules.
- Wizards can access medium armor and shields by taking a single level of Artificer, Fighter, or Cleric (requiring 13 Wisdom). They already have shield and absorb elements natively.
- Sorcerers can access medium armor and shields by dipping into Hexblade Warlock, which also grants them access to Eldritch Blast and related Eldritch Invocations. Sorcerers already have shield and absorb elements natively.
- Bards (non-Valor) and Warlocks can access medium armor and shields by taking the Moderately Armored feat, or by dipping/taking Hexblade.
- Bards, Warlocks, as well Clerics and Druids who invest into 13 starting Charisma, can consider taking their first level in Divine Soul Sorcerer, which grants access to shield and absorb elements, with the added bonuses of proficiency in Constitution saving throws, bless, and Favored by the Gods.
- On top of all these tools, an underrated option for survivability on casters is the Dodge action. Since a caster’s main contribution to combat is leaving up a powerful concentration spell, the caster may opt to take the Dodge action on subsequent rounds, giving them even more protection on top of their already formidable AC.
Using any of these, it’s possible to grant any caster a level of durability that exceeds that of any martial aspiring to be a “tank”! (Note that Druids have their own considerations with regards to armor).
With all of this stated, even in the world of spellcasters with 19/24 AC and absorb elements, part of the goal of a “tank” (protecting your party from damage), is still worthwhile. However, the way you do this is not with a durable front-liner who soaks up damage for you, but instead by using control spells to ensure enemies are unable to damage you and your party.
A theoretically optimal party in D&D 5E consists of entirely ranged characters, be they spellcasters or ranged martials. Not only are ranged character options almost always more powerful than melee ones, but many monsters have only melee attacks, and even among those that don’t, their most devastating attacks are melee or short ranged. With this in mind, one of the most powerful options for keeping you and your party alive is preventing enemies from reaching your party. There are three parts to this:
- Moving away from enemies. The most basic and essential tactic for any ranged character is “kiting”, or moving backwards while making ranged attacks to maintain distance between you and your enemy. Things like mounts and especially phantom steeds that increase your movement speed can make this an even more effective tactic.
- Effects that prevent enemies from moving. Control spells such as grease, web, hypnotic pattern, slow, and many others reduce or remove multiple creatures’ movement abilities, helping you maintain your distance from them. Many of them also have other effects that deny or reduce the effectiveness of other actions, which further helps your party survive.
- Effects that push enemies away. Forced movement effects, while not as common as the other two, are very effective at keeping enemies away. The most accessible and common is a Warlock’s Repelling Blast invocation, which can be used to deal damage as well as protect your party in Tier 2 and upward.
With these options combined, whether you have a hyper-optimized all-ranged party or still have melee characters, you can defend your party from challenges that would otherwise crush you. All without the need for a “tank” character!
In Conclusion
Due to the mechanics of D&D 5E, the “tank” character archetype does a poor job of fulfilling its goal. If you want to protect your party from monsters, your best bet is to use control effects to deny enemies’ actions and movement.
That, or convince your group to play D&D 4E. That game has good tanks.
For more on this topic, check out the follow-up post, The Myth of Party Roles in D&D 5E.
I think you’re way off base here. You’re creating scenarios that rely on massive stats to make the build possible. I mean, 14 Dex, 16 Con, plus needing an eventual 20 casting stat? Even the Half-Elf Charisma Caster would be starting with a point buy of 8-13-15-8-9-16 to be able to start L1 with 14 Dex, 16 Con, and 18 Cha. I mean, I guess if you like an unintelligent, non-perceptive, weakling as a moderate HP Medium Armor Dex Tank that relies on Shield every turn… Go for it.
A Paladin is going to have superior HP, the ability to Lay Hands, Heavy Armor (so no need for Dex at all), and can go the Sorcadin route later on and get Shield & Absorb Elements that way. It also super-charges their smites by increasing spell level progression.
But all that is moot, because the best tank is most often a Heavy Armor Cleric w/ War Caster & Resilience (Constitution). You’re a 2-stat monster, often starting at 18 Wis and 16 Con. You’ll never lose concentration with Advantage + Con Save Proficiency. Your cantrips will out-damage any weapon shot for shot, and you can bonus-action control a Spiritual Weapon. You put up those Spirit Guardians and become a 15′ r nightmare for enemies that are now taking radiant damage every turn, and stuck in difficult terrain while doing so. Even if they’re flying.
And at the high-end you just create legions by using Planar Binding to anchor Celestials to your plane until a task is completed. At L11 you can bind these for 10-days via a L6 Spell Slot. 30-days via a L7 Spell Slot, and 180 days via a L8 Spell Slot. Given prep-time and funds, a Cleric can amass any army of Celestial beings capable of wreaking havoc while healing and granting temp hit points to allies, all while he’s usually sporting a 24+ AC.
Reading the article it says their point buy assumption is 14 Dex, 15 Con, 10 Wis and 14 Int/Cha. With a +2 to the casting stat and +1 to Con from racial bonuses. Which costs only 25/27 points. I would hardly call those massive stats.
Uh, did you just argue against the ideas of casters not needing tanks, by using examples of casters BEING tanks? The Sorcadin is a caster. The heavy-armor cleric you cite is a caster.
The Sorcadin and Cleric you cite are tanky, but they’re not fulfilling a party role of forcing opponents to attack them to protect other casters.
You don’t think a Bear Totem Barbarian with the Tough feat is a good tank? Why would it not be one? Barbarians deal so much damage if you don’t target them they will pretty much tear your NPCs apart one by one, but if you do target them, they take a loooong time to die and their party will be the ones tearing your NPCs apart. Barbarians, specifically the Bear Totem ones, make amazing tanks because they need to be focused down, otherwise they wreak havoc on the NPCs.
Hey Dan! Thanks for commenting. I’m Soma, an editor for the blog and a fellow barbarian enthusiast, so I was glad to see your comment.
Unfortunately, however, no, we don’t think a Bear Totem Barbarian with the Tough feat is a good tank, though that doesn’t mean that Bear Totem Barbarians don’t have a place at most tables. We would say that an appropriately constructed Bear Totem Barbarian (Polearm Master at 1, Great Weapon Master at 4) is doing great single target DPR while being reasonably survivable as far as characters that wade into melee go. I think in that sense, we are probably in agreement! We just have different views on what makes a good “tank,” and whether or not a Bear Totem Barbarian actually brings that to the table.
First I think it’s important that we don’t view good survivability as the same thing as being good at tanking. To us, being good at tanking means providing actively high amounts of damage mitigation and being able to prevent attacks from targeting our high-value teammates (think a wizard concentrating on a hypnotic pattern). As we said in the article, “tanking” as it exists in MMOs and video games is very rare in 5E– there are few class features that are analogous, and a Bear Totem Barbarian does not have access to any. As noted in the article, it’s very easy for enemies to move around a front-line melee character and to higher priority targets like a caster concentrating on a spell. We could take Sentinel to alleviate this problem, but then our damage would be pitiful, with no damage boosting feats taken until level 8– and given that many campaigns run almost exclusively tier 1 and tier 2, we are doing a very poor job of providing single target damage for most of the levels.
And again, we believe that going into melee has significant downsides. We may have to spend rounds Dashing or even getting into position to make attacks, while ranged characters can engage with the enemy right from turn 1. Melee characters who find themselves swarmed by enemies may find that their survivability is not as good as they imagined or hoped, and may be downed quickly, and because, as we noted, casters often have better defenses than martial weapon users, spreading that damage out would have likely been better damage mitigation than letting enemies pile on to the character with the lowest AC in the party.
Setting aside the downsides of going into melee, it’s important to note that mathematically, barbarians are not doing competitive amounts of focused damage if they are not using Reckless Attack. And we definitely want to be doing as much damage as possible– we are racing to eliminate as much action economy from the encounter as possible, so early damage is better– anything we can do to reduce the number of combatants.
Assuming a base hit rate of 60%, a level 5 Bear Totem Barbarian with Tough + PAM is doing 17 DPR (we aren’t going to do the math for needing to use a bonus action to activate rage to keep it simple) with their 3 attacks, and that goes up to 25 DPR with advantage on every attack. A fully damage focused barbarian is trading 10 hit points to do 35 damage per round. A Battle Master Fighter with Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter is averaging 31 damage per round under these assumptions (we’ll be publishing a post on Battle Master DPR over the course of an 8 encounter adventuring day soon). With Tough, I honestly cannot say that a Barbarian is dealing “so much damage,” though GWM would alleviate that.
As I said initially, it’s not that Bear Totem Barbarians aren’t reasonably survivable, or that they don’t do reasonable damage (though I would push back that a Bear Totem Barbarian with Tough is ripping apart enemies– Great Weapon Master is a must here). Even with all attacks against them being made with advantage, they are for sure mitigating some amount of damage– as enemies always having advantage to attack equates to roughly a 50% boost in damage for them, which is then being halved, in general I would expect a Bear Totem to be mitigating about 25% of attacks compared to another character with the same AC who is also in melee. (I made a random deadly encounter for four level 5 PCs in Kobold Fight Club to test this and the math worked out pretty much exactly, for what it’s worth).
Is any of this a bad thing? No. Doing respectable (though not world-class, if we opted for Tough over Great Weapon Master) single target damage while being able to survive and reduce some damage directed your way is good and will be strong at most tables, but we don’t think taking Tough is the best way to do it. And again, we still don’t have any particularly notable tanking abilities– no way to forcibly cause enemies to attack us, no way to prevent enemies from disengaging or targeting our allies when we don’t want them to, and we have no notable methods of battlefield control to offer either.
In short, Bear Totem barbarians (built properly) do good damage and are likely mitigating some damage dealt to themselves, and so are a useful addition to most parties. With Tough, the reduced damage output probably is an outright inferior option to focusing on damage with Great Weapon Master. But they are not specifically good tanks, as we view it, and there are probably better builds for its role of the single target DPR striker as well (builds like Gloom Stalkers, or Battle Masters). Their DPR is also not so notably higher than other martial weapon user builds and barbarians lack any sort of nova or resource-consumption features, and fall off somewhat notably later in tier 2 as their damage scaling becomes nearly non-existent, for longer campaigns I would probably go in a different direction (as much as it pains me to say it). Being effectively restricted to melee weapon attacks also has downsides, so with all of these considerations packaged together it’s hard for us to endorse that Bear Totem Barbarians are good tanks, though that doesn’t mean they aren’t fun to play! I always have a blast with them.
What is your thoughts on utilizing Grappling as a Tank Mechanic? An effective Grappler build can effectively drag two enemies out of the heat of combat (or potentially up to four with Simic Hybrid, but might take multiple turns), and shoving each creature prone makes it harder for them to hit you. It also helps that Grappler builds tend to be Rune Knight Fighters and/or Barbarians, which can be good at other things when Grappling is not an option.
Thanks for your comment!
Grappling can be useful to an extent, when it comes up, but we don’t think of it as something that plays a big enough role to merit defining a build around, or to make a character into what you’d want to call a proper tank.
The main issue is that it suffers from the same basic problem that threatening opportunity attacks does, which is that you can only immobilize one creature at a time, maybe two if you’re doing nothing else or are playing a character with extra limbs. And meanwhile, the target can still make melee attacks against you. Granted they may be at disadvantage if you’ve also shoved them prone, which you almost certainly should be doing if you’re grappling, and you may have redirected their attacks away from a more vulnerable target, but they can make them nonetheless. But more importantly the other enemies can just rush past you with impunity.
Compare that to spells like Sleep (at low levels), Web, Spike Growth, Hypnotic Pattern, Sleet Storm, Spirit Guardians, Conjure Animals, Plant Growth… these are spells that can prevent multiple enemies from doing anything that affects the party at all, largely because so many monsters in 5e are useless or nearly so if they can’t get into melee range. And those are just some of the 1st-3rd level spells that do that.
So it’s not that melee/grapple tanks don’t do anything, but they require adopting a playstyle that plays into monsters’ strengths the large majority of the time (going into melee), and because meaningfully difficult fights tend to involve more monsters than PCs, their contribution isn’t really enough to prevent other party members from getting swarmed.
Esker, although I agree with the general conclusion that tanks don’t work very well in 5e, I do believe grappling is a much better option than you make it seem.
Anyone can just ignore opportunity attacks, but getting out of a grapple is often very difficult. Most creatures don’t have proficiency in Athletics, so even say a CR9 Clay Golem with 20 strength will struggle to get our of a grapple with a raging bear Barbarian. Attempting to break the grapple takes a full action, and can’t be combined with multiattack.
It’s true that grapple can typically handle only one or two creatures. At the same time, many battle involve one or two powerful villains assisted by minions. Grappling the main antagonist can dramatically reduces the damage the rest of the team takes.
Finally, grappling completely ignores legendary resistances. At higher levels, this often makes grappling far more reliable than control spells against a single tough enemy.
One of the reasons a topic like this becomes polarised is because of DM style. There are a not-insignificant number of DMs (perhaps even, the majority of) that play combat using the dumb brute style for all but the more ‘intelligent enemies’ – enemies rush at the nearest player and smack away until combat ends. In such a situation, all a tank needs to do is not die to look good (although, even then, mitigating damage via AC/resistance/other is better than just soaking damage with HP that will then require healing resources).
What about the ‘intelligent enemy’ encounter? What does such a DM do? Well they tend to be bosses for such DMs; either being alone, or having some supporting minions. So, something like a grappler only needs to deal with that one creature – the minions will dumb brute anyway. Seems good, tanking success.
Rarely will such a DM having multiple ‘intelligent enemies’. Why the quotes? Because the thing is, most enemies should be intelligent enough to not be dumb brutes – the DM is the one making them play like this. Even the enemies that could be considered unintelligent still know combat tactics and to pick off the easiest prey.
If the DM plays most enemies at least somewhat intelligently, a grappler will only be useful in single-enemy encounters for the role of a tank. There are non-tank roles grapplers are good at, but tanking is not really one of them.
Counterpoint: an optimized party will likely be running forced movement with spike growth and the like. Given a team that wants to kill things with spike growth anyway, a Rune Knight or similar adds a phenomenal amount of damage. Does it count as being a tank if you just pick 1-2 enemies and anniilate them? Hnmm.
Anyway, coupled with multiple ways to negate critical hits, which is one of the major risks to a high AC party, the Rune Knight presents a valuable contribution to most optimized parties.
Pardon, I have to strongly disagree with something you just said:
The role of the tank is to get ATTACKED so your friends don’t.
Tanks don’t want to get HIT any more than any other character.
That’s why tanks prioritize high armor class and saving throws.
You raised a good point and the phrasing within the post has now been updated to reflect this.
By this reasoning, wouldn’t a Conquest Paladin be ideal, as it features the movement control to prevent enemies from closing in on your other allies, while also holding them in place and making it more difficult for them to successfully attack anyone (including you)?
They also have Bless and the Aura that are highly effective at protecting your party from dangerous save based effects.
Well in theory, sure there’s something to be said about rooting an enemy within your aura so they have nowhere to move. However, we’ve found that many enemies, especially larger ones, have reach. So since they can’t run away instead they can attack you with disadvantage. While your rooted enemies are not likely to deal a lot of damage because of disadvantage and sure, you taking the hits is better than your allies, it’s still more damage than they’d deal if they ran away to try and shake off the frightened effect or were just unable to get close enough into the aura to start with and were frightened from further away. The fear spell has anti-synergy with this aura for that reason. More importantly, if you’ve frightened the encounter you’ve already won. You do not need to restrict their movement beyond being able to approach you, which frightened does on its own. So the Channel Divinity feature Conquest Paladin gets is good, their 7th level aura bonus less so.
I wish to notify the author about a mistake: Champion Challenge. As a bonus action, you issue a challenge that compels other creatures to do battle with you. Each creature of your choice that you can see within 30 feet of you must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, a creature can’t willingly move more than 30 feet away from you. This effect ends on the creature if you are incapacitated or die or if the creature is more than 30 feet away from you.
In the article it is listed as a single target ability, but it’s an aoe taunt. It recovers on a short rest and following the recommended adventuring day 6-8 encounters and two short rests, that would mean you should have the option of an aoe taunt for 37,5-50% of the recommended encounters. Together with spirit guardians from the expanded spells crown is actually the best tank in theory starting at 3 and fully coming to fruition at level 9.
Still not great in my opinion, but having correct information in your article is paramount to give a fair assessment.
Thank you for the observation, we’ve corrected the mistake.
Any reason you haven’t mentioned warcaster+booming blade as a good AoO option that scales?
I feel like Spirit Guardians should be mentioned, but then again that’s a Cleric spell…