Taunt?

[finneas]

Does the taunt skill actually work for lowering a creature's AC during combat as the description states? I've not ever had any success when using it for combat in game. Just curious if I am doing it wrong or missing something regarding this skill.

[Valefort]

It works, but the taunt action is queued after the action of attacking, you have to cancel the attack action for taunt to actually trigger... which means attacks of opportunity if you are in melee range.

Another solution is to go near the monster, taunt and then attack. In both cases you're likely to offer free attacks to the opponent and it will be tedious to use.

[finneas]

Thanks Vale. Guess I won't put points in it other than for RP purposes.

[NegInfinity]

Does the taunt skill actually work for lowering a creature's AC during combat as the description states? I've not ever had any success when using it for combat in game. Just curious if I am doing it wrong or missing something regarding this skill.

Yes, it works. Very amusing in crowds, because you can enrage 20 people at once by waving sword at them.

However, unless you have high charisma or a lot of taunt gear, you could skip it - most mobs have very high will saves to be taunted. You need skill of about 37 to have a chance of taunting the wyrm, for example.

[Valefort]

Completely false, only ranks works wonders, you don't even have to max them out as mobs in general have "low" will saves, ie under 20. Considering taunting is modified taunt +5 this is a super easy check.

Of course there are some with high will but the proportion is incredibly tilted towards low will saves.

[mireigi]

The biggest flaw of Taunt is that it uses up an entire round, but doesn't cancel the auto-attacks. Change that, and it will be much more useful.

[Thorsson]

Yes, it's a PITA to use, and 99% of the time you would be better off just wading into the fight.

[mireigi]

It's great when fighting against multiple enemies, however.

[Valefort]

Moderately .. if they're already around you you spend a round and they all get attacks of opportunity. When I used it I usually went nearby the target, taunted and then engaged.

Also the taunting has a big side effect. The more ranks you have in it the bigger the area affected becomes, while you have to be near the target to taunt it everyone around the target (and the radius can become very big) has to make the check, and comes for you !

I remember well drawing 5 stone giants that way, in a totally unplanned fashion, who then proceeded to spam knockdown, nasty

[Hoihe]

Moderately .. if they're already around you you spend a round and they all get attacks of opportunity. When I used it I usually went nearby the target, taunted and then engaged.

Also the taunting has a big side effect. The more ranks you have in it the bigger the area affected becomes, while you have to be near the target to taunt it everyone around the target (and the radius can become very big) has to make the check, and comes for you !

I remember well drawing 5 stone giants that way, in a totally unplanned fashion, who then proceeded to spam knockdown, nasty

What did you say about their mothers to piss them off so hard ?

[Valkyrie]

Of course there are some with high will but the proportion is incredibly tilted towards low will saves.

Like every other BGTSCC NPC stat, Will probably is higher than reasonable to expect from monsters of their level. We are talking about the same monsters with random True Seeing effects, and able to detect Hide 80 characters.

[Valefort]

Who are so incredibly numerous that mages and sneakers are unplayable, right ? If anything the spotter script should be turned up instead of being so non-existant.

While the saving throws and HP of the monsters are inflated you also have to see how powerful PCs are, and I'm not even talking about powerbuilds. Ask those mages who use dominate monster all the time if the will saves of the monsters are too high

[Flasmix]

[Lockonnow]

I belive you need 12 in cha to make it work and then skills point like 20 before it work

[NegInfinity]

Completely false, only ranks works wonders, you don't even have to max them out as mobs in general have "low" will saves, ie under 20. Considering taunting is modified taunt +5 this is a super easy check.

Of course there are some with high will but the proportion is incredibly tilted towards low will saves.

Sure, if you want to leave them a chance to resist the taunt in addition to occasional natural 20 roll. If you use a taunt, you need a bonus from somewhere. Either from having 22 charisma, or from taunting gear. With ranks alone I wouldn't bother. You don't need insane bonus, like with sneaks, just +5..+10 would do.

it everyone around the target (and the radius can become very big) has to make the check, and comes for you !

Maybe somethign changed, but I'm fairly certain it doesn't work that way. Monsters keep attacking their current targets when taunted and do not immediately run after you.

The biggest flaw of Taunt is that it uses up an entire round, but doesn't cancel the auto-attacks. Change that, and it will be much more useful.

The biggest flaw is that even if you can taunt everything in 10 mile radius, character still insists getting on getting close to the target-to-be-taunted. That is even more annoying than taunt not cancelling auto-attack.