Taunt?

[Valefort]

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.

Monsters have under 20 will save, you roll taunt skill +5 +d 20, if you have only 25 in taunt you're already fine, high CHA and taunt gear are not needed at all.. I know because I didn't maxed out the skill back then, that was useless. Obviously the higher the better but taunt does not require the heavy investment you keep mentioning, at all.



CR 27 monsters, wuhu, 15 will save ! Not too hard to taunt.

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.

Probably true, my scenario was if they were just walking around and you taunted one of them. I can't remember what happens when they're already in combat.

[NegInfinity]

Monsters have under 20 will save, you roll taunt skill +5 +d 20, if you have only 25 in taunt you're already fine, high CHA and taunt gear are not needed at all.. I know because I didn't maxed out the skill back then, that was useless. Obviously the higher the better but taunt does not require the heavy investment you keep mentioning, at all.

Two problems here.

Monsters ROLL d20 against your your taunt (will save + d20 vs taunt + 5). So to succesfully always taunt targets with 18 will save. you'll need skill of 33, otherwise you'll have a good chance of failure. That 25 taunt skill you mentioned? It is only dc 30, while monster can roll up to 38, meaning they will have a whopping 40% chance of resisting your taunt, which makes skill a waste of skillpoints, and taunting them a waste of combat round. And without gear or high charisma, you will get that 33 skill only at level 30. Spending 30 levels to taunt a mere level 20 lizard doesn't sound like a very impressive achievement to me. Now, when you can reliably enrage a wyrm (you need skill of 40 to have a chance), that's more like it.

Another thing is ...before you reach snorefest of epic levels, you'll fight through level 1-20, and at THOSE levels, not having cha bonus or gear will make a huge difference. Basically a difference between half of monsters resisting your taunt or all of them failing to resist. Cha bonus will make huge difference for the same reason - monsters ROLL saves against you. Taun skill of 4 at level 1 with no bonuses? 40 or 50% chance of failure against cr1 monster - a target with 0 will save. To keep it efficient and reliable, you need to have skill value of target's will save +15. That frost giant mystic requires skill of 40 to be taunted reliably, for example.

IN addition to that, I'd like to address what valkyrie mentioned.
Monsters do have unusually high saves. Basically, if you use any ability with dc, everything you meet will have a incredibly good chance to resist it at the level you face it for the first time, unless you minmax your char or pump your skills through the roof with magical items. Basically, when my sneakmage managed to petrify orc chief for the first time, it was event worthy of celebration.

[Valefort]

40% failure is totally fine by me, at worst you spend another round .. maximum and reliable efficiency is a snoozefest, remember it's a dice game. As for the Mystic thats is a suicide to taunt him, even if you succeed that's one more spell to eat.

[NegInfinity]

40% failure is totally fine by me, at worst you spend another round .. maximum and reliable efficiency is a snoozefest, remember it's a dice game. As for the Mystic thats is a suicide to taunt him, even if you succeed that's one more spell to eat.

Well, it isn't fine with me, because the game is already prone to rolling 20s on monster attacks and saves and prone to rolling 1s on your saves and attacks.

When I mentioned that you need charisma and gear I meant that you need them if you want taunt to reliably work, without such high chance of failure.

[Lockonnow]

wll you can get item with skills on