Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

No matter how hard you try, you can't make a true tank in this game. You can make a character with high AC and high saves, but without the ability to taunt/grab enemy attack or DR for elemental/physical damage, you can't tank at all. Also you guys have the "smart AI" mod in, enemies will not focus solely on you even if you are the first in the room or the first to appear. So tanks don't work in this server or any server.

Besides, save-less magic makes any melee character useless. If you can stop/slow a character and burn them with magic, you are useless as a tank. What's worse, a mage has good enough defense to outlast the tank, which makes the conventional tank useless.

ARHicks00 wrote: Besides, save-less magic makes any melee character useless.

Unless you play Spell Mantle.

Tanks can be played, but you need chokepoints for that, either natural (doors, narrow passages...) or artificial (casters creating them by means of Grease, Web, Wall of Stone...).

Nobody plays them because it's possible to make a character with excellent defense, and also good offense. Little reason not to.

Invoker wrote:

ARHicks00 wrote: Besides, save-less magic makes any melee character useless.

Unless you play Spell Mantle.

Tanks can be played, but you need chokepoints for that, either natural (doors, narrow passages...) or artificial (casters creating them by means of Grease, Web, Wall of Stone...).

Nobody plays them because it's possible to make a character with excellent defense, and also good offense. Little reason not to.

If you are talking about a PvE melee tank, yeah, you can tank a little easier than a PvP tank, but even then you can be burned down if your NPC come in legion and have HP, which is often the case. Even in the case of a battle caster and gish, you can be burned down once you are dispelled, which DM makes it easy by making builds with High BAB have less spellcaster levels. (Forcing you to be a classic stereotypical nuker or healer and having less variety of builds.)

Also I don't know what you mean by spell mantle. If you mean the spell, you can strip that away if you do not have enough spell levels. A true tank, regardless of class, can reduce both elemental and physical damage as well as other outlets of damage against them. The closedts I came was with Wizard/Palemaster/Swiftblade/DragonSlayer and W/PM/EK/DS.

http://nwn2db.com/build/?263044

Melee non-caster tank. Gives up the uber crits of a weapon master for the more reliable damage of EIPA from FB alongside the defenses and bonus feats from AK. Has solid saves (with +6 save vs. spell due to access to spellcraft), high AC which doesn't need UMD to be solid, but can use UMD to bump AC up above 50 and can still approach 50 damage / hit when needed, along with standard EW to ensure every attack hits each round. Can use wands for Haste or activate Frenzy for bonus attack and has DR 12/-

As I said before, the issue is that people want F14/WM7/FB5/X4 which is essentially taking ALL OFFENSE and then they also want to have defense against anything that comes their way which you cannot do without some grandfathered or at a minimum high-epic gear. Even with all that gear you have to know the weaknesses you have and avoid areas where those weaknesses will be exploited. Doing something simple like adding in Anointed Knight, Warrior of Darkness, or Divine Champion can help to round out the characters weaknesses. This class is about as well defended from most enemies as an Arcane Gish, and with wands can be right on par with them, yet it can also do about two to three times more damage than a gish on a consistent basis.

chad878262 wrote:http://nwn2db.com/build/?263044

This build can be burned down as I noted above with non saving spells. AK doesn't get spell resistance here and it doesn't get extra feats. Maybe in Dalelands, this would thrive.

Melee non-caster tank. Gives up the uber crits of a weapon master for the more reliable damage of EIPA from FB alongside the defenses and bonus feats from AK. Has solid saves (with +6 save vs. spell due to access to spellcraft), high AC which doesn't need UMD to be solid, but can use UMD to bump AC up above 50 and can still approach 50 damage / hit when needed, along with standard EW to ensure every attack hits each round. Can use wands for Haste or activate Frenzy for bonus attack and has DR 12/-

I'm not talking about a WM tank, but any tank as you can be burned down. You can make similar builds with Dwarven Defenders and Barbarians. Also if the enemies hit harder than 12 point hit than you can still be burned.

As I said before, the issue is that people want F14/WM7/FB5/X4 which is essentially taking ALL OFFENSE and then they also want to have defense against anything that comes their way which you cannot do without some grandfathered or at a minimum high-epic gear.

Fighter 12/DC8/Rogue3/WM7. Saves in their 20s, a good AC, can disarm traps, high spot/listen, 33 UMD, and damage. And that's without enchanted gear, mind you. The problem with ANY melee build is the server and items provided. If the server has physical reduction around 10, then best believe the enemies will be doing anywhere from 11 or more points of physical damage. If you have elemental reduction at 20, then you know the enemies will be doing 21 or more point of elemental damage.

Even with all that gear you have to know the weaknesses you have and avoid areas where those weaknesses will be exploited. Doing something simple like adding in Anointed Knight, Warrior of Darkness, or Divine Champion can help to round out the characters weaknesses. This class is about as well defended from most enemies as an Arcane Gish, and with wands can be right on par with them, yet it can also do about two to three times more damage than a gish on a consistent basis.

Not, really. That gish build I posted gets high AC of 50ish in low magic servers. It also get magical protections, elemental reduction, physical damage reduction, immunity to critical hits/sneak attacks, immunity to stun/paralyze, and high saves. It can also wears heavy armor, wields a shield, can nuke, can melee, and has a high spot/listen score. The build is a swiss army knife of class roles being able to everything except healing. The build is extremely hard to burn. Having a high AC and saves get you only so far in a server. Hell, my cleric is near 40 AC gets burned in low CR dungeons. The main thing that burns her is non-savable energy spells and negative attacks. Same thing that everyone else gets burned by, beside the occassional 20 rolls from melee attack.

My whole point is so long as you get can be burned and cannot reduce all source of damage, you can't truly tank in DnD. (That and you can't get the enemies to face you by grabbing aggro) And the reason people opt damage is because most tanks can't heal themselves so it only makes sense to outdamage your opponent and not outlast them. Being a tank with low AB or low damage gets you no where, but being a tank that can wear his enemies through raw damage can get you everywhere. There are builds that can get both, you just focus on the defense first than build up to the offense.

ARHicks00 wrote:This build can be burned down as I noted above with non saving spells. AK doesn't get spell resistance here and it doesn't get extra feats. Maybe in Dalelands, this would thrive.

You do not NEED SR to survive PvE. Only specific classes/races can get SR. Arcane casters can't get it, only clerics/FvS have a spell for it. There are OTHER WAYS to defend against no save spells. What is it you are running in to that you can't defend against without SR, happy to tell you what you can do to mitigate it...

ARHicks00 wrote:I'm not talking about a WM tank, but any tank as you can be burned down. You can make similar builds with Dwarven Defenders and Barbarians. Also if the enemies hit harder than 12 point hit than you can still be burned.

Dwarven Defender is one of the top tier classes to build with on the server. If you can't solo basically everything, but the white dragon on a DD than either you built it wrong or aren't playing it right.

ARHicks00 wrote:Fighter 12/DC8/Rogue3/WM7. Saves in their 20s, a good AC, can disarm traps, high spot/listen, 33 UMD, and damage. And that's without enchanted gear, mind you. The problem with ANY melee build is the server and items provided. If the server has physical reduction around 10, then best believe the enemies will be doing anywhere from 11 or more points of physical damage. If you have elemental reduction at 20, then you know the enemies will be doing 21 or more point of elemental damage.

Not my experience at all. In fact, specific areas have 1 or 2 types of elemental damage it is a good idea to protect against and anything else is just random traps. You don't need to avoid ALL damage with a decent amount of HP, you just need to mitigate it and carry some heal kits.

ARHicks00 wrote:Not, really. That gish build I posted gets high AC of 50ish in low magic servers. It also get magical protections, elemental reduction, physical damage reduction, immunity to critical hits/sneak attacks, immunity to stun/paralyze, and high saves. It can also wears heavy armor, wields a shield, can nuke, can melee, and has a high spot/listen score. The build is a swiss army knife of class roles being able to everything except healing. The build is extremely hard to burn. Having a high AC and saves get you only so far in a server. Hell, my cleric is near 40 AC gets burned in low CR dungeons. The main thing that burns her is non-savable energy spells and negative attacks. Same thing that everyone else gets burned by, beside the occassional 20 rolls from melee attack.

Nothing wrong with that build, but it is going to move SLOWLY through content. Take 1 1/2 minutes to ward up, does crap melee damage and will run out of spells fairly quick. Nothing wrong with this, but I wouldn't act like it's going to be the best build in the world to play. And still doesn't have SR and low HP so one IGMS and it's going down.

ARHicks00 wrote:My whole point is so long as you get can be burned and cannot reduce all source of damage, you can't truly tank in DnD. (That and you can't get the enemies to face you by grabbing aggro) And the reason people opt damage is because most tanks can't heal themselves so it only makes sense to outdamage your opponent and not outlast them. Being a tank with low AB or low damage gets you no where, but being a tank that can wear his enemies through raw damage can get you everywhere. There are builds that can get both, you just focus on the defense first than build up to the offense.

There should always be counter play. You don't need to be resistant to ALL forms of damage, you just need to know the one or two you should defend against and this is easy to do with items, scrolls, potions, etc.

Dwarven Defender is one of the top tier classes to build with on the server. If you can't solo basically everything, but the white dragon on a DD than either you built it wrong or aren't playing it right.

This is both true and disturbing. In a debate that has points arguing balance the DD is one of the biggest offenders. And unlike the equally out if balance fvs this one is only available to dwarves. So if you want to play this specific very proficient melee class, you need to want Dwarven rp.

You can build a pure Barbarian to be a mobile DD thanks to changes on this server. Whirlwind Frenzy, Greater Resiliency, and Epic Damage Reductions allow for 18/- and +5 AC (in Frenzy).

Let's also not forget Ice Troll Berserker. Oh and the class gets +2 Dodge AC at level 20 also.

Except barb is rest dependent. And even then it is only near a DD but still would not have the amount of open feats to compete. A well built dd can have ew melee weapon mastery and gws on a Dwarven war axe that is statistically better than most one handers.

How is a Barb more rest dependent than a DD?

It is rest dependent because most of the skills are tied to a rage timer/counter. A DD has just the 5 per day counter to the stance that is not as nessasary for effectiveness.

A DD's stance is very necessary for its effectiveness. It is disrupted by practically everything, also. Except during prolonged boss fights, you aren't going to get to camp in one place. Even then, use a scroll or potion, or have to adjust your positioning... even miss-click the boss and stance is canceled.

http://nwn2db.com/build/?263069
Here is an example of a tanky Barbarian I rolled up with no forethought. Note that it misses BGTSCC bonus feats at various levels (10, 20, 30). It's AC should still be:
+10 base
+1 Luck of Heroes
+1 Dex Item
+8 Full plate
+4 Armor Enhancement Bonus
+4 Tower Shield
+4 Shield Enhancement Bonus
+2 Heavy Armor Optimization Bonuses
+2 Level 20 Barbarian Bonus
+1 Armor Skin
+4 Deflection Item
+4 Dodge Boots
+4 Natural Amulet
+1 Tumble
TOTAL: 50 AC (no Rage or UMD)

When inside Rage:
+5 Whirlwind Frenzy
+4 Ice Troll Berserker (actually +8, but subtracting an amulet)
TOTAL: 59 AC (no UMD)

Add in some UMD and one wand, and you can push 61 AC while raging, or 52 AC outside of Rage. The whole time you have 18/- damage reduction, and EW without multiclassing for it. With a bonus feat Tower shield specialization could be taken for another +1 AC.

Edit: This build works for Half-orc, Grey Orc, Dwarves, Earth or Water Genasi. You COULD take 4 fighter levels to gain Heavy Armor and Tower Shield proficiency, which frees up two feats, and gains 1 bonus feat (you lose the level 30 Barb bonus feat). The fighter dip would cost 1/- DR, leaving a total of 17/- Damage Reduction.

Well the DD I cooked up real quick has

Base 10
Loh 1
Dex 1
Fp 8 +4
Tower 4+4
+4 dd dodge
+3 tumble
Ring 4
Neck 4
Boot 4
Total 51
Full umd
Ew
Dr 15/-
Gws
Ewf
Mwm
Ipa
5 levels of AK

Seriously not close

Also 30 spellcraft and heal to boot

You're right. Its not even close. The barbarian is better.

(55AC + 15/-DR + Stationary) < (59AC + 18/-DR + Movement)

The DD is not stationary. If it chooses to go stance it can. Look at the ALL THE TIME offense of the DD build vs the what.... 16 mins / rest of the barb 30 build. Your barb's offense would be gish like. It's rest dependent to maintain even a workable pace. I am sure somebody could roll up a better dd than mine as well. I did it in like 4 mins.

F12/dd10/r4/AK4