How to NWN Tank?

[PJtheFey]

Can anyone give me a rundown of how tanking works in NWN2?

I understand the obvious things like having a lot of hit points and high AC, but how do tanks keep mobs hitting them instead of squishier party members? Is it relative to the character's taunt skill? (I was told by one person in game that it was not.)

I ask because #1 - I'm thinking about turning one of my melee characters into a tank, and #2 whenever I go into Xvarts with less than 4 people, my wizard seems to draw the attention of at least half the mobs. One person in game thought it was that the AI targets party members with the highest AC, HP, or the person doing the most damage, but this seems hard to believe considering that the character currently only has 63 hit points and 33-35 AC fully buffed.

So... How do you become an agro magnet?

[Shad]

I'm interested too. It somehow happen that whatever character I play, 90% times the mobs do focus it:) Its very fit, because they usually tank good. But that 10% - there are some characters who attract better, mean whenever they are present mobs attack them instead. One of these I remember now has lower ac and high damage. My current guess is bosses choose melee target with highest damage potential, using some custom algorithm probably dependent on classes.

tldr: Most mobs attack whoever they see first, with bosses it's not so.

[mrieder79]

The AI scripts appear to focus on whatever toon is dealing the most damage at the time. Unfortunately that sets a very high bar for an effective tank toon: high HP, High AC, High damage. Tough to do that.

Hips will break aggro, so squishy hipsers can escape that way, focusing the monster back on the tank.

The AI will usually not engage ranged attackers if a melee attacker is available, so squishier toons can used ranged weapons. Casting is the same way.


Also, the AI seems to like to target toons with lower AC.

Bottom line, tanking is tough. I think one of the MaA abilities causes mobs to focus on them, but Im not sure about that.

[PJtheFey]

They should make the taunt skill useful by building it into the game mechanics... higher taunt = higher chance NPCs will attack the character instead of someone else. I wonder how hard it would be to program.

[Adamaklas]

From my experience in tanking, i have to completely disagree that the enemies focus the highest dps characters!

My cleric/fighter who is usualy paired with a wizard( he does not dps but has 2 summons as a thaumaturgist) , a FB/WM/Fighter ( who constantly does rediculus damage) and a Fighter/AA/Ass archer (who does decent dps), has totaly no problem tanking all the mobs, as long as he is the first to initiate the battle. I noticed that my capability of tanking sky rocketed when i picked the Turtle shield that gave me sneak atack, so when i see that i lose the agro of a mob i sneak atack it and its instantly on me again.

I found it really hard to keep the agro from Sneak attackers that got sneak atack from more than one source, but as i said a sneak atack right after from me gives me back the agro. There were one perticular character that had twice my hp at that time that i could never take the agro from but i have no more info on his build ( he was definately a fighter ...)

So, in a few words, i have no idea how the agro algorithm works! ( To be honest in nwn 2 OC, that i finished with the same people quite some times, we figured that agro favors the highest AC characther, but i can't prove it )