How Should Taunting Work?

[S'mon]

The DM tends not to do that sort of thing. He is of the opinion that the only reason a creature would turn its attention to another creature is that it is the biggest threat. He doesn’t seem to view the common trope of the small guy talking crap to get the big guy’s attention as a legit thing.

It seems like a legit thing out of combat. When big guys are wailing on you with greatswords, not so much.

 

[Yunru]

The DM tends not to do that sort of thing. He is of the opinion that the only reason a creature would turn its attention to another creature is that it is the biggest threat. He doesn’t seem to view the common trope of the small guy talking crap to get the big guy’s attention as a legit thing.

Too be fair, the only reason that a creature should want to turn its attention to another creature in combat is that it is the biggest threat.
Of course, the entire point of taunting is to get the creature to do something you want to do, not it, so it should only do that if it doesn't fall for the taunt.

Your DM is putting the horse before the carriage in deciding how the creature will act before the result of the roll (or if there's no way the creature would act differently, shouldn't be calling the roll at all).

 

[Krachek]

What's annoying about using BB? I've used it as a player and had a player use it when I DM, and...never seen any problems crop up from it in any context.

My general tactic is simply to use the swashbuckler class feature to hit and run on something that is primarily melee, so it has to either give chase or sit on it's hand, or use a less powerful ranged option. if possible, my rogue hides as a bonus action after getting that attack. In an open field, he'll often forgo the BB attack, and instead use his rapier and hand crossbow to double his chance of a sneak attack, or stay at range with the hand crossbow and avoid melee.

What i do find annoying, sometimes, as great a DM as my buddy is, is when we fight basically mindless stuff like zombies, and they avoid giving chase in order to avoid the secondary damage, or to avoid another character's damaging zone, or whatever.

To continually evaluate the Dm in hope that BB trigger can be annoying. Especially if the player comment, suggest, argue. Hopefully you don’t seem to be in that situation.

 

[Horwath]

I would go with Intimidate/deception/persuation, depending on situation/target/type of taunt vs. wisdom save or insight check(whatever is higher).

 

[jasper]

Create a feat call taunting. Since the poll seems to a reskinning of some battlemaster and other class skill.

 

[Blue]

I don't want a repeatable, mechanical subsystem for taunting. That walks over a bunch of class features that already have affect. And it heads towards making builds around it, like "Diplomancers" in D&D 3.5.

I am for a DM making a case by case call, with perhaps (and perhaps not) adjusting the creature's tactics based on taunts, threats, etc.

EDIT: There was no option for this in the poll, so I didn't vote.

 

[Torquar]

I would go with Intimidate/deception/persuation, depending on situation/target/type of taunt vs. wisdom save or insight check(whatever is higher).

The problem with this is that it's a house rule, the rest of the game hasn't been made to take it into account. Check your Monster Manual, very few monsters and npc's have Insight proficiency. Even seasoned fighters would have little defense against an ability like this.

 

[Horwath]

The problem with this is that it's a house rule, the rest of the game hasn't been made to take it into account. Check your Monster Manual, very few monsters and npc's have Insight proficiency. Even seasoned fighters would have little defense against an ability like this.

I know that is the problem. It can be overcome by giving most of the saves an advantage and really bad taunts disadvantage.

 

[Pregily]

Optimizing BB is really annoying for me.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't want a repeatable, mechanical subsystem for taunting. That walks over a bunch of class features that already have affect. And it heads towards making builds around it, like "Diplomancers" in D&D 3.5.

I am for a DM making a case by case call, with perhaps (and perhaps not) adjusting the creature's tactics based on taunts, threats, etc.

EDIT: There was no option for this in the poll, so I didn't vote.

Do you allow people who aren’t battle masters to trip and shove?