D&D 5E What class fills the tank role best? Fighter, Barbarian, Cleric or Paladin?

[manduck]

It also depends on what the rest of your party looks like and how big a group you have. Do you have a large group that needs more healing? Do you have some heavy hitters in the damage department so you can focus elsewhere? What classes are they playing? That kind of stuff.

I have a clear bias towards paladins (as admitted in another thread). I like that you can go sword and board without having to worry about weapon damage all the time. Big damage comes more from smites and less from weapon choice. Devotion and Ancients both have great resistance benefits, like charms for devotion or spells for ancients. If you have access to Oath of the Crown, that one just screams tank. Save bonuses, fear immunity, and heavy armor all give you good defenses. Extra attacks and some nice utility spells round out what you can offer the party. Throw in some extra healing and the ability to cure diseases or poison and you're a handy addition to the party.

My group has a paladin, a fighter and a barbarian. From what I've seen all three can do big damage. The way it seems to shake out so far is the fighter has great control on the field, the barbarian can take the most hits with his resistances and high hp and paladin has the most utility with divine magic and healing. So whatever your group needs more of, start there and see your options.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I agree. My Bear Barb has Adamantine Partial Plate and a +2 shield (AC 21) and has MC'd to Rogue (Swashbuckler) to get Uncanny Dodge. Hard to hit and harder to damage.

 

[hejtmane]

I'm going to be starting an Out of the Abyss campaign next week, and this group plays by the books.

27 point buy, starting at level 1.

I want to build a tank, somebody who can both dish out damage and draw the attacks away from the other PCs, who are much squishier than I plan on being.

Which class works best?

I always find it funny when people assume Point Buy is the only by the book PHB PG 13

You generate your character's six ability scores randomly. Roll four 6-sided dice and record the total of the highest three dice on a piece of scratch paper. Do this five more times, so that you have six numbers.

Point Buy is the Variant rule (So the buy the book makes me laugh)

The question about best tank depends on how your DM runs monsters. How does your DM do things does he play the monsters smartly or if the Big bad meat shield just hits him they focus on mele etc

Barbarians with Bear Totem can take a beating and keep on ticking taking half damage from all attacks technically can get the highest AC

Fighter has two options Battle Masters works great because you can use menacing strike and goading attack, parry, trip etc for maneuvers all help in tanking and you can use protection if you want that route has the most asi so taking sential is easier.

Fighter EK some may disagree but you do not need anything in intelligence and then you can use things like shield and absorb elements to keep damage you take down and blur later which you can cast on you or even a teammate.

Paladins give out auras that help teammates smites to increase damage

They all work I would say take the one that most appeals to you

 

[Tony Vargas]

I sure hope this advice is useful to the opening poster in his Out of the Abyss campaign from 2015.

SCAG's Oath of the Crown and UA's Knight Archetype do add new wrinkles to the question. It's nice to see a bit more support for the function.

 

[WarpedAcorn]

From a DM's perspective, I will say that the Barbarian gets a slight edge on the best tank in my book. Although she is easier to hit than the fully armor Eldritch Knight in the group, he damage is more than double his making her a much bigger threat. Plus, with resistances, she is questionably tougher. Basically she can run up and start doing massive damage and very few enemies will want to try and run past her because her reaction damage with a Maul would be significant. Meanwhile, I can (and have) ignored the Eldritch Knight because of mediocre damage and him being less of a "threat".

As a player, I have the tank role on my Battlemaster/Cleric. Outside of running up and staying in the enemies' collective faces, I don't have many tools except high AC. But vs. a single big enemy I have found Menacing Strike to be fantastic since my party is behind me and on a failed save the enemy will not approach me and thus will not move towards my party. So in that regard, its a decent tank.

 

[Nathan Mitchell]

I have played a number of characters that all tank rather well. My favourite three were as follows;

The first was a Fighter (Champion) 17/Barbarian (Path of the Bear) 3. He was a Greataxe wielding Half Orc with Great Weapon Master and Sentinel. He was originally a gladiator and loved nothing more than a good bar fight. The ridiculous HP and resistances meant that he could take hits for days and keep coming back for more, and you don't want to try ignore this character as he could crit-fish with the best of them and if he crits, you're hurting.

The second was a Paladin (Oathbreaker) 12/Warlock (Pact of the Tome/Fiend patron) 8. He was a Glaive wielding Half Elf with Polearm Master and Sentinel. He had a way of getting more money out of people than they originally promised, especially when they saw him fight. He was employed as a personal bodyguard for the party Wizard and did a good job of it too, mowing down mooks as they got close and firing off Eldritch Blast at distant enemies.

The third was a Cleric (Life Domain) 1/Wizard (School of Abjuration) 19. She was a Hill Dwarf with War Caster and Tough that wielded a Warhammer and a Shield. When you have access to spells like Hold Person and Phantasmal Force, enemies tend to target you first because they don't want to deal with that . She made herself the tankiest Wizard around in order to take advantage of that fact.

 

[Satyrn]

I'm going to be starting an Out of the Abyss campaign next week, and this group plays by the books.

27 point buy, starting at level 1.

I want to build a tank, somebody who can both dish out damage and draw the attacks away from the other PCs, who are much squishier than I plan on being.

Which class works best?

The paladin in my group makes for a good tank as you describe it. He's a variant human with Heavy Armor Master (really does soak up the damage) though unless you know your DM is gonna give you heavy armor right away, I'd wait until level 4 to take the feat, so grab something else - and I'd suggest a dwarf for the extra hit points, darkvision, - and because a dwarf ought to be a decent explorer in the underdark

And for helping your squishy allies, my gnome battlemaster is exceptionally happy the party paladin took the Protection fighting style. But this soaks up your reaction, so Sentinal feat doesn't work well.

 

[S'mon]

Barbarian is best tank by miles, IME. I loved my Barbarian with Polearm Master & Greatweapon Master - tons of tactical options, enormous damage, free whack at anyone closing on him. Could Reckless + GWM for obscene damage or non-reckless raging for huge endurance.

 

[DaviMMS]

The paladin in my group makes for a good tank as you describe it. He's a variant human with Heavy Armor Master (really does soak up the damage) though unless you know your DM is gonna give you heavy armor right away, I'd wait until level 4 to take the feat, so grab something else - and I'd suggest a dwarf for the extra hit points, darkvision, - and because a dwarf ought to be a decent explorer in the underdark

And for helping your squishy allies, my gnome battlemaster is exceptionally happy the party paladin took the Protection fighting style. But this soaks up your reaction, so Sentinal feat doesn't work well.

Just in case you did not notice, that comment you quoted is almost two years old. Someone necroed this thread

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I see 5e as more like BECMI; being able to "tank" (re: "get/hold aggro") is dependent almost entirely on the player and DM accepting that it can be done by way of "common sense RP'ing". In other words, "You are heavily armored and more threatening than the guy in leather armor next to you, so yeah, it will attack you over him"; no mechanics, no numbers, no rolls... just RP'ing in the common imagination of the groups game.

I still have a difficult time understanding such common sense aggro rules. Either I'm just mistaken in my reasoning, or some of the current thoughts about what makes sense in drawing aggro come from the way it has been implemented in MMOs.

Most combatants don't want to die. Most combatants also don't think they're the biggest baddest butt-kickingest one out there, and want to prove it at every chance.

Therefore, most combatants, given a chance, probably don't want to fight the most threatening opponent.

Am I completely wrong here?

I mean, if I were in a band of goblins, and we started fighting a motley crew, and one of them was swinging a weapon at everyone near him, taking down my allies, whacking anyone who tried to run away...the last thing on my mind would be to charge up there and get in his face. No, I'd be disengaging, probably hiding, and moving around the perimeter to look for an easier target to take out.

And that's just one scenario. There are all sort of others.

Most combatants should, unless I'm totally missing something, prefer to pick less threatening opponents most of the time. Yes,some times they will want to all gang up on the big guy, but that hardly makes sense as standard operating procedure to me.

Even ignoring the role-playing element (the most important one for me), the math doesn't always favor attacking the biggest threat. Sometimes it does, but other times it favors taking out the lesser threats quickly, because they amount of damage they are going to be plinking you with while you fight the bigger tankier one will add up to more damage than he would have put out if you had just picked off the weaker ones one at a time before turning to him.

It might just be that my (really good) DM is a bit too informed by MMO aggro for my taste, but I just don't seem to think about it the same way as others do when I try to put myself into the mindset of the monsters.