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<blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9077975" data-attributes="member: 7035894">Let's say our level 5 berserker barbarian has 55 HP, AC 14, Str 18, Con 16, Dex 12, which is pretty typical. They'll use frenzy, and reckless attacks for this test. Great sword. Up against an owl bear, they do 35.83 damage per round, while taking 11.31 DPR. 5 rounds of survivability, but they kill the owl bear in 2.Level 5 champion fighter has similar stats but let's say they got chain+shield and dueling, long sword. AC 20, 49 HP. They'll do 15.75 DPR (doubling that for one round if they action surge) while taking 9.8 DPR. They also have 5 rounds of survivability, but will take twice as long to kill the owl bear.My point is that you have to take offence into account when assessing tanking, because killing enemies faster means taking less damage. Barbarians can tank exceptionally well while putting out big numbers - that berserker barbarian basically threw defence to the wind and still had the survivability of a fairly typical tanky fighter. You can definitely create builds with other classes that are as good or better at defence - eldritch knight was a great example, but only by paying a high price in offence.And you can build an extremely tanky barbarian, if you want - that barbarian could have AC 20 and not do reckless attacks, for example, and their survivability would be ridiculous (owl bear now needs 11 rounds to kill them, and the barbarian is still doing 26.3 DPR). Folks seldom do this because the baseline barbarian is already a good tank while putting up big numbers, which is fun.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Clint_L, post: 9077975, member: 7035894"] Let's say our level 5 berserker barbarian has 55 HP, AC 14, Str 18, Con 16, Dex 12, which is pretty typical. They'll use frenzy, and reckless attacks for this test. Great sword. Up against an owl bear, they do 35.83 damage per round, while taking 11.31 DPR. 5 rounds of survivability, but they kill the owl bear in 2. Level 5 champion fighter has similar stats but let's say they got chain+shield and dueling, long sword. AC 20, 49 HP. They'll do 15.75 DPR (doubling that for one round if they action surge) while taking 9.8 DPR. They [I]also[/I] have 5 rounds of survivability, but will take twice as long to kill the owl bear. My point is that you have to take offence into account when assessing tanking, because killing enemies faster means taking less damage. Barbarians can tank exceptionally well while putting out big numbers - that berserker barbarian basically threw defence to the wind and still had the survivability of a fairly typical tanky fighter. You can definitely create builds with other classes that are as good or better at defence - eldritch knight was a great example, but only by paying a high price in offence. And you [I]can[/I] build an extremely tanky barbarian, if you want - that barbarian could have AC 20 and not do reckless attacks, for example, and their survivability would be ridiculous (owl bear now needs 11 rounds to kill them, and the barbarian is still doing 26.3 DPR). Folks seldom do this because the baseline barbarian is already a good tank while putting up big numbers, which is fun. [/QUOTE]

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