D&D 5E Help creating a tough defender

[hejtmane]

Menacing might be a better choice. Give a dwarf polearm master menacing attack and the Sentinel feat, and he's able to hit a target from outside normal reach with an attack that keeps it from closing on him, keeps it from moving to another target and imposes disadvantage no matter who it attacks.

Not a bad idea either then again you get three of them so no matter which route you go with fighter I would look at

Menacing
Goading
Trip
you could also look at disarming in place of one of them as an option as while

Lots of cool ideas floating around

 

[Dersu]

I have played a barbarian tank in a previous campaign and I am currently playing a oath of vengeance paladin in the current campaign.

First about barbarians. They can be hands down the best traditional tank out there. If you go path of the totem warrior and take all of the bear powers you will effectively double your hp pool while also inflicting disadvantage on any enemy who attacks anyone other than you in melee.

That gives creatures one reason to attack you. Combine that with sentinel and now you are very sticky and can stop enemies in their tracks with an OA, or attack them if they try and attack your buddy with disadvantage. Also you can just constantly give yourself advantage every round, while giving everyone else advantage who wants to attack you. As a tank this is essentially a taunt and given your damage resistance, not really a problem.

That is four powerful reasons for anything in melee range to attack you over your friends and you haven't spent an action yet.

Another great feat for barbarian's is shield master. Now when the big bad dragon blasts you with it's breath attack, you already had advantage on the dex save, you can add your shield modifier to that save, and if you pass you take 0 damage or if you fail you take 1/4 damage.

Having high strength is sort of the barbarian's thing, picking athletics as one of your proficiencies is highly advisable. Getting advantage on all strength checks while raging is really great. Mix it all together and you are a grappling monster. The only thing you can do to make it even better is to take a single level of rogue and gain expertise in athletics. Grappling and shield master work very well together. Grapple, and then shove prone as a bonus action.

So after all of that you have one of the most durable fighters in the game who can lock down two to three creatures each round. You wont be doing much for damage, but that is not your job. You are a walking choke point for the rest of the party to focus their attacks on. (I wish I had found that shield that cursed you to always become the target of ranged attacks, would have been beautiful.)

Secondly the paladin build I am doing right now is Oath of vengeance with polearm master and sentinel. This is a very different tank. You can still stop creatures in their tracks, sometimes where they are incapable of attacking back. You can buff the party, heal, whip out some clutch damage when you smite on top of a critical, and give people a reason to stay near you with your protective aura, which works great for the reach enabled sentinel powered OA's.

The other great thing about vengeance paladins is their mobility and battlefield control. Abjure enemy takes a melee monster out of the fight. Compelled duel can lead a monster straight into your sentinel OA. Relentless avenger when coupled with all of the OA's you will be swinging lets you jump around the field like a monk or rogue. Haste is just pure win on top of everything else and works great with dumping more smite damage in one crazy round.

To be honest though... the best tank in the game is a wizard, or warlock, or sorcerer or bard... or anyone that picks a bunch of crowd control spells. If you focus heavily on reducing the onslaught of enemies down to a trickle... it doesn't matter what the odds are, you are going to wipe the table clean.

Wildshape druids are an honorable mention as they are tougher than nails with all of that free hp. But I find they suffer in the stickyness department. Even with sentinel, their +to hit in their wildshape tends to lag behind their non shape shifted counterparts. If they summon a bunch of creatures and then shape shift AND take some feats like resilient constitution and warcaster to maintain concentration, then they can basically create a wall of fur between the enemy and the party. A pack of wolves is amazing at knocking people on their butts and a pack of pixies can put the world to sleep.

 

[PnPgamer]

heavy armor master can help survivability...

 

[Kithas]

Oath of the Crown Paladin/War Domain Cleric can do this about as well as possible.
At level 7 in OoC you get a reaction that lets you take the damage for one attack per turn from an ally. From cleric you get quite a few cool support spells/abilities but the big one for you is Warding Bond, Basically you pick one person(or a few) give em a platinum ring(one time buy) and when you cast it they take half damage from everything and you take the half they aren't.

The main issue with this build from the outset is the MAD(multiple ability dependancy). There are a couple ways around this being an issue; First Be that Hill dwarf you mentioned, they don't get slowed down by heavy armor so you don't need str any more. Then all you need is a good Wis/Dex/Con, assuming dex for a finesse weapon. Alternatively(I think this is the best option) you can just use Sacred flame for everything and forego the weapon altogether, this also means you don't need the War Caster Feat. Meaning now you only need a good Con/Wis The exact thing your race gives you! you only need 3 levels in cleric to get Warding bond so feel free to do like 8-3 by 11 (P-C). I would pick up Resilient-Con sometime very soon though, that way your concentration checks will be a breeze.

 

[transtemporal]

I created a 5e dorf battle master tank build on the charop forums: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Dreadnought-Mountain-Dwarf-Battle-Master-Tank
He was pretty tanky for level-appropriate fights but did have a few problems maintaining aggro (we didn't use the marking rules). The problem comes if you regularly punch above your weight in encounters: only a 17-20 regularly hits you but crits basically one-shot you anyway. At level 4 I had... 36? 40hp? We fought 3 wraiths and one of them crit or two of them crit, I forget. Anyway, I basically went from full hp to minus-a-lot in one round.

So now I only build DPS chars.

 

[Kithas]

I created a 5e dorf battle master tank build on the charop forums: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Dreadnought-Mountain-Dwarf-Battle-Master-Tank
He was pretty tanky for level-appropriate fights but did have a few problems maintaining aggro (we didn't use the marking rules). The problem comes if you regularly punch above your weight in encounters: only a 17-20 regularly hits you but crits basically one-shot you anyway. At level 4 I had... 36? 40hp? We fought 3 wraiths and one of them crit or two of them crit, I forget. Anyway, I basically went from full hp to minus-a-lot in one round.

So now I only build DPS chars.

This kind of thing is why Blur/High hp is a real requirement for tanks in this edition. High hp makes crits less of a instakill, and things like the Blur spell make it now a 1/400 chance to crit.

 

[transtemporal]

This kind of thing is why Blur/High hp is a real requirement for tanks in this edition. High hp makes crits less of a instakill, and things like the Blur spell make it now a 1/400 chance to crit.

Disadvantage is definitely important but if a 20 hits you, you're still getting critted. My AC at level 4 was 20 or 21, which is pretty decent for that level, but not enough to mitigate crits from wraiths (+6 attack bonus), even with disadvantage.

And this absolutely isn't a problem if you're getting hit once or twice in a fight. But when you're absorbing 60-80% of attacks, statistically you're screwed.

I think the best way to "tank" in this game (as peeps pointed out in the group composition thread), is to spread the damage out as much as possible with reactions like cutting words, abjurer ward, fighter shield protection thingy.

 

[Kithas]

Disadvantage is definitely important but if a 20 hits you, you're still getting critted. My AC at level 4 was 20 or 21, which is pretty decent for that level, but not enough to mitigate crits from wraiths (+6 attack bonus), even with disadvantage.

They have to get 2 20's on the same roll to get a crit as they use the lower roll. This turns the 5% crit chance into a .25%~ chance, effectively not going to happen.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think the OP should probably clarify the thematic background approach he or she wants. Sword and board is all we have. But how the OP envisions the PC would definitely help suggestions. Soldier/knight type of PC? Barbarian? these are important things to know because most of the responses here are focusing on CHAR OP. I.e., Let's say I want to play a traditional fighter sword and board, and focus on defending. Most responses are, "level dip into barbarian." Well, a barbarian has a very distinct theme and background to it, and it doesn't fit my desired PC at all, so that's not an option. Neither is going polearm because I said I wanted sword and board.

Believe it or not, lots of people want to play the theme they envision, and don't really care if their PC is min/maxed. So a bit of clarification on the OP's vision of how he or she sees their PC would help point in a better direction.

 

[Dersu]

Except in this case, the entire purpose of this thread was to make character that used martial abilities to protect the party without concern for the ability to inflict damage.

I think it's perfectly valid to expand upon the initial idea set forth. Maybe the op doesn't realize that barbarians can be more than the stereotypical goon with a great axe, Or that defenders don't always need a shield.

If someone wants to play a character they envision, awesome they can go right ahead and do so. If someone asks for help creating a character that is good at something, like defending, then they have many different options because d&d is a flexible system.