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

[gyor]

Oath of the Ancients Paladin, You end up with passive Aura that cuts spell damage in half, plus the usual Paladin Auras that adds your Charisma Bonus to allies saves, and immunity to fear. Your immune to disease, plate armour, your oath keeps you alive if you die once per long rest, you get great defence spells like Stone Skin and protection from elements. Seriously against spellcasters your the scarest thing out there.

If your facing demons Turn Faithless (I forget the name) works against them to drive them away, your divine sense can find them. Also go Aasmir Oath of the Ancients Paladin, because if demons hate a Paladin, they hate an Aasmir Paladin even more.

 

[Erik Stoop]

The best Tank class in 5e D&D is Barbarian or Fighter with protection style. You can take a look at things like a Paladin and maybe even a Life cleric. The life cleric can't realy dish out lots of melee damage though, but has enormous staying power.

 

[Celtavian]

There's a few good options.

Least Complicated: Bear Barbarian. Half damage all attacks except psychic. Decent offense. Good whether you're using feats or ability bonuses. Downside is you have to take hits. Low AC and Reckless attack means you'll get hit often. You can run this class pretty much to twenty and the play-style doesn't change much.

Best Option if you can use all options: Paladin 6/Eldritch Knight Fighter 14. You can pick up both protection style and defensive fighting style. You get heavy plate and shield. This will give you a base AC of 21. Then you can cast Shield of Faith for an AC of 23 for some battles. If you combine this with shield, you can get to a 28 AC at key times quite a few times per day. This is without magic armor. You have access to some helpful spells including a spell that can protect you against energy attacks as well. You'll have access to decent offense with occasional smites. Your saves will be really good with the paladin levels. You'll be fairly well rounded.

Downsides: Con, Str, Cha focus versus Con and Str for the barbarian. Takes a bit longer to come online, though you can get the AC fairly early.

Other than that, it's 5E. You can play almost any tank class, even a ranger, and be effective and have fun. Parties don't need a tank to take on enemies. Battles are fast and furious and it's kill or be killed with little room for avoidance. Either they die quick or you die quick. You can also play a Bladesinger wizard/Paladin for pretty good AC and a lot of spell slots for smiting. A buddy of mine did this and is having fun. He can get his AC when bladesinging and buffed to near 30. This is an Int, Con, Dex class. Light armor, maxed dex, maxed intelligence is an AC of 22 while bladesinging before buffing. With Shield of Faith and shield it gets up to 29 for short periods of time with lots of spells for offenses.

Look around. There are some good tank builds possible. If you don't want to min-max too much, almost any martial class and clerics can be built into strong tank types that are fun to play and effective.

 

[Horwath]

battlemaster fighter with sentinel, polearm master and heavy armor mastery. defense fighting style

At lvl6 you can have all 3 feats and with halforc, variant human or mt.dwarf you can even get 18 str.


OR new UA beastmaster ranger. take shield and defense fighting style. Might even think of variant spell less ranger is your wisdom is not high enough. beast gives extra pool of HP that can be bashed upon and you can even put some armor on it.

half orc BM ranger with ape as beast companion; brother of another mother

 

[MechaPilot]

Bear Barbarians. Effectively double hit points AND double-powered heals from your Cleric! In a combat heavy game, there is no option even close to this for a tanking ability.

And with reckless attack and the GWM feat, you have outstanding offense too!

I have to agree with this.

One of my players has a bear barbarian. At level 7, the party nearly killed a Solar (a CR 21 legendary, just as a reminder). Between extremely good HP rolls when levelling and his high Con score the barbarian has 107 hps (while raging, the damage resistance basically doubles that amount against everything but falling damage). Couple that with the life cleric and the paladin healing him, the wizard hasting him, and him having a magic weapon to punch through the Solar's resistance, and he survived long enough to basically do 80% of the damage to kill the thing, and he doesn't even have GWM.

Edit: If you're wondering why I threw a Solar at a level 7 party, it was part of a setting change. The solar was supposed to kill them all (quickly) so they could meet the gods of the setting and return to trounce the thing with a divine power-up. Cut to two-hours later, and the Solar is so beaten down he has to call for reinforcements to actually finish a job that was supposed to take just a few rounds. Consequently, the fight ate up more of the session time than I wanted it to and their comeback was anti-climactic instead of being the triumphant moment I'd intended. DM tip: if you need something to actually kill the characters, don't be afraid to be as mean and broken as you have to be to get the job done.

 

[CapnZapp]

DM tip: if you need something to actually kill the characters, don't be afraid to be as mean and broken as you have to be to get the job done.

DM Tip: If you need the story to kill the characters, do it outside of combat.

Yes, that's right. Don't use the combat rules (initiative, round by round, etc) if the purpose isn't to see if the characters can make a miraculous escape.

Instead, just narrate it. In the same way you tell the players their heroes reach the next town, or the way you describe a cave room to them, or how they gossip at the local bar and flirt with its maids etc, you simply tell them the story of how their characters got killed.

If you want it to be more interactive, still don't bring out the dice (battlemat, minis etc). Instead tell the players their characters will be killed off, tell them the reasons, and now ask the players to describe how their characters died.

Why?

Well, let's leave that for now, and just soak this in...

 

[Waterbizkit]

So there's a lot of good advice here, but there's one area I'm going to go in a slightly different direction: AC. Depending on your DM having an astronomical AC like some builds are capable of can be a detriment to "drawing aggro" the way you seem like you may want to.

On my side of the screen, if my monsters and villains are having trouble hitting you they're going to ignore you. My motley crew of would-be hero killers aren't going to keep beating on the turtle that's cozy in its shell when the other turtle behind him is stuck on its back and a lot easier to crack. And in 5e you only have so many ways to lock down enemies with a single reaction.

In that way my personal preference would be a barbarian of whatever flavor you like most. While they can push a higher AC they don't need to and with damage resistance as well as reckless attack granting enemies advantage to hit you you're giving plenty of incentive to keep hitting you while you keep shrugging half of it off. Add in a feat like sentinel and you're in great shape.

Anyway, just a thought. As I said to start with though there's plenty of good advice already, so you can't go wrong really.

 

[TwoSix]

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

 

[Caliban]

Bear Barbarians. Effectively double hit points AND double-powered heals from your Cleric! In a combat heavy game, there is no option even close to this for a tanking ability.

And with reckless attack and the GWM feat, you have outstanding offense too!

My preference is Fiend Patron fighter 1/warlock X with heavy armor mastery. Regenerating temp hp, Armor of Agathys or Fiendish Vigor for temps tos start the fight with, Damage reduction, Resistance via blade ward as needed. You are very tough and things damage themselves when they hit you. It's one of the better tanks I've played at levels 1-10.

Paladin might be the better choice in the long run, due to giving a bonus to saves to everyone near them and how often saves come up at higher levels.

 

[CapnZapp]

Thank you.

(Yes, Paladin is the better choice, but we can't all be paladins, can we )