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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6701380" data-attributes="member: 996">Really, the aggro thing was just an implementation of how many old-school DMs tended to run things.  It was very common to have a fight in a corridor or small room where the fighters in the party formed a de-facto front line or 'wall' or to have monsters attack the 'biggest' or 'most dangerous looking' (ignoring the threat of spellcasting entirely) PC.  It was one of those conventions that defied logic, but kept the game playable and more fun than it might otherwise have been.  Translating D&D style combats got us aggro formulas for 'AI's. So, yeah, 'tank' or 'meat shield' or whatever was a D&D thing long before MMOs.   In 5e, as in classic D&D, the primary implementer of it is not the player choosing to 'tank,' but the DM.  That's just how 5e works down to it's most basic resolution.  The players decide what to do, the DM decides how it works out for them.  So, if you want to 'Tank' and aggressively engage enemies and protect allies, you just do.  You shout challenges, charge (move/attack) melee types, position yourself between enemies and allies and generally declare Tanking actions.  The DM, if he's a good sport, will have the monsters attack you more often than not.The mechanical support for that is just strong melee offense & conventional defense.  High DPR, high AC, high hps.  Barbarians work fine, Fighters of any stripe, and Paladins (who can also heal allies, which is a plus). You can get fancy with a Battlemaster fighter (and find yourself wishing you had more Reactions), but it's still up to your DM whether those tricks deliver any real 'aggro.'  It's not like 4e where you have strong Role support for Defenders, since 5e eschews the concept of roles, and it's not like 3.5 where you could apply system mastery to create a complicated, but effective, battlefield-control build.  This ball is mostly going to be in the DM's court. Heh, prettymuch, yeah.  Depends on the DM, but let's pick on the Paladin is not uncommon. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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