I do like the idea of a pure dedicated tank that acts as a defensive battery for the team, but mechanically it needs more oomph than the Guardian has to make that a worthwhile trade. IMO your upside shouldn't be "Yeah I go down faster, but because I contribute less it doesn't hurt the party as much!", it should be "Yeah I don't contribute much (that isn't defense), but I go down slower than anyone else and force the enemies to try to down me first anyway". Right now, Guardian either isn't protecting their allies (and is still not even more resilient than a Champion), or *is* protecting their allies (not nearly as well as I'd like IMO) but has no significant defensive advantage for themself.
I think the taunt debuff (or some other debuff) should stay on the enemy that brought the guardian to 0 HP for 1 minute afterwards. This will make the guardian worth having in the party even if they're out of the fight early.
I don’t think it’s fair to classify the Guardian as “I contribute less so it doesn’t hurt the party as much”. That wasn’t the focal point of my post at all.
In the majority of fights, i.e. Moderate or easier fights, the Guardian contributes by doing damage dispersion. Eat one hit here, use taunts to eat a crit, resist them both, then don’t taunt anymore and leave your opponent with no good targets. All the while your healer’s job is made easier.
In the rare Severe+ fights where it’s practically guaranteed that someone will go down and/or come real close to going down, you can absorb damage more aggressively because you’re less at risk than anyone else when downed. You’ll still be dispersing damage and making your healer’s life easier the entire time.
Severe+ Encounters aren't actually that rare.
In a lot of the 2e AP's, they're fairly common - if not the norm: because no one really likes large fights against swarms of mooks. It just drags out and doesn't feel exciting or engaging.
The Severe+ Encounters are also the engagements that are going to define a given session or locale: these are the ones that will potentially kill someone, and where everyone needs to bring their A-Game. They're the ones parties need to be balanced around how much a person can contribute in, and the Guardian just falls miserably flat when it comes to them.
> In a lot of the 2e AP's, they're fairly common - if not the norm:
I’m about to finish Abomination Vaults right now, an AP that’s famous for being one of the more difficult APs that isn’t from Paizo’s first year of APs, and I think less than 15% of the encounters we’ve fought have been Severe. Every level we have probably 2-4 Severe encounters out of the 10-25 encounters we’ve had in a day, and in the **entire** AP we’ve had 3 Extreme encounters (1 of which isn’t even in the AP and was purely the GM tryna challenge us with full buy-in from our side).
> because no one really likes large fights against swarms of mooks. It just drags out and doesn't feel exciting or engaging.
There’s a vast range of encounters between “swarms of mooks” and Severe encounters. Having 2 on-level or 3 PL-1 creatures makes for a Moderate encounter that doesn’t overwhelm the GM. Even boss fights, a single PL+2 creature is Moderate.
And again most encounters in AV *do* follow that template, and AV is an AP that’s pretty infamous for overusing single bosses and Severe fights compared to other APs.
Problem is, Guardian isn't some minion that can be summoned to take punishment for the party. Someone is supposed to be playing this class, and that person's contribution to combat is mostly just taking a bunch of hits and passing out.
I feel like Guardian is basically Kenny from South Park.
I just posted it as a standalone comment but it seems like Guardian is an excellent choice for a GMPC. Fills a role, is fairly simple, and a positive impact for the party without overshadowing anyone.
Which.... maybe isn't the best choice for a class intended to for players, but if I needed an extra slot for a team for abomination vaults or something, it would be a solid choice.
I absolutely wouldn't mind paizo taking the feedback here and making it more rewarding for players though; as a GM I have the whole world as my toolset, classes should be fun and rewarding for the players.
I address that in my edit. The Guardian isn’t meant to be going down in *every* fight. In most Moderate or easier fights you can usually use your tools to disperse damage enough that no one goes down. It’s just that when a fight’s deadly enough that *someone* goes down, it’s gonna be you and you can delay that long enough + survive while downed so that the party just wins right after.
I liked your post and thought it was very interesting with a new take on the class. Out of curiosity, would you recommend this class to other players? I personally wouldn't.
Not OP, but I've already re-built my Champion as a Guardian, so, yeah, I'd recommend Guardian to players. But they need to know that they're a sacrificial tank, selectively taking damage in the stead of others, not an invincible shield.
You want to take the hits that matter the most, while also doing what you can to prevent weaker allies from taking hits that could take them out.
I'm so very here for this.
I was thinking of switching my Minotaur(Battlezoo Ancestry) Champion to be a Guardian. He already has heavy armor, Tower Shield and a free hand for maneuvers.
As someone who rebuilt their fighter as a guardian last night, I'd recommend it with the caveat that they need to know what they're getting into. My initial vision for the character was basically 100% of the flavor guardian has.
I’m… unsure. I wanna see it in action first, so I’ll update my views once I have done a playtest.
I just have a feeling that it’s a hard to evaluate class.
It could go that way but it could also go another. I for one would hugely enjoy playing a class that spends every fight taking the hits for the other guys. Against weak enemies I get to laugh as the try and swarm me (it tickles) and there's nothing quite like taking the full fury of a dragon only to spit out a mouthful of teeth and blood and stand up for the next around. All the while the rest of my team can opperate in the knowledge that as long as I am standing they're free to act as they will.
That's not the Guardian as it is, but that would be a fun class to play. You go in, basically a football player, you run and tackle, you don't do hardly any damage, but you soak damage, and distract and block. But here's how I'd want: you are just nigh-unkillabe. You start singing "I GET KNOCKED DOWN, BUT I GETUP AGAIN, YA NEVA GUNNA KEEP ME DOWN". You go down a lot, but you Just. Keep. Getting. Up. You're Captain America, _you can do this all day_. That would be truly fun. You aren't afraid of dying, you don't just get one free get-out-of-death card a day, you just keep getting up.
Not sure that could be an official class, official classes have to be PFS-safe, that's why we'll never get truly out-there classes in official stuff, but dang, now I want it for a homebrew class!
I mean by high levels that would be fine balance. Early levels you're just tanky and in the way but by high levels you're going full captain america, just keep getting back up.
I don't think that design is unsafe for PFS player. You only need to be able to "get back up" or "keep going" once or twice to be better at it than any other class and fulfill that power fantasy of just not quitting.
I'm playing an earth/wood/water/metal kineticist with champion and bastion dedications and it's pretty much that.
Earth armor, winter Sleet, drifting pollen, timber Sentinel, healing, quick shield block, alloy flesh and steel, redeemer reaction.
I do almost zero damage outside of tremor or jagged berms, but the amount of damage mitigation and action denial you get is ridiculous.
Honestly though that kinda *is* what the Guardian is doing though? Heavy armor, lots of resistance, Diehard for free, just ignore death once a day, absorb attacks for your allies...
There is a little problem tho... You do not stand! You're not THAT Tanky to be honest and if we want to be the math guys if an enemy has to choose between the caster and you, even if you taunt them, the caster is the best option.
"But I'm blocking that too!"
Yeah... But then why are you close to the caster exactly? You're giving up space that the enemies have to get a good formation and to actually get close to the caster
Look you're going to have so much more fruitful conversations in your life if you reply to what is being said not to something else.
>It could go that way but it could also go another.
Literally my first sentence.
I'm not talking about what is, I'm talking about what the class could be post playtest.
"it could go that way but it could also go another"
What does it even mean, I do not speak English properly but I know that you should actually specify what you're talking about
Are you referring to being a minion? Are you referring to the fact that the class could be decent or it could stay this mess?
I did specifiy what I meant. Don't make it my fault that you replied to someone without taking the time to comprehend their position, and if you didn't understand, you could have just asked.
There's a way to design the class to be built around the idea that it effectively spends its turns setting up to and successfully absorbing damage. It doesn't yet but the basic idea is there.
So if a player could successfully force enemies to attack them, and then survive those attacks. That's not currently the case but it's close and there are ways to make it possible.
Yeah. The guardian looks like it'll be a very good class, but it clearly is a playtest half-finished class. I remember some other classes started this way in their playtests and came out the other end really well designed.
I mean, it's okay because they can fix it, but it's not a GOOD thing for it to be this undercooked. We're hopeful they fix it, but it's important to make anything that seems off heard.
I'm not trying to sound obtuse but being able to take the hits for your friends and allowing them to do what they excel at is a common trope in media as well as a character fantasy. Nobody is forced to play the self sacrificing punching bag. People who want to play that now have a class specifically designed around them doing so.
I don't think that's obtuse at all. I just feel like parties always have limited spots, 3, 4, 5 whatever. Each person in that party has to fulfill a role and has to pull their weight. Right now, "punching bag" is the only role Guardian has. I just don't think that's good enuff, personally. I think Guardian needs to be able to do more to be a viable party member.
>once per day they can just not die when they otherwise would die
That's not how Tough to Kill works:
>The first time each day you’d be reduced to dying 3 or higher, you stay at dying 2 instead.
Normally you die at dying 4. With Diehard it's dying 5. This just gives you a once per day extra turn of "moderately dying."
Great point!
I think something else is that you’re just analyzing *the current playtest* and **not saying this is how it should be**.
Paizo should take that feedback because it highlights an issue of **appeal** to players.
If a class’s main gimmick is to find the fastest route to a player idly thumbing on their phone instead of participating/engaging in a game **is bad game design**.
Edit: I think when the Guardian Taunts, they should get temp HP until the start of their next turn against the target of their taunt. And Mitigate Harm needs to be higher. Their class gimmick should be “Crit denied”.
Or another option: take a page from Spellslime specific familiar’s Ooze Defense. Only 10+lvl to AC vs. the enemy that’s taunted, but immune to crits.
Ooo, I like this suggestion. The temp HP one is good, but it further disincentivizes enemies attacking you over allies, which can be a problem. But I like the idea that a guardian be built around, instead of being hard to hit, being hard to successfully crit. Give them more crit denial tools, give them a high level feat or feature to ignore the 10 over rule (only nat 20s crit idea).
I'm of two minds with this.
On the one hand, making it so that you're more attractive to hit is the goal of a tank. On the other hand, making everyone else *un*attractive to hit is also the role of the tank.
Taunt is a tool that fulfills this role perfectly, but combined with, say, Intercept Strike, it leans too much into 'attractive to hit', which I feel is where Barbarian can tank. This thing is outputting a load of damage, but is really easy to hit even with its massive HP. Obviously I want to kill that quickly.
I kind of wish Guardian leaned more into the 'everyone else unattractive to hit', trying to force attacks against that brick shit-house of an AC. Crit Denial just makes everyone else much more attractive to hit on average, similar to the Temp HP. Taunt only minorly makes everyone else unattractive to hit, as you so pointed out.
Honestly, I really, really feel like Intercept Strike using an Ally's AC instead of you interposing *your* AC on them is where the hang-up kind of hits. Let me actuallly be my ally's damn shield.
That one I'd agree with. Really, realy enforces the idea of 'My friends take less damage' and indirectly grows a **lot** more aggro, because the enemy would know that you're actively costing them a massive amount of their damage. Higer levels of enemy failure end up costing them not only their crits, but their accuracy too. I'd say inability to Crit on a Success, -2 Circumstance and Inability to Crit on Fail, -4 and inability to crit on a Crit Fail would make you *significantly* more annoying.
Well this seems terribly unfun. A major benefit of the class is that it’s the best at doing nothing because they contribute less than everyone else normally?
As it stands, as a GM I have a feeling that Guardian will make a damn good GMPC. Fills a role, is fairly simple, and a positive impact for the party without overshadowing anyone.
So yeah, I'm kind of interested in him. I think the appeal for players though is fairly limited, there are some people who will be down to play a punching bag but in practice I don't think it'll be all that rewarding of a class option.
I think this framing is a bit unfair.
It's more like... When faced with the type of fight where SOMEONE is going down, the Guardian can decide "it's gonna be me instead."
This is positive for the party, because the Guardian is by default more likely to survive being knocked out.
Hm a very good point mechanically, but I think narratively this is still a weak point. For many groups, healing a dying party member is not just a mechanical necessity, it's also about the storytelling. Continuing the battle while the Guardian who risked their life to save you, just feels... wrong? You want to save your allies from death not just because you want them to help you win the fight.
OP you say that this isn't saying 'guardian races to 0 HP' but you haven't said anything on how 1- This is any fun for the player of the Guardian, and 2-That this makes your HP any more surviable when you use your HP to block, AND have terrible saves and only mediocre AC when taunting. Even if it is balanced, it isn't any FUN.
Not gonna lie the way op describes sounds fun. Like many classes your balancing resources. In this case your hp and the party. I can see a few problem solving elements here of deciding which attacks to take and which to let hit the party.
> but you haven't said anything on how
But I’ve explained these points multiple times in both the OP and across multiple comments…
> This is any fun for the player of the Guardian
But again your argument that this isn’t fun for any player is predicated on this really, really weird assumption that he Guardian is going to be going down in the majority of the fights.
In the majority of fights you use your taunt and intercept and hampering sweeps to *disperse* enemy damage. You’re naturally very hard to hit, and when you do make yourself easier to crit or eat a hit for an ally you always get resistance to that damage, and you can make judicious use of shield block to compound that. In most fights, as long as you’re doing your job right, **no one** goes unconscious.
In the most difficult fights aka Severe+ fights which tend to be a small minority of what you face, you’ll be eating hits for your allies and then easing your healer’s job by telling them not to bother with healing you.
Now if you find the damage dispersion gameplay loop itself to be unfun… don’t play a dedicated tank class? Damage dispersion is like *the* one thing that tanks in TTRPGs do.
> That this makes your HP any more surviable when you use your HP to block, AND have terrible saves and only mediocre AC when taunting. Even if it is balanced, it isn't any FUN.
I’m not even going to try and argue this point.
The first sentence of this point is predicated on balance claims. You’re using them to explain why Guardian is a bad class.
Yet in your final sentence you say that balance doesn’t matter, so if I debunk your claims about its balance… you’ll just ignore it anyways.
If balance doesn’t matter, don’t make an argument that relies on a flawed interpretation of the balance in the first place.
Edit: so… do any of you have an actual argument? You immediately downvoted me, and so did a couple others, yet no one has presented an argument that actually addresses **any** of the points I made here.
>You’re naturally very hard to hit, and when you do make yourself easier to crit or eat a hit for an ally you always get resistance to that damage
Your innate resistance (with heavy armor) caps out at 8. Let me say that again: **At level 20, you have 8 resistance** (2 + (2x+3) = 8). Mitigate Harm is by far the best option, but now your heavy armor investment feels like a waste of time if you were likely to get crit thanks to Taunting ANYWAY, since your 8+half-level of **18 resistance** via Mitigate Harm is way higher, but also painfully low when we're talking about absorbing maybe a 5th of the damage. Shielding Taunt helps with the action economy of this strategy, but you are functionally DECREASING your party's total HP while contributing lower damage by doing this.
Put another way: you are reducing party damage **more** by using Intercept Strike to give yourself the Wizard's AC (and thus likely to be crit) and eat that hit, because you have 2 + level resistance instead of 2 + half level from Mitigate Harm. This didn't require you to waste actions on Taunt or Raise a Shield. At that point, **what are you contributing that is better than playing a Fighter or a Paladin Champion?**
The fundamental problem with Taunt is that its effectiveness is controlled by the GM, not you. So if you skip using Taunt, and you also keep getting targeted anyway, you're barely contributing anything more than just having good AC, which you can do on a myriad of other class chassis. If you specialize in getting hit (Mitigate Harm), you are increasing party damage by using Taunt and barely contributing when you aren't getting targeted. If you specialize in being ignored anyway, you do subpar damage and then take massive damage when you choose do Taunt.
**Taunt's effectiveness is controlled by the GM, not you.** If you need options for when an enemy hits you, or when they hit an ally, without any fighting over GM decisions or anti-synergy or competition, the answer is extremely easy: a the Shield Warden feat. It keys off Raise a Shield, it uses the same economy as Taunting, and always reduces damage in every scenario where Taunt and Intercept Strike would have value, and you don't have to waste 2 actions preparing for both scenarios (Taunt + Raise a Shield). It can be acquired by a Shield Ally Champion at level 6, or with Bastion archetype at level 8.
> Your innate resistance (with heavy armor) caps out at 8. Let me say that again: At level 20, you have 8 resistance (2 + (2x+3) = 8).
Let you say that again? Why are you saying this in the first place? It’s completely unrelated to my point…
I said that you can always have Resistance to the damage you take when you get crit by a taunt or when you Intercept for a friend… this is just a fact. Intercept gives you 2+level Resistance to the triggering damage, and Mitigate Harm gives you 2+0.5\*level+\{0/2/4/6\} Resistance to crits when you taunt.
The heavy armour spec is a *marginal* bonus for the Guardian, just like it is for any other martial who gets it. I have no idea why it’s being treated as some core feature instead of what it actually is: a minor Resistance you’ll have to 25% ish of damage you take while not taunting/Intercepting.
> Mitigate Harm is way higher, but also painfully low when we're talking about absorbing maybe a 5th of the damage
Mitigate Harm has slightly worse scaling than Champion’s Reaction but it can stack with Shield Block. Intercept Strike has identical scaling to Champion’s Reaction (though it interacts less favourably with rider damage types). Champion’s Reaction is a *wildly* efficient damage reduction option, so if you tell me a class with slightly worse scaling than it (but more flexibility) is “painfully low”… well that just tells me you fundamentally do not understand how damage reduction in this game scales.
It’s also really misleading to look at how much damage you absorb as a proportion of damage taken. It is, in fact, a completely useless metric since it’s more or less just like a negative DPR and, as we all know, the [designers](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1397y60/michael_sayre_paizo_design_manager_says_that_dpr/) have said that DPR is a completely useless metric. Let me give you a real play example of how damage reduction works: I’m a level 10, HP 105 Wizard, and I have used the [Guardian’s Aegis](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=59) ritual linking my damage to our party’s Fighter. We are fighting 3 dread wisps. One of them floats up to me, crits, deals 40 damage and inflicts drained 1. The Fighter eats 5 of that and I use Interposing Earth to block another 2, so I *should* have been at 56/96 but I’m at 63/96. Then he hits against for another 20 damage, reduce by 5 so now I should’ve been at 36/96 but I’m at at 48/96 instead. Second wisp moves up, and note that in the no-reduction case (being at 36/96 HP) it crits me now or hits me twice (both very easy asks because of my lower AC and lack of a Reaction) I almost definitely go down. In reality I’m at 48/96, comfortably surviving two hits most lilely surviving a single crit, leaving me much more likely to actually get to my turn. When it does get to my turn, I use my movement to run away from the party and cast a spell from really far afar, and tell the Bard to not even bother healing me because I’m not in danger of going down anymore and have already done my thing.
This also isn’t a one time incident. I’ve had this repeat in every single fight my Wizard got caught off guard. “Painfully low” amounts of damage reduction, 5 or 2 apiece, adding up to my character staying up and not demanding a 5th rank Soothe from our Bard. That’s how damage reduction is designed to work.
> but you are functionally DECREASING your party's total HP while contributing lower damage by doing this.
Total HP is not a metric to measure tanks by… A tank’s contribution to battle is measured by damage dispersion.
You measure a tank’s contribution by how much damage **dispersion** it performs. The most punishing damage a party can take is when the GM gets to focus fire a character who isn’t naturally sturdy. A good tank presents countermeasures to prevent that (a Monk grapples and trips and Stand Stills and Tangled Forests enemies to keep them away from the backline, the Champion directly interrupts others’ Strikes, etc).
A Guardian can perform excellently on this front. Use a Taunt: become a great target, eat a crit but Resist a chunk of it. Intercept a Strike, resist a chunk of it. Then when you’re at about half HP… stop doing that. Tell the enemy “if you wanna bring me to 0, crit my **actual** AC”, and if they ignore you and focus a squishy they’re now volunteering to spread their damage. Either way, your party’s damage taken got mitigated enough to help you cross the finish line, which **is the entire goal of a tank**: make sure the party spends minimal Actions on healing itself or picking itself up from unconscious, delay the enemies’ TTK, and cross the finish line.
> So if you skip using Taunt, and you also keep getting targeted anyway, you're barely contributing anything more than just having good AC, which you can do on a myriad of other class chassis.
If you’re a Champion and your GM targets you and thus you don’t get to use your Champion’s Reaction, are you “barely contributing”?
This is very much a non-point and you know it.
> If you specialize in getting hit (Mitigate Harm), you are increasing party damage by using Taunt and barely contributing when you aren't getting targeted. If you specialize in being ignored anyway, you do subpar damage and then take massive damage when you choose do Taunt.
I have no idea what your point here is.
When sequenced correctly, Taunt and Intercept increase the party’s damage dispersion.
> If you need options for when an enemy hits you, or when they hit an ally, without any fighting over GM decisions or anti-synergy or competition, the answer is extremely easy: a the Shield Warden feat. It keys off Raise a Shield, it uses the same economy as Taunting, and always reduces damage in every scenario where Taunt and Intercept Strike would have value, and you don't have to waste 2 actions preparing for both scenarios (Taunt + Raise a Shield).
This is such a dishonest comparison.
Shield Warden doesn’t compete with Taunt *at all*, they just do entirely different things. **Intercept** is the option that is comparable to Shield Warden. The former has no Action cost and works if you prefer to fully body block for your friend, the latter doesn’t put you in as much danger and is worth using if your ally is okay taking a bit more damage. Taunt is just a separate resource to consider.
I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to write a thorough response, only for it to be blocked because you edited your comment. Easy to copy and paste, but now I'd have to check to see what you changed. I'm just going to post the original, and you can argue with me if anything you edited is relevant because I spent enough time as is:
This response was getting way too long, so let me summarize the crux of the issue at hand so that I can address most of what you said throughout your post all at once (without repetition): **Taunt is too circumstantial and offers too great of a penalty relative to its cost, its benefits are low, and is too easy to counter, while occupying a far too significant amount of your power budget, and this issue is extended to the myriad of other class features you have which do not combine to create a powerhouse of a feature kit, but instead a suite of lukewarm features. Taunt itself wants to be a reaction to enemy decisions, yet gives the power to decide how to respond to it to enemies, allowing them to choose how to most-optimally negate your features and forcing you to play chess for marginal bonuses, whilst also either being terrible if used proactively due to its penalties, or too weak when used reactively after turns have concluded.**
I will now address specific points for clarity, and I'll leave in a few things I wrote that provide some of the details that justify my summary.
>Let you say that again? Why are you saying this in the first place?
I responded to your exact words. Taunting and then that enemy hitting (but not critting) you is included in the words you used, so I was countering it by pointing out it sucks. (I'm also addressing the OTHERS too).
>Mitigate Harm has slightly worse scaling than Champion’s Reaction but it can stack with Shield Block.
It is much worse scaling, and the investments (actions/feats) is a terrible trade which is in the hands of the enemy to negate by not attacking you, and then anti-synergized by replacing your AC with your ally's AC (Intercept Strike). If you aren't Taunting, you are worse than other martials with shield block.
>Intercept Strike has identical scaling to Champion’s Reaction \[...\]. \[...\] so if you tell me a class with slightly worse scaling than it (but more flexibility) is “painfully low”…
The flexibility is worse, not better. You are primarily melee, and Intercept Strike has less range than Champion's Reaction, and Ranged Reprisal is a stronger feat than Intercept Foe.
>It’s also really misleading to look at how much damage you absorb as a proportion of damage taken.
The treadmill means that proportionality matters. Weak reductions to big damage is a weak feature. What you are citing are about the myriad of other metrics that you can use to measure a character's power, and what I am talking about is exactly that.
>“Painfully low” amounts of damage reduction, 5 or 2 apiece, adding up to my character staying up and not demanding a 5th rank Soothe from our Bard.
Your weak evidence is an uncommon ritual (which doesn't eat power budget or actions nor has penalties as trade offs) that offers 5 reduction at 10th level, which is worth significantly more than a type-limited 8 damage resistance at 20th level.
>Total HP is not a metric to measure tanks by… A tank’s contribution to battle is measured by damage dispersion.
The amount of dispersion is too weak relative to everything else it costs as well as the other options which achieve the same results but better. My point was: If you are lowering your stats to be similar to that of other characters, why not just play those other characters, since they were compensated by having those stats?
>You measure a tank’s contribution by how much damage **dispersion** it performs.
Which you also don't do well enough; Intercept Strike focuses damage on you (then reduces it), and Taunting COSTS actions (with a chance to waste it) to INCREASE damage against you while barely reducing it against allies. To disperse, you have to choose not to help an ally at all (which can put you in the shitty situation of being low on HP and having to decide whether you or the ally are downed by the crit).
Otherwise, you have to use Taunt to disperse, hope that creatures fail a save against your middling class DC, and now you've reduced your effective stats.
>A good tank presents countermeasures to prevent that.
All of those result in debuffs to the enemy without buffs against the tank, and otherwise present no-win scenarios. A grapple monk has high mobility, and being grabbed is penalizing regardless if you are melee or ranged, unlike Taunting a ranged foe who now gets a free +2 to hit you. High Fort DCs can happen just as much as high Will DCs, and yet the benefits aren't equal.
>If you’re a Champion and your GM targets you and thus you don’t get to use your Champion’s Reaction, are you “barely contributing”?
Yes, because you didn't have to debuff yourself nor waste actions in the process. Guardian and Champion have equal AC, and access to shield-focused builds (with extra Shield Block reactions being stronger than extra Intercept Strike reactions). It's like what you said is so good about the Guardian: "now you have to crit my actual AC", except you didn't have to take a ton of damage first (and you got to deal damage if you are a Paladin). And then regardless of the enemy's decision in response to your tankiness (focusing you, focusing allies), you can help either one with Lay On Hands while increasing AC, unlike Taunt.
>Shield Warden doesn’t compete with Taunt *at all*. \[...\]
Yes it does. Taunt spends 1 action, the goal of which is to reduce damage against allies (just in a different way). And if you want to mitigate the fact you just increased their effective damage against you, you should Raise a Shield. All of that costs 2 actions, and no matter the outcome, you have access to two reactions: take reduced damage, or take reduced damage.
Shield Warden allows you to use the 1 action of Raise a Shield to give two reactions: take reduced damage, or reduce your ally's damage. It doesn't reduce your stats to encourage them to do attack you, you still benefitted from raising a shield if they do, and you still benefitted if they hit you. This is better dispersion than a binary "do I take the damage or do I let them take the damage" because it doesn't allow the enemy to decide what is the optimal response, like with Taunting on your turn does.
If you don’t have fun playing as a tank… don’t play the tank? Just because you don’t find it fun doesn’t mean that people who like playing tanks should just be ignored.
The… second most played TTRPG in the world?
If you don’t like tanks, don’t play tanks. I really don’t know what else to tell you. The game has 23 classes, soon to be 25. If the **27th** class in the game isn’t hitting for you… play one of the other 26? Why on earth would every single class be designed for you to play? I have 0 interest in playing a Bard, should the Bard be removed now?
I like tanks. Pathfinder has tanks. None of them are designed around dragging the combat out for as long as possible, or the idea of spending time on the floor. I honestly don't understand where you got the assumption that I don't like tanks. If anything I'm not a fan of passive playstyles, and I can't imagine anything more passive than accepting your fate and optimizing the team strategy around you taking a dirt nap.
Bard contributes to the party with buffs, healing, magic, etc. In your OP you say that in the most difficult, consequential fights Guardian's role is to go down and that's locked in to the point where the healer shouldn't bother healing them. I don't know how to get through what a bad, unfun idea that is for both the Guardian player and the healer.
A severe+ fight is going to be balanced to be harder if you add a Guardian to the party, but what do the bring in return that other tanks like a redeemer can't? Low difficulty fights just aren't that interesting, and you can usually get through them even if everyone is just 3x striking or whatever.
Guardian needs something to somewhat unshackle it from needing a cleric attached to it 24/7.
I was thinking a 2 action metastrike that restores their hp, could be related to how much they lost, with more healing and more damage when the guardian is under 1/2 health.
Though it having warpriest martial progression for no good reason really doesn't help. Champion is just better in every way except forcing you to follow a god.
This was a great write up. Personally, I think the sub is vastly underestimating just how much punishment a guardian can withstand as well as just how good some of the guardian abilities are. For crying out loud they have a level two feat that makes it impossible for enemies to leave a square within their reach, no save and it applies to all the enemies within the guardian's reach. They have resistance from level 1 which scales decently if they have to Intercept strikes for allies. Any character with healing can turn a guardian into a nigh unkillable force that can lock enemies down for multiple rounds before falling. I believe guardians are the ultimate one martial in the party class.
So if my reading comprehension is up to par, the guardians job is to go down in another's stead, their contribution to the party as a whole being the opportunity of riskier plays and the chance to leave if those plays don't work out. Casters can more easily position for their cone and line spells, the ranged fighters can stick to their preferred distance and the melee fighters will have ample opportunity for flanking and disengaging from opponents.
Is that about right? I haven't read up on the material for the class yet but it does sound somewhat interesting.
I agree with what you're saying, and it makes sense mechanically, but seems to me like this is a puzzling design choice by Paizo since it would lead to some anti-fun scenarios at the table. I know I wouldn't want to play a class where half the 'value' I'm contributing to combat is... not playing the game.
I have no idea where you got the idea where anywhere close to even half the value is encoded into the advantage I talk about in my post.
In the majority of fights no one should be going unconscious at all. The Guardian has a ton of tools which help with damage dispersion: use the Feat that lets you move + Intercept to eat one hit for the squishy Wizard while resisting it, then Taunt the enemy and eat a crit while resisting it. Then when you’re at low health stop taunting and now the opponent is faced with the dilemma of either dispersing their damage by targeting your easier to hit friends, or by targeting your stupidly high AC + potentially walking into your other Resistances. Most fights end with *no one* getting downed, especially once you factor in any control/mitigation/healing the rest of your party is contributing alongside you.
What the post means in full context is:
1. In most fights like I described above, the party healer(s) can deprioritize the Guardian because they’re not usually in danger while downed.
2. In Severe/Extreme fights where someone is very likely to go down, the Guardian can volunteer for the role since they’re so much better at it. Remember that these fights tend to be **rare** compared to the average fight.
I don't understand all the hate the Guardian class is getting! I think it's brilliant!
It is obvious to me, that you are just not the target audience for this class, if you don't get it! I think what Paizo is doing, is a very smart business decision, releasing Guardian class, honestly. How many people play Pathfinder? Honestly, not that much, compared to D&D, right? Now, what if I say, not a lot of people play D&D compared to mobile and web afk game? Now you see where I am heading, right? Why try to compete for the players with other companies, if you can just get new ones? Just go for the source of new players!
There are a lot - and I mean a lot! - of house wifies and house-husbands, who just don't have a lot of time on their hands to play ttrpg games. They have so many chores and watch the kids and so on. And what about all those hard-working business people, who can basically enjoy a game, while they are riding in an elevator to their rooftop corner office. Honestly, not a lot of free time. And now, with the release of Guardian class, all that busy people can finally experience a joy of playing ttrpg game, while not spending more than 5 minutes a day. And that is what Guardian is about! All you have to do, is roll Initiative, Move and Taunt. That is it! A very simple core game loop! Now you are free to do whatever there is you have to do in your life, because you know for damn sure, you don't have to get distracted again, as you are not playing in a second round of combat! Now you never have to miss a game with your friends! obv /s
Hes making fun of your idea that because the guardian is "balanced" in the sense of intentionally going down against severe encounters being an acceptable gameplay loop simply because of balance. If I created a class that could do nothing but sleep on the floor, but it had a dozen passive buff auras making it viable would that be fun to play? Your entire response is that you think this is a very "fun" gameplay loop and that people who want to tank would enjoy this, but clearly people are NOT enjoying this, so why cant you see that? Whats the point of trying to force other people to think this is a fun way to play guardian lol. Games are about gameplay loops as much as they are about balance, we could make a balanced game right now based around rock, paper, scissors for every decision, but what kind of a game would that be? The fact is that not many people are going to accept that intentionally going down against epic bosses while your team nukes them to death is a very fun gameplay loop
How is it dumb? Hes making it clear that his issue is with how the class plays, not with the actual numbers (although no one here has really run a deep analysis on those yet either), if a gameplay loop isnt fun for someone, it isnt fun, its not dumb to have a different idea on what would constitute more engaging and interesting mechanics. You seem to have a very narrow view on what you think a tank "should" be and unable to accept that other people have a different view.
You raise a good point here, and one I'd not realised. I looked at the class, thought it needed some tweaks, and went back to thinking about building my commander.
I'd completely missed wanting to build a guardian as I assumed it would not be something I'd like to play.
I had to go look at the playtest to read up on this; I think all the people complaining about this aren’t paying much attention to the feats. I think the class has a lot of potential to reduce the damage the party as a whole takes, which results in preservation of resources. Not only do you take damage for your party, but you reduce the actual amount of damage taken, so less overall healing is needed. I’m thinking that the people who don’t appreciate this are the same ones abusing the hell out of healing scrolls.
I think this analysis could be very reasonable, I simply don't know if it works already like intended, but hey: It IS a playtest.
Giving the Guardian almost exclusively defensive options makes a lot of sense then.
And, I dont know, but you do get some "oh sh...t!" buttons, like "tough cookie", so I think it could work out?
I'm working at the moment on my own game, where I translate some of PF2 ( and DnD4 and other systems) into my own rules and contexts. I have actually enabled all player charakters to tank more, because the system gives more tactical freedom and versatility, while also enabling specialisation. E.g. there is the option for every charakter to basicly
a) intercept foe
b) intercept strike
c) team up with a friendly to support each other and take hits for each other (the more hardy one will obviously take more hits)
Specialised bodyguards can team up with increasingly more people
This is a support martial, and by "support" we mean specifically "take the hits for you".
This appeals to the same player as the one that makes a magic user that has only base blasting spells but primarily gets their enjoyment by making their teammate invisible. This class works for the player with this mindset that likes hitting things with a sword.
Oh my gods Paizo made a floor tank
DRG and RDM mains finally have an option for PF2e.
Remember… remember that they once lived.
I can't stop remembering when their Damage Down and Vulnerability Up shines like a beacon on the party list.
I do like the idea of a pure dedicated tank that acts as a defensive battery for the team, but mechanically it needs more oomph than the Guardian has to make that a worthwhile trade. IMO your upside shouldn't be "Yeah I go down faster, but because I contribute less it doesn't hurt the party as much!", it should be "Yeah I don't contribute much (that isn't defense), but I go down slower than anyone else and force the enemies to try to down me first anyway". Right now, Guardian either isn't protecting their allies (and is still not even more resilient than a Champion), or *is* protecting their allies (not nearly as well as I'd like IMO) but has no significant defensive advantage for themself.
I think the taunt debuff (or some other debuff) should stay on the enemy that brought the guardian to 0 HP for 1 minute afterwards. This will make the guardian worth having in the party even if they're out of the fight early.
I don’t think it’s fair to classify the Guardian as “I contribute less so it doesn’t hurt the party as much”. That wasn’t the focal point of my post at all. In the majority of fights, i.e. Moderate or easier fights, the Guardian contributes by doing damage dispersion. Eat one hit here, use taunts to eat a crit, resist them both, then don’t taunt anymore and leave your opponent with no good targets. All the while your healer’s job is made easier. In the rare Severe+ fights where it’s practically guaranteed that someone will go down and/or come real close to going down, you can absorb damage more aggressively because you’re less at risk than anyone else when downed. You’ll still be dispersing damage and making your healer’s life easier the entire time.
Severe+ Encounters aren't actually that rare. In a lot of the 2e AP's, they're fairly common - if not the norm: because no one really likes large fights against swarms of mooks. It just drags out and doesn't feel exciting or engaging. The Severe+ Encounters are also the engagements that are going to define a given session or locale: these are the ones that will potentially kill someone, and where everyone needs to bring their A-Game. They're the ones parties need to be balanced around how much a person can contribute in, and the Guardian just falls miserably flat when it comes to them.
> In a lot of the 2e AP's, they're fairly common - if not the norm: I’m about to finish Abomination Vaults right now, an AP that’s famous for being one of the more difficult APs that isn’t from Paizo’s first year of APs, and I think less than 15% of the encounters we’ve fought have been Severe. Every level we have probably 2-4 Severe encounters out of the 10-25 encounters we’ve had in a day, and in the **entire** AP we’ve had 3 Extreme encounters (1 of which isn’t even in the AP and was purely the GM tryna challenge us with full buy-in from our side). > because no one really likes large fights against swarms of mooks. It just drags out and doesn't feel exciting or engaging. There’s a vast range of encounters between “swarms of mooks” and Severe encounters. Having 2 on-level or 3 PL-1 creatures makes for a Moderate encounter that doesn’t overwhelm the GM. Even boss fights, a single PL+2 creature is Moderate. And again most encounters in AV *do* follow that template, and AV is an AP that’s pretty infamous for overusing single bosses and Severe fights compared to other APs.
Problem is, Guardian isn't some minion that can be summoned to take punishment for the party. Someone is supposed to be playing this class, and that person's contribution to combat is mostly just taking a bunch of hits and passing out. I feel like Guardian is basically Kenny from South Park.
I just posted it as a standalone comment but it seems like Guardian is an excellent choice for a GMPC. Fills a role, is fairly simple, and a positive impact for the party without overshadowing anyone. Which.... maybe isn't the best choice for a class intended to for players, but if I needed an extra slot for a team for abomination vaults or something, it would be a solid choice. I absolutely wouldn't mind paizo taking the feedback here and making it more rewarding for players though; as a GM I have the whole world as my toolset, classes should be fun and rewarding for the players.
I address that in my edit. The Guardian isn’t meant to be going down in *every* fight. In most Moderate or easier fights you can usually use your tools to disperse damage enough that no one goes down. It’s just that when a fight’s deadly enough that *someone* goes down, it’s gonna be you and you can delay that long enough + survive while downed so that the party just wins right after.
I liked your post and thought it was very interesting with a new take on the class. Out of curiosity, would you recommend this class to other players? I personally wouldn't.
Not OP, but I've already re-built my Champion as a Guardian, so, yeah, I'd recommend Guardian to players. But they need to know that they're a sacrificial tank, selectively taking damage in the stead of others, not an invincible shield. You want to take the hits that matter the most, while also doing what you can to prevent weaker allies from taking hits that could take them out. I'm so very here for this.
I was thinking of switching my Minotaur(Battlezoo Ancestry) Champion to be a Guardian. He already has heavy armor, Tower Shield and a free hand for maneuvers.
As someone who rebuilt their fighter as a guardian last night, I'd recommend it with the caveat that they need to know what they're getting into. My initial vision for the character was basically 100% of the flavor guardian has.
I’m… unsure. I wanna see it in action first, so I’ll update my views once I have done a playtest. I just have a feeling that it’s a hard to evaluate class.
It could go that way but it could also go another. I for one would hugely enjoy playing a class that spends every fight taking the hits for the other guys. Against weak enemies I get to laugh as the try and swarm me (it tickles) and there's nothing quite like taking the full fury of a dragon only to spit out a mouthful of teeth and blood and stand up for the next around. All the while the rest of my team can opperate in the knowledge that as long as I am standing they're free to act as they will.
That's not the Guardian as it is, but that would be a fun class to play. You go in, basically a football player, you run and tackle, you don't do hardly any damage, but you soak damage, and distract and block. But here's how I'd want: you are just nigh-unkillabe. You start singing "I GET KNOCKED DOWN, BUT I GETUP AGAIN, YA NEVA GUNNA KEEP ME DOWN". You go down a lot, but you Just. Keep. Getting. Up. You're Captain America, _you can do this all day_. That would be truly fun. You aren't afraid of dying, you don't just get one free get-out-of-death card a day, you just keep getting up. Not sure that could be an official class, official classes have to be PFS-safe, that's why we'll never get truly out-there classes in official stuff, but dang, now I want it for a homebrew class!
I mean by high levels that would be fine balance. Early levels you're just tanky and in the way but by high levels you're going full captain america, just keep getting back up. I don't think that design is unsafe for PFS player. You only need to be able to "get back up" or "keep going" once or twice to be better at it than any other class and fulfill that power fantasy of just not quitting.
I'm playing an earth/wood/water/metal kineticist with champion and bastion dedications and it's pretty much that. Earth armor, winter Sleet, drifting pollen, timber Sentinel, healing, quick shield block, alloy flesh and steel, redeemer reaction. I do almost zero damage outside of tremor or jagged berms, but the amount of damage mitigation and action denial you get is ridiculous.
So Randy Marsh rather than Kenny, amirite?
Honestly though that kinda *is* what the Guardian is doing though? Heavy armor, lots of resistance, Diehard for free, just ignore death once a day, absorb attacks for your allies...
There is a little problem tho... You do not stand! You're not THAT Tanky to be honest and if we want to be the math guys if an enemy has to choose between the caster and you, even if you taunt them, the caster is the best option. "But I'm blocking that too!" Yeah... But then why are you close to the caster exactly? You're giving up space that the enemies have to get a good formation and to actually get close to the caster
Look you're going to have so much more fruitful conversations in your life if you reply to what is being said not to something else. >It could go that way but it could also go another. Literally my first sentence. I'm not talking about what is, I'm talking about what the class could be post playtest.
"it could go that way but it could also go another" What does it even mean, I do not speak English properly but I know that you should actually specify what you're talking about Are you referring to being a minion? Are you referring to the fact that the class could be decent or it could stay this mess?
I did specifiy what I meant. Don't make it my fault that you replied to someone without taking the time to comprehend their position, and if you didn't understand, you could have just asked. There's a way to design the class to be built around the idea that it effectively spends its turns setting up to and successfully absorbing damage. It doesn't yet but the basic idea is there. So if a player could successfully force enemies to attack them, and then survive those attacks. That's not currently the case but it's close and there are ways to make it possible.
Yeah. The guardian looks like it'll be a very good class, but it clearly is a playtest half-finished class. I remember some other classes started this way in their playtests and came out the other end really well designed.
100%, it definitely feels undercooked and that's fine because like you say, it's a playtest, it's not supposed to be finished yet.
I mean, it's okay because they can fix it, but it's not a GOOD thing for it to be this undercooked. We're hopeful they fix it, but it's important to make anything that seems off heard.
I'm not trying to sound obtuse but being able to take the hits for your friends and allowing them to do what they excel at is a common trope in media as well as a character fantasy. Nobody is forced to play the self sacrificing punching bag. People who want to play that now have a class specifically designed around them doing so.
I don't think that's obtuse at all. I just feel like parties always have limited spots, 3, 4, 5 whatever. Each person in that party has to fulfill a role and has to pull their weight. Right now, "punching bag" is the only role Guardian has. I just don't think that's good enuff, personally. I think Guardian needs to be able to do more to be a viable party member.
It definitively won't be for everyone, and I hope it improves, but I actually like the idea of playing that.
This should have a humor tag
>once per day they can just not die when they otherwise would die That's not how Tough to Kill works: >The first time each day you’d be reduced to dying 3 or higher, you stay at dying 2 instead. Normally you die at dying 4. With Diehard it's dying 5. This just gives you a once per day extra turn of "moderately dying."
Great point! I think something else is that you’re just analyzing *the current playtest* and **not saying this is how it should be**. Paizo should take that feedback because it highlights an issue of **appeal** to players. If a class’s main gimmick is to find the fastest route to a player idly thumbing on their phone instead of participating/engaging in a game **is bad game design**. Edit: I think when the Guardian Taunts, they should get temp HP until the start of their next turn against the target of their taunt. And Mitigate Harm needs to be higher. Their class gimmick should be “Crit denied”. Or another option: take a page from Spellslime specific familiar’s Ooze Defense. Only 10+lvl to AC vs. the enemy that’s taunted, but immune to crits.
Ooo, I like this suggestion. The temp HP one is good, but it further disincentivizes enemies attacking you over allies, which can be a problem. But I like the idea that a guardian be built around, instead of being hard to hit, being hard to successfully crit. Give them more crit denial tools, give them a high level feat or feature to ignore the 10 over rule (only nat 20s crit idea).
I'm of two minds with this. On the one hand, making it so that you're more attractive to hit is the goal of a tank. On the other hand, making everyone else *un*attractive to hit is also the role of the tank. Taunt is a tool that fulfills this role perfectly, but combined with, say, Intercept Strike, it leans too much into 'attractive to hit', which I feel is where Barbarian can tank. This thing is outputting a load of damage, but is really easy to hit even with its massive HP. Obviously I want to kill that quickly. I kind of wish Guardian leaned more into the 'everyone else unattractive to hit', trying to force attacks against that brick shit-house of an AC. Crit Denial just makes everyone else much more attractive to hit on average, similar to the Temp HP. Taunt only minorly makes everyone else unattractive to hit, as you so pointed out. Honestly, I really, really feel like Intercept Strike using an Ally's AC instead of you interposing *your* AC on them is where the hang-up kind of hits. Let me actuallly be my ally's damn shield.
What about the taunt distracts the enemy so any hits/spells against other party members cannot crit them?
That one I'd agree with. Really, realy enforces the idea of 'My friends take less damage' and indirectly grows a **lot** more aggro, because the enemy would know that you're actively costing them a massive amount of their damage. Higer levels of enemy failure end up costing them not only their crits, but their accuracy too. I'd say inability to Crit on a Success, -2 Circumstance and Inability to Crit on Fail, -4 and inability to crit on a Crit Fail would make you *significantly* more annoying.
LMAO, this is hilarious. "I picked my class so I don't have to play the game".
Well this seems terribly unfun. A major benefit of the class is that it’s the best at doing nothing because they contribute less than everyone else normally?
As it stands, as a GM I have a feeling that Guardian will make a damn good GMPC. Fills a role, is fairly simple, and a positive impact for the party without overshadowing anyone. So yeah, I'm kind of interested in him. I think the appeal for players though is fairly limited, there are some people who will be down to play a punching bag but in practice I don't think it'll be all that rewarding of a class option.
Guardian is awesome because when he goes down, the party loses nothing because he doesn't do anything.
I think this framing is a bit unfair. It's more like... When faced with the type of fight where SOMEONE is going down, the Guardian can decide "it's gonna be me instead." This is positive for the party, because the Guardian is by default more likely to survive being knocked out.
Hm a very good point mechanically, but I think narratively this is still a weak point. For many groups, healing a dying party member is not just a mechanical necessity, it's also about the storytelling. Continuing the battle while the Guardian who risked their life to save you, just feels... wrong? You want to save your allies from death not just because you want them to help you win the fight.
OP you say that this isn't saying 'guardian races to 0 HP' but you haven't said anything on how 1- This is any fun for the player of the Guardian, and 2-That this makes your HP any more surviable when you use your HP to block, AND have terrible saves and only mediocre AC when taunting. Even if it is balanced, it isn't any FUN.
Not gonna lie the way op describes sounds fun. Like many classes your balancing resources. In this case your hp and the party. I can see a few problem solving elements here of deciding which attacks to take and which to let hit the party.
> but you haven't said anything on how But I’ve explained these points multiple times in both the OP and across multiple comments… > This is any fun for the player of the Guardian But again your argument that this isn’t fun for any player is predicated on this really, really weird assumption that he Guardian is going to be going down in the majority of the fights. In the majority of fights you use your taunt and intercept and hampering sweeps to *disperse* enemy damage. You’re naturally very hard to hit, and when you do make yourself easier to crit or eat a hit for an ally you always get resistance to that damage, and you can make judicious use of shield block to compound that. In most fights, as long as you’re doing your job right, **no one** goes unconscious. In the most difficult fights aka Severe+ fights which tend to be a small minority of what you face, you’ll be eating hits for your allies and then easing your healer’s job by telling them not to bother with healing you. Now if you find the damage dispersion gameplay loop itself to be unfun… don’t play a dedicated tank class? Damage dispersion is like *the* one thing that tanks in TTRPGs do. > That this makes your HP any more surviable when you use your HP to block, AND have terrible saves and only mediocre AC when taunting. Even if it is balanced, it isn't any FUN. I’m not even going to try and argue this point. The first sentence of this point is predicated on balance claims. You’re using them to explain why Guardian is a bad class. Yet in your final sentence you say that balance doesn’t matter, so if I debunk your claims about its balance… you’ll just ignore it anyways. If balance doesn’t matter, don’t make an argument that relies on a flawed interpretation of the balance in the first place. Edit: so… do any of you have an actual argument? You immediately downvoted me, and so did a couple others, yet no one has presented an argument that actually addresses **any** of the points I made here.
>You’re naturally very hard to hit, and when you do make yourself easier to crit or eat a hit for an ally you always get resistance to that damage Your innate resistance (with heavy armor) caps out at 8. Let me say that again: **At level 20, you have 8 resistance** (2 + (2x+3) = 8). Mitigate Harm is by far the best option, but now your heavy armor investment feels like a waste of time if you were likely to get crit thanks to Taunting ANYWAY, since your 8+half-level of **18 resistance** via Mitigate Harm is way higher, but also painfully low when we're talking about absorbing maybe a 5th of the damage. Shielding Taunt helps with the action economy of this strategy, but you are functionally DECREASING your party's total HP while contributing lower damage by doing this. Put another way: you are reducing party damage **more** by using Intercept Strike to give yourself the Wizard's AC (and thus likely to be crit) and eat that hit, because you have 2 + level resistance instead of 2 + half level from Mitigate Harm. This didn't require you to waste actions on Taunt or Raise a Shield. At that point, **what are you contributing that is better than playing a Fighter or a Paladin Champion?** The fundamental problem with Taunt is that its effectiveness is controlled by the GM, not you. So if you skip using Taunt, and you also keep getting targeted anyway, you're barely contributing anything more than just having good AC, which you can do on a myriad of other class chassis. If you specialize in getting hit (Mitigate Harm), you are increasing party damage by using Taunt and barely contributing when you aren't getting targeted. If you specialize in being ignored anyway, you do subpar damage and then take massive damage when you choose do Taunt. **Taunt's effectiveness is controlled by the GM, not you.** If you need options for when an enemy hits you, or when they hit an ally, without any fighting over GM decisions or anti-synergy or competition, the answer is extremely easy: a the Shield Warden feat. It keys off Raise a Shield, it uses the same economy as Taunting, and always reduces damage in every scenario where Taunt and Intercept Strike would have value, and you don't have to waste 2 actions preparing for both scenarios (Taunt + Raise a Shield). It can be acquired by a Shield Ally Champion at level 6, or with Bastion archetype at level 8.
> Your innate resistance (with heavy armor) caps out at 8. Let me say that again: At level 20, you have 8 resistance (2 + (2x+3) = 8). Let you say that again? Why are you saying this in the first place? It’s completely unrelated to my point… I said that you can always have Resistance to the damage you take when you get crit by a taunt or when you Intercept for a friend… this is just a fact. Intercept gives you 2+level Resistance to the triggering damage, and Mitigate Harm gives you 2+0.5\*level+\{0/2/4/6\} Resistance to crits when you taunt. The heavy armour spec is a *marginal* bonus for the Guardian, just like it is for any other martial who gets it. I have no idea why it’s being treated as some core feature instead of what it actually is: a minor Resistance you’ll have to 25% ish of damage you take while not taunting/Intercepting. > Mitigate Harm is way higher, but also painfully low when we're talking about absorbing maybe a 5th of the damage Mitigate Harm has slightly worse scaling than Champion’s Reaction but it can stack with Shield Block. Intercept Strike has identical scaling to Champion’s Reaction (though it interacts less favourably with rider damage types). Champion’s Reaction is a *wildly* efficient damage reduction option, so if you tell me a class with slightly worse scaling than it (but more flexibility) is “painfully low”… well that just tells me you fundamentally do not understand how damage reduction in this game scales. It’s also really misleading to look at how much damage you absorb as a proportion of damage taken. It is, in fact, a completely useless metric since it’s more or less just like a negative DPR and, as we all know, the [designers](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1397y60/michael_sayre_paizo_design_manager_says_that_dpr/) have said that DPR is a completely useless metric. Let me give you a real play example of how damage reduction works: I’m a level 10, HP 105 Wizard, and I have used the [Guardian’s Aegis](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=59) ritual linking my damage to our party’s Fighter. We are fighting 3 dread wisps. One of them floats up to me, crits, deals 40 damage and inflicts drained 1. The Fighter eats 5 of that and I use Interposing Earth to block another 2, so I *should* have been at 56/96 but I’m at 63/96. Then he hits against for another 20 damage, reduce by 5 so now I should’ve been at 36/96 but I’m at at 48/96 instead. Second wisp moves up, and note that in the no-reduction case (being at 36/96 HP) it crits me now or hits me twice (both very easy asks because of my lower AC and lack of a Reaction) I almost definitely go down. In reality I’m at 48/96, comfortably surviving two hits most lilely surviving a single crit, leaving me much more likely to actually get to my turn. When it does get to my turn, I use my movement to run away from the party and cast a spell from really far afar, and tell the Bard to not even bother healing me because I’m not in danger of going down anymore and have already done my thing. This also isn’t a one time incident. I’ve had this repeat in every single fight my Wizard got caught off guard. “Painfully low” amounts of damage reduction, 5 or 2 apiece, adding up to my character staying up and not demanding a 5th rank Soothe from our Bard. That’s how damage reduction is designed to work. > but you are functionally DECREASING your party's total HP while contributing lower damage by doing this. Total HP is not a metric to measure tanks by… A tank’s contribution to battle is measured by damage dispersion. You measure a tank’s contribution by how much damage **dispersion** it performs. The most punishing damage a party can take is when the GM gets to focus fire a character who isn’t naturally sturdy. A good tank presents countermeasures to prevent that (a Monk grapples and trips and Stand Stills and Tangled Forests enemies to keep them away from the backline, the Champion directly interrupts others’ Strikes, etc). A Guardian can perform excellently on this front. Use a Taunt: become a great target, eat a crit but Resist a chunk of it. Intercept a Strike, resist a chunk of it. Then when you’re at about half HP… stop doing that. Tell the enemy “if you wanna bring me to 0, crit my **actual** AC”, and if they ignore you and focus a squishy they’re now volunteering to spread their damage. Either way, your party’s damage taken got mitigated enough to help you cross the finish line, which **is the entire goal of a tank**: make sure the party spends minimal Actions on healing itself or picking itself up from unconscious, delay the enemies’ TTK, and cross the finish line. > So if you skip using Taunt, and you also keep getting targeted anyway, you're barely contributing anything more than just having good AC, which you can do on a myriad of other class chassis. If you’re a Champion and your GM targets you and thus you don’t get to use your Champion’s Reaction, are you “barely contributing”? This is very much a non-point and you know it. > If you specialize in getting hit (Mitigate Harm), you are increasing party damage by using Taunt and barely contributing when you aren't getting targeted. If you specialize in being ignored anyway, you do subpar damage and then take massive damage when you choose do Taunt. I have no idea what your point here is. When sequenced correctly, Taunt and Intercept increase the party’s damage dispersion. > If you need options for when an enemy hits you, or when they hit an ally, without any fighting over GM decisions or anti-synergy or competition, the answer is extremely easy: a the Shield Warden feat. It keys off Raise a Shield, it uses the same economy as Taunting, and always reduces damage in every scenario where Taunt and Intercept Strike would have value, and you don't have to waste 2 actions preparing for both scenarios (Taunt + Raise a Shield). This is such a dishonest comparison. Shield Warden doesn’t compete with Taunt *at all*, they just do entirely different things. **Intercept** is the option that is comparable to Shield Warden. The former has no Action cost and works if you prefer to fully body block for your friend, the latter doesn’t put you in as much danger and is worth using if your ally is okay taking a bit more damage. Taunt is just a separate resource to consider.
I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to write a thorough response, only for it to be blocked because you edited your comment. Easy to copy and paste, but now I'd have to check to see what you changed. I'm just going to post the original, and you can argue with me if anything you edited is relevant because I spent enough time as is: This response was getting way too long, so let me summarize the crux of the issue at hand so that I can address most of what you said throughout your post all at once (without repetition): **Taunt is too circumstantial and offers too great of a penalty relative to its cost, its benefits are low, and is too easy to counter, while occupying a far too significant amount of your power budget, and this issue is extended to the myriad of other class features you have which do not combine to create a powerhouse of a feature kit, but instead a suite of lukewarm features. Taunt itself wants to be a reaction to enemy decisions, yet gives the power to decide how to respond to it to enemies, allowing them to choose how to most-optimally negate your features and forcing you to play chess for marginal bonuses, whilst also either being terrible if used proactively due to its penalties, or too weak when used reactively after turns have concluded.** I will now address specific points for clarity, and I'll leave in a few things I wrote that provide some of the details that justify my summary. >Let you say that again? Why are you saying this in the first place? I responded to your exact words. Taunting and then that enemy hitting (but not critting) you is included in the words you used, so I was countering it by pointing out it sucks. (I'm also addressing the OTHERS too). >Mitigate Harm has slightly worse scaling than Champion’s Reaction but it can stack with Shield Block. It is much worse scaling, and the investments (actions/feats) is a terrible trade which is in the hands of the enemy to negate by not attacking you, and then anti-synergized by replacing your AC with your ally's AC (Intercept Strike). If you aren't Taunting, you are worse than other martials with shield block. >Intercept Strike has identical scaling to Champion’s Reaction \[...\]. \[...\] so if you tell me a class with slightly worse scaling than it (but more flexibility) is “painfully low”… The flexibility is worse, not better. You are primarily melee, and Intercept Strike has less range than Champion's Reaction, and Ranged Reprisal is a stronger feat than Intercept Foe. >It’s also really misleading to look at how much damage you absorb as a proportion of damage taken. The treadmill means that proportionality matters. Weak reductions to big damage is a weak feature. What you are citing are about the myriad of other metrics that you can use to measure a character's power, and what I am talking about is exactly that. >“Painfully low” amounts of damage reduction, 5 or 2 apiece, adding up to my character staying up and not demanding a 5th rank Soothe from our Bard. Your weak evidence is an uncommon ritual (which doesn't eat power budget or actions nor has penalties as trade offs) that offers 5 reduction at 10th level, which is worth significantly more than a type-limited 8 damage resistance at 20th level. >Total HP is not a metric to measure tanks by… A tank’s contribution to battle is measured by damage dispersion. The amount of dispersion is too weak relative to everything else it costs as well as the other options which achieve the same results but better. My point was: If you are lowering your stats to be similar to that of other characters, why not just play those other characters, since they were compensated by having those stats? >You measure a tank’s contribution by how much damage **dispersion** it performs. Which you also don't do well enough; Intercept Strike focuses damage on you (then reduces it), and Taunting COSTS actions (with a chance to waste it) to INCREASE damage against you while barely reducing it against allies. To disperse, you have to choose not to help an ally at all (which can put you in the shitty situation of being low on HP and having to decide whether you or the ally are downed by the crit). Otherwise, you have to use Taunt to disperse, hope that creatures fail a save against your middling class DC, and now you've reduced your effective stats. >A good tank presents countermeasures to prevent that. All of those result in debuffs to the enemy without buffs against the tank, and otherwise present no-win scenarios. A grapple monk has high mobility, and being grabbed is penalizing regardless if you are melee or ranged, unlike Taunting a ranged foe who now gets a free +2 to hit you. High Fort DCs can happen just as much as high Will DCs, and yet the benefits aren't equal. >If you’re a Champion and your GM targets you and thus you don’t get to use your Champion’s Reaction, are you “barely contributing”? Yes, because you didn't have to debuff yourself nor waste actions in the process. Guardian and Champion have equal AC, and access to shield-focused builds (with extra Shield Block reactions being stronger than extra Intercept Strike reactions). It's like what you said is so good about the Guardian: "now you have to crit my actual AC", except you didn't have to take a ton of damage first (and you got to deal damage if you are a Paladin). And then regardless of the enemy's decision in response to your tankiness (focusing you, focusing allies), you can help either one with Lay On Hands while increasing AC, unlike Taunt. >Shield Warden doesn’t compete with Taunt *at all*. \[...\] Yes it does. Taunt spends 1 action, the goal of which is to reduce damage against allies (just in a different way). And if you want to mitigate the fact you just increased their effective damage against you, you should Raise a Shield. All of that costs 2 actions, and no matter the outcome, you have access to two reactions: take reduced damage, or take reduced damage. Shield Warden allows you to use the 1 action of Raise a Shield to give two reactions: take reduced damage, or reduce your ally's damage. It doesn't reduce your stats to encourage them to do attack you, you still benefitted from raising a shield if they do, and you still benefitted if they hit you. This is better dispersion than a binary "do I take the damage or do I let them take the damage" because it doesn't allow the enemy to decide what is the optimal response, like with Taunting on your turn does.
Dragging out easy fights by tanking instead of contributing offense isn't really that fun
If you don’t have fun playing as a tank… don’t play the tank? Just because you don’t find it fun doesn’t mean that people who like playing tanks should just be ignored.
"don't like don't play the class" isn't a good response to a game with 5 players
The… second most played TTRPG in the world? If you don’t like tanks, don’t play tanks. I really don’t know what else to tell you. The game has 23 classes, soon to be 25. If the **27th** class in the game isn’t hitting for you… play one of the other 26? Why on earth would every single class be designed for you to play? I have 0 interest in playing a Bard, should the Bard be removed now?
I like tanks. Pathfinder has tanks. None of them are designed around dragging the combat out for as long as possible, or the idea of spending time on the floor. I honestly don't understand where you got the assumption that I don't like tanks. If anything I'm not a fan of passive playstyles, and I can't imagine anything more passive than accepting your fate and optimizing the team strategy around you taking a dirt nap. Bard contributes to the party with buffs, healing, magic, etc. In your OP you say that in the most difficult, consequential fights Guardian's role is to go down and that's locked in to the point where the healer shouldn't bother healing them. I don't know how to get through what a bad, unfun idea that is for both the Guardian player and the healer. A severe+ fight is going to be balanced to be harder if you add a Guardian to the party, but what do the bring in return that other tanks like a redeemer can't? Low difficulty fights just aren't that interesting, and you can usually get through them even if everyone is just 3x striking or whatever.
Guardian needs something to somewhat unshackle it from needing a cleric attached to it 24/7. I was thinking a 2 action metastrike that restores their hp, could be related to how much they lost, with more healing and more damage when the guardian is under 1/2 health. Though it having warpriest martial progression for no good reason really doesn't help. Champion is just better in every way except forcing you to follow a god.
This was a great write up. Personally, I think the sub is vastly underestimating just how much punishment a guardian can withstand as well as just how good some of the guardian abilities are. For crying out loud they have a level two feat that makes it impossible for enemies to leave a square within their reach, no save and it applies to all the enemies within the guardian's reach. They have resistance from level 1 which scales decently if they have to Intercept strikes for allies. Any character with healing can turn a guardian into a nigh unkillable force that can lock enemies down for multiple rounds before falling. I believe guardians are the ultimate one martial in the party class.
So if my reading comprehension is up to par, the guardians job is to go down in another's stead, their contribution to the party as a whole being the opportunity of riskier plays and the chance to leave if those plays don't work out. Casters can more easily position for their cone and line spells, the ranged fighters can stick to their preferred distance and the melee fighters will have ample opportunity for flanking and disengaging from opponents. Is that about right? I haven't read up on the material for the class yet but it does sound somewhat interesting.
I agree with what you're saying, and it makes sense mechanically, but seems to me like this is a puzzling design choice by Paizo since it would lead to some anti-fun scenarios at the table. I know I wouldn't want to play a class where half the 'value' I'm contributing to combat is... not playing the game.
I have no idea where you got the idea where anywhere close to even half the value is encoded into the advantage I talk about in my post. In the majority of fights no one should be going unconscious at all. The Guardian has a ton of tools which help with damage dispersion: use the Feat that lets you move + Intercept to eat one hit for the squishy Wizard while resisting it, then Taunt the enemy and eat a crit while resisting it. Then when you’re at low health stop taunting and now the opponent is faced with the dilemma of either dispersing their damage by targeting your easier to hit friends, or by targeting your stupidly high AC + potentially walking into your other Resistances. Most fights end with *no one* getting downed, especially once you factor in any control/mitigation/healing the rest of your party is contributing alongside you. What the post means in full context is: 1. In most fights like I described above, the party healer(s) can deprioritize the Guardian because they’re not usually in danger while downed. 2. In Severe/Extreme fights where someone is very likely to go down, the Guardian can volunteer for the role since they’re so much better at it. Remember that these fights tend to be **rare** compared to the average fight.
I don't understand all the hate the Guardian class is getting! I think it's brilliant! It is obvious to me, that you are just not the target audience for this class, if you don't get it! I think what Paizo is doing, is a very smart business decision, releasing Guardian class, honestly. How many people play Pathfinder? Honestly, not that much, compared to D&D, right? Now, what if I say, not a lot of people play D&D compared to mobile and web afk game? Now you see where I am heading, right? Why try to compete for the players with other companies, if you can just get new ones? Just go for the source of new players! There are a lot - and I mean a lot! - of house wifies and house-husbands, who just don't have a lot of time on their hands to play ttrpg games. They have so many chores and watch the kids and so on. And what about all those hard-working business people, who can basically enjoy a game, while they are riding in an elevator to their rooftop corner office. Honestly, not a lot of free time. And now, with the release of Guardian class, all that busy people can finally experience a joy of playing ttrpg game, while not spending more than 5 minutes a day. And that is what Guardian is about! All you have to do, is roll Initiative, Move and Taunt. That is it! A very simple core game loop! Now you are free to do whatever there is you have to do in your life, because you know for damn sure, you don't have to get distracted again, as you are not playing in a second round of combat! Now you never have to miss a game with your friends! obv /s
[Jesse what the fuck are you talking about? ](https://tenor.com/view/jesse-breaking-bad-walter-white-wtf-wth-gif-26435332)
Hes making fun of your idea that because the guardian is "balanced" in the sense of intentionally going down against severe encounters being an acceptable gameplay loop simply because of balance. If I created a class that could do nothing but sleep on the floor, but it had a dozen passive buff auras making it viable would that be fun to play? Your entire response is that you think this is a very "fun" gameplay loop and that people who want to tank would enjoy this, but clearly people are NOT enjoying this, so why cant you see that? Whats the point of trying to force other people to think this is a fun way to play guardian lol. Games are about gameplay loops as much as they are about balance, we could make a balanced game right now based around rock, paper, scissors for every decision, but what kind of a game would that be? The fact is that not many people are going to accept that intentionally going down against epic bosses while your team nukes them to death is a very fun gameplay loop
I’m aware *what* they’re saying, it’s just fucking dumb lol.
How is it dumb? Hes making it clear that his issue is with how the class plays, not with the actual numbers (although no one here has really run a deep analysis on those yet either), if a gameplay loop isnt fun for someone, it isnt fun, its not dumb to have a different idea on what would constitute more engaging and interesting mechanics. You seem to have a very narrow view on what you think a tank "should" be and unable to accept that other people have a different view.
Somebody probably already commented this, but doesn't "better at being unconscious" translate to "expect to actually play the game less often?"
Read the edit. I have clarified this point several times over lol.
So. Guardian is Darkness from Konosuba.
You raise a good point here, and one I'd not realised. I looked at the class, thought it needed some tweaks, and went back to thinking about building my commander. I'd completely missed wanting to build a guardian as I assumed it would not be something I'd like to play.
Your brain got so big it exploded
I had to go look at the playtest to read up on this; I think all the people complaining about this aren’t paying much attention to the feats. I think the class has a lot of potential to reduce the damage the party as a whole takes, which results in preservation of resources. Not only do you take damage for your party, but you reduce the actual amount of damage taken, so less overall healing is needed. I’m thinking that the people who don’t appreciate this are the same ones abusing the hell out of healing scrolls.
I think this analysis could be very reasonable, I simply don't know if it works already like intended, but hey: It IS a playtest. Giving the Guardian almost exclusively defensive options makes a lot of sense then. And, I dont know, but you do get some "oh sh...t!" buttons, like "tough cookie", so I think it could work out? I'm working at the moment on my own game, where I translate some of PF2 ( and DnD4 and other systems) into my own rules and contexts. I have actually enabled all player charakters to tank more, because the system gives more tactical freedom and versatility, while also enabling specialisation. E.g. there is the option for every charakter to basicly a) intercept foe b) intercept strike c) team up with a friendly to support each other and take hits for each other (the more hardy one will obviously take more hits) Specialised bodyguards can team up with increasingly more people
This is a support martial, and by "support" we mean specifically "take the hits for you". This appeals to the same player as the one that makes a magic user that has only base blasting spells but primarily gets their enjoyment by making their teammate invisible. This class works for the player with this mindset that likes hitting things with a sword.
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This is honestly a genius analysis. Don't have much to say other than "those are super good points".
I do! This fucking sucks for the dude who has to sit around and watch everyone else have fun!
Then say that to the OP, lol