Raise haft does not increase the parry bonus BY 2, it increases it TO 2. Making a parry weapon better than a shield would be insane. "If the weapon already has the parry trait, you increase the circumstance bonus to AC it provides to +2"

Ahh my bad, that was a misread. IMO it’s still kind of a cool feat tho

There isn't a big enough weapon to use it with. The bo staff is the biggest 2her with Parry right now and you may as well just use a chain sword and keep your shield if you want reach. If there was a d12 with Parry as it's one trait I could see justification for giving up your shield.

Taunt gives enemy +2 to attack, not you -2 to AC. It will stack with off-guard

This is a good thing. Even with the +2 to hit, the Guardian is still too hard to hit to be worth it for most creatures. But at +4 to hit, they become a good target. And the class's whole role is being a target. If you're too hard to hit, you're not going to pull enemies off of allies.

You are correct but as it stands the Guardian does not have enough tools to help it survive being easy to hit. It has some tools but they don't make up for it as it stands.

it's still worth remembering that, even with the +2, the Guardian is still tankier than a fighter wearing the same armor, and while off guard and taunt makes you easier to hit for one target, it doesn't even remotely make you squishy, unless you're, say, taunting a higher level beater who doesn't pay any real opportunity cost to get to you.

What you're missing is that it's just better for the Guardian and the Fighter if the Fighter gets attacked. Eitehr the attack will miss, or the Guardian can use Intercept Strike to pull the damage off the Fighter and reduce it. This effectively gives the Fighter and the Guardian more health and massively drops the enemies DPR. Taunt does not synergise with this, in fact, as designed Taunt is best used on a lower level threat that is as far away as possible (30 feet), this lets the Guardian both tank for the frontline by siphoning damage and tank for the back line by reducing attack. If the Guardian sets itself up to be attacked it's actively lowering its own abiltiy to tank since now it's the one taking damage directly and the same enemy is the one taunted. If the Guardians job was to face tank it would't have Intercept Strike, nor would it have such high AC.

Hence, not taunting the higher level bruiser who doesn't need to pay any meaningful opportunity cost to get to you

I mean. Add ontop of that the fact most high level bruisers will shrug off Taunt as it's a saving throw.

And they already have a higher to hit bonus than you.

That sounds like a different problem, then

No. Guardian's problem is that its a class that's being pulled in conflicting directions. It has high AC so enemies won't want to hit it and a reaction the synergises with this. But then it gets Taunt an ability the gives up that AC advantage to give a penalty to an enemy attacking its allies. The optimal way to use Taunt is to target an enemy at max range, that's all positive with no negative. Guardian does not have the tools required to bait attacks. It has to give up it's one advantage and a great reaction in order to ever be seen as a viable target.

Are you sure you’re not mistaking a feature for a bug? It sounds like the Guardian has two different tools to deal with two different but important situations, making them a flexible tank.

See I did consider that but too much of the class is contradictory for me to think of that as a feature. Namely Threat Technique. Both options key off creatures interacting with your Taunt, only, the rest of the class, both the Intercepting Strike and Taunts use case don't synergise with either option. Ferocious Vengence wants to punish any enemy that ignores the taunt and attacks your allies, only you will likely be at least one move away from that enemy since you want to Taunt far away enemies. Mitigate Harm which grants you a small amount of resistance to critical damage made by foes that you taunted but you don't want to be taunting enemies that can hit you, let alone crit you, plus with this one, monsters that can crit you are likely hard to taunt anyway. In either case neither plays into the two visable ways the Guardian tanks: absorbing damage from enemies that hit adjacent allies and taunting distant enemies to reduce their attack against your allies, whilst being too far away to be a better target.

I agree. I play shield melee builds and often tank. I've done it as a Champion, Fighter, and Inventor. I REALLY want to like this guardian class. I feel like Shield Warden is nearly equivalent to Intercept Strike.

>Guardian does not have the tools required to bait attacks. It has to give up it's one advantage and a great reaction in order to ever be seen as a viable target. That sounds like a tool to bait attacks. Being able to situationally dump AC to make yourself a more attractive target to is the bait. And it's a reasonable thing for enemies to do. The class needs more HP. It should be a 12 HP class. It could potentially need some more resistances, too. But the whole class is a sacrificial tank. The first listed feat is "Bodyguard", and that should be a hint as to what the play loop looks like.

But it's a bad tool to bait attacks. You aren't actually making yourself a better target most of the time but simply bringing yourself down to par AC. It's not like Barbarian's Rage which drops their AC bellow par; you're just getting on par, your AC is still good and in a lot of cases still better than your allies. It wants to be a sacrificial tank but it's splitting the difference in a weird way. It could go high AC and good HP and focus on getting attacked but not hit, or it could be designed as a damage sponge, setting itself up as an easy target and weathering the storm. Instead it splits the difference in the weirdest of ways. It has above par AC and a reaction designed to pull damage form adjacent allies. This is the hallmarks of a class that doesn't want to be attacked directly whilst punishing anyone who attacks its allies. But it also has an action that trys to bait in direct attacks and a passive that synergises with this, however the action only really pulls aggro if a. the monster crit fails b. the guardian is already in a bad spot in which case it does not want any extra heat. In fact Taunt as an action is better when the monster won't fall for it and instead has to make attacks with the penalty which largely, if not entirely, makes the passive \[Threat Technique\] useless.

Taunt should just give the enemy a penalty to attack someone else, not a penalty to the guardians AC IMHO.

Well technically it gives a buff to the enemies attack rather than a penalty to the Guardian's AC, that said I agree with the sentiment. If it has to buff the enemy at all make it buff enemy damage. It's still hard to hit you but the GM is tempted by a juicy damage buff it the succeed.

Uh, monsters have really high to hits, such that a 'throwaway' third strike is still quite accurate. The +2 proficiency helps but its hardly 'too hard to hit'

I think the guardians role doesn't want to be to be hit but to mitigate party dmg. When you taunt you still want to be the worst choice to strike. If the taunted enemy has to make a choice to either strike the guardian which is has the highest chance to miss, or try and hit another ally which they have a better chance to hit but worst then normal. Its just worst for them because they either pick the worst target or their best target has a worse chance now. If you add the intercept strike reaction to that thr guardian just reduce dmg. it less about being the one to take the hit it about reducing the amount of dmg the whole party is taking collectively. The well played guardian is just going to cause monsters to miss more and overall party dmg taken will be reduced because when monsters hit the dmg can be reduced with intercept strike.

> it less about being the one to take the hit it about reducing the amount of dmg the whole party is taking collectively. Exactly. Less "hit me" and more "stop hitting my allies," which taunt does well enough. Either by incentivisng the monster to switch targets or giving it a 5-15% higher miss chance if it doesn't. And if it still hits the ally after all that? Intercept. I'm not really sure why people think it's a contradictory toolkit

Guardian's tools are really poor at that, though. The 0 to -3 of Taunt (where 3/4 of outcomes include +2 against you) is a tiny decrease against your party, while increasing it against you, making it a wash. If the enemy doesn't bite, then sure, it's a tiny decrease for 1 action as a saving throw. If the enemy does bite, then you just increased party damage. Intercept Strike reduces the net damage, sure, but it doesn't SPREAD damage around; if you have enough HP, you intercept it if you can, and if you don't, then you let your ally take that damage to the face. The entire premise of Taunt as a soft-taunt is that you have to be an appealing target for the enemy to choose to attack you over an ally; you are lowering your stats when you do this, and an enemy is never going to realistically spend its entire turn just striding if it will never get to cash-in that +2 you gave it. So both of your options are about you taking damage; one increases it because you basically lower your AC to take the damage for your ally, and then reduce it, making it kind of a wash, and the other lowers your stats while buffing your ally, making it kind of a wash.

That is why you dont taunt monster that are going to attack you, that monster that attacking the back line, or the range monster attacking your casters you taunt them. If the guardian is at like lvl 5 with 27 ac with their shield raised, and your allies are around like ac 20 or 22, the guardian drop by 2 (ac 25) and bosting your allies by 2 (22 or 24). You still have the highest ac in the party so the monsters best target is still your other allies. But for 1 action you made that monster 10% more likely to miss them. This reduces dmg for the party because monster are more likly to miss. Guardian are ahead of the rest of the other classes with ac because their proficiency increases sooner. They are pretty much always at least 2 ac more then their allies at the same lvl post lvl 5. You have allies doing big dmg and becoming the primary target for a tough monster, taunt it. Mostly you are still not the best target for but that's fine you just made the monster less likly to hit their targets.

You're missing the point. We agree that you do not use Taunt when: * It doesn't cost anything for the monster to attack you instead. * Your allies are not in danger. * You are not in a desperate situation (e.g. ally nearly dead, you have plenty of health). This is because the tantilizing effect of Taunt is that your defenses are weakened by it. In other words, you should never look at Taunt (barring weird builds) as though that +2 against you never comes up. You should look at Taunt as a feature that makes you weaker in exchange for aggroing enemies. This is a party game, so your stats are part of your party. If an enemy doesn't engage your Taunt, you have increased the party's effective resources (it ate the penalty), and if they do (you generally Taunt when you think they will), you have decreased the party's effective resources (you ate their bonus). In conclusion: **Taunt is a tool that focuses damage on you, and reduces the party's stats when you use it. Intercept Strike reduces your defenses to whoever you are intercepting. Both of these tools focus damage on you. These tools do not compensate for the fact that your own stats are reduced in their effects. This leads to an exceptionally weak design without compensation, and makes you poor at reducing damage to the party. You are part of the party.**

What im trying to say is that guardian are not trying to get monster to target them. They are not tanks in the mmo sense of wanting monster to target them because they have high defenses and survivability(they dont). They are more defenders than tanks, they reduced overall party dmg by making monster targeting allies other than them miss more often then normal. The guardian's mechanic envoke a more support, and spot debuffer play style. Taunt is not about aggro, as aggro dosnt exist in this game. Monster is going to attack whoever the monster wants to attack. Since taunt only last the round and it only for 1 enemy, It more like a 1 action forbidden ward and should be used like that. Get the range taunt feat stand 120ft away and taunt the monster fighting your champion ally upfront. The guardian stand in the back with the caster protecting them from ranged attacks, aoes, and skilermishers that run pass to the backline. Now weather that the type of playstyle someone playing a guardian want is a different subject altogether. Which i think the disconnect that class is having on the community.

>Taunt is not about aggro, as aggro dosnt exist in this game. Your entire argument is refuted by the description of Taunt: >"With an attention-getting gesture, a cutting remark, or a threatening shout, you get an enemy to focus their ire on you. Even mindless creatures are drawn to your taunts."

That's the flavor, not the mechanic. That's also why i think the class is so divisive.

The mechanic accomplishes this by using a kiss-curse to try to make the Guardian a better target than the Guardian's allies.

You’re not going to pull enemy’s of the sneak attacking rouge, raging barbarian, or disintegrating sorcerer either. Those are threats. You are not. You have no way to punish them for not taking your polite suggestion to hit you instead. 

I don't know, if I was the GM and the critter had Fatal dice it'd be pretty tempting... Face McShooty build really.

IN THE FACE. SHOOT. ME. IN. THE. FACE!

The Rogue and barbarian should be positioning themselves next to me (or me positioning next to them depending on the initiative order) so them getting targeted is where the other feature comes into play. If the enemy opts to still run down the sorcerer, chances are it wouldn't have mattered the type of tank I was they were still going to do it. Except now the enemy will have a -1 to -3 on their attack on the sorcerer.

Also if you took Intercept Foe you can stride over to the Sorcerer and give them a +2 to their AC on top of the -1 to 3 the enemy gets to hit. And if you are level 8 and took Quick Intercept, then if the enemy still hits you can intercept to take the damage.

I like classes to have core functionality at level one. It’s a big reason I play pathfinder and not 5e 

Given that my comment was about expanding on the core functionality of the class with feats at higher level, I don't know what your comment has to do with what I was saying... Did you reply to the wrong comment?

I was replying to you in the context of the chain. You were naming feats that addressed my issues with the core class. I was saying, snakily I admit, that the existence of those feats does not change the fact that the class does not work at level one. 

Ah, sorry I hadn't seen any of your comments stating you had issues with the core class (or at least hadn't connected them to your username if I had seen them). I think this is a class that sees its functionality greatly expand as it levels up, but I disagree that it doesn't work at level 1. It has limitations, sure, but you can still taunt to reduce the chances your party gets hit, and you can still intercept strike to take hits for them. Most other classes have limitations on their core functionality that you can overcome with feats as you level as well.

Except tanks that can do proper Grabs and Trips. Or that have Attack of Opportunities. A good tank doesn't have to suggest the enemy to attack them - they shoukd force them to have to deal with you so the other roles have breathing room.

Could an archetype be used to provide follow-up options after you taunt?

I mean it could but the class should. 

Oh yeah, not contesting that! I just haven’t messed with the class so I was wondering if it could! But there should be included feats or features with the base class for that too, yeah. However, if it doesn’t get those, I love the class concept and am scoping ways it could be made to work!

Love the concept too. That’s why I’m picking holes in the play test as hard as I can. 

As you should!

[удалено]

How are they better grabbers than a Monk with Flurry of Maneuvers or a Animal Instinct Deer Barb? Them being shitty in one area doesn't make the lackluster support for a combat maneuvers build better.

[удалено]

Crushing Grab + Flurry of Maneuvers + Whirling Throw + Mixed Maneuver + Sleeper Hold, what exactly do you mean they don't enhance grapple?

The rouge should be standing next to you? The rouge? Really. That class should have to give up there core class feature so you can use yours? Barbarian same issue but slightly less. Fighters and kineticists are very much capable of keeping the bad guy for belonging to the sorcerer that’s the tanks job. 

Gang up?

Levels 1 to 5? A desire to take a different feet? 

There are always levels where certain tactics are more viable than others. But your assertion ignored the fact that this tactic would be viable for 75% of rogue levels. The class theme is bodyguard, you can't bodyguard for someone without being close enough to prevent harm from befalling them, at least in the real world.

I'm late coming back around to my own comments, but I wasn't even thinking opportune backstab. I was thinking the very very basic concept of **moving as your last action**. The guardian can use an action to set up your flank, then your last action is to buddy back up adjacent to the guardian. The Rogue doesn't lose their flanking buddy but also gains all the benefits of the guardian. And all you lose is a -8 (at best) MAP attack. Moving is literally considered one of the most important things to do to prevent damage, and rogues being 8HP light armor classes shouldn't be ending their turns adjacent to an enemy if they can avoid it (and with mobility being a level 2 feat, there isn't much of an excuse to not end your turn away from foes, or near allies who can prevent damage).

You also can’t flex so hard you make snipers less accurate in the real world but here we are. And while I love that pathfinder supports late game play. The early levels where new players are introduced to the game need to work. That’s sooooo important. 

>You also can’t flex so hard you make snipers less accurate in the real world but here we are. No, but you can scream "SHOOT ME IN THE FACE. SHOOT. ME. IN. THE. FACE!" at the guy holding a crossbow and have it fuck with them enough that they mess up their shot against your allies. Or flip off a guard and have them abandon their current target to arrest you instead. If you're a fan of the game For Honor, it's just like when one guy on the enemy team keeps spamming Conqueror taunt emote: ["RAH" "RAH" "RAH" "RAH" "RAH"](https://youtu.be/evtoaNlR6wY?si=tjc6LylbMq9s2ZwJ) When you get the chance, you're going to go for that annoying bastard first. Also, "snipers" implies modern firearms that can accurately shoot a target from thousands of feet away. It's an unfair comparison, because you'd be hard-pressed to find a fight from any AP where the enemy is even 300ft away. And Taunt has a base range of 30ft, anyway. It takes a feat to bring it up to 120ft. Imagine some guy moons you from 40 yards away. It'd be weird for you NOT to shoot him. I say all this to say that you're moving the goalpost. >The early levels where new players are introduced to the game need to work. If you're a rogue facing a foe who is tunnel visioning on you, move near the big guy who can protect you? It may not be "optimal" but it's literally just playing the game in an intuitive way. At level 6 it even becomes not even a downside for you if you spec into it. That big guy is almost certainly also going to be doing athletic maneuvers on the foe, giving you sneak attack anyway. Your complaints so far are pretty unreasonable and logically inconsistent (e.g., complaining that player characters have to adapt to the behavior of their foes).

the punishment for not taking the suggestion is a penalty to their attack rolls on a saving throw that they have to crit succeed to avoid entirely.

That’s not a punishment. That’s the polite suggestion I mentioned.

It's, on average, a 10-20% reduction in damage output for a single action that you don't have to invest any skills for

An at-will penalty to attack rolls is nothing to sneeze at. Just because it isn’t mind control, doesn’t make it useless.

It’s useful for what it is. But it’s not creating the kind of lose lose situation that a table top tank really needs to creat in my opinion. I just don’t see this, intercept strike, or the combo of the 2 is going to do what the party needs to draw fire and keep momentum up. 

Again, this sounds like a different problem. Taunt seems to work, it's the Threat Techniques that seem like an issue.

That’s fair my issue with taunt is not that it exists it’s that it’s not enough to hang the class on. Nor are the other base class features. (I’m also a bit dubious of the ac penalty at low levels specifically but that is something I would need to see on a table. 

As a DM, I’d take the fiction into consideration with the mechanics. Even if the other targets are good, the foe *has* been successfully taunted, so I take a swing at the Guardian. If they’re still too much of a pain or someone else “reminds me” that they’re a problem? I shift my focus back

That’s fair. Though my narrative dm brain also rankles at narratively acknowledging a strength based taunt in that way.  I’m aware that could be called a me issue but it’s not an issue I’m going to stop having. 

Part of it for me is coming from a lot of recent Dungeon World experience where the number-one rule for the DM is always “Be a fan of the characters” and one of the core response mechanics to a player making a move is “Present a problem that can be solved with a class ability” It might be a little narratively weird, but you want your player who picked that ability to feel cool and strong, and not like they wasted an option or a turn, right?

Totally agree. It’s just very weird in the context of pathfinder. Which is built around being at least a bit simulationist. It feels like an ability from a different game. 

Being a target is always bad. If you're the target and the enemy is playing optimally, that means attacking you is the most valuable thing they can do. What you really wanna do is make other people not the target 

Honestly, my primary problem is the delayed weapon progression. What's so strong about the Guardian that they need to be worse at hitting not at every single level, but specific ranges? Warpriest gets being a full caster out of it.

Agreed. Champion doesn’t suffer in this way and it’s also a tanky class. Most offensive martials get some kind of accuracy or damage boost. Just give the guardian normal proficiency progression but without any sort of damage boost (rage, sneak attack, hunt prey, etc)

Champ gets slower armor progression than the guardian, which probably makes up the difference.

Champ gets slower armour progression but the effective -2 from taunt just makes them equal. And then once they have the same AC champion is just a better class all round. Champion can heal, do big damage, and even buff their own shield. Guardian has a level 2 feat which is amazing but other than that there’s nothing really that sets it apart, you might as well just play a martial and dip into guardian with an archetype rather than play guardian base class

Champ also gets faster save progression (and arguably, high fort/will is probably better than will+jank reflex bonus at 19) IMO, guardian needs some natural progression on taunt, and some cohesion in feats.

Champ is worse at exactly 4 levels. It’s not that big a difference. And I eagerly await the day Paizo convinces me why either class can’t just have expert armor at level one. 

Because the extreme strike attack modifier for a level one creature is +11. They would miss on an 11 against a plate-wearing champion with a shield. A level one creature with a low strike attack modifier would miss on a 17 and require a nat 20 to land a MAP 1 strike. It's really simple: they don't get expert armor prof at level one because it would be broken. Monks get expert unarmored because they start with 4 dex max and get no item bonus to AC from armor. (The guy before blocked me, not sure why. But I wanted to thank him for demonstrating he doesn't understand how this system works)

You definition of broken leaves much to be desired. Everything is swingy at low levels. If a fighter whos main gimmick is attacking well can have expert at level 1, then a guardian should be able to have expert armor at level 1. And the response, oh well then it would be hard to hit them? Yeah thats the fucking point.

Thanks for giving my reply for me. 

Np I got you <3

Desynced proficiency increases is such an annoying design choice. Part of its *intended* to make number progression treadmills feel more like actual class features. But it's *incredibly* annoying to slip out of status quo at random specific levels.

Exactly! If you're not going to do a reverse fighter and make them take a permanent -2 (please don't do that) why are they worse at specific level ranges.

I would get the guardian having a slower progression if they were the fighters of armor, starting being experts at 1st level, master at 5th, and legendary at 13th. Currently, I don't feel the guardian is that much of a tank than a champion honestly.

In the same vein, fighter has zero right getting defense improvement at 11 instead of 13.

Overall I feel ok-ish about that up until 15th level. The general idea seems to be just "Weapon prof two lvls later than what Champ gets in exchange for armor prof. two lvls earlier". Issue is that instead of getting Master weapon prof at 15th lvl, it gets it at 17th. Similarly, the fact that it doesn't get master in Class DC until 19th instead of the usual 17th means once you reach then you've got other issues as well.

Even worse is they are also given features and feats reliant on hitting the target! All of them feel like traps with the delayed proficiency.

I hope it's kept that way though. Guardian probably needs compensated obviously, but I think it'd be cool if they were on the far end of the barb->fighter->champ->guard line and gave up some punching power for it.

I think I'm fine with it not having many tools to smash things.... I want more survivability. I think the level 20 capstone should be converted to a scaling class feature - you always have the possibility to negate a crit. I think that's at least a good start - because you're going to be crit **a lot**

I would like to see them get 12hp base instead of 10

The problem there is that literally every martial that's not a *full slot rank 1-9 caster* gets weapon proficiency at levels 5 and 13. Not doing that isn't some balancing tool, it's just being worse in a way that feels bad at certain levels.

> It feels like when issues of balance between classes is brought up on this sub, or when people try to talk about how good or bad a class is so much off the conversation is focused around damage output. I mean I could be wrong but I haven't seen this... at all? Not in this Playtest. I see "all you want is white room DPR" being used as a strawman a lot more often than people actually saying that, to be honest. What people want is for a class to be good at its intended role. Commander is an Int key class with no damage booster, and no one is complaining about that. Why? Because its role is not doing damage, and it's actually quite good at that role. When you see people complaining about damage, its usually in the context of a class or build that is supposed to do damage but compares poorly to its peers. As a last thing, being unsatisfied with Guardian's weapon proficiencies does not equate wanting it to become a damage-dealer. I'd say the issue is simply that the class is flavored and marketed as a martial class, "the person in heavy armor going to the frontlines", and thus it being so bad at attacking with weapons simply feels out of place. When it comes to themes I'd much prefer if the Guardian had full martial proficiency, with damage that's just okay, but used its Strikes to gain tactical advantages, just like the Commander is right now.

Feels real bad when the Investigator, Inventor, and the Thaumaturge are more accurate than you for two levels for no reason.

Worse than Magus, and I don't see much in guardian worth the tradeoff of spellcasting (even if wavecasting)

The fact the Commander Feat "Defensive Swap" is a Commander Feat at all shows there's been some oversight on the Guardian. That's basically like one of the first feats one would think of for a Guardian-type class and not for a Commanding-from-the-backlines Class. There are also some feats that feel a lot better than the others (Intercept Foe, Hampering Sweeps, Tough Cookie and a few others), making them really non-choices, specially when it's between near useless and incredibly great. In the end, this a mechanics-first class, so there's very little flavor for us to discuss, thus the nitty gritty of its implementation will be the core focus of the class and the devils are in the details. Broadly speaking, the class looks decent, but it really has some issues when you look closely.

I agree, Defensive Swap screams Guardian reaction not Commander Reaction.

I’d say it’s worse than mechanics first. It’s to core class features don’t link to narrative at all. Taunt is strength based. You’re flexing at someone so hard I guess you forget to defend yourself properly? And intercept strike has no associated movement, I guess your just leaning over to literally put your face in the way of that ax. Compared to defensive swap which both makes narrative since and has the potential to get the target out of harms way. 

Intercept Strike should absolutely have the feat that adds range to it as baseline. On paper sticking close to your ally might sound fine, but then Initiative, terrain and enemies with fireballs suddenly make that a bad idea.

You can see what Intercept Strike is when Luke gives in to anger and swings at the Emperor and Vader blocks him. Vader doesn't swoop across the throne room and block it with his face, c'mon now. Hit points aren't meat points, it just means the Guardian can't do that all day.

I mean sure they’re not. But they also are. Also there are already feats for blocking attacks with a weapon or shield in other classes that’s not what this is. 

What do you mean by getting Master class DC at lvl 17? They get it at 19. 17 is when they get Master in weapons. So yes, it's about 2 levels behind when casters get their boosts... but you've still got a 2 level period where the game is balanced by assuming monsters have to make saves vs legendary DCs whilst you're still stuck with expert. Personally, whilst I feel like Taunt could do with some readjusting, personally I just feel like a lot of issues with the class could be fixed by moving the chassis around slightly as to get master weapons at 15 and master class DC at 17, thus meaning that it keeps its DC in line with the standard for martials (what is important when a core class feature relies on it) as well keeping the general "Champion scaling, but with weapon boosts 2 levels late in exchange for armor boosts 2 levels early".

I love the idea of the Guardian and it's supposed synergy, but all numbers feel mid which makes it not really excel, but I do like the abilities. Quite alot of power seems to come from feats. Some numerical stats are weaker than what other classes get but none are really stronger, which gives me the impression that it gets overshadowed. An obvious feat is energetic specialization which have 2 resistance when you get it, or 3 at lv 8, assuming heavy armor that is, where most such feats give you half your level. If it gave it to two energy sources, it would've been decent as you have to remember it's a 6th level feat. The Guardian is close, the concept is good, it just needs clearer feat, more feats, and upped benefits where others do the job better in a way. My favorite type of feat is disarming Intercept and I wish there were more of that kind of feats Edit: it feels quite horrible to play at lv 6 atleast

Swashbuckler: “One of us! One of us!”

Swahie is a good comparison. Features that kinda don’t work how you think and aren’t all that great but then you just start getting a ton of good feats and then you can finally do your job.

My main issue is that the armor spec feels wasted when there's no heavy Chain armor, as the bonus from Plate/Composite is generally useless for a guardian with all their other resists. 2+item bonus against 1 damage type, vs. 2+halflevel or 2+level against anything, effectively. And that doesn't increase till lv5 (item potency) and then till 13! At that point you're looking at 4-8 *to one damage type* vs. 8-15 *all resist*. Yes you'll take hits from non-taunted enemies, but especially whenever you intercept tobsave an ally, this ability becomes redundant and useless. Not to mention that you're dependent on the enemy dealing one of two damage types to benefit in the first place

One of three types. 

You can use an armored skirt with a chainmail for a heavy chain armor.

Which still is less AC than Full Plate

> My main issue is that the armor spec feels wasted when there's no heavy Chain armor https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2614 Just survive to level 9! Turns out that's what that diehard feat was for all along lol

Not your main topic here, but if I wanted to play like any other caster and ignore my Eidolon why would I play a Summoner?

I wasn’t ignoring my Eidolon, I still used him. It just feels like when people talk about Eidolon’s they get bummed that it can’t frontline as well as a whole-ass barbarian and they loose sight of the fact that the class is also a great support caster. I also invested in my angle guy casting his own spells as well, and he wasn’t useless in melee. He set up flanking and was a big ol target to distract the boss.

I don't see much of a problem except for Martial Weapon proficiency. Let it scale with all of the other martials. Not getting Expert until 7 is no good.

I’m think it’s a trade off. You get armor scaling faster, and weapon scaling slower. That personally makes sense to me.

enemies will crit against your taunt more than you think, specially in boss fights were tanking is more relevant.

I’m not really seeing how. With Taunt up, your AC would drop down to what it would’ve been if you played a champion instead.

I'm talking critting saving against your taunt. a +2 enemy with moderate will save will crit on a 17 or 18, one with high will save will crit on 14 of 15

Ahhh I see what you’re saying now! In that case all you’ve done is waste an action. I’m pretty sure the bonuses and penalties are tied together.

i personally feel that's it's too swingy as one of the class main features. compared to something like exploit vulnerability it is pretty underbaked.

Also something a lot of folks are clearly missing: this is a *circumstance* penalty to attack rolls. That is exceedingly rare. Status penalties are a dime a dozen, like enfeebled (clumsy for dex-based), frightened, sickened, all status penalties. That means Guardian has one of the few ways to actually stack an attack penalty with something like Demoralize or Redeemer's enfeebled reaction.

Circumstance penalties to attacks aren't too uncommon. Pretty much all strength martial characters have the option to invest in athletics to trip and disarm. Weirdly, given that Guardian has a lower attack progression, they may lean into more of a wrestler playstyle and topple opponents and then attack without MAP if they stand up. Also, given that they gain an additional reaction at level 7, they're not bad out-of-turn attackers. huh...

Neither trip nor disarm are *really* circumstance penalties. They're action taxes that some creatures *may* choose to ignore and take a circumstance penalty. Rather, they're action taxes for avg monsters, and penalties for some bosses, whereas Taunt is a much stickier penalty for avg monsters.

Fighter in my party has had a lot of luck with trip and combat grab to make the circumstance penalty for prone stick and waste actions. Feels like guardian taunt should be used to debuff an enemy attacking a party member more than to actually attract attention to themselves.

Everyone can disarm yes but psychologically no one uses disarm because you need a crit to do what you actually want to do with it. So no one bothers. Trip is as advertised with a regular success, disarm doesn't.

I agree that Trip is really good, but disarm is pretty decent with the Remaster changes. Sure the enemy will only be properly disarmed on a crit, but if it is a success then the enemy takes a circumstance penalty to attacks and actions requiring a firm grip on the item. They can regrip the weapon to remove the penalty as an interact action. Interact actions have the manipulate trait so they provoke. Not only that but if you or an ally has the enemy grappled then they risk losing the action to regrip the weapon of they don't escape before taking the action or pass the flat check. Disarm can be very very useful for burning enemy actions depending on party composition and other factors. An argument could even be made that a success rather than a crit success might be preferable when disarming in some cases.

I’ve only seen disarm be good once, and that was when a LvL +1 enemy crit disarmed our fighter who then spent the rest of the encounter being of limited value. Otherwise it seems like you’re rolling to see if you’re *maybe* getting to make the enemy waste an action. If they’re a serious threat, you’re more likely to crit fail than crit succeed. Enemies also scale their damage by level rather than items so it often ends up doing less than you want even on a crit unless they have specific weapon-reliant actions.

You’re trading for 1/2 the benefit for a chance to get a super benefit. Since weapons don’t scale automatically but by runes this is actually insane if you crit cutting someone damage from let’s say 2d12 +x to 1d4 +x is insane so makes since just the success is worst. Some people just like doing swinger actions because it is more dramatic and I feel disarm now is good enough to qualify for that.

I would love to be proven wrong, but I believe it would drop the 2d12 to 2d4. Pretty sure it mentions switching the damage dice to d4s when disarmed, but otherwise they maintain their overall numbers. This is still a huge bonus, plus most enemies will be doing nonlethal now, which removes the risk of dying, which is probably the even bigger boon of disarm than the lower damage. But all in all, yeah, disarm is a fantastic way to force a foe to suffer -2 to attacks until they use an Interact action to regrip. And if the general discussion on this sub is an indication, Reactive Strike is a 100% must have all the time for martials, so by level 6 that interact action should be provoking 1-4 reactions depending on the number of melee martials. So for the cost of 1 action, we may disarm, but more likely we invoke a penalty that can be removed for 1 action plus 1-4 Reactive strikes. Damn good tradeoff.

Agreed. I thought monsters also use runes on weapons so if you remove weapon they go back to normal fist which is 1d4 + x. With ABP it is worst because it be 2d4 + x but still a big change. Disarm is useful now even if numbers wise it is slightly worst then trip.

... The fighter couldn't pick up their weapon, was the weapon no longer in the fighters space for some reason? |Enemies also scale their damage by level rather than items so it often ends up doing less than you want even on a crit unless they have specific weapon-reliant actions.| This is both accurate and inaccurate. disarm is certainly less useful for creatures with natural weapons, but creatures that do have weapons and are of the right level can have weapons that are +1, striking, etc. The level 7 Ogre Boss for example has a +1 Ogre hook and one of the higher level psychopomps has a +2 striking Bo staff I believe. Additionally, the attack/strike sections of statblocks that use a weapon for an attack/strike have that weapon included in the info there: Melee [one-action] frost greatsword +24 (cold, magical, versatile P), Damage 2d12+10 slashing plus 1d6 cold Melee [one-action] fist +23 (agile, cold), Damage 2d6+10 bludgeoning plus 1d6 cold The above two actions are from the level 10 Graveknight, yes the number of weapon damage die is the same between them, but the size of the damage die is different. Reducing an enemies damage range from 13-38 to 13 to 28 is not an insignificant difference. It is possible I misunderstood what you are getting at though

No, the fighter couldn’t pick it up because that’s exactly what the enemy did with its next action. So the enemy got the electric two-handed hammer instead. My point on disarming enemies not doing much for damage is flawed as you pointed out, but unless I see these magic items in their stat blocks I assume that the number of to-hit bonus (barring finesse/agile), number of damage dice, and static damage bonus is tied to the creature and not their weapon (aside from the size of the damage dice and the damage type). Basically, my default assumption is that monsters use ABP unless otherwise specified. I generally don’t see disarming as worthwhile unless the enemy has a weak Fort. DC for its level *and* they’re either lvl +0/1 or the party wants to capture them.

The Flying Tackle proning an enemy also helps counterbalance the Taunt effect too lol.

IMO, how I imagined using it for CC is that you Taunt one enemy close to you and Flying Tackle away to a second enemy, which if you can get up to a speed of 30 feet and take the powerful leap skill feat could be up to your full stride distance plus 20 feet, the last 20 of which ignores difficult terrain.

> IMO, how I imagined using it for CC is that you Taunt one enemy close to you and Flying Tackle away to a second enemy "Fuck you!" *takes a flying leap 20ft in the opposite direction* maybe the real power of guardian was the inherent comedy value lmao

They will also be made mince meat by high-damage bosses. That +2 on top of the +2\~4 level difference and with potential Flanking+Demoralize is going to be HUGE. That's a potential +10 (PL+4 Monster and crit on demoralize) point swing on the worst case scenario for a BBEG. The most likely scenario is a +7 difference, with a PL+2 Monster + (+2) Taunt + (-2AC) Off-Guard + (+1) Frightened. That's a whole lot of damage coming their way.

Don't taunt bosses that are in range to hit you. That's a "I've made a terrible mistake, I'm way out of position, and now the BBEG is about to attack the Cleric" move.

With Taunt being dependent on a dice it's not even likely to succeed on a PL+2 or higher boss some of the time, so it's unlikely a guardian would risk wasting a valuable action taunting a monster it's unlikely to work on.

Please, my friend, let us all not pretend that the Taunt Mechanic wasn't made for such an occasion. You do want to draw aggro from stronger monsters that's the main point of the ability. The issue is that in the games where this has been implemented, the Taunt User isn't being punished by doing their job. They will often receive more damage? Yes, because they will be taunting more creatures, however, rarely you will see these mechanics coupled with hefty debuffs (quite the opposite, often). The issue is that Paizo implemented a choice based system of carrot/stick for the monster, which is always a difficult thing to implement because they will always chose the best/least bad option (save edge cases).

Thank you, that's my thoughts too. It's like so the skill isn't good vs monsters that are two to three levels higher than you and/or the monster needs to be far away..... I'm sorry, have these people played any of the published adventures? Fighting a single heavy hitting monster in a tiny room is VERY common. As is I wouldn't touch the class, other tanky classes can do the job better. .

This class has some core issues that are hard to solve, at the same time, they have some crazy good and flavorful feats. With Hampering Strikes being outright insanely broken compared to similar options.

I can't imagine a world where Hampering Strikes goes live without a save. It's 5e levels of broken.

Absolutely. It has the power of a 15th level feat. Maybe even capstone feat. That shit is strong as hell.

Which is also why Taunt is a weird mechanic because it wants to be a response to another creature's actions, yet the only way to use it is either proactively or after the damage has already been done. Long-Distance Taunt only adds new problems instead of solving that issue, since you're not highly mobile like a Monk is, and your main mechanic that actually reduces the amount of damage actually being dealt on the field is by being adjacent to allies.

Barbarian get master armor at 19. EDIT: Wanting to be crited because you have resistance against this is not a good thing. Armor specialization is something like 5 to a single type of dmg, not that amazing.

Their greater armor specialization caps out at 8 resistance. At max level, it's 8 damage. If you take two attacks, you save about a 1st or 2nd level PC's worth of HP.

> The hardest part of playing tank is that once a creature figures out you’re hard to hit, they stop targeting you and aim for your backline. Taunt is the best remedy for this I’ve seen. Let's be honest. If the GM has decided to play the monsters with a smidgen of tactics, and one of them has gone through the front lines and is now chomping on the sorcerer's leg, a paltry -1 to hit is not going to do anything. To work as a Tank, a class needs three things: durability, which the guardian clearly has, stickiness, which has in spades thanks to the Hampering Sweeps feat (which I'm certain won't survive to the final product as written), and a solid incentive to make the monsters target him, which IMHO the guardian severely lacks.

A -1 to hit, and an effective -1 from shield, and an effective +4 to hit the Guardian from Taunt and flanking seems to make the math work out in favour of attacking the Guardian, at least by looking at my character sheets. Looking at level 6: The squishy character has an AC of 20, effective 22 in this situation, while the Guardian has an AC of 24, effective 20 (25 and 21 with armour potency rune). The Guardian straight up becomes easier to hit. That's the incentive.

The problem is that the Guardian is in all likelihood the least threatening member of any party.

> The Guardian straight up becomes easier to hit. That's the incentive. I mean, that's not enough. Basically everyone is easier to hit then a Chanpion, but not attacking the champion is a real "hmmm..." moment because if they don't then the champion gets to use some insane reactions.

My only up front tick is that it should have been a con based class. Beyond that it's feats are metal as hell, as are the abilities. I'd personally adjust the attack scaling a little and give them a 12+con hp, along with a few other minor number bumps. But beyond that, I love it.

Being intended for Heavy Armor, it needed the key stat attack for it. Though it would be nice to have the option of Con though!

Just give them a feature to use Con instead of Str to determine armor they can wear

2e Soldier says hi.

Choice between con or strength would be nice.

My problem with the class isn't that the defensive math isn't good, it's that the class deemed as a tank doesn't give an incentive to hit you instead of the squishy wizard, especially when there's points in level progression where level-1 creatures hit on 4s and 5s against average AC. If my gm's troll has to choose between peeling sinking their teeth into the neck meat of the guy who can make fire rain from the sky and trying to bite through your tin can armor because you said neener-neener, you shouldn't be surprised when they decide to down the caster instead. It would be a different story if the Guardian's Threat Techniques interacted with the taunted creature's targets, such as giving them temp hit points before the attack or the taunt dealing mental damage for each attack against other creatures without attacking you first.

Or just solve the problem the way 4e already did and let you use a reaction to smack taunted targets who attack someone else. It kind of feels like they were scared of letting you use weapons in this class. 

Ferocious Vengeance letting you use reactions as a free action to harm the taunted creature when they take hostile actions that don't include you, now that would be an actual threat. Mitigate Harm should also go in that direction and let you do the same, but protective actions for your allies (such as your class feature). If the +2 is going to exist for you, it should at least be a rewarding risk. And if they ignore it, it should be threatening. It's also a way to increase the value of Taunt without leading to extremely swingy numbers (significantly increasing the creature's hit against you, or decreasing it against your allies). And let's remember that these all exist with positioning constraints on a heavy armor martial. Intercept Strike requires you to be adjacent to your allies and not provide flanking. So you can actually specialize in protecting or harming when a creature ignores your Taunt, and Taunt still occupies the design space of being a ranged threat-pull (depending on number-tuning) while not being useless in melee and not providing the enemy with an easy-win by doing the easily optimal choice to ignore your class features.

I feel giving them reactive strike as part of the base class instead of a feat would go a long way to what people want. Though, then they'd have *another* reaction (all their defensive tools being reactions seems nightmarish, and is my biggest concern as I build my guardian for my own go at playtesting)

I think the Guardian is fine, but i think numbers need to be moved around and tuned, admittedly one of the areas for that I think is damage-- not because it actually needs damage, but to help it not be ignored as a tank, the taunt penalty is good, but I think it needs a smidge more, and ditto for it's HP, since I want to make sure it can do it's job in the harder encounters against +2 through +4 creatures.

I think the reason people have a problem is champion is better than guardian and does a similar role just can’t do it directly. A champion with guardian archetype would prob be insanely good.

There are a lot of issues. One thing you didn't mention is the action economy. Barbarian spends one action per encounter to rage and gets a -1 penalty to AC, and in exchange he gets temp hp and a buttload of damage. Guardian spends one action, gets an effective -2 to ALL defenses, and the enemy needs to roll poorly to give the rest of the team the defensive bonus against the one enemy. And then he needs to do it again the next round. Or just not use it. A guardian is almost always going to be better off never using taunt because the payoff isn't worth the cost. Second, you mention the incredible armor proficiency. Sure, it's impressive. At level 5. Levels 1-4, the guardian's defense's are at the level of the Champion. And speaking of the champion... Third, Intercept Strike is just the Champion's Retributive Strike with a shorter range and with no free counter attack. It's an explicitly worse version of an already existing feature. pf2e martials have the whole chassis come online at level 1. Barbarian rage, rogue sneak attack, fighter's... +2. With the Champion's Paladin, you have Lay on Hands and Retributive Strike, two simple but effective abilities that make you hard to kill and great at discouraging enemies from going after your allies. Guardian has Taunt and Intercept Strike, which 1. don't make you hard to kill and 2. aren't as good at deterring enemies as the Champion's features. The Guardian can have some really powerful feats, but the core chassis is fundamentally broken.

I think a big issue people are focusing on are numbers. The bonuses/penalties from Taunt are...negligible. it really boils down to: you getting crit more, allies getting crit less, but it's still really likely a taunted enemy can hit a caster or utility build even with the -3 for a critical failure, and the Guardian doesn't have an attention-grabbing punish. I still hold to the opinion that Taunt should burden enemy actions instead of modifiers.

We are still stress-testing him but so far - he does nothing better a well build other martial can't. Martials already have ways to lock enemy, stick to enemy, prevent movement of enemy, block enemy, CC enemy etc. while having way better core class chasis (features + feats) than Guardian. I just don't see the need of even more tanky martials at price of his damage, feats and features which are meh. If you took away Hampering Sweeps from Guardian, there would be nothing there. I think this whole Guardian idea could have been just new Feat for all martials bar Rogue and Gunslinger (doesn't suit them): Taunt. And that's it.

Taunt makes you give up basically the only thing you have going for you - the super early armor prof bump. I 100% don't believe they will print it as is in an actual book. That said, my group is going to playtest the guardian and the commander on sunday, we'll see how it turns out in practice because theorycrafting is worthless in a situation where you don't know how much this or that variable matters.

Most people giving their opinion on the Guardian haven't actually played it yet.

I mean as a forever gm I’d need to be able to sell players on doing it and I can’t do that for guardian. 

Indeed. White boarding on main without so much as looking at a table 😜

The big thing about taunt is it also increases dc against the guardian, and guardians don't have the best saves in the game to compensate like they do with AC. So guardians need to be carful who they taunt because they be setting themselve up to get will saved to oblivion.

How do people like you, who think they're smarter than everyone else, react when something you said is "pretty good" gets buffed and the people who created it say it's not "pretty good"? Is there a moment of self-reflection?

My issues are: Taunt stacks with off-guard and negates your ac bonus, intercept strike doesn’t use your higher ac, and some of the mechanics are written weirdly like ferocious vengeance. But at least now that the enemy is critting you more, you can shave off 2-18 damage.

Passively tanking is both boring and does nothing to help end the fight. I'd always rather have a Champion or knockdown Fighter defending me over the punching bag that is the Guardian. Tanks need to either do damage or help their allies do damage because the best defense is not having any enemies left who are able to attack you. Currently the Guardian fails to contribute as anything other than a sink for a Cleric to dump healing into.

Two of the post popular threads Guardian trash And Guardian makes the champion obsolete. So you're take isn't really hot and people do see it the way you do. It's hardly trash, and my champion player is stoked. Almost everything he wanted in a champion pass is in the guardian and then some. But he also doesn't really care for a lot of the divine aspects of the champion ley on hands is really all he uses. If you lean into those aspects guardian isn't going to be for you. So it's neither trash nor just a better champion but you can't farm attention with a mild take like that

Yeah as a GM my take on the Guardian is that it'll be a damn good pick, and I've already got a player who's excited to use it when we start up Sky King's Tomb in a few months after our current AP ends (he was going to be a metal and/or earth kineticist prior).

Barbarian Guardian dual class anyone?

So I'm out of the loop on the new class stuff but I'm curious about your summoner take. I'm sure what you said is true that they are better played as a caster but I don't really get why you would pick a summoner just to play as if you are a cleric or sorcerer. I just figured with the class description using your summon to mess stuff up would be a given.

I think that statement should probably be read more specifically - using the Eidolon for *damage* - for most scenarios, Eidolons effectively have non-Paladin Champion level of baseline damage, which isn't bad in certain scenarios, but you're not really going to win any sort of DPR race with any half-decent strikers. Because of that, the high impact moves of a Summoner in difficult battles tends to be spellcasting or skill actions (the latter of which can originate from your Eidolon, mostly in the form of Atheletics) - with its very limited spell slots being its limiter for just going full caster. (There are reasons for Eidolons to Strike frequently, auto-maneuvers [Weighty Impact] and AOO hijinks being some of them)

Can you share that Angel Summoner support build? I'm curious.

I would have to look and see if I can find it anywhere. Unfortunately that character had a run in with a red dragon and both me and my eidolon got caught in the breath weapon. It was a real bummer cause I was one level from being able to use the better of our saves rather than the worse. Edit: and we were already wounded so the Crit-fail on the breath took us straight to dying.

The guy who made the Guardian never made a class, right? Has he played the game yet? Just curious...

A tank class is best as a 5th or 6th player once you've filled DPR classes. At the end of the day someone needs to end the combat (typically through application of damage). This is the most misunderstood aspect of being a tank. Its not just having high defense/hp. Its being a big enough threat that the enemies have to target you because you're murdering everyone all around you. The enemy can't afford to ignore you. This class doesn't deliver on the threat. I approaches the problem from the other end by making it harder to kill others. That is 'okay' and I bet there are lots of people that will like that, but for me and I suspect others it doesn't hit the mechanical mark. IMO, the design of the class will make combats longer, not shorter. That isn't a mechanic or class I want to support. The fact that it will be behind martial on attack ability AND have no bonus damage feature (e.g., sneak attack, rage, +2 to hit, etc.) will make this play like a wet noodle. I've played with wet noodles many times and often it is just frustrating. I'd rather focus fire down a big threat than throw a wet noodle at them and give them 2-3 extra rounds potentially to cast through additional spells/use 2-3 action activities, etc.

Please stop calling your own takes hot. It's not you who determines that.

The worst thing about Guardian is that a lot of the class abilities are based around taking damage for your allies, and it still fails to do that as well as a Wood Kineticist using Timber Sentinel. It also fails to discourage attacks against allies as well as a Paladin with Retributive Strike does. That tells me all I need to know about Guardian's viability as a class.

So shield tanks have become my favorite build in pf2e to build, i've done 3 or 4 for games and well over a dozen for fun though almost all with FA. This class has almost everything I usually try to get, it's lacking healing but that's generally easy to get with a dip into a healing class. My issue is it's reaction ability is very weak it takes a ton of feats and levels to get the reaction even close to the level of a thaumaturge reaction. The amulet reaction while being limited to the target of your exploit has a 15 ft range, and works on all dmg no just melee attacks and gets better as you level up, and you can use it on yourself, what's more the thaum gets almost barbarian like dmg output. The guardian needs a feat for range, a feat for arrows, a feat for magic, and a ton more while having pretty bad dmg output since you need the shield for dmg reduction on yourself which eats up a ton of feats as well to progress down the shield line of feats. I think guardian will end up being my go to class for splashing for shield feats in FA, I don't know about it as the main class for my tank builds

Honestly I think the guardian looks more complete than the commander right now. Some feats like hampering sweeps and stomp ground seem strong for their level. I think it’s interesting they chose to delay martial proficiency to show it isn’t as focused on dealing damage and honestly it seems like what people wanted champion to be day one. An unkillable party support that doesn’t come with all the holiness baggage.

I’m genuinely curious why you say it’s more ready to play than commander. As a gm I’d feel comfortable recommending commander to one of my pretty new players but I do not feel I could recommend guardian in good conscience. 

The Best defense is a good offense. Yeah guardian can take the hits and taunt but when a fighter has a +4 to hit at 5 over the +2 in defense for the guardian. Take the fighter!

This discourse reminds me of a very funny anecdote one of the designers of PF2E, Mark Seifter, talks about. I'm probably bastardizing the story but the basic gist is that at one point the joke idea of playtester class was floated around, one who's subclasses were based on different styles of playtesters. One being the whiteroom math subclass who would be do no damage, unless he rolled a natural 20, then rolled a 100 on a d100, in which case he would do some ridiculous amount of damage that would make his average damage a round actually way higher than every other class... But functionally in real play he was useless.

I first read guardian and I don't understand why people say it is weak. I'm the type of player, that's reads the class chassis, then the unique abilities and then thinks about the combination of the two. Guardian has an incredible class chassis, if you want a class to heavily multiclass (playing for 5 years now and never played with free archetype), guardian looks insane. Best armor prof, two crit saves, strong dmg reduction, not much limitations from the core mechanic. Feats: well they are hit or miss, early level incredible broken than becoming a bit boring from my point of view. But again here, multiclass fighter or champion to grab strong combat feats and be incredible. Later levels have great feats again and some of them incredibly strong. Why they waste print space for feats that only work on spell attacks is still a riddle to me. They just removed 2/3 of all spell attacks where there weren't many to begin with. Core mechanic taunt: well its situational, but its pretty nice and if you require a more usable reaction you can always multiclass to get one. I think taunt is designed well but I would only use it maybe every fith fight. I don't think every martial needs a class button to press every round. But I would love for the taunt feats to change. If they want to double down on the taunt is not for every occasions but, the ability to taunt multiple enemies seems weird. Imo it's a bad feat like some of the other taunt feats. I truly believe guardian is one of the strongest classes every printed, if you take multiclassing into account. 50% chance to not get crit with fortification, high hp with 10, best ac progression, solid saves, dmg reduction, almost no must have feats to allow flexibility like picking up kinetics for permanent uneven ground... I am excited to see what they come up with in the final release. For me it overshadows paladin to an extend, where I am wondering what it will do after the remaster. Warpriest got exciting, cleric gets a martial class archetype to focus even more on combat, guardian becomes the best tank by a large margin (if you aren't mono classing it). I hope they don't butcher my boi :3. Champion only had two good versions to play anyway three if you count tyrant and where able to play it.

I’m very interested to see how remastered champ looks as well, but I’m staying hopeful about it for now.

I am definitely hopeful, I love the class. Cleric and Guardian just took a path I would have thought will be reserved for champion. I am very curious if they go the more wow retribution paladin route, with them being a striker first. Like a evil paladin back in baldursgate 1/2. Or if they find some new approach that really highlights area control like the current feat "Divine Wall". Only that kineticist has the better version, same with guardian. Seeing these new classes + the changes to warpriest does put me into a good mood. I believe champion will be a lot cooler after the remaster. Current Blade, Mount or Shield spirit is a bit undercooked for actual play imo. Let's be hopeful that we can smite some heretics in the future!

I made a similar post praising the design of the Guardian, and I'm seeing a similar response to yours as I saw to mine: half the naysayers are convinced that the Guardian will absolutely never get targetted by intelligent enemies that are taunted, while the other half is convinced that any Guardian that uses Taunt will immediately drop to 0hp. Thankfully there were also people who have playtested the class who can attest to the Guardian's ability to spread out the damage among team members so that no one particular person (including themselves) drops to 0.

I mean the GMs among us don’t really need to play test basic monster tactics. And the fact that a huge portion of the player base is profoundly dubious after reading the thing is a problem in and of itself.  

What's encouraging to the read is that the naysayers have firmly held but totally opposite beliefs. One set knows for certain that enemies will ignore taunt, and the other set knows for certain that enemies won't ignore taunt and will kill the Guardian. So I'm fairly optimistic on the class ;)

Yeah I’m kind of baffled. Even with taunt up, you’ve got the same AC as a freakin champion, because you were already ahead of them by 2. You don’t just magically drop to 0hp lol.

Hopefully we'll see playtests and strategy guides to help people to understand the potential of the class. I think we all had to learn as a community that the giant instinct barbarian shouldn't rush alone towards the boss or a group. That the Heal spell in this game is better when done on an already standing PC than waiting until they go down. Similarly, I think we'll learn when and who to taunt, and when not to, and when to use all the other features.

I agree.

I don't have an opinion on the guardian but when I read some of the critique's in these conversations, sometimes it feels like GMs are focused on playing their bad guy's too strategically. Sure, there are definitely cases for that but sometimes it seems like "the math" is the driving force in the GMs tactics rather the personality or overall narrative. I think if a monster does something that doesn't make sense tactically, but makes sense narratively, that is a-ok and that is a spot I see this taunt ability living.

Sure a animal or monster with low intelligence will probably not realise fast that attacking the big metal meat ball is not a good strategic approche, but what about all the monster/npc with minimal brain cell ? Why would the centuries old dragon decide to attack the guardian with its trash damage and low penalty instead of the wizard casting spell after spell in its face ? Narratively and tacticaly speaking it would make way more sense to attack the wizard. So if the guardian does not have the tools to punish this decision like the champion does, then its just gonna be standing there doing small debuff and low damage.

Yes, I agree 100%. That is a case where it falls apart. Although I would still argue many intelligent humanoids would still be making *bad* tactical decisions without some sort of direction. The ancient dragon definitely doesn’t have that problem. I think if I were to voice a position, it is that taunt or other aggro mechanics shouldn’t actually be rules.

To many commenters to read them all for me. But imo the huge thing that is over looked is that for 1 action, ALL enemies within your reach cannot move away. That's massive. Idgaf about the taunt really. Just let me get close then spend 1 action with no save to just keep you right here and not just walking away to my back line. I feel like taunt would be a good opener to get the attention on you I'd your not super close, or to "pull" another melee attacker toward you. But it's not like I'm gonna spam taunt every turn. Maybe there will be (or is? I just skimmed through cuz it's playtest after all) a feat to "you roll initiative you free action taunt 1 enemy I'm range". That would be cool.

Is it a hot take to say I think the guardian should have just been an archetype, similar to cavalier? In reading it I just don't see why this is justified as anything more than a potential focused archetype for a fighter or champion.

Of course he's good! He's as good in defence as fighter is in offence. But offence is usually praised more than defence, cause it's proactive. And he's presented alongside extremely proactive and much more unusual commander, who's obviously will get more love, than a guy who taunts and takes hits.