Various people were discussing tanking in LARP in general and in TT in particular on #LARP. This page is some thoughts of mine on 1) why I don't think this is a good idea, and 2) how I'd try to make it work if we were going to. It contains an elegant paradox.
Tanking as I understand it refers to a division of labour in which one character has the job of taking as much as possible of the "being hit" going, in order to prevent anyone else from being hit. I think there are three ways of doing this in LARP:
- We already have this. It works as well as it works, you can do it for a little while with(out) any abilities but high damage output and other ways to make yourself a priority target are very helpful, the length of time you can do it for depends on your hits. It's easy to do a little but very hard to do reliably. On it's own, it's not nearly enough to make a high-survivability low-damage tank class viable or fun, I think.
- We could give people taunt-type abilities: "You must do your best to attack me in preference to other targets". I think this is a horrible, horrible mechanic that we shouldn't touch with a barge-pole: It will destroy immersion, lead to accusations about people not taking taunts properly, make fights less interesting and generally suck.
- Giving one class a suite of abilities such that the sensible thing to do is for the monsters to attack it in preference to all other targets. I think this would be fine if we could do it, but it run's afoul of Steel's Tanking Paradox:
Steel's Tanking Paradox
- For a tanking mechanic to work the way tanking "ought" to work, it has to be the optional strategy for the tanked side to focus all their attacks on the tank, and the optimal strategy for the tanking side to have all the enemies aggression focussed on the tank.
It's very easy to design an "I am a priority target you need to kill me first" mechanic, but then what you have is a healer/buffer/etc who hides behind the party. It's very easy to design an "I have lots of hits but low damage", but then you have a class who the monsters will just ignore and go after the squishies. In any vaguely symetrical fight, the point at which it becomes sensible for the tank to try to tank is exactly the point at which it becomes sensible for the monster to ignore them.
For asymmetrical encounter - party vs monsters - this isn't totally insurmountable, because the goals of the two sides aren't necessarily diametrically opposed. If all you have are fights where the monsters are only concerned about "win or lose" but the party are concerned about resource conservation, it might theoretically be possible to get around Steel's Tanking Paradox by having "focus all fire on the tank" be the strategy most likely to result in the monsters wiping the party, but likely to result in much less resource expenditure if they don't. But this has many, many problems with it:
- :-It reduces the space between "TPK" and "no effect on the party" even more.
- :-There are large numbers of encounters where it just doesn't work.
- :-We'd have to rewrite massive chunks of the system to implement it.
In computer games, tanking works by mechanised threat with no suggestion the monsters are targetting optimally. My impression is that D&D tanking works partly by means of exploiting asymmetry and partly by the GM choosing to play the monsters with suboptimal tactics, trying to maximise their damage dealt rather than their chance of winning (D&D players: is this accurate?). But in a LARP, with independent tactically-thinking monsters, I think that Tank/DPS role division is not sensible.
- I agree with most of Jacob's summary here. However, I would add that I firmly believe that hard skill tanking is viable. However, if you analyse MMO tactics, where the concept of tanking tends to stem from, most experienced gamers will tell you that it is not just the tank's responsibility to make this strategy work. In an MMO team, the traditional approach is for the tank to attack first 'gaining aggro' from the monsters. The high damage dealing members of the team (rogues with backstab, magic users and targeteers) hold back on the initial volley, to ensure the monsters are fully focussed on the tank.
- If we were to film a TT linear, I would be surprised if the non-tank classes were actually behaving in that manner. Most targeteers will loose as soon as they have a shot. Most mages will cast as soon as they are in range. Thus the tank never captures the monster's attention and the strategy fails. Like most good strategies, it requires the entire team to be behind it, not just for it to be the responsibility of one person.
- On a tangent to this, I would note that the most textbook tanking I have seen at TT recently was by monsters on yesterday's nightmare linear. The PCs were engaged by the close combat nightmares, who were several meters ahead of the casters. While the PCs were chasing the melee types, the caster nightmares then threw in status effects. The now over-exposed and blinded PC warriors were badly mauled and it came close to a TPK. --TimB
- Well actually it did hit TPK. That was largely due to an all warrior character party as well. --Mechanical_Roo
- 'This was also sort of what happened at the York summer event. Monster parties of 2/3 monsters with shields and knives - hard to kill, but also unable to fight a PC line effectively in terms of getting hits in. Had loads of damage front-loaded if they did hit, but too few hits to rush easily. 1/3 of the monsters had bows and a fair bit of damage, and if the PCs ran off on their own to get the archers the skirmishers tore them apart. -TheKremlin
- WoW, at least, is drifting more and more to 'it's okay to open up straight away - just get the right target' as a model for DPS restraint (arguably without the latter proviso). It's a subject of common criticism. Conversely, I can think of times I've tied up 3-4 monsters by looking large and threatening, while all the action took place on another flank. --I
- From a PC side, I made good use as Magnus of not engaging in the front rank, then running round and back stabbing monsters once they'd forgotten about me and were already engaged.. Wasn't always successful and possibly worked a great deal as I ran away very fast. --Taxellor
- DnD? tanking makes use of medium-sized penalties, and of retribution for violating a mark. The essence of good tanking in DnD? is to give as many enemies as possible a choice between two bad options (option 1: attack tank, destroying any hope of focussing fire on a better target, option 2: ignore tank, suffering penalties to attack, and disruption or damage). A DnD? tank does not, generally, want to take all the attacks ever - they probably want to take about twice as many everyone else in the party, for optimal use of defenses and damage absorption capacity. Positioning and abilities will often let them avoid overaggro, but it is a real threat. --I
- The marks tend to work by blurring the issue as to what actually is optimal for team NPC. --Taxellor
- Not really. You use them to make the best choice worse. Ideally, you reduce it to about the level of all their other choices (no point going further, after all). --I
- An attempt to implement 'two bad choices' in larp, using the current TT system as an example platform: Your tank gets two calls of 'TAUNT' by blow (which can have been parried) per encounter. The effect of this is 'for the next 30 seconds, if you're attacking anyone but me, you must call one degree less damage'. This is reasonably easy to take, and allows you to obey it or not, according to your reading of the tactical situation. Its use for 'taunt and run' is limited by the fact that you must start in direct contact with the enemy - and it is ultimately a consumable resource, to be spent to reduce enemy damage. --I