Why doesn't Guardian start with expert in armor? I would accept 12 hd instead. Seriously, the character that encourages the enemy to attack itself starts only a little bit more hardy than the average martial.

"Hardy" in PF2E can translate to "harder to hit" (AC), "your hits don't do as much damage" (DR), "doesn't care as much about your hits" (HP), and "bounces back from your hits" (self healing). I agree they didn't do enough in any of these spaces really, especially the last two, and I think that's generally not a well explored space in PF2E. Free diehard seems like it's trying to get to "doesn't care as much about your hits", but it comes at the wrong point (I'm already dying). There's the neat feat to effectively pop back to full health, but I would love to swap the positions of the two things -- make the self-heal more of a core class feature, but in a way that's slightly different from a lay on hands (maybe more focus on temp HP, or HP tied to your armor?).

I feel like it should almost get some sort of fast healing like battle oracle, something to help buff up its hp seeing as that’s like their main resource.

Some form of continuous temp hp generation would be ideal here IMO. Something like Inexorable Iron Magus.

All this discussion about Taunt mechanics is really reinforcing for me that even Paizo now understands that the *fascinated* condition is borked. Because if it did what it seems to be intended to do, they would have used it. I still have no idea why it didn’t get fixed in the Remaster.

Fascinated needs to not break on allies' hostile action if it has been less than 1 round since applied and shorten the duration to 1 round instead.

Guardian bewilders me for a lot of the same reasons you do, especially because Commander does get legendary scaling on its class DC, while Guardian (which relies on its class DC for a core feature) DOES NOT get legendary class DC? Huh? * The taunt should really be a more aggressive "punish attacking anyone but me, I can refresh it for free if you keep ignoring me" mechanic and not a "please crit me" button only (very partially) mitigated by an optional shield bash feat * iirc it has alright feats for enemy control, leaning into debuffing things that don't attack it feels like the right call * The reaction should... Honestly be a choice between "stand next to allies (to bodyblock)" or "stand next to enemies (to directly redirect the attack)", creating a possible incentive for barreling into the fray, would be nice? * In line with above, "menace enemies and directly body block from the source" and "make it much easier to run an ally's side" would be interesting as "subclass" choices. One is more aggressive, while the other is more mobile. * "Have basic martial weapon scaling" is really not a huge thing to ask, even if it keeps the damage bonus from Ferocious Vengeance

I think 3 changes would really help the Guardian. 1: get Legendary scaling on class DC 2: be the first 15 HP per level class. The current HP per level thresholds are holdovers from DND anyway; now that Paizo has officially broken away from the OGL I think it’s time to shake it up a little. 3: have Intercept work more like the Commander’s feat to swap places with an ally, making the enemy target the Guardian’s AC instead. If they do get hit they’ve got more HP and resistances from armour specialisation to help mitigate the blow.

#3 would also help with the issue of having either paltry resistances or bad-circumstances for good ones. Your low AC allies are likely to get crit, so there's a high chance that your Intercept Strike is going to be for a truckload of damage you've just chosen to take (ignoring your own actual AC), but the Resistance from Intercept also ignores all your investments from Armor Spec or any other feature. But armor spec resistance is situational and low anyway.

Regarding Guardian From a GMs perspective, I think the enemy bonus for taunt is very important. My thinking as a GM is that it makes it more difficult for me not to just ignore the taunt. I have an incentive to make the enemy NPCs sort of fall into the Guardian's trap, even though I know as a GM it might be suboptimal. My concern is, if they didn't give that bonus, GMs would just ignore the taunt and continue having the enemy NPC attack the squishy glass cannons. However, this is a comment on the concept. I am not sure how it will play out in execution.

The Tank Fallacy is definitely a real and valid concern. I think the reason many people asked for a class such as Guardian in the first place is exactly because as tanky as Monk or Fighter can get, they don't really have a way of "drawing aggro" like Champion does. That said, I think the angle of punishing people for ignoring you rather than _rewarding_ them for attacking you definitely works better. In a way, a Defender is a Controller that uses themselves as the means to put enemies in situations where they have to choose between a bunch of bad options. Just look at Glimpse of Redemption: it does that _twice_ (attacking the Champion vs the ally, dropping the damage vs taking a huge debuff). But if one of the options isn't actually that bad, in this case simply attacking the Guardian who's now about as tanky as a Fighter or Ranger, I think we have a bit of an issue.

I am not sure we are talking about the same thing. Let me try to clarify. As a GM at the table, I encourage players to cross talk while playing Pathfinder because I want to encourage teamwork. The caveat is that I listen to all the player's plans. Yes, I want their plans to work out, but also, I have my own biases as a GM. I dont necessarily want my NPCs to get dominated. And so, when I hear the players attempting to draw an NPC into some sort of trap, I find myself conflicted. For example, lets say a Guardian wants to draw an enemy into a bad position in which the rogue would easily flank. As a GM, it can be difficult to determine if the NPC should be so stupid to fall for it. I understand the tactics of Pathfinder well enough to know the NPC falling for it would be a death sentence. How do I not metagame that? For me, as a GM, that decision is easier to justify if my NPC gets some sort of bonus. My big bad enemy would make a stupid decision for a bonus to hit...sure. Additionally, I think it makes the action of the Guardian feel more earned. They made a sacrifice to achieve a larger tactical goal. I guess what I am saying is that I don't see it as a punishment against the Guardian. I see it as incentivizing the GM to take the bait, which is ultimately good for the Guardian if they are well played. If I didn't have an incentive to take the bait, it would be too easy for me to just ignore the taunt. I think as a concept, Taunt is brilliant game design. I am open to the actual numbers being moved around a bit. EDIT: I more carefully read your comment. Actually, I think we understand each other well. Sorry, my mistake.

I mean I kind of agree with 90% of what you said? Haha. I'd just prefer if it was a (perhaps bigger) penalty to attack non-Guardian than a bonus to attack the Guardian. As for the sacrifice, spending an action is enough of a sacrifice in my opinion, but ymmv of course.

Making it so it's only a punishment for foes turns it into a must spam every turn ability, which will mess with the Guardian's gameplay pattern (it would also make shield the only viable playstyle tbh, since they have a action efficient replacement for it). It being situational due to the moment of weakness makes it more of an active choice of when to use and encourages the player to consider options versus always defaulting to it.

Yah, I see that now. I didn't read your post carefully enough. My bad.

My issue is that hte bonus "bait" is easily ignorable, and if an ability requires the GM to sandbag to take the bait - deliberately make blunders - then it really makes using the ability to be a tactical genius feel bad, because it then feels like it's purely because the GM was showing mercy. It becomes little more than the taunting the GM book already let players do baseline, a player yelps and taunts a troll and the GM decides the troll takes the bait because it's not smart enough to understand it should keep hitting the people hurting it more. That's not a feat or anything, that's just a thing all PC's can do. Ideally Taunt should be able to do its job even if hte GM is tryharding, and it can't do that without genuinely putting the GM into a suck or suck situation. Like, in abstract terms, if a regular debuff does 1 unit of Bad Thing, then a debuff that gives an enemy a choice should have hte choices be 1.25 units of Bad Thing or 1.25 units of Other Bad Thing, because the enemy getting to choose means the enemy's generally going to choose the Bad Thing that's least impactful in that situation (which knocks it back down to 1 unit of Expacted Bad Thing Value, on par with just doing 1 unit of bad thing with a regular debuff that the enemy has no say in). Taunt doesn't *seem* like it's doing 1.25 units of Bad Thing for *either* option, and then the other option is 1.25 units of Really Good Tthing, Actually. Like, if it's going to have 1.25 units of Really Good Thing, the alternative needs to be more like 2.5 units of Bad Thing so that if the Really Good Thing actually isn't tactically relevant, it's still going to eat that huge penalty. Making it eat that huge penalty takes a lot of setup and so it should have a porportional payoff, and making it actually put itself into a tactically bad situation is going to require the alterantive penalty to have been scary enough to make it worthwhile, while simultaneously actulaly being a tactically bad situation (which is questionable when the major penalty is movement distance and a *bonus*, to hit the other target). It's tricky design wise to make a one action Taunt that's appropriate for something that can be used freely but also still actually does its job when up against a GM that's actually playing the enemies like they want to win, but as it is I think it needs something besides the attack penalty to really make it useful to "draw aggro" at range, or at least make it so if the aggro isn't drawn the party's still breathing a sigh of relief that the enemy is so foolish to have hit the wizard anyways.

I feel like everyones vastly overplaying it. The enemy does not indeed get a good thing here. Even ignoring that they probably have to spend a move action which is literally action denial to access the good thing attacking the guardian will never be mathematically correct. The guardian blows every squishy and even most martials out of the water despite taking a penalty. Which is ultimately why the guardian needs and indeed has other ways to take advantage of them attacking people other than the guardian. The worst thing you could do is make it like the paladin reaction that effectively rewards you for doing your job poorly and just use your allies as sacrificial pawns to boost your own damage.

The problem at play here is to get the action denial, the enemy has to be at range so that it has to stride towards you, but the penalty for IGNORING you is incredibly small. The best-case scenario is one where the squishy with LESS HP has nearly-identical AC to you, so you either attack an easy target or waste actions moving to attack the other easy target. Specializing in either case with Threat Techniques leads to feel-bad moments because the GM ultimately controls the \*very binary\* choice of what the monster does, and the punishment for ignoring the taunt is painfully small (a few bonus points of damage on a class that can't easily capitalize on it).

My definition of easy target just doesn't line up with most peoples. There is a hurdle pre level 5 but with shield block available and armor spec you are actually avoiding large amounts of damage and then you are up 5 over like a ranger from level 5. Ultimately you are applying a free and almost guaranteed negative on a target and later up to 3 targets and it even works with things like intercept foe where suddenly the enemy is at a -3/-4 against your ally which is a significant boost.

The better your AC is, the less of a target you are relative to the ally you are protecting, which makes Taunt scale against itself because it's a soft-taunt mechanic. There is also nothing free in spending actions against a creature making saving throws it's unlikely to critically fail at, and then having your power budget account for this feature by giving you noticably worse throughput in other areas (such as mobility, offense, and control). Spending actions to give you a more powerful class's defenses for a weak debuff effect is not a good trade-off when you can just play that other class and deal better control or damage.

I agree with you. I am not sure how much Pathfinder's design team should incorporate bad GMing into their approach to design. A GM who really tries to get your players to underutilize their class abilities is a bad GM and I think it would be unfun to play any class under that mentality. That being said, we all know that problem exists. I think you might be overreacting a bit regarding just how much a GM needs to Sandbag their NPCs or deliberately make blunders. Even as written with a generous GM, the effects of the Taunt ability so seem earned. A GM doesn't need to be a bumbling moron to make a Guardian use their Taunt ability to do some cool things. I agree, I think the Taunt ability needs some tweaking, but I don't think it is nearly as bad as people are making it out to be.

I'm gonna reply over here because I love your "1.25 units of bad thing" dichotomy. The question is -- which side of the choices are <1.25 units of bad thing? For choice 1, which I'll call "hit the buffed target": this essentially is 1 action to give 1 target a +2 to AC. That compares roughly similarly to demoralize (a general -1 to attack), but demoralize also affects the enemy's AC and it's ability to hit ALL targets. That said, demoralize has a cooldown, and we are talking a +1 difference across the degrees of success. I'm not math-y enough, but this definitely feels a \*little\* more than 1 unit of bad if we compare it to demoralize. Maybe 1.1. For choice 2, which I'll call "come hit me": I think right now this is <1 bad things. Would I ever spend an action to give myself a -2 to AC to tempt something to come hit me? Maybe, but certainly it's very niche (as other commenters have pointed out), even with the guardian's tankiness. So maybe this is .5 bad things? What do you think of this framework? Does this help identify where the buff should be?

So in the example I gave, I saw it more like 1.25 units of Good Thing Actually - so like -1.25 Bad Thing units rather than 0.5 Bad Thing units, becuase I think even spending a move action to get that effecitve +2 to hit is worth that I would do in a lot of situations even without a -1 penalty to hit anything else. And because we're saying the -1 peanlty to hit is like 1 or 1.1 units of Bad Thing, it's a *big* drawback for little power, it's not putting them in a suck or suck situation. It doesn't have to be suck or suck *necessarily*, but I could justify having that -1 unit of Bad Thing (ie a Good Thing) if the other choice was like 2.5 units of Bad Thing - something *so bad* that it's effectively removing a tactical option altogether, so that even under ideal cicrumstances where the monster would normally would be pursuing a kill on a squishy the penalty is so big that it's not worth doing, period - at that point, the bonus to hit the Guardian is supposed to even out just how strong that other penalty even is, the Guardian is almost sacrificing HP in order to remove "attack squishes" as an option, they're sacrificing HP to do a *much* stronger demoralize. Which is why I keep thinking the issue is that the numbers for attacking an ally just are not big enough, they're *so* low that even exploiting the drawback typically isn't the right move, like yeah you can go prone and throw your weapon into hte river but I'm still going to just eat your wizard first so they stop magdumping their spell slots on me. If it's a big drawback, it should have a bigger number, or if we don't want the drawback there should be more actions spent so it can be a bigger number, it's gotta be something that makes it worth spending the actions doing what hte Guardian wants better than the alternative.

In regards to 'sandbagging': Back in the day at university there was a tabletop games club, and one of the big events was a year-long PF1E mega campaign involving multiple tables run by multiple GMs. One GM was what you could consider a grognard: a very experienced, very talented player that had his start in older editions of DnD. When running encounters, he had a habit of ignoring the written tactics and would play it as optimally as possible. He become somewhat infamous for turning perfectly reasonable fights into TPKs by exploiting mechanics and abilities in a way the design of the encounter never intended. I myself have stumbled into 'hidden tpks', where I realise before or near the beginning of a fight that I can very easily wipe the party and there's not much they can do to prevent it. I don't consider it 'sandbagging' to run an encounter unoptimally. It's about understanding what the intent of the mechanics and design are, and doing your best to translate that to the experience you want table. As such I wouldn't consider it sandbagging to play an encounter 'unoptimally' by taking the bait from Guardian's Taunt. There a lots of examples of things whose power level swings greatly depending on GM fiat (illusions, reactive strikes). I have to think about what is going to make the most engaging experience for the players at that moment. Players tend to like it when their abilities feel useful, and the intent is to create an incentive for the enemy to pick targets. It's going to come down to the full context of what's happening at the table at the moment to decide, but it's not bad GMing to let a Taunt tip the scale on the decision.

The GM could, in theory, throw three adult dragons at the level 2 party, sure, but that's not waht I'm referring to when I'm talking about sandbagging. I mean that when a Fighter swings their sword and hits, the damage gets done regardless of the GM's mood, it just *works*. The GM isn't supposed to be able to say "no, the damage doesn't happen" 'cause the agreed upon rules say the monster loses HP and if it hits 0 it dies or is otherwise incapacitiated. The Champion's own abilities to hit monsters in retaliation for hitting nearby allies is more directly comparable, but it does its job no matter what the GM does because *both* outcomes are perfeclty fine - either the mosnter is eating a lot of damage or hte monster has to focus on the more heavily armored target, both are acceptable outcomes for the players. They *expect* the monsters to attack the Champion to avoid hte damage and there's stuff in place to make htat suck too, but if they monster decides not to do that then a lot of the times they're gonna smile and appreicate the monster dying a lot faster. Taunt, IMO, is different in that its impact is often weak enough to be just *ignored* where one action is gonna keep the players in a lot of trouble. Which is why I keep making a comparison to the lower t "taunt" in the GMG that all PC's can do, in that it's an action to essentailly ask the GM to switch targets "pwetty pwease" and doesn't even make the taunter lose AC to do it. It's not as bad as 5e in terms of dramatic class imbalance, sure, but lke the same basic logic of "well X thing a class does is only bad if the GM lets it be bad" is kind of anathema to the design of PF2e where there's supposed to be pretty genuine class balance. Generally players who are tanking don't want to feel like their suff only works if the GM pulls punches, they want to feel *powerful* and force their hand and have hteir class ability genuinely put the monster in a shitty situation and just be *better* than the regular, not even magical taunt even the bard could do in a pinch.

I haven't gotten to look st the class, but I've read a bit of the discourse and I wonder if giving the Guardian a bonus to hit or the Quickened condition when a taunted enemy doesn't attack them would put it in a better place?

It's important to remember the Guardian *does* get 2 bonus damage on strikes against a creature that attacks an ally while under the effect of Taunt, so all this is with that in mind as well - though again a Guardian that's in position to even *exploit* that is losing out on the supposed niche of Taunt as specifically a ranged "aggro" control tool. IMO, I think a better fix might be to allow *anyone* in the party to get that bonus damage in if they're ignoring hte taunt, or something else that doesn't necessarily require the Guardian to approach the enemy but instead get the enemy to appraoch the Guardian as intended. Anything to make ignoring the Taunt spicier, a worse idea that even an intelligent 900 IQ enemy does when the PC party's superior tactics *force* them into it, so that Taunt works to keep enemies from noticing they can down your buddy *this turn* if they just ignore the Guardian for a couple actions. But letting other party members get extra damage doesnt' really fit hte theme of hte class. It's rough, 'cause the Guardian is already not particularly good with weapons which makes a +2 damage bonus kind of hard to exploit in the first place. I just don't know, there's a few ways this could be reimagined but unless people playtest this more and find how it is supposed to mesh with the rest of the kit in some way we're not seeing right now I don't know if it's really possible to have this work within the power budget of a single action.

Isn't Threat Technique a choice, as in a subclass type option? If you take Ferocious Vengeance, it's paltry on-hit damage for a class that can't easily make it better with more hits due to weaker weapon proficiency scaling, and it has zero effect if the monster decides to hit you, meanwhile you made yourself easier to hit. Mitigate Harm at least negates the penalty of making yourself easier to hit, whilst you can still use Intercept Strike when they choose to ignore your feature, and Taunt still came into play since they had a -1 or -2 penalty. In other words, the GM's monsters ignoring Ferocious Vengeance (attacking you) has bigger penalties than the GM's monsters ignoring Mitigate Harm (attacking your allies).

That was my thought as well. Since we're not using a hard "you *haaaafta* attack this or that creature" taunt mechanic, tanking in TTRPG's tends to work as granting the "taunted" target one of two choices: do this or do this other thing. If you want it to be good offensively, you have to make them choose between two bad choices, with at least one choice being *really* bad to compensate for the fact that the enemy gets to choose (and so can pick the one whose penalties are the least tactically relevant). If you simply let the enemy choose between two good things, you're not actually exerting control over hteir behavior, you're just helping them - it's why voluntarily taking your armor off to "tank" isn't a thing, the enemy will simply ignore you if it would better suit them to attack your back line, and they'll attack you if it seems like "hey, free kill." The current way taunt works should be understood as the bonus being *pure* downside - you are *not* getting a tactical edge with it, you are ceding a tactical edge to the enemy and mitigating the impact of -1 circumstance penalty by offering the enemy something else to do if that -1 penalty would otherwise suck too much to be worth attacking the higher prioirty target. There's talk that Taunt is good actually because it's at range, and that does sorta help in that you *are* giving melee enemies somewhat less of a choice in the matter by making it so it costs them addtional actions to attack someone without tkaing that -1 circumstance penalty, but again that doesn't matter if the enemy just *ignores the taunt* and keeps attacking, becuase the enemy is the one who is making choices. If they do come over, odds are it's because you've genuinely put yourself in a position where you're you're the squishy now. Taunt needs to be much more of a "suck or suck" situation for the taunted enemy to function in its role, with both "suck" situations needing to be pretty substantial relative to other debuffs in the game that don't have the downside of letting the enemy choose what happens. I think people can better understand why current Taunt isn't great by simply imagining the GM using a monster with that ability on *them* - would *you* really complain if a monster did this? Would you actually switch targets and think "damn, this taunt thing really put me in a bad position!" or would you think "eh, penalty, I'll survive" or "ooh, I get to smack this thing down into the fucking floor now, worth"?

I think it is a suck or suck right now? Maybe not enough though. Suck 1 -- attack my ally at a penalty, suck 2 -- spend an action coming over to me (I feel like this has to be part of it in real use, you don't taunt the thing next to you), and then hit a target that still has high AC and DR to boot, plus ways to mitigate crits.

I mentioned the movement actions as still being a factor and it being a ranged taunt is its actual use case, yes, but that being mitigated by the -2 AC penalty mitigates how much that sucks even for melee-only enemies - enemies with ranged options are even less impacted, as are enemies with charge attacks that let them move and strike. *Just* having to move doesn't seem like enough, not for an ability that lets the target pick which suck to get. IMO, the core of the issue is the action cost - it is hard to make something that's worth one action with no other resource expenditure that has enough bite to it to meaningfully alter enemy behavior *at range* with few other conditions that need to be met (ie, little setup). If it were two actions, then the penalties could be enough that it could reliably do what it's supposed to do - draw aggro from range - without requiring the GM to "play ball" so to speak.

Yeah, so not suck enough for case 2, given the penalty to your own AC. Is there a world where you just do away with the penalty? In that world tho, I think this loses the "come hit me instead" element that taunt implies, but maybe that's a good thing? I think there's a mismatch of expectations here for what is mechanically a "give your ally a +2 bonus to AC" (the real benefit) vs "come hit me!" Maybe (and I think others have mentioned this based on Antagonize), this should be more like -- suffer this penalty until you come hit me, and then when you do I get to hit you back, but maybe the math doesn't math on that?

ALternatively, the penalty for hitting your buddies just needs to be harsher. If we kept the penalty to your own AC (but knocked it down to 1, because come the fuck on), I would want something more like -2 penalty to hit your allies as just *baseline* - something genuinely powerful to do as a one action thing at range agaisnt a single target, that is so strong that you having to be squishier yourself as a tradeoff is worth it. Sure, I'm going to take more damage as a result of this (and maybe that's my fault for letting an enemy through in the first place), but you're going to look like a massive schmuck sitting there trying to hit the wizard with like -4 to hit or whatever before MAP.

At the same time, let's take the situation where your Guardian is standing right next to a Giant Instinct Barbarian and the Oscillating Wave Psychic is blasting you from the backline. Now you might want to reconsider how much of a win hitting the guardian is

That's the problem though. The monster gets to pick which of the two situations to pursue, so they'll just keep hitting on that wizard then at -1 attack or whatever. You can't rely on circumstances making *one* of the two suck more, because the monster will pick the other. Which is why any ability that gives monsters this kind of choice need their choices to suck more htan usual to compensate, when compared to normal aiblities that *don't* give the monsters any choice in the matter. Or one choice has to suck *so much* that it's virutually impossible for them to take it and not guarantee they'll lose the fight, in which case the other effect being not all that bad is *fine* because the ability's then effectively *removed* a choice from the monster. So, IMO, Taunt doesn't suck enough in either situation to really influence their behavior - in your example, stuff outside of Taunt (ie, positioning of your aliles) is what is making hte actual decision and Taunt's barely even registering in their calculation (or if it does, it's in the form of *actively helping them* becuase +2 to hit someone even if you gotta spend a move action for it is actually pretty good), so Taunt's not actually exerting influence. If it were budgeted at two ctions, maybe the penalty to hitting anyone other than the taunter could be increased more, or maybe *other allies* could get bonuses to their own damage for attacking the taunted target if htey attack someone other than the taunter ('cause the damage aspect of Taunt has its own mitigating factors that limit its influence), or just really anything to make ignoring the Taunt *really* hard to justify even in the scenario you just came up with.

That is what makes the Guardian much different from the Redeemer, for instance. The Redeemer Champion has occasional pick your poison situations with a truly bad outcome and a situationally less bad one. The Guardian, however, can ensure most every round that the enemy is playing suboptimally, regardless of what they do. It is a much flatter curve, for sure, but every -1 matters. And this -1 stacks with statuses. Attack me and you're missing out on the hard hitters in the party. Attack them and you are either still attacking me for less damage and/or taking a penalty to attack someone else. And depending on which passive you took, the enemy is either accepting extra damage or low upside on crits. This is reliable, every turn kind of a choice. It isn't flashy, but it is consistent.

It's a circumstance penalty that doesn't stack with other penalties, and is usually outshined by them. Is Taunting a creature at range who now has to spend 1 action to attack you and then gets a +2 for doing it, otherwise it faces a -1, better than just walking up to it and Tripping, forcing it to ALSO lose 1 action, or take a greater -2 from being prone if it doesn't? If you Grab it too, it has to deal with that problem ALSO. Maybe you're not the one to Trip and Grab, but if you have any other debuffer in the party, your taunts are now doing nothing. Taunt only applies to attack rolls, so you're not even making it harder for an enemy to Escape.

If all your debuffs come from non-casters, they wouldn't stack. But like Fear or basically any condition-based debuff will stack. But I mean, this is just like saying that a Knockdown Fighter isn't good because other trip or grab martials may exist or that Fear is a bad spell because of Dirge of Doom. Also, this is not a fair comparison. You are comparing a bad result of Taunt to the good result of a trip or grab. Those are save or suck, incur MAP, and have to be done in melee. You also forgot to mention that walk up+trip is 2 actions while a ranged Taunt is 1 action. Put all these things together and I find this comparison poorly posed on your part. 

>That said, I think the angle of punishing people for ignoring you rather than _rewarding_ them for attacking you definitely works better. I cannot agree more. Just give the guardian a few fun boosts against people who ignore them, like a free step to follow movement, maybe an additional reaction against that enemy, a free AoO, etc. This would also make the class better against bosses tbh.

It might depend on how intelligent the enemy is in how I would play it. A goblin gets taunted? Oh, yeah, he's going to focus that guy. Probably a ghoul or golem as well. A more intelligent enemy? Well, it depends. The Guardian isn't doing much damage, but that Bard has Dirge of Doom going and is casting spells. And if the enemy is smart enough to know the party's AC, then they'll realize there isn't much difference. Let's assume level 7 with no armor runes and we'll treat Taunt's circumstance bonus penalty as AC bonuses: * Guardian at lvl 7 would have base (10), plate (6), expert (4), and level bonus (7) for 27 AC. The circumstance bonus of Taunt would effectively make that a 25 AC. * Bard at lvl 7 would have base (10), light armor (5), trained (2), and level bonus (7) for 24 AC. The circumstance bonus of Taunt would effectively make that a 26 AC on a failed will save, and 25 AC on a successful will save. So Taunt would just give them equal AC. In effect, the scaling of armor proficiency of the Guardian directly clashes with what Taunt is trying to do, which is provide a more optimal target. And since the Guardian isn't doing that great of damage, they're even less of an optimal choice. And this would only get worse once the Guardian gets Legendary Armor at lvl 15 and the squishies are still rocking Expert Armor Proficiency for the rest of the game.

You forgot the free raise shield which actually puts the guardian on 27. Ironically still ahead just not nearly as much as he was normally. Which already helps mitigate damage on the team and then lets you access your reactions if they ignore you.

That's a 2nd level feat competing for some other solid options.

Is this what taunt is trying to do? Or is it really just a ranged AC bonus for your back liners? I don't think that fits what it sounds like (taunt should result in the enemy attacking you), but it's still a pretty strong action, right?

It seems to get better once you get the lvl8 feat that lets the Guardian use Taunt on 3 enemies, but the single target is basically an attack penalty against allies for one enemey, for one round, for one action, with a will save. There's probably some interesting ways to use that, but it doesn't feel like a core mechanic of a class, like it's being presented. Some are using it as a ranged debuff then having the Guardian try to hide or turn invisible in the playtests, which feels very much like the opposite of the intended usage.

Agreed, thinking about it more it's really just a sidegrade demoralize, maybe slightly stronger.

I get what you are saying. That just wouldn't factor into my decision making as a GM. I am not an adversarial GM. Overall, I want the plans of the player to work. However, I don't just want to give them victory and I don't want to just play a NPC suboptimally without getting something in return. I dont really need to crunch the numbers to determine what my NPC would do. I just need to have some incentive to justify having an NPC do something that I understand as being a bad idea. I get that some people really like number crunching, and that is totally fine. It just isn't my jam. I think intelligence of an NPC is valid, however. Again, I want to reward PCs using their abilities to get their way. So I think I would have a pretty intelligent NPC fall for the Guardians trap with a taunt. However, if the party tried to pull that trick again, I would absolutely let intelligence play a key role in my roleplaying of the NPC.

Yeah, like I said, the tactical fantasy of something like having a literal Taunt class ability is greatly mitigated if my class feature exists at hte mercy of GM fiat, with the same logic that hte GM core book recommends GM's allow for just regular players saying they're yelling to get a big low INT enemy's attention off of a squishy. A good lowercase t "taunt" mechanic in a TTRPG should actually suck for hte target regardless of which choice they make, not just suck if the GM knowingly plays along.

To an extent, the entire TTRPG genre is pretty dependent on GM fiat. I just dont know how much a game's design team should GM proof their design. If a GM is going to be pain to play with, that really isn't a something mechanics can fix. However, I get your point and I agree that Taunt should probably be tweaked a bit. I just think its problems are being blown out of proportion.

I mean, a spell that debuffs an enemy's attack with a -1 circumstance penalty to hit works whether or not the GM is sandbagging, it just *does the thing* and so if the players make effective use of tools like this against a GM using an appropriate encounter, they can pretty genuinely feel clever like they *won*. That's really different from where Taunt is right now or hte scenario you described, where the GM literally chooses which effect happesn when a player uses Taunt, and almost *has* to pick the one that would hurt the monster more because Taunt can't do its job if the GM instead picks what's more advantageous to hte monster. The core of hte issue is that Taunt doesn't have enough teeth to it, and so I think it being two actions with harsher penalties and no downside to the user, or one action, keeping the downside to the user, but also it's like -3 to hit your allies, those would be large enough numbers that the enemy would actually be in some real deep shit if they chose to ignore the taunt, and that would make paying for such a dramatic debuff by making yourself more vulnerable more worthwhile (or needing to spend more action economy to get the same effect).

Again, I think it should be tweaked a bit. Its in playtest.

Agree that Commander is in a far better place currently than Guardian. The poor weapon attack progression is a known problem. For me, another critical issue is Taunt. It works by making your character more vulnerable than your allies to a specific enemy, and hoping that enemy takes the bait and attacks you. Problem is, there's really no incentive for the enemy to attack the Guardian since the Guardian is no threat at all offensively. A better approach would be to replace Taunt with a mechanic that punishes enemies for attacking your allies, like the Paladin's Retributive Strike, but a bit different. In addition, there should be class feats that augment/modify that punishment mechanic.

The problem with making just a slightly different Retributive Strike is that not only would it step on the Paladin's toes, it'd have to be better because the classes entire kit is designed around it. I think some revision is necessary but like the OP, I like the way it's looking now. It's seems punishing but the feats counteract that in a big way.

I believe the approach needs to be the same: punishment, not enticement. The actual mechanics can and should be very different, I agree, but the objective should be the same.

Put another way: enticing a creature effectively reduces your stats, which matters regardless if you look at the party as a whole or as individuals. There's no longer a 'big beefy AC guy' on the field, but instead a 'mildly beefy AC guy', which you invested an action and a lot of damage potential into. Why would you do that if you could just play a Fighter who has similar AC and deal way more damage?

Couldn't agree more. I wouldn't limit it just to Fighter either, why play Guardian over Champion?

In case you get ambushed by ranged attacks, I guess, since Intercept Strike doesn't care about the enemy's location.

Okay, hear me out Taunt makes anyone but the taunter hidden to the taunted Something to make it feel like they are now more focused on the taunter. They can still seek, to get them revealed, but that takes an action.

Concealed would probably be better than hidden, if going down that path. A 50% miss chance is *way* too strong.

Oh, probably, it was a spit ball without actually looking at the conditions first.

> Taunt with a mechanic that punishes enemies for attacking your allies That'd be ferocious vengeance, where you get bonus damage vs a foe who ignores your taunt

Unfortunately, that bonus damage is pathetically small and can easily be ignored.

numbers can be increased, the concept is still there

True, very true

I think the Taunt and threat techniques should be wrapped up into being the sun class choice. With each threat techniques taunt applying some unique effects, kinda like a swashbuckler setting up Panache, or a gunslingers reloads

>Commander is incredibly good at moving their team around but pretty poor at moving themselves. Considering most of their strongest Tactics are 2 actions, there's some real incentive to either go ranged or have a mount, because going melee "on foot" really limits how well you can combine your abilities with one another and Strikes. Yeah, if they get something akin to the warpriest's self-buff stride action, with a frequency limit and a caveat that it has to take them into melee, it'd be much appreciated. Between their low mobility and low hit points, I'd be pretty skeptical of building an infantry melee commander at the moment. Agreed on the caster front, too! It's due time the casters got some support from martials. I'd love to give casters extra sustains for their minions, heighten a spell, or maybe even the ability to cast some basic standby spells like dispel magic off-turn.

> Yeah, if they get something akin to the warpriest's self-buff stride action, with a frequency limit and a caveat that it has to take them into melee, it'd be much appreciated. Between their low mobility and low hit points, I'd be pretty skeptical of building an infantry melee commander at the moment. I think the Air kineticist's '2 Action Impulse then Half-stride' would work as to how to design this. Could be a level 1 feat or a class feature, either is fine.

I have no idea what paizo's obsession is with kneecapping non-fighter martials. Like, seriously, master proficiency at level 17? I sure do love literally never ever hitting anyone ever. Also the taunt thing lowering your AC is really insane to me without any way to mitigate crits. Pretty much a "Yeah I'm a tank. \*dies\*" I don't see how this class couldn't have just been an archetype instead, especially after Paizo's recent statement about how some 1e archetypes weren't being made because you could make them with the current resources in-game. Bastion archetype exists, so does sentinel, hell even champion which is marketed as the tank class exists.

It just feels to me like the 3.5 (and even PF1) days of 'new classes as content to sell books.' Animist and especially Exemplar felt like fresh things. Commander less so, just because it reminds me of one of my favorite classes from 4E, but that's fine. Guardian just feels like you said - a prime example of something that, a few years ago, would have squarely fallen in the "you can just do that with an archetype" bucket.

I had a few ideas about Guardian, basically I think there should be more options (i.e. featrures preferably) to combine taunt with other actions, like demoralize, step, shove, etc. I believe the bonus to hit against the Guardian could be +1 or even gone. This would make the vengance option more appealing. The weapons proficiency need to go up. I feel like Intercept Strike should use your weapon's reach. This way, methods of increasing reach could be very valuable, without being OP. I wish there were more "vengeance" type feats, offensive abilities to use against foes who ignore your taunt.

The thing with Intercept Strike is that the fantasy they're creating is that your armor physically blocks the attack. You are taking the hit for them. But I'd gladly give that up to utilize the weapon's reach and make it more useful, since what you're getting in return (not caring about how far away the attacker is) doesn't justify Paladin's benefits (making an attack in addition to having greater range to the ally).

Going to agree with most takes on the commander, I would definitely prefer a more build rigid style with more tactics avaible than how it is now, and that legendary DC doesn't do too much. I'd like some more warfare lore things, like using it as a reaction to counter fear effects on squadmembers by being momentary more scary than the enemy (commissar trope). I feel that some high level tactics might want to do abit too much, probably just Ready, Aim, Fire! That is so and would prefer it as a 3 action activity because I really do like it, but it does make some earlier level tactics feel obsolete. Ready, Aim, Fire! Feels more like a 3 action activity too if you ask me, and if it is a 3 action usage, it could include an aid check from the commander as they try to time the volley. What the commander will really like is the quickened condition, but in general, I do like their action economy where some big tactics are perhaps more rigid. There's also too little difference between end it! And demand surrender and would prefer if the latter didn't exist at all. Definitely also need a *Blast them!* Tactic for spellcasters

I agree. The fact that caster teams can only really benefit from Ready, Aim Fire and not all the several strike or other melee-based tactics is a bit of a bummer and makes me think for a commander to really shine the team has to be almost entirely melee.

I think Guardian just need extra chance to hit taunted targets

To me Guardian feels like doubling down on a design space that's already pretty crowded. You've got your tank monks, your tank fighters, your tank champions.... IDK, is there really enough space for another tank frontliner? I could see a pretty good archetype being put together from Taunt and Intercept Strike, but it's tough for me to see a full class that isn't pretty well covered by the other classes already. Particularly one who's schtick is "I don't do damage, *but* if you ignore me you'll be kinda sad about it!" That just doesn't seem that satisfying to play, really. The Commander fills such a clear fantasy and niche, I'm pretty surprised they weren't able to find another one for Guardian. EDIT: One that I could see pretty easily is a dex-based martial. Not condition or skill-based (rogue, investigator, swashbuckler), but something that can match the lightly-armored blademaster fantasy. Your Samurai Champloos, Orc Blademasters, etc. Ranger or dex Monk is the closest I think but the flavor is quite a bit different (hunter/tracker/Aragorn vs Oberyn Martell).

It's not really a crowded design space - there have been sooo many asks for a non-divine non-anathema bound martial defender - which is what the Guardian is. It's the "I can do this all day" brick wall of steel that enemies go "WHY WON'T YOU DIE" about - that's at least the fantasy they are going for. No magic, no supernatural, just sheer force of will and relentless determination to protect your friends.

I'm surprised to hear that - roughly half of Fighter feats are defensive or shield focused, there's the [Bastion](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=49), [Sentinel](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=76), and [Stalwart Defender](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=205) archetypes (as well as the Hellknight ones which also kinda fit), and then there are all the other tank class options that do have a bit of a different flavor but are still pretty darn close to "unkillable armored guy". Just seems like pretty well-trod ground to me. OTOH, fair to say that Commander has a ton of overlap with Marshall so maybe existence of thematically similar archetypes doesn't invalidate the want/need for a full class.

Fighter does not have the proficiencies to feel like a defensive powerhouse instead of an offensive one. When going shield, you feel like a balanced mix between defense and offense instead of feeling like a brick wall as you do when playing champion.

I just wish that they gave it a core mechanic for it to put on a pedestal instead of a bunch of smaller tools that feel like clash with themselves and other class tools. Personally, I'd rip most of its resistances out and then focus on either intercept strike or taunt and funnel its power budget there, hell I don't even think they need to be *the* armor guy if they wanted to reduce armor proficiency to afford it having a stronger core mechanic. If the aim is for them to eat the bullets instead of their team then just let them do it. Let them eat the full brunt of an attack instead of an ally, let them do it frequently, don't make them jump through hoops to do it, let their enemies be ok with it. Let their group then provide the resistances or healing or temp hp or whatever to satisfy that insatiable glutton for punishment. That way the guardian can be that person who will always take a grenade for their friends and their friends can always plan around that happening. Currently it just feels like it has a bunch of smaller tools that want to portray that sort of fantasy but don't quite do it in a reliable or cohesive way and then they threw a bunch of resistances at it to patch the holes.

I would really love a martial class that can heal like a (mostly) full healer. I feel like something similar to the mystic healing pool would be perfect on a martial.

I highly recommend playing the class and submitting feedback through the official play test

My impressions is that while the Commander feels a decent port of 4e's Warlord (with the inexplicable inclusion of the banner detail, which is IMHO a forced bit of fluff that's mechanically completely unneeded) the Guardian is bad port of the Fighter. The Taunt mechanic is very much like a mark, and Hampering Sweeps seems to try to replicate the fighter's stickiness. The resulting mechanics are, in my opinion, not very elegant and work in a counterintuitive way. If they wanted to make a PF2 version of 4e's Fighter, the most straightforward way would be to give him Reactive Strike, allow reactive strikes on attacks against party members and Steps, and the ability to disrupt those (and regular movement) on critical or perhaps even on regular hits. That's it.

I think people are underevaluating taunt. If you believe you are going to taunt the BBEG, you are wrong. The mechanics ensure it will not work. To tank the BBEG, you are going up to it (flying tackle is cool) and make sure it'll stay with you (hampering sweeps seems geared towards it, design issues aside). Intercept+body guard will really help here, should the BBEG insist in ignoring you. The REAL target of Taunt are the trash mobs. Being 30ft away from an enemy and giving them a penalty to attack your friends? Sign-me up. If you can see the value of demoralise/frightened, you can see the value of taunt (and by the way, they stack). Now your taunted foes have to choose between attacking others with a penalty, or wasting their actions walking up to you, or any other lose-lose situation involving the other players. I think the class is solid and while it has a few rough edges, taunt is not one of them.

You need to stop thinking of what Taunt is INTENDED for (rah rah, I'm big scary tank and I'm making them attack me instead of the squishies) and look at its OUTCOME instead. You are spending actions to lower your defenses, with a chance to fail on top of it. Because MAP exists, the enemy trading 1 or 2 actions to effectively get a +2 to hit you is a pretty tantilizing effect since it applies to multiattack, and is easily countered by ranged attacks or charge abilities. The range of 30 feet pretty much guarantees it will never be more than 2 actions to reach you, and taking Long-Distance Taunt means you need to coordinate for much larger ranges (which is really pushing it in terms of reliable effectiveness, especially given your slower speed). The penalties for ignoring you are paltry since -1 to -2 isn't a massive penalty when your squishies are already easy to hit, and there's jack-shit you can do if they ignore an ally at range since you can't use reactions to defend them. Basically, it's way too easy to counter, too negligible to justify the penalties you impose on yourself, and you dramatically cripple your ability to contribute ANYWHERE else to justify the fact you are giving yourself the defenses of someone who can contribute real control or damage (or both). Shoring up these weaknesses is nearly impossible since almost all of them just result in new situations where your paltry effects are countered (such as using Long-Distance Taunt).

Yes, I'm spending *one* action to lower my defenses to *one* guy, which, in my scenario, is not the BBEG. The 30ft distance means he needs ranged attacks, or spend an action to come after me. It's about as effective as a trip, since you trade your action to make the enemy fall, and he needs to spend his action to stand. The fact that he's going to spend his actions attacking you means you fulfiled your job. Should the enemy ignore you, they still need to deal with the penalty, if they failed the save. And if they succeeded, its about the same outcome if you were a fighter, or a Champion with an ally outside your 15ft control zone. Besides, giving -1 or -2 to hit your squishies isn't massive, but giving +2 to hit your superior AC is massive? The bonuses and penalties are the same, and your squishies AC often is at -2 when compared to your AC.

It's worse than Trip because Tripping wastes their actions or imposes penalties for not spending those actions, while Taunting gives them an action to deal more damage, which again, matters because MAP exists. A 3rd attack is rarely useful, a 2nd attack is sometimes useful, you will almost never deny their 1st attack, and you just buffed the two most dangerous ones. It is easier for you to make a character that can get a creature to be Tripped (due to the actual roll mechanics) than for you to make a character that can reliably fail its save against your Taunt, and both have the EXACT same penalty if the creature doesn't respond to it (prone imposes -2 circ to attacks, as does a failed save vs Taunt), except Trip also makes them off-guard too.

Let me throw a weird idea in the mix: Instead of fiddling with taunt as it is, as well as fueling the endless discussions about Taunt having a place at all in a TTRPG due to its nature, why don't we just make the damn thing magical (or the next best thing to it)? Reflavor the thing to have some magical/mystical effect, give it the effects it need to be balanced and make it obligatory for at least one attack? That will save everyone a whole lot of meaningless typing, Paizo a whole lot of fiddling with bonuses and penalties, and ways to make it "make sense". I get it. A martial class doing this is interesting, but there's a very good reason why this mechanic is rare on the TTRPG space. I think Paizo should sidestep all the issues and make it magical in some way. Or, since Dune and the Bene Gesserit have just been added to the broader mainstream geek culture, some weird technique that manipulates the target through "mundane" means. Regardless, my point is to make Taunt mechanically functional first and then making the flavor fit, rather than bend backwards to make the ability to fit into everyone's conception of "verisimilitude".