Tanks vs Bruisers

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Toros
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Tanks vs Bruisers

Postby Toros » Fri Oct 21, 2016 8:49 pm

Hey everyone, I wanted to discuss the use of the word "tank" and when I feel it is misleading.

"Tank" relating to games typically refers to a character that is exceptionally durable and can survive for a significant period of time.

What I've noticed is that in dnd/nwn there is a tendency to refer to any heavy armor (fighter/paladin) class as a tank, despite them potentially only having a few more AC than what medium armor classes can reach.

On TER I don't think it's accurate to call something with less than 25 AC a tank.

Why does this matter?

Because of how AB/AC works. If one person ("B") has 20 AC vs +5 AB, they will get hit on a 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

If someone else ("T") has 25+ AC, they are only hit on a natural 20 vs +5 AB.

This means that "B" takes up to 6x as much damage as "T", which is massive.

So people with 16-22ish AC don't qualify as tanks, so what do we call them?

"Bruisers" is a common term in other genres, and on tvtropes (such as lightning bruiser, which would correspond closest to barbarians) and more appropiate when discussing say, how a dungeon went and who did what.

Of course, the purpose of this post isn't to disparage "Bruisers" as nwn is a game of tradeoffs, and someone who invested into damage and AB instead of AC tends to do a ton more damage.

But a dungeon party with 2 bruisers is not the same as one with a tank and a bruiser in terms of options.
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Also, I play Galondel.

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Kerstman
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Re: Tanks vs Bruisers

Postby Kerstman » Sat Oct 22, 2016 8:20 am

Very much agreed. When there are no full plate warriors the barbarians with 17 AC I play are often referred to as the tank of the party. Not just here, but on other servers as well. Ofcourse when it is all IC there is nothing wrong with it and a little bit of DR helps them being good defenders against hordes of foes that do low damage per hit.
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blatob
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Re: Tanks vs Bruisers

Postby blatob » Sat Oct 22, 2016 10:38 pm

Tank = any idiot with the shield/bugger that wears no skirt (robe, whatever it is called, anyway)/bloke that has weapon with at least 1d6 damage.


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