Originally Posted by Vector
I started a gameplay about 1-2 weeks ago, finished yesterday. Taunt only "worked" once, and I use it loosely, because once in an entire gameplay, is probably just an exception/fluke. It was the most idiotic of the situations, because the enemies were actually farther away from the taunt caster than from other party characters. Some times, I'm standing right next to them, which will obviously have a path to target (doesnt require them to move at all), I taunt, the status is applied and they still run around like idiots, sometimes to other characters that are far away.

I'm not the only one that claims that is "not working", or that have bad experiences with it, if you google, you'll see several people "complaining" about this skill and how it is supposed to work, on the forums alone:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=divinity+taunt+site:larian.com

On this reddit post, you can see that pretty much the majority has the same personal opinion and its a pointless/useless ability:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DivinityOriginalSin/comments/3rr3ry/taunt_does_nothing/

I'm ok without having taunt really, I've done pretty good without it, its far from being a required thing to be able to play the game, but, its either a bugged spell or a badly designed one, since from my personal experience, rarely seems to be worth using it, which makes the desire of having a character with single/shield skills much less attractive, as its pointless to have a character so defensive, with the offense gimped, when I just rather go dual or 2H and deal more dmg while playing at the same time the Crowd Control game. Maybe its not the spell per se ofc, but something on the AI that needs to be looked on.

I'm not expecting for it to be "fixed" at this point in time, as I'm sure all efforts are being directed to D:OS2, as it should, but maybe its a good idea to look up on the taunt spell if there is one, its mechanics and design, and how it plays along with the AI.

I think that I never even bothered to learn taunt in my playthroughs after reading some forum poster's 'not working' message.
I've seen a couple of Let's Plays though and the situation there was as you described, NPCs even ignored the taunter when right next to him/her sometimes. One could never see that Taunt did anything at all.

I have looked into the game's script and with my little understanding of character scripts I'd say that at best so-called 'auto-attacks' should work, but when NPCs use skills, magic arrows or grenades, they completely ignore being taunted. (I might be wrong though because I'm by no means an expert in the game's script languages ... and they are complex.)


Now, I've been wondering if taunt is even a mechanic that makes sense in a game like D:OS at all. If you had a real 'tank' that could reliable taunt enemies and if you had a lot of them, you would probably have that tank for one turn only after being the target of focused fire.
For me - and for you as well from what you write - it's not the worst thing if it does not work, it's only a waste of a spell slot.
(And according to my understanding of the scripts, simple weapon attacks should work in most cases.)


If I knew how to change the status texts I'd even be tempted to totally remove the skill and 'abuse' the TAUNTED status for something completely different in a mod ;-)