Just last page, MadDemiurg, you seemed to dismiss the entire idea of having a tank character at all.
It might not be an MMO, but it is still a group-based game, and given the AI's dedication to focusing on the squishy party members first and foremost, wanting a way to mitigate that is valid.
You have many ways of mitigating it as is, such as shielding your weaker characters, CC or at least punishing enemies for moving with AOO. Most forms of CC are blocked by armor now (the ones that are not are surface based and can be countered by surface clearing/transmuting abilities). Just because you can't make all enemies attack you with 100% chance without even damaging them doesn't mean you can't control combat. Also, maybe try not to have complete glass cannons in your party and build more balanced characters unless you're confident in your ability to wipe out enemies on the first turn?
Any more frustrating than other types of hard CC? But all right, do you have any other suggestions for how Provoke/Taunt can fulfill its main function without being annoying, or should it just be deleted completely?
No, just as frustrating (when applied), but also going through all armor. CC currently is only balanced by the fact that there's armor, otherwise it's 100% success. Taunt is also CC. Should we make knockdown/freeze/stun go through armor as well? And how taunt is not performing its function? It works just as well as any other CC when armor is down. The only problem is that it has to compete with knockdown that would usually win if it's not on cd, then again provoke is only 1 AP + aoe so there's that. Maybe add low physical armor damage to it, idk. If you compare it to battlestomp it's always gonna be meh, but battlestomp is OP.
In my opinion, you're greatly exaggerating the power. Taunt also only lasts for 1 turn. But fine, combine the "only move and basic attack" with changing Taunt from everything in a small AoE to single-target, but at long rage. Combining those two things would limit the amount of enemies affected.
Most CC lasts 1 turn. You don't need more than 1 turn of enemies being bunched up to nuke them with aoe. And 1 turn of your character doing dumb shit is enough to get him killed. Single target would be probably reasonable vs AI (we should account for the fact that it's pretty dumb as is and is not impaired by taunt as much), but still very frustrating vs player, since it takes away control with no chance to resist (besides going first and killing the enemy with taunt). Maybe it's the case where PCs should be just immune to taunt.
A lot of RPG systems found a way to make "tanks" viable without resorting to the "taunt" crutch btw. E.g. dnd 4ed had "tanks" being able to shield allies, get damage bonus vs enemies attacking allies (thus discouraging enemies from doing it) or just outright getting free attacks vs them when it happens etc. All of which is imo miles better than the 100% loss of control for the taunted side.
"Guardian aura" is imo a much better designed tank ability, shame you only get it very late into the game.
