In FF4 you had characters in the front row who took full damage. The backrow characters took 1/2 damage. So the front row characters would be considered tanks. The mage in the back row would be DPS but not the sole dps because the front row did a lot of damage as well. The cleric in the back row could heal for days on end so they fulfilled that role perfectly. FF1-3 didn't have rows so everyone took the full damage from hits. But it did have the ability to guard other players sorta making tanks but not fully.
FF4 does appear to be the earliest version of clear trinity roles being played to a full extent. 1991
By that definition on the PC platform you could go back to games like Wizardry and most of the CRPGs of the 80s. If still staying digital but not necessarily PC, Oubillette and Sorcery on PLATO required formations and different classes. If we want to go to physical games (tabletop, p-n-p) Stratego is one of several examples from the 60s.
If wizardry had someone taking the damage to protect others and someone capable of healing the damage then yes they had the trinity. You can't just link the trinity to 1 taunt ability. that is just absurd. Its linked to the fact that a character is taking damage for the group and the game mechanics allow it through either taunts, blocking choke points, or simply tying a rope around the enemies leg. So long as that character is capable of preventing other people from taking damage then he's serving the tank role. Otherwise Kender are the tanks of D&D because well that is where the taunt skill came from in the first place.
People seem to be trying to hard code the definition of a Trinity. To me the whole aspect of the tank and taunt mechanic, is being confined to having to work within the limitations of a primitive AI
Trinity is a more encompassing word and IMHO shouldn't be confined to *tank and taunt*
It is obviously about the aggro concept of which taunt is a thing. The OP is doing it again.
Its about finding a class that can prevent other players from getting hit by taking the damage themselves. Then finding another class that is capable of healing more then 1 person a day. You think tank and healer should be something else then please tell us.
DND back in the 70s didn't have tanks or aggros etc. Aggro came from the fact that computer games weren't run by a human Dungeon Master. I know you have read the link to the trinity origins and you can't understand it enough to accept it.
Now, you know who says we had tanks in dnd in the 70s? BS Artists who are projecting backwards in time to claim such a thing. Anyone who thinks that dnd, adnd 1st or 2nd had aggro, show me where it is in the DMG or the PH. You won't find it.
Now dnd had character who had armor and shield and that doesn't make it a tank. THe DM would move opponents against the PCs.
You really need to take a look at what you are trying to pull here. I think you are just looking for attention. You can't rewrite history even when you don't believe it.
So you agreed with what I said and somehow made it look like you disagreed. Good job.
People seem to be trying to hard code the definition of a Trinity. To me the whole aspect of the tank and taunt mechanic, is being confined to having to work within the limitations of a primitive AI
Trinity is a more encompassing word and IMHO shouldn't be confined to *tank and taunt*
It is obviously about the aggro concept of which taunt is a thing. The OP is doing it again.
Its about finding a class that can prevent other players from getting hit by taking the damage themselves. Then finding another class that is capable of healing more then 1 person a day. You think tank and healer should be something else then please tell us.
DND back in the 70s didn't have tanks or aggros etc. Aggro came from the fact that computer games weren't run by a human Dungeon Master. I know you have read the link to the trinity origins and you can't understand it enough to accept it.
Now, you know who says we had tanks in dnd in the 70s? BS Artists who are projecting backwards in time to claim such a thing. Anyone who thinks that dnd, adnd 1st or 2nd had aggro, show me where it is in the DMG or the PH. You won't find it.
Now dnd had character who had armor and shield and that doesn't make it a tank. THe DM would move opponents against the PCs.
You really need to take a look at what you are trying to pull here. I think you are just looking for attention. You can't rewrite history even when you don't believe it.
Yep no aggro in those books but they were guides not rule books. If a DM decided that the great big hobgoblin hated the paladin, then that's who the hobgoblin attacked. If the fighter shouted out that line about boots and mothers and the DM decided the orcs responded, then the warrior had aggro. If the balrog wanted his flaming sword back from the Ranger who looted it a month ago, the Ranger had aggro.
I don't have to rewrite history I remember it, and just because you have a different history doesn't make mine wrong. We were in different groups, in different cities half a world apart.
You seem to have hard and fast definitions of what the trinity is and what a tank is, accepting those supports your assertions. But I don't accept your definitions and I have a different conclusion.
That doesn't make you wrong, but it doesn't make me a BS artist either, so stop the ad hominem.
The concept of having those who can take a pounding up front and weaker ones at the rear is as old as warfare: to get at the archers and siege you had to go through the front lines or try to flank them. I suspect the trinity was invented by some unknown cave dweller.
And as far as taunts being nonsensical and only working on dumb animals, try this: go to a bar and throw a beer on someone's face. Did he attack you or your friends behind you?
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Moirae said: You didn't ask about the warriors. You didn't specify anything else. You asked who originated the trinity and when it started. It started in 1974 with D&D. Nothing more and nothing less. It may not have been perfect, it may not have been MMO's, but that is where it started. MMO's are simply an extension of the tabletop gaming that already existed. Thinking otherwise is rather arrogant. There have been many version of the trinity by different tabletop games, computer RPG's and MMO's over time, but they ALL originated with D&D which started as a geek and nerd game and slowly expanded over time to several other ideas, genre's and styles.
But it all started with D&D in 1974. So nice try but no fly.
You arrogant multi-celled organisms. You think the trinity began when you started fighting wars.
NO!!! We bacteria were the original trinity! We repair ourselves, have cell walls to keep things out of our cytoplasm. We kill and eat other cells! We are the ORIGINAL! SELF CONTAINED TRINITY!!!
---------
Back in the real world, D&D characters are not distinctly separated into three roles so there is no true trinity in D&D. The trinity is all about separation. That guy tanks, that guy heals, and those guys do DPS. All working together as a single team. If that guy kind of heals but also DPSs and can take hits and that guy is one of our major damage dealers but he's also our tank... it isn't a trinity anymore. It's a party with a diverse skill set. Which by the way is part of the reason D&D is better than trinity based MMOs.
In D&D tank meant you wore heavy armor or carried a shield and could take a hit.
As to taunting in the real world look up Nordic Berserkers...guys hooped up on shrooms and drunk that if you did not focus on them first they most likely would kill 20+ of you if ignored.
Moirae said: You didn't ask about the warriors. You didn't specify anything else. You asked who originated the trinity and when it started. It started in 1974 with D&D. Nothing more and nothing less. It may not have been perfect, it may not have been MMO's, but that is where it started. MMO's are simply an extension of the tabletop gaming that already existed. Thinking otherwise is rather arrogant. There have been many version of the trinity by different tabletop games, computer RPG's and MMO's over time, but they ALL originated with D&D which started as a geek and nerd game and slowly expanded over time to several other ideas, genre's and styles.
But it all started with D&D in 1974. So nice try but no fly.
You arrogant multi-celled organisms. You think the trinity began when you started fighting wars.
NO!!! We bacteria were the original trinity! We repair ourselves, have cell walls to keep things out of our cytoplasm. We kill and eat other cells! We are the ORIGINAL! SELF CONTAINED TRINITY!!!
---------
Back in the real world, D&D characters are not distinctly separated into three roles so there is no true trinity in D&D. The trinity is all about separation. That guy tanks, that guy heals, and those guys do DPS. All working together as a single team. If that guy kind of heals but also DPSs and can take hits and that guy is one of our major damage dealers but he's also our tank... it isn't a trinity anymore. It's a party with a diverse skill set. Which by the way is part of the reason D&D is better than trinity based MMOs.
So a Shadow Knight in Everquest 2 is not a tank, because they do too much damage and have Siphon Strike (and other abilities) which heals them?
As to taunting in the real world look up Nordic Berserkers...guys hooped up on shrooms and drunk that if you did not focus on them first they most likely would kill 20+ of you if ignored.
You mean like you can't ignore the DPSer in PvP. You kill high value targets first?
The Trinity actually came from the second generation of MMOS, mainly World of Warcraft. The trinity is a simple watered down version of what I call the Quinity. Everquest is where it all comes from. You see in the beginning there was more than Dps,heals, tank. There was also utility (support) and CC. The classes that could provide the support also could do some Dps but their primary roles in the group would be as CC or utility. So in a full group you would have Dps, heals, Tank, utility (slows, buff, debuff...most of the time Shaman), and CC (mainly Enchanter or Bard), the last slot would just be another dps or off tank or off healer.
If at first you dont succeed, call it version 1.0
As to taunting in the real world look up Nordic Berserkers...guys hooped up on shrooms and drunk that if you did not focus on them first they most likely would kill 20+ of you if ignored.
You mean like you can't ignore the DPSer in PvP. You kill high value targets first?
Yeah, that's not a taunt. And that's not a tank.
you take taunt to mean the computer game magical taunt. A guy that is hard to kill (real world tank) and will take coordinated effort to take down that can be a wrecking ball you if you ignore him is called a real world taunt. A guy that is easy to kill, but can do a lot of damage (archer, unarmored swordsman) has the ability to taunt, but the fact that one on one they can be beaten removes some of the taunt.
A Nordic Berserker is a tank. They were used to break enemy lines, hold passes for retreats, and usually died in the actions. In the real world he is a guy that ignores pain and just kills. It would take many wounds to take one down. A solo person going against one better be very very good or they are screwed.
Technically... Pen and paper games innovated the idea of a trinity, but it wasn't mandated, it was up to the players and the dungeon master.
I would say MMO's created the idea of mandating the trinity. But not going to say they were the first to implement it in video games.
I'm not sure anyone recalls but the Final Fantasy games even had the potential, by changing a party member's position between front and back. Characters in the front were more likely to be attacked. In the back would increase defense slightly and characters placed in the front had an opportunity (chance) to block back placed party members. There were also items that increased chances etc.
In FF4 you had characters in the front row who took full damage. The backrow characters took 1/2 damage. So the front row characters would be considered tanks. The mage in the back row would be DPS but not the sole dps because the front row did a lot of damage as well. The cleric in the back row could heal for days on end so they fulfilled that role perfectly. FF1-3 didn't have rows so everyone took the full damage from hits. But it did have the ability to guard other players sorta making tanks but not fully.
FF4 does appear to be the earliest version of clear trinity roles being played to a full extent. 1991
I'd say the SSI Gold Box titles came earlier, from about 88 to 91.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
As to taunting in the real world look up Nordic Berserkers...guys hooped up on shrooms and drunk that if you did not focus on them first they most likely would kill 20+ of you if ignored.
You mean like you can't ignore the DPSer in PvP. You kill high value targets first?
Yeah, that's not a taunt. And that's not a tank.
you take taunt to mean the computer game magical taunt. A guy that is hard to kill (real world tank) and will take coordinated effort to take down that can be a wrecking ball you if you ignore him is called a real world taunt. A guy that is easy to kill, but can do a lot of damage (archer, unarmored swordsman) has the ability to taunt, but the fact that one on one they can be beaten removes some of the taunt.
A Nordic Berserker is a tank. They were used to break enemy lines, hold passes for retreats, and usually died in the actions. In the real world he is a guy that ignores pain and just kills. It would take many wounds to take one down. A solo person going against one better be very very good or they are screwed.
Sounds very much like the D&D barbarians that were based of them. High strength, high con. Part DPS, part tank, not really either. If you are both tank and DPS that destroys the idea of three distinct roles and therefore destroys the idea of the trinity.
And no. Being a high value target is a not a taunt. Being a high value target is being a high value target.
Taunts are just that. Taunts. Getting people to focus on you when you aren't putting out enough damage or healing to actually justify it.
Moirae said: You didn't ask about the warriors. You didn't specify anything else. You asked who originated the trinity and when it started. It started in 1974 with D&D. Nothing more and nothing less. It may not have been perfect, it may not have been MMO's, but that is where it started. MMO's are simply an extension of the tabletop gaming that already existed. Thinking otherwise is rather arrogant. There have been many version of the trinity by different tabletop games, computer RPG's and MMO's over time, but they ALL originated with D&D which started as a geek and nerd game and slowly expanded over time to several other ideas, genre's and styles.
But it all started with D&D in 1974. So nice try but no fly.
You arrogant multi-celled organisms. You think the trinity began when you started fighting wars.
NO!!! We bacteria were the original trinity! We repair ourselves, have cell walls to keep things out of our cytoplasm. We kill and eat other cells! We are the ORIGINAL! SELF CONTAINED TRINITY!!!
---------
Back in the real world, D&D characters are not distinctly separated into three roles so there is no true trinity in D&D. The trinity is all about separation. That guy tanks, that guy heals, and those guys do DPS. All working together as a single team. If that guy kind of heals but also DPSs and can take hits and that guy is one of our major damage dealers but he's also our tank... it isn't a trinity anymore. It's a party with a diverse skill set. Which by the way is part of the reason D&D is better than trinity based MMOs.
So a Shadow Knight in Everquest 2 is not a tank, because they do too much damage and have Siphon Strike (and other abilities) which heals them?
Self-healing is a distinctly tankish ability. But if they do DPS comparable to an actual DPSer then no they aren't a tank they are some kind of hybrid. Something tells me they don't.
Self-healing is a distinctly tankish ability. But if they do DPS comparable to an actual DPSer then no they aren't a tank they are some kind of hybrid. Something tells me they don't.
Self-healing is a distinctly tankish ability. But if they do DPS comparable to an actual DPSer then no they aren't a tank they are some kind of hybrid. Something tells me they don't.
Who makes these rules up anyways?
Tank
DPS
Hybrid
Still looks and smells like a tank to me
Who makes up these rules? @Eldurian does, and if we disagree with him, why then we are just wrong.
One has the purpose of killing the enemy off as quickly as possible before they can kill you and your allies. That is DPS. One has the purpose of removing damage so that the party can keep fighting. That is the Healer. One has the purpose of attracting the attention of the enemies and then mitigating as much of it as possible so that the healer can keep pace. The tank.
If your job is to go in there and wreak havoc and destruction and you have armor for the purpose of assisting you in that, but you don't have the ability to keep the enemy focused on you with any means other than your own damage potential. You aren't a tank. You're a brawler. Or an "off-tank".
Neither brawler or off-tank are part of the trinity.
The trinity is three distinct roles. Not hybrids that kind of do something like a tank, and something like a DPS but aren't really either.
Go into any MMO, create a build that's half tank and half-DPS then link your build and say "Looking to tank a raid/dungeon." See what people say to you. Unless you seriously outlevel the content they will turn you down... because you aren't a tank.
BTW my son has been having bad day, after venting on the phone, he asked me how my day had been. So I told him about this thread, and he said but D&D had the trinity back in 2nd edition. Funny that as he has only been playing D&D for about eight years, but he prefers the free form nature of second edition over the proscriptive nature of latter versions.
Like I said. Go into any MMO that still allows for customization. Make a tank/DPS combo build and post LFG as a tank. See if anyone agrees that's a tank build.
I guarantee you more than just @Eldurian will laugh at you when you tell them it's a tank.
Brawlers are excellent in PvP but tanks they are not.
Like I said. Go into any MMO that still allows for customization. Make a tank/DPS combo build and post LFG as a tank. See if anyone agrees that's a tank build.
I guarantee you more than just @Eldurian will laugh at you when you tell them it's a tank.
Brawlers are excellent in PvP but tanks they are not.
That test just shows you what defines a tank today in MMORPGs today. It really does not address the question that the title of this thread proposes. But you are really a lost cause when it comes to sensible discussion on that question.
One has the purpose of killing the enemy off as quickly as possible before they can kill you and your allies. That is DPS. One has the purpose of removing damage so that the party can keep fighting. That is the Healer. One has the purpose of attracting the attention of the enemies and then mitigating as much of it as possible so that the healer can keep pace. The tank.
If your job is to go in there and wreak havoc and destruction and you have armor for the purpose of assisting you in that, but you don't have the ability to keep the enemy focused on you with any means other than your own damage potential. You aren't a tank. You're a brawler. Or an "off-tank".
Neither brawler or off-tank are part of the trinity.
The trinity is three distinct roles. Not hybrids that kind of do something like a tank, and something like a DPS but aren't really either.
Go into any MMO, create a build that's half tank and half-DPS then link your build and say "Looking to tank a raid/dungeon." See what people say to you.
Back full circle to the basics
Mitigation, Healing and Damage
Tanks mitigate damage. In all party based RPG's. The winning tactic is to have you meat shields up front and your high damage dps and healers in the rear (rogues flanking in the shadows). The job of the tank is to keep mobs away from the clothies by any means possible and the clothies to burn the mobs down before the mobs can reach them. I would classify the cleric as the traditional hybrid (mediocre armor, damage and healing)
Now of coarse a good game is deeper but that is the basics of it.
Now as some suggest that the trinity originated with EQ and the three classes involved. If we are going to be so rigid with it, it might as well stay confined within EQ.
Trinity means 3, which was derived from the basic concepts of Tank, Healer and DPS or Support. While I'd have to say pen and paper versions of games such as Dungeons and Dragons probably made use of these 3 basic combat roles before computer games, it was never coined as the Trinity system back then. I'm not sure exactly when this phrase came into existence, but it was during online gaming so it could be anywhere from 1991 or so until EQ when it arrived and first made use of the party system for quests and dungeon raids.
D&D, Warhammer, Runequest, BRP and the other early PnP games had nothing like that.
Yeah, some had combat healer but even in AD&D many parties did not have one, since the DM crafted the difficulty according to the party it was not something you needed (also, pots works just as fine there). The one class almost all AD&D groups had were the rogue, even if some groups replaced her with a bard instead.
The classic combat mechanics in early PnP games is partly about positioning and partly that the DM decides who the mob attack based based on the situation. A smart evil guy will usually kill the mage first, easy to drop but does high damage. An animal will most likely attack the closest player or the one that smells most like food. Some DMs will try to kill the players rather nastily while others take it easier.
The first trinity game I played were Meridian 59, it is very possible that Muds were the first to use it though. Basically is it very easy to code and it encourage players to work together. Those early games did neither have the money or the CPU power to use an advanced system.
The real mystery is why no-one really made anything better since, just because it was first does not make it the perfect system and removing it with DPS only or GW2s stacking is not good enough. The trinity does what it should but it have the price that all PvE opponents are incredible stupid, no matter if they are brainless blobs or evil geniuses. It is very predictable.
It's not just MMORPGs today. The word "trinity" was coined in MMOs and it was coined to describe a system where there must be a player that fulfills one of three distinct roles. Three - distinct - roles. Each essential to the creation of an effective party. Thus the use of the word trinity which originates from the religious idea of three distinct and separate entities comprising one greater whole.
If you have more than three roles, or they are not distinct / essential to the party, then you don't have a trinity. If a tank can fulfill the role of DPS, then why would you even have the DPS role? Why not just tanks and healers? Three barbarians or fighters of identical build and a bard are actually an extremely powerful party in a 1-5 campaign. You've got massive damage output. The ability to heal, arcane spells and even a skill based character that can do roguey stuff / be the party face. That's only two character types so they can't fill three distinct roles. Where is your trinity?
"Oh but that wouldn't work in a high level campaign!" Sure but two wizards and two druids would. The druids can heal and fight on the front lines in animal form and the wizards have a whole slew of spells to back them up. Both top tier classes at high level. Again, where is your trinity?
The reason it gets important not to blur terms is because it leads to misunderstandings in arguments.
The whole reason we got on the topic on the trinity is because in another topic it was asserted that removing healers as we have come to know them in a traditional sense goes against the trinity which was established in D&D yadda-yadda-yadda.
That's of course a hilarious claim because healers as we know them didn't exist in D&D. And games that have been declared "non-trinity" games such as GW2 that only have what we would call "off-heals" are actually far more accurate to the traditions of D&D than trinity based games.
If we are to consider D&D to be a trinity based games then we have to consider GW2 and any other game that is blurring the distinction of roles to be a trinity based game as well.
At that point the term "trinity" becomes useless, as any term does when you make it far too broad to describe anything of any meaning at all.
The Trinity actually came from the second generation of MMOS, mainly World of Warcraft. The trinity is a simple watered down version of what I call the Quinity.
Well, as long as we're just going to make stuff up...
The trinity is made up of lamb's ear (the herb), corn kernels, and a wheat grains. Jacob Adriance came up with it when playing dice with his kids on his produce farm in the early 1700s. Charcoal for writing was expensive, so they switched from playing their Lions and Lambs game on paper to using grains of wheat and kernels of corn to represent characters and count stats. Originally naming it the Herbaceous Three, Jacob soon changed it to the Trinity due to confusion with the local bard trio by the same name.
The term would have died with Jacob had it not been for his grand children who preserved the description of the game by writing the rules and details down. However, the small box containing those adorably scrawled notes remained in the house, hidden in a wall compartment for years to come.
In the 1920s, through misfortune and accident of disorder, the Adriance Farm and all 40 acres of its land became the property of the state, specifically the New York Lunacy Commission. The house was re-opened and used as a farm colony for the mentally disturbed and criminally insane in attempts to rehabilitate them. It was during this time that the small box was found, the game rediscovered, and the word trinity resurfaced.
However, Lions and Lambs was an early incarnation of Dungeons and Dragons, which we all know from the Dark Dungeons PSA, is a tool of the devil. In April 1941, a young nurse was playing the game in an upstairs room of the farm house with several of the patients. The game went south, and the devil began his possessions, one by one. The patients locked her in the room and made her play the game for days. They made her create trinity after trinity with different pieces of herbs and grains cultivated from the farm colony. When she was found, she was barely alive, mumbling over and over "trinity.... trinity... trinity..." They say she had a son who went mad trying to save his mother from her growing insanity. He soon grew a burning hatred for the world and, with a razor-clawed glove, set out into the night to slaughter DnD players in their sleep.
Again the term Trinity disappeared until one day... one very dark day... Richard Bartle wrote a blog, raising the term from the dead.
To this day, gamers still go insane when mention of the term arises. Even right now someone, somewhere, is feverishly typing out points and counterpoints as the curse of the Trinity slowly emulsifies their minds. They...
I...
I'll need to finish this another time. Things seem foggy... sloooow... I'll...
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Comments
I don't have to rewrite history I remember it, and just because you have a different history doesn't make mine wrong. We were in different groups, in different cities half a world apart.
You seem to have hard and fast definitions of what the trinity is and what a tank is, accepting those supports your assertions. But I don't accept your definitions and I have a different conclusion.
That doesn't make you wrong, but it doesn't make me a BS artist either, so stop the ad hominem.
And as far as taunts being nonsensical and only working on dumb animals, try this: go to a bar and throw a beer on someone's face. Did he attack you or your friends behind you?
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
NO!!! We bacteria were the original trinity! We repair ourselves, have cell walls to keep things out of our cytoplasm. We kill and eat other cells! We are the ORIGINAL! SELF CONTAINED TRINITY!!!
---------
Back in the real world, D&D characters are not distinctly separated into three roles so there is no true trinity in D&D. The trinity is all about separation. That guy tanks, that guy heals, and those guys do DPS. All working together as a single team. If that guy kind of heals but also DPSs and can take hits and that guy is one of our major damage dealers but he's also our tank... it isn't a trinity anymore. It's a party with a diverse skill set. Which by the way is part of the reason D&D is better than trinity based MMOs.
As to taunting in the real world look up Nordic Berserkers...guys hooped up on shrooms and drunk that if you did not focus on them first they most likely would kill 20+ of you if ignored.
Yeah, that's not a taunt. And that's not a tank.
If at first you dont succeed, call it version 1.0
you take taunt to mean the computer game magical taunt. A guy that is hard to kill (real world tank) and will take coordinated effort to take down that can be a wrecking ball you if you ignore him is called a real world taunt. A guy that is easy to kill, but can do a lot of damage (archer, unarmored swordsman) has the ability to taunt, but the fact that one on one they can be beaten removes some of the taunt.
A Nordic Berserker is a tank. They were used to break enemy lines, hold passes for retreats, and usually died in the actions. In the real world he is a guy that ignores pain and just kills. It would take many wounds to take one down. A solo person going against one better be very very good or they are screwed.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
And no. Being a high value target is a not a taunt. Being a high value target is being a high value target.
Taunts are just that. Taunts. Getting people to focus on you when you aren't putting out enough damage or healing to actually justify it.
Tank
DPS
Hybrid
Still looks and smells like a tank to me
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
You have three distinct roles.
One has the purpose of killing the enemy off as quickly as possible before they can kill you and your allies. That is DPS.
One has the purpose of removing damage so that the party can keep fighting. That is the Healer.
One has the purpose of attracting the attention of the enemies and then mitigating as much of it as possible so that the healer can keep pace. The tank.
If your job is to go in there and wreak havoc and destruction and you have armor for the purpose of assisting you in that, but you don't have the ability to keep the enemy focused on you with any means other than your own damage potential. You aren't a tank. You're a brawler. Or an "off-tank".
Neither brawler or off-tank are part of the trinity.
The trinity is three distinct roles. Not hybrids that kind of do something like a tank, and something like a DPS but aren't really either.
Go into any MMO, create a build that's half tank and half-DPS then link your build and say "Looking to tank a raid/dungeon." See what people say to you. Unless you seriously outlevel the content they will turn you down... because you aren't a tank.
BTW my son has been having bad day, after venting on the phone, he asked me how my day had been. So I told him about this thread, and he said but D&D had the trinity back in 2nd edition. Funny that as he has only been playing D&D for about eight years, but he prefers the free form nature of second edition over the proscriptive nature of latter versions.
I guarantee you more than just @Eldurian will laugh at you when you tell them it's a tank.
Brawlers are excellent in PvP but tanks they are not.
Mitigation, Healing and Damage
Tanks mitigate damage. In all party based RPG's. The winning tactic is to have you meat shields up front and your high damage dps and healers in the rear (rogues flanking in the shadows). The job of the tank is to keep mobs away from the clothies by any means possible and the clothies to burn the mobs down before the mobs can reach them. I would classify the cleric as the traditional hybrid (mediocre armor, damage and healing)
Now of coarse a good game is deeper but that is the basics of it.
Now as some suggest that the trinity originated with EQ and the three classes involved. If we are going to be so rigid with it, it might as well stay confined within EQ.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Yeah, some had combat healer but even in AD&D many parties did not have one, since the DM crafted the difficulty according to the party it was not something you needed (also, pots works just as fine there). The one class almost all AD&D groups had were the rogue, even if some groups replaced her with a bard instead.
The classic combat mechanics in early PnP games is partly about positioning and partly that the DM decides who the mob attack based based on the situation. A smart evil guy will usually kill the mage first, easy to drop but does high damage. An animal will most likely attack the closest player or the one that smells most like food. Some DMs will try to kill the players rather nastily while others take it easier.
The first trinity game I played were Meridian 59, it is very possible that Muds were the first to use it though. Basically is it very easy to code and it encourage players to work together. Those early games did neither have the money or the CPU power to use an advanced system.
The real mystery is why no-one really made anything better since, just because it was first does not make it the perfect system and removing it with DPS only or GW2s stacking is not good enough. The trinity does what it should but it have the price that all PvE opponents are incredible stupid, no matter if they are brainless blobs or evil geniuses. It is very predictable.
If you have more than three roles, or they are not distinct / essential to the party, then you don't have a trinity. If a tank can fulfill the role of DPS, then why would you even have the DPS role? Why not just tanks and healers? Three barbarians or fighters of identical build and a bard are actually an extremely powerful party in a 1-5 campaign. You've got massive damage output. The ability to heal, arcane spells and even a skill based character that can do roguey stuff / be the party face. That's only two character types so they can't fill three distinct roles. Where is your trinity?
"Oh but that wouldn't work in a high level campaign!" Sure but two wizards and two druids would. The druids can heal and fight on the front lines in animal form and the wizards have a whole slew of spells to back them up. Both top tier classes at high level. Again, where is your trinity?
The reason it gets important not to blur terms is because it leads to misunderstandings in arguments.
The whole reason we got on the topic on the trinity is because in another topic it was asserted that removing healers as we have come to know them in a traditional sense goes against the trinity which was established in D&D yadda-yadda-yadda.
That's of course a hilarious claim because healers as we know them didn't exist in D&D. And games that have been declared "non-trinity" games such as GW2 that only have what we would call "off-heals" are actually far more accurate to the traditions of D&D than trinity based games.
If we are to consider D&D to be a trinity based games then we have to consider GW2 and any other game that is blurring the distinction of roles to be a trinity based game as well.
At that point the term "trinity" becomes useless, as any term does when you make it far too broad to describe anything of any meaning at all.
The trinity is made up of lamb's ear (the herb), corn kernels, and a wheat grains. Jacob Adriance came up with it when playing dice with his kids on his produce farm in the early 1700s. Charcoal for writing was expensive, so they switched from playing their Lions and Lambs game on paper to using grains of wheat and kernels of corn to represent characters and count stats. Originally naming it the Herbaceous Three, Jacob soon changed it to the Trinity due to confusion with the local bard trio by the same name.
The term would have died with Jacob had it not been for his grand children who preserved the description of the game by writing the rules and details down. However, the small box containing those adorably scrawled notes remained in the house, hidden in a wall compartment for years to come.
In the 1920s, through misfortune and accident of disorder, the Adriance Farm and all 40 acres of its land became the property of the state, specifically the New York Lunacy Commission. The house was re-opened and used as a farm colony for the mentally disturbed and criminally insane in attempts to rehabilitate them. It was during this time that the small box was found, the game rediscovered, and the word trinity resurfaced.
However, Lions and Lambs was an early incarnation of Dungeons and Dragons, which we all know from the Dark Dungeons PSA, is a tool of the devil. In April 1941, a young nurse was playing the game in an upstairs room of the farm house with several of the patients. The game went south, and the devil began his possessions, one by one. The patients locked her in the room and made her play the game for days. They made her create trinity after trinity with different pieces of herbs and grains cultivated from the farm colony. When she was found, she was barely alive, mumbling over and over "trinity.... trinity... trinity..." They say she had a son who went mad trying to save his mother from her growing insanity. He soon grew a burning hatred for the world and, with a razor-clawed glove, set out into the night to slaughter DnD players in their sleep.
Again the term Trinity disappeared until one day... one very dark day... Richard Bartle wrote a blog, raising the term from the dead.
To this day, gamers still go insane when mention of the term arises. Even right now someone, somewhere, is feverishly typing out points and counterpoints as the curse of the Trinity slowly emulsifies their minds. They...
I...
I'll need to finish this another time. Things seem foggy... sloooow... I'll...
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?