Tanking! Brilliance in 4th Edition!

So one very nice element they added in 4th edition was the notion of tanking. Tanking is the act of one character who is harder to kill via armor class, hit points, and so on, taking the brunt of the enemy attack. Traditionally in D&D this means simply getting in front of the spell casters making it so monsters would have to go around to attack them. MMORPGs changed this concept. This built in the idea the tanks had special powers that caused monsters to focus on them. Complex mechanics grew up around a character keeping a monster attacking him. This basic mechanic has been enormously successful in MMORPGs and is a major element of the teamwork involved.

Fourth edition copied this concept and brought tanking to the world of D&D with the 'Defender' role. These classes were given at will powers that allowed them to focus on a target. This target would then suffer some consequence for not attacking the character. Also in the ability lists of these classes are special skills used to control the battle field so that they are the primary focus of attacks. Of course ironically, due to the armor rules and hit points number, the need for a tanking class is actually diminished.

Anyway, I think this is a great piece of game design and it was a good idea to incorporate it into 4th edition. Simple ways to add it to 3rd are to simply add 'Combat Challenge' and 'Divine Challenge' to the abilities of fighters and paladins. Of course these classes have several other abilities that focus on this aspect, but even just these two abilites would be useful.