So why do warriors in MMOs have taunts? I mean, I get the function; as this helpful Reddit post points out, it’s the “rogue did something stupid” button. I get why a tank would want an ability to pull hate off of their squishy buddies, but why taunt, specifically? Warriors are not exactly known for their bardic wit or repartee that doesn’t involve gesturing and grunting; how believable is it that a side of beef in platemail, in the heat of combat, can come up with a real zinger?

There needs to be something elemental about a meatslab pulling his eyelid down and going “nyah” at dragons in order for that to work. Taunting an ogre, that’s easy; you say “Hey, you!” and that is enough to get even the most focused ogre to stop what they were doing to parse out the complexity of your two word sentence. Dragons though are highly intelligent, having lived for thousands of years; they shouldn’t be vulnerable to “neener neener” like a three year old. Or an ogre; that’ll work on them, too. Ogres are dumb as hell.

The reason I ask is because Pox is a tank. Her role in combat is to be shrieking and irritating, so much so that despite how delicate the rest of the party is compared to her (and, keep in mind she’s a fairy, so that may tell you something either about the prowess of fairies in this setting, or the wimpiness of the rest of the cast), enemies can’t get their hands off of sweet, innocent Pox. So given that she’s a magical creature, we can invent some reasons why enemies must hate her more than everybody else, but.. can she really taunt?

Pox is irritating. She doesn’t use pronouns for herself. She doesn’t use anybody’s given name; she invents one on the spot for them and never varies from it. She seldom uses periods and has not heard of commas. Or separating thoughts. Or inside voices. So there’s a lot of room for creativity as to how she could pull off a constant level of obsession with hitting her.

The fae are known for their glamours, so maybe its part of her magic. She is supernaturally vexing. The more you’re around her, the more you can’t control your need to give her a smack. And then, you see how little damage she actually takes from your efforts, and you see red. How dare that little insect giggle at me? Why, I’ll show her!

So maybe instead of building taunt, a magical creature as a tank starts binding the emotions and blinding with rage. I don’t really know how a muggle tank does it, though. Just barbaric yawps, I guess?

Usually when I think of fae magic, it’s all about charming the gullible and putting illusions into reality. A homely fairy could become a real stunner and maybe front a K-Pop band. Maybe they already do! What if a fairy wanted to use its magic to appear more troublesome than it should normally be?