knowing you're marked

[Gruns]

Defense!

Personally, I like my players to feel like their characters are awesome, and that actually argues for the monsters not knowing .. that way, they trip the character's class feature fairly frequently, and get zinged by it; the player of the defender feels like they're "doing their job", the monster is attacking with minuses, and the defender gets to do a bit of extra damage or coolness, depending on the class feature.

Heh. Then again, if the Defender wants to Defend, he also does his job when the enemies mysteriously know about Combat Challenge, and never attack the friends in the first place!

I do see your point though, and I feel it's up to the DM to know what the players want and to feed them whatever they think is fun!

Of course, a thinking creature, once bitten, is likely to adjust its tactics .. a recurring major bad guy with a long life is likely to have met a PC before .. and unthinking constructs, undead, and animals may never adapt to it.

Yep. Likewise, I tend to play creatures that are known for their tactics (such as Hobgoblins) to be able to recognize a "defender" type of role in a party even if they've never seen the PCs before. To an extent. Ditto your thoughts on the unthinking types.

Later!
Gruns

 

[Mengu]

I try to run marks open book, so a marked monster knows what will happen, as does a marked PC. For instance if an Eladrin Fey Knight marked a PC, I would tell them the consequence of ignoring the mark the when they are marked. Of course as DM I know the consequence of all the PC marks, so I don't have to ask.

I even give people precautions when they are about to do something they might not realize. For instance, when they are about to provoke an opportunity attack from a skeleton, I might tell them the skeleton seems especially poised to strike you hard if you try to move past him.

I don't like gotchas. There is still plenty of mystery to a monster's abilities so I don't really feel like I'm giving away much by a few token things an experienced combatant would be able to recognize. They of course rarely recognize an opponent in full plate with a large sword might be chucking fireballs at them, or that killing a chillborn zombie might result in a cold mushroom cloud.

 

[Ryujin]

Having the Fighter or Warden be constantly be in your face would be a pretty big give-away that you're marked. I'd say that knowing you're marked is a given, though you may not want things to be so transparent as to what the result of the mark is.

 

[Infiniti2000]

I'm in the camp that they know they are marked, and for how long, but don't know about other powers that can trigger due to the marked state. (Just as they don't know that the ranger has an immediate interrupt that he can use when they attack or the wizard can cast shield as an interrupt.) How they know is harder, but there you go, welcome to 4e

This. You know about the powers and everything there is about them, but that doesn't give you knowledge about other powers.

 

[Amaroq]

I try to run marks open book, so a marked monster knows what will happen, as does a marked PC. For instance if an Eladrin Fey Knight marked a PC, I would tell them the consequence of ignoring the mark the when they are marked. Of course as DM I know the consequence of all the PC marks, so I don't have to ask.

Hmmm, I guess I tend to play the monsters much as I described my monsters reacting to the players, too.

In other words, the monster applies the "Marked" condition, and the player knows they're marked ... but if the monster has a special attack it can do if its Marked target ignores it, the players learn that "the hard way".

We alternate DM's on alternate weeks, though, and my players call me the "evil" DM , so YMMV!

 

[mkill]

4th edition only gives the rules framework, as a DM and player, you are expected to fill the blanks. If a PC is marked by a monster, it's up to the DM to come up with a reasonable explanation. For example, this could be

The hobgoblin soldier watches your every action, ready to strike at any time you try to avoid him.

Or

You feel a divine force compelling you to attack the Paladin, and fighting against it will bring immense pain.

etc.

Of course, you can play 4e very boardgamey and stick to the plain rules explanations, but it's more fun if you give it some colour.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I run it so the monsters know the consequences of disregarding a mark as well I do (the DM). On the other hand, we have a houserule regarding how much time you can take to decide what action to take and you the players and the DM only have one "Eh, I plain forgot, lets move him back to start" action each.

The way this plays out is that relatively often a mark is disregarded because the monster saw a tasty target and forgot about the mark. Not really a good idea most of the time. Sometimes the monster makes a bad decision and sometimes there are three monsters and they all try to get away at the same time. To bad for the first one.

This plays out pretty well for both me and the defender and makes for some really amusing situations, while the player feels his character is very nice and defendery.

(Btw, I agree that the rules here are a bit unclear, and I am playing something that isn't by the book)

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Where I run into problems is with something like the mark of an Assault Swordmage. Sure, the marked creature knows that someone has "marked" them for special attention. But to actually know that the Swordmage can TELEPORT to their side and whack them if they attack someone? Without ever having seen them teleport even once?

I'm not going to argue RAW or RAI, because in this case I don't care. I prefer a ruling that says the marked creature sorta knows, but not really. Kind of like if someone walks into the room with you and shouts "Look out!" You go on alert but you have no idea WHAT you are looking out for yet.

 

[DracoSuave]

Where I run into problems is with something like the mark of an Assault Swordmage. Sure, the marked creature knows that someone has "marked" them for special attention. But to actually know that the Swordmage can TELEPORT to their side and whack them if they attack someone? Without ever having seen them teleport even once?

I'm not going to argue RAW or RAI, because in this case I don't care. I prefer a ruling that says the marked creature sorta knows, but not really. Kind of like if someone walks into the room with you and shouts "Look out!" You go on alert but you have no idea WHAT you are looking out for yet.

Well that all depends on the flavor of the mark.


If 'marked' means nothing more than game terminology, then no, of course not.

But given what each mark represents, in the case of an Aegis of Assault:

You create an arcane link between you and a foe, allowing you to instantly respond to its attacks with a counterassault.

The monster KNOWS something is hinky. If he has training in Arcana, it would be -counterintuitive- if he didn't have some inkling that there's spacial magic gonna happen if he attacks someone.

Monsters have skills. Good DMs play the Monsters according to those skills. If the Monster's got enough knowledge of dwarves, (a nature check) he CAN know (as an example) that the player character's fighting style derives from the Hammer and Anvil school of defensive fighting, as exemplared by the Stonehammer Heavy Irregulars.

People need to stop treating stuff like 'Astral Seal', 'Magic Missile', 'Second Wind', or, yeah, 'Combat Challenge' like they're secret techniques that no one has ever heard of in the entire universe except for PCs. If a first level character can have it, it's not exactly secret ancient forgotten lore.

This is a question about common sense, not rules law.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

People need to stop treating stuff like 'Astral Seal', 'Magic Missile', 'Second Wind', or, yeah, 'Combat Challenge' like they're secret techniques that no one has ever heard of in the entire universe except for PCs. If a first level character can have it, it's not exactly secret ancient forgotten lore.

I will be charitable and assume that you are engaging in hyperbole.

Combat Challenge means "This guy is alert and focused on you. Turn your back and you'll get whacked." Second Wind means "When you slow down and rest for a few seconds, you get your wind back." Those are so obvious only a zombie wouldn't catch on.

Astral Seal and Magic Missile are available to many, if not most, low-level characters of the appropriate class. I suppose an intelligent monster might have heard about them through the grapevine or even encountered someone using them and lived to tell about it.

But Teleportation? I'm just not sure how many encounters with teleporters an average monster is going to survive. Not many for low level monsters, that's for sure.

Again, RAW or RAI, maybe they know what it is in all its minute detail. But -- and I say this rarely in 4e -- this is a place where it sticks in my craw.

So, regardless of "what I need to do", I will view it as I described in my original comment.