Ranged Strikers - more "aggro" mechanics?

[drjones]

Yeah 'rules lawyering' the text on the character sheets from DDXP it might be possible to stack them and have multiples but based on other things I have heard/read I went with 1 mark at a time per character with no stacking unless the power specifically said otherwise (like the pallys does).

But of course I am probably wrong on the details vs. the final product.

 

[med stud]

How long is your wizard or warlock going to last under the withering fire of two or three enemy archers concentrating fire and all doing bonus damage?

Not long

In my playtesting, I put the players up against five elven archers. The elves were in a tree house connected by bridges to four platforms in other trees, one of them climbable. The PCs were all careful until the wizard got himself out in the open and BLAM! he went down from 20 HP to -10 in one round.

That +9 attack bonus coupled with 1d8+4 damage is really dangerous. It was a fun fight though; the fighter huffed up the ladders and ran across the bridges at a snail pace, the warlock used his fey pact to teleport up to the platforms and the cleric lance of faithed archers, giving the attack bonus to the warlock.
The elves had a melee defender (I took the stats for a human guard) at the climbable platform. The warlock used her daily power to make him stumble down from the platform. When the fighter reached the archers after giving chase for a while, tide of iron also smacked elves out of the trees.

 

[Thyrwyn]

Just picture this as the new version of Point Blank Shot - same idea: you do more damage to closer opponents. Did PBS encourage you to shoot at the guys that were closer to you or did it encourage you to get closer to the guys you wanted to shoot at?

 

[DM_Blake]

I agree with the 'reality' of the restriction in that the closest target will be the most vulnerable, on average, to the most decisive shots. We can stipulate that this isn't a reality game, but we expect things to make sense, and this is supportable from that perspective.

Sure, if you're talking about a significant difference in how close the target is, or what cover they might have.

If a ranger is faced with 2 enemies, neither of whom are in melee or have any cover at all, one of whom is 4 squares away and one is 5 squares away, it seems to me that the ranger should be able to mark either enemy he chooses to mark.

Espcially because if you move the closest of those enemies to 10 squares', the ranger can now easily mark the remaining enemy at 5 squares, which means 5 squares is not out of his markable range, which means in the first example, it should have been possible to mark him, instead of arbitrarily ruling that he MUST mark the enemy at 4 squares or mark no enemy.

Likewise, if the nearest enemy is 20 squares away, that enemy can still be marked, which calls into question if the concept of only marking within effective range of the long bow.

Which means all of this is more arbitrary gamist ruling that has no bearing on how anything in reality, or semi-fantasy-quasi-reality might work, and furthermore makes no effort to resolve its own paradoxical implementation.

Another odd paradox that might or might not be handled in the complete rule description would be what happens if there are 2 enemies, say at 3 squares and 6 squares. The enemy at 3 squares is peeking through a little peephole in a door, or cloaked in invisibility or darkness, or is simply crouched behind a table. Does this mean the ranger MUST mark the guy he has no chance of hitting, or choose to mark nobody at all?

Ranger: I mark the guy I can actually see.
DM: But there is a guy you can't see who is much closer, so you can't mark the guy you see.
Ranger: But I can't even hit that guy, heck, I can't even see him, so I want to mark the other one.
DM: You can't.
Ranger: He's well within my range. I have marked enemies much farther away in other fights. So I want to mark the one I can see.
DM: You can't
Ranger: Why not?
DM: Because the other guy is there, even if you can't see him. So mark him or mark nobody.
Ranger: That makes no sense. Why can't I choose who to mark?
DM: I don't know, but you just can't.

I sure hope the final, full description of this ability, and others like it, is thorough enough to resolve these kinds of issues.

I've never DMed a group of players that would be satisfied with "Yeah, that doesn't make sense, but hey, this is a game, right? So play it the way it's written and ignore the nonsense and paradoxes of the silly rule."

 

[FitzTheRuke]

This reminds me of the DM who thinks that Cleave or splash damage can't kill minions.

It's so obviously NOT the invisible closer target that the ranger can't even see that I don't see any reason WHY the rules would have to say so. Can't players ever use their own brains? Why do rules have to be written to avoid every utterly stupid way they can be interpreted?

Why on earth do we need lawyers to write our rulebooks?

Fitz

For the record, I'm not calling you out, Blake. You obviously think that it would be stupid to have the unseen target stop the Ranger from marking the seen target. It's your hypothetical idiot DM I don't understand.

 

[D'karr]

Sure, if you're talking about a significant difference in how close the target is, or what cover they might have.

If a ranger is faced with 2 enemies, neither of whom are in melee or have any cover at all, one of whom is 4 squares away and one is 5 squares away, it seems to me that the ranger should be able to mark either enemy he chooses to mark.

Espcially because if you move the closest of those enemies to 10 squares', the ranger can now easily mark the remaining enemy at 5 squares, which means 5 squares is not out of his markable range, which means in the first example, it should have been possible to mark him, instead of arbitrarily ruling that he MUST mark the enemy at 4 squares or mark no enemy.

Likewise, if the nearest enemy is 20 squares away, that enemy can still be marked, which calls into question if the concept of only marking within effective range of the long bow.

Which means all of this is more arbitrary gamist ruling that has no bearing on how anything in reality, or semi-fantasy-quasi-reality might work, and furthermore makes no effort to resolve its own paradoxical implementation.

Another odd paradox that might or might not be handled in the complete rule description would be what happens if there are 2 enemies, say at 3 squares and 6 squares. The enemy at 3 squares is peeking through a little peephole in a door, or cloaked in invisibility or darkness, or is simply crouched behind a table. Does this mean the ranger MUST mark the guy he has no chance of hitting, or choose to mark nobody at all?

Ranger: I mark the guy I can actually see.
DM: But there is a guy you can't see who is much closer, so you can't mark the guy you see.
Ranger: But I can't even hit that guy, heck, I can't even see him, so I want to mark the other one.
DM: You can't.
Ranger: He's well within my range. I have marked enemies much farther away in other fights. So I want to mark the one I can see.
DM: You can't
Ranger: Why not?
DM: Because the other guy is there, even if you can't see him. So mark him or mark nobody.
Ranger: That makes no sense. Why can't I choose who to mark?
DM: I don't know, but you just can't.

I sure hope the final, full description of this ability, and others like it, is thorough enough to resolve these kinds of issues.

I've never DMed a group of players that would be satisfied with "Yeah, that doesn't make sense, but hey, this is a game, right? So play it the way it's written and ignore the nonsense and paradoxes of the silly rule."

Yeah, these exaggerated cases are just that, exaggerated. Good one, close but no cigar.

 

[bobthehappyzombie]

They might have clarified this situation but there will always be another situation or another rule that won't be explicitly covered; all games break from reality when examined closely.
If you enforce mechanics rigidly then you will find a point where some rules seem to make no sense, that is what DM arbitration is for, if it reaches the invisible line in the sand then the DM makes a call and interprits the rules so they make more sense.
Of course a DM could abuse this role to arbitarily punish players, but lets face it he can also just say rocks fall... If a DM wishes to be an arse he needn't go to all the trouble of finding a rule loophole to do it.

 

[small pumpkin man]

Which means all of this is more arbitrary gamist ruling that has no bearing on how anything in reality, or semi-fantasy-quasi-reality might work, and furthermore makes no effort to resolve its own paradoxical implementation.

Please stop using that word if you don't know what it means. Quarry rules have as much to do with simulating fast moving chaotic combat as they have to do with making it a fun game. It's abstracted and simplified because people pissing around with string and arguing over LoS doesn't simulate anything except nerds arguing. (It's also designed to be used easily without miniatures, man, don't you hate it when they do that?)

 

[KrazyHades]

Totally agree, and that's why strikers are focused on mobility.
If they weren't meant to go behind the enemy lines, a melee striker would have the same (and even bigger) issue of not getting to attack the back-row controllers.

I agree. Keep in mind, folks, that in the case of the ranger, his range is ridiculous. He can make that mark from a massive number of squares away, and I think makes for great combat combinations with marking. The ranger stalks around the edge of the fight, moving and firing at enemies, until he makes his way to the back of the enemy formation. Now the baddies are in trouble. Either the ranger will mark the squishy little controllers back there and take them out quickly, or a defender will have to rush back to protect the "squishies".

Of course, the same applies to enemies attacking the PCs, so the combat is very dynamic. I personally like how this affects combat.

 

[Thyrwyn]

There is nothing in Hunter's Quarry that states that it is a "Mark". Granted, we only have the demo characters which are incomplete and have abilities that may have changed by now, but "Mark" is a specific, 4e term and is not used in this ability.