paladin divine challenge at the end of a turn?

[Mahali]

Everyone in our group reads DC to require you to Engage the new target the same turn you DC them and can't figure out how you can interpret it differently.

No free round of going "I challenge YOU! Just be patient, I'll get closer eventually." Otherwise you would be able to challenge a different target every round without ever Engaging.

 

[pskought]

Everyone in our group reads DC to require you to Engage the new target the same turn you DC them and can't figure out how you can interpret it differently.

No free round of going "I challenge YOU! Just be patient, I'll get closer eventually." Otherwise you would be able to challenge a different target every round without ever Engaging.

That's true, but you'd be a pretty ineffective defender. I'm squarely on the side of "or means or" and the paladin must either a) engage or b) challenge a different target.

Two things:
1) If your argument against allowing a mark at the end of a turn includes girly skipping or just be patient flavor derision, then you need to consider the flavor assumption of a paladin killing the last marked minion, turning to the war king across the room and issuing a Divine Challenge: "You're next, buddy!"

2) If strict design intent is to engage, then what's the point of giving it a Burst 5 range? Just make it Burst 1 or Melee Range and there's no confusion.

My read of the intent is that Burst 5, coupled with the ambiguous language, indicates a power designed for distance use, and the clause about losing the ability to DC prevents the "run away" paladin.

 

[eamon]

2) If strict design intent is to engage, then what's the point of giving it a Burst 5 range? Just make it Burst 1 or Melee Range and there's no confusion.

My read of the intent is that Burst 5, coupled with the ambiguous language, indicates a power designed for distance use, and the clause about losing the ability to DC prevents the "run away" paladin.

You don't need to engage an enemy in melee - you just need to engage the enemy. You're permitted, for instance, to fire arrows at the enemy.

If you challenge a new target in a turn, then that marked monster the divine challenge rules hold: it must be engaged or you must challenge a new target. You cannot engage a new target, so you must engage.

Next turn, you must still comply with divine challenge's rules concerning that target - again you must either engage it or challenge a new target. This turn, however, you actually have a choice, since now you can target a new enemy.

The language is not ambiguous. The challenge is targetted, and when you chooe a target, the paladin must follow the challenge's rules concerning that target. The rules text is not describing how divine challenge works in some abstract, high-level (ambiguous) overview, it is "Effect:" text describing what effect it has concerning that particular target - it uses the word "target" all the time.

 

[Syrsuro]

The language is somewhat vague and there are two interpretations, depending on how one reads the paragraph. Either is valid and both are flawed.

Interpretation One:

On your turn, you must engage the target you challenged or challenge a different target.
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To engage the target, you must either attack it or end your turn adjacent to it. If none of these events occur by the end of your turn, the marked condition ends and you can’t use divine challenge on your next turn.
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The two parts of the paragraph are read separately and the word 'events' refers only to attacking or ending adjacent. By this reading, if you fail to attack or engage the mark, your mark fades and you lose the ability to mark next round.


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Interpretation Two:

On your turn, you must engage the target you challenged or challenge a different target. To engage the target, you must either attack it or end your turn adjacent to it. If none of these events occur by the end of your turn, the marked condition ends and you can’t use divine challenge on your next turn.​

The two parts of the paragraph are read together and the word 'events' refers to challenging a different target as well as to engaging or adjacent. You would only lose your ability to mark in the next round (suffered a penalty) if the mark was carried over from a prior round and you had neither engaged nor attacked that target for the entire last round.​

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There really IS no way to resolve this by referring to the RAW, it depends on how you read that paragraph and interpret the word 'events'.

However, lets look at something else:

Effect: You mark the target. The target remains marked until you use this power against another target. If you mark other creatures using other powers, the target is still marked. A creature can be subject to only one mark at a time. A new mark supersedes a mark that was already in place.
If the target makes an attack that doesn't include you as a target, it takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls and takes [5 + charisma modifier] radiant damage. The target takes this damage only once per turn.​

What is this? This the version of the Paladin's Divine Challenge that was used at D&DExperience and it is evidently the version they intended to use until (unexpectedly to them) many of the Paladin's started marking and running away, exploiting this version by making themselves unable to be attacked.​

As a result they instituted a last minute, emergency, fix to eliminate the ability of the Paladin to run away leaving marked targets who were unable to attack the paladin but would take damage if they attacked anyone else. Specifically they wanted to make the mark expire if that tactic was used.​

What can we infer from this? First, the clumsiness of the second sentence came about because they just added the phrase "or if you fail to engage the target (see below)." to existing text rather than doing a full rewrite of that paragraph.​

Second: The entire paragraph starting "On your turn..." in the new version was written to be the explanation of how the effect is maintained. And thus is can all be considered relevant to the maintenance of the mark, possibly favoring interpretation 2 (else why the redundency when compared to the second sentence - which already mentions the option to mark a new target).​

But Third: The original intent was for marks to be persistant and they changed it to prevent Paladin's running and leaving non-expiring marks. However, there is no evidence to suggest that they also wanted to prevent Paladin's marking targets at the end of the round. Marking at the end of the round would have worked just fine under the previous version and marking at the end of the round is not part of the behavior they were trying to address (Paladin's fleeing so that they could not be attacked).​

Because a target marked by the Paladin at the end of the round CAN (and probably WILL) attack the paladin following that mark there is no reason to infer that they intended to prevent such actions with their emergency fix. And thus there is no reason to infer that they prefered interpretation 1 to interpretation 2. And interpretation 2 is closer to the original implementation.​

Therefore, I think that - although the language (RAW) is vague, an intent (RAI) can be inferred and interpretation 2 is the better choice as it allows the mark to be used as marks are intended to be used. That is, it gives the Paladin a way to attract the ire of their opponents and thus draw their attacks away from their companions.​

Now if I could just figure out a way to deal with the Paladin in my group who multiclassed into Warlock and keeps marking and then using Eyebite on targets (once per encounter)....​

Carl​

 

[Mahali]

Therefore, I think that - although the language (RAW) is vague, an intent (RAI) can be inferred and interpretation 2 is the better choice as it allows the mark to be used as marks are intended to be used. That is, it gives the Paladin a way to attract the ire of their opponents and thus draw their attacks away from their companions.

Carl​

You're still allowing the Paladin to Challenge every round without ever attacking or ending adjacent to an enemy. I do not think this is RAI. I don't think RAW is very ambiguous either, but here we are.

Anyway, instead of having a "You're next!" challenge it became a "You're mine!" by requiring you to Engage the target.

 

[KarinsDad]

There really IS no way to resolve this by referring to the RAW, it depends on how you read that paragraph and interpret the word 'events'.

Yes. We can read the rest of the description:

The target remains marked until you use this power against another target, or if you fail to engage the target.

If one fails to engage a target, he is no longer marked. No exceptions.

This means that if the Paladin DCs an opponent at the end of the Paladin's turn, it immediately fails if he is not adjacent to that opponent due to the fact that he is not engaging that opponent.

With either interpretation that you listed of the other portion of the description, neither interpretation removes this sentence from the description.