What is that mark? Well time in the game isn't done in a series of stop and go motions like some weird play, it's continuous.
That mark is the fighter ATTACKING YOU. And if you don't pay attention to the guy whose attacking you, he gets a few extra hits in.
This is good stuff. The turn-based initiative system is an abstraction. Out-of-turn actions, including OAs (which fighters are especially good at) and the challenge-generated interrupts, are part of the mechanical apparatus for preventing the abstraction generating absurd results.
Sometimes marks also just work at the metagame level. They're a device that makes it more likely that the fighter will be at the centre of the fray. Similar to the paladin's Valiant Strike power (which gives a bonus to hit equal to the number of adjacent enemies): a players whose PC has that power is more likely to play the PC as valiantly surrounded by foes,
because there is a mechanical incentive to do so.
D&D has always used metagame contrivances to reinforce class role and flavour (eg the prohibitions on swords and armour for wizards), although 3E reduced this noticeably compared to earlier editions. 4e is a return to earlier editions in this respect, although it uses new mecanical devices to achieve that result.
Write the fluff first and then write mechanics that simulate what's going on.
Ultimately, 5e needs to merge the smoother mechanical resolution process of 4e with the "simulationism" of 3e.
Thoughts?
Personally, I quite like 4e's approach. I think "fortune in the middle" resolution - roll dice first, narrate events second - can have some advantages for introducing new complications into the narrative without bogging the game down mechanically, and while keeping the odds of success and failure more-or-less known and balanced. It does raise interesting issues about fictional positioning - how does the narration of what happened in the course of action resolution than feed into subsequent action resolution - but I think these can be handled. The most obvious way is by having the NPCs/monsters in a situation respond appropriately and interestingly to whatever narration was used to explain the action resolution. Make the colour count!
I don't seem to recall the game spelling out in detail what actually is happening when our characters specifically make a Saving Throw versus Petrification in editions past. It said the effect didn't affect us, and we actually had to "roleplay" and "describe" what our bodies were doing when the save occurred.
In older editions, when I make a saving throw vs. magic, my character is trying to defend himself (reactively) from a magical spell. In 3e, when my character makes a Reflex saving throw, he is trying to get out of the way of something trying to do him harm.
What DEFCON 1 says is true of AD&D (or 1st ed, at least). Gygax explains it in the DMG: roll the save, and if it is successful than narrate something around it that makes sense. This explains why even the fighter chained to the rockface is entitled to a save vs Dragon Breath - perhaps s/he finds a niche in the rock at the last minute, or a chain breaks, or whatever. (And a chain breaking can be narrated even if the fighter earlier failed a bend bars attempt in respect of it!)
What B.T. says about saves is true of 3E, however. 3E changed many aspects of the game, and probably has the least "fortune in the middle" of any edition of D&D - even hit points seem to be much more "meat"-ified in 3E than in earlier editions, or in 4e.
4E didn't remove the roleplay from D&D but it did throw it into the back seat and tell it to shut up.
Yeah, "rewriting this power so it makes sense" is not "roleplaying" in my eyes. It's game design.
One part of playing an RPG, for some players at least, is narrating fiction around action resolution. It's true that 3E has less of this than any other edition of D&D, and games like Rolemaster or Runequest have less in turn than 3E, but there are plenty of other well-know RPGs that aren't so spartan in this respect: The Dying Earth, HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel, etc. And I don't think it's fair to describe it as "rewriting powers so that they make sense" - at least, not for those who enjoy fortune-in-the-middle resolution. It's narrating the events of the fiction within a constraint provided by the mechanical resolution system.
It was part of the AD&D saving throw mechanic, and it remains part of the hit point mechanic in all editions: it is not possible to narrate what a successful attack for 8 hp means until you know who was hit, how many hit points they started with, and therefore how many they end up with (I think even the biggest "hp are meat" proponent would accept that this is so). 4e just takes it into more areas of the game.
Unless[/i] the Paladin uses his Divine Challange. That, for some reason, wipes the Fighters mark and now it IS safe to ignore the Fighter in combat. Why?
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You can't roleplay your way out of that
Well, you can. "I'm leaving it for you to handle." Not only is it possible, but it happens routinely at my game table.
You know where meta-system mechanics have a place? Narrative systems where you want the players to be able to grab the wheel from the GM for a moment. Or 'Fate point' mechanics to allow gritty dangerous worlds where you don't need to roll a new PC every week.
But at the round-to-round tactical level? That crap needs to go.
This is something on which opinions differ. D&D has always made the metagame part of round-to-round tactical decision-making, via its hit point mechanics. In AD&D it was also part of the saving throw mecanic. 4e just extends that to "active" as well as "passive" elements of action resolution.
Another good example of this not working in 4e is a utility power for rogues. I forget the name, but the fluff is that you are flinging things from your pockets to create an area of difficult terrain. Now, that's cool and all, but are you telling me that you're carrying enough junk in your pockets to do that? Likewise, if you're using that ability, which items are scattered onto the ground? Do you lose access to them?
The standard reply is that you can fluff the power however you want, so the rogue might be knocking over carts in a city or somesuch. At which point, I've lost interest.
Fair enough. But this is exactly how 3E treats the wizard's spell components pouch. (In AD&D, you actually had to track your componenent usage.) And some systems - including d20 modern, I think - use abstracted wealth rules. Other systems - The Dying Earth, and OGL Conan - have rules about PCs losing access to accrued wealth between sessions (they are deemed to have spent or lost it). In Burning Wheel you role a d6 every time you use a toolkit, and on a roll of 1 it is depleted.
To put it another way: detailed item tracking isn't the only way to handle things, and hasn't been an essential part of D&D since the 3E-era (ie the above mentioned spell component pouches and rogue powers).
when each action is conflated into a "macro" and players use the shorthand to say, "I'll attack with Tide of Iron," or "I mark my foe," or "I use Sly Flourish," combats become mechanical, often repetitive and less interesting.
This raises an interesting, and in my view slightly orthogonal, issue.
Given my own interests and prejudices, I'm inclined to frame it this way: is the players' main contribution to interesting action resolution their impact on colour, or their impact on situation? I agree that 4e's power usage can reduce colour. Some description becomes compressed. But 4e powers give players - and especially martial players - a lot of influence over the situation - in particular via forced movement and condition infliction.
This is where the interest is to be found. (And it's true that in
this particular respect, 4e martial PCs become more like traditional D&D spell-user, who have always had "macro labelled" abilities ("I fireball the orcs") which give them a high degree of influence over the ingame situation.)
If switching systems is too much of a pain, but adding house rules isn't, then go buy the
Codex Martailis, produced by our very own Galloglaich! It's the only melee weapons RPG combat system designed by a person who actually studies and practices melee combat!
Hmm. I thought that Jake Norwood made the same claim about The Riddle of Steel!
) chef who does food all the freakin' time and would use cooking techniques/ideas that I would never think off. Also, cooking on TV requires that stuff gets edited out so that the show will fit in an half hour/hour long time slot. It's realistic for chefs to wash their hands all the freakin' time but do you really want to waste 3 minutes of national TV time to show someone washing their hands? 
