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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Switchback" data-source="post: 4375990" data-attributes="member: 69793">People use the old, "The monsters are fighting to win" a little too casually I think. Not every group of monsters is going to act like a perfectly oiled unit with the best interests of their buddies in mind. Monster societies are usually brutish and full of infighting. It's true that every individual monster wants to win, but not necessarily at the expense of his own life. He would rather his buddy die. What that means is that many creatures marked by the Paladin (and knowing so) will prefer to keep trying to fell the Paladin simply on self-preservation grounds. It's true that he is a harder target to hit, but he is right there, not actively trying to get away like the strikers, and he is not dealing automatic damage like the creature will receive if he bypasses the Paladin to get to other foes.Opportunity Attacks should often create the same logic for creatures. When a Paladin has just struck them across the face with his blade, chances are not every creature is going to be thinking in pure analytical terms that he needs to get to the strikers first. It's against their basic instinct to willingly turn their back on a threatening foe, to go over and chase the Wizard or Rogue around. I think this is kind of a silly really. If the monsters are always going to perform the best meta-game tactical option then they would actually run away at the fist sign of heroes, and alert the whole castle, cave, what have you dungeon, that is full of more monsters just standing in rooms waiting to be slaughtered. The spirit of the game makes a natural assumption that creatures are not going to sacrifice themselves by endlessly turning their backs to the big armored guy hitting them with a sword. They might *want* to attack the Wizard, sure, but they are not thinking "Pff, I have 50 HP left", they are probably thinking I need to deal with this huge annoyance invoking his god against me and standing in my path. Now if the Pally is already tied up by several foes, it definitely makes sense for other enemies to go chasing down the strikers, leaders, etc. If the game rules have done their job, and I see some arguing they do, the monsters won't gain anyway from eating all the extra and automatic damage they will be receiving. But I'm not even interested in that so much as the common sense expected behavior of most creatures. World ecology might play a role in monster tactics as well. If you're in the Forgotten Realms with heroes around every corner, maybe the Stoneland Orcs or whatever are used to dealing with adventurers and react with great cunning and poise in the heat of battle. But in a more generic Points of Light style world that 4e encourages, heroes are actually rare and it is far from likely that groups of Wizards, Paladins and Warlords are bursting into monster strongholds every few weeks to give them pointers on excellent strategies to combating them. And even if heroes are common, the monsters that live to tell about such encounters might be 1 in 100.</blockquote>

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