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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5565120" data-attributes="member: 996">It is simple.  It can be made much less effective if the DM makes a conscious effort to circumvent it.  But, that's true to a lesser extent of all defender mechanisms - how effective they are, and in what way they're effective, depends largely on how the DM has monsters react to them.The Brawlers usually take Grappling Strike, which is useable as a basic attack in an OA and /grabs/, thus ending movement something like Combat Superiority.  The Knight's mark-punishment is an OA, so it would benefit /greatly/ from that functionality.  The result would be a very sticky defender, possibly even stickier vs several marked foes because marked punishment is an OA for the Aura mechanic, so it can be done 1/turn instead of 1/round.Depending on your style, it might not be overpowered or even all that effective.  Defenders aren't that hard for a DM to circumvent in the meta-game.  For instance, if the 1/turn aspect of the Aura gets to be too much when the fighter manages to surround himself with marked foes, have the enemies ready to charge other foes as soon as one of their allies moves - all that movement will happen on the same turn, and the fighter will be back to getting only one of them.  Pushing or dazing a Knight or Fighter will also render his mark-punishment moot, as will simply using AEs that can catch both him and the squishier members of his party.</blockquote>