Correct me if I'm wrong: Paladin Marks

[gtoasnt3]

I'll say this much about the computer age and this forum: I've been a DM for 30 years. Never before have I had the ability to learn from so many and so quickly. I have updated our 4th ed game quite a bit thanks to the people here on this forum, and now that we understand the combat sequence and conditions better, our game has greatly improved.

Thanks to all of you!

 

[Nail]

I'll say this much about the computer age and this forum: I've been a DM for 30 years. Never before have I had the ability to learn from so many and so quickly. I have updated our 4th ed game quite a bit thanks to the people here on this forum, and now that we understand the combat sequence and conditions better, our game has greatly improved.

Thanks to all of you!

That's been my experience too!

 

[DracoSuave]

Good point.

The accessibility to information is a good thing, as well as accessibility to advice, etc.

 

[Nail]

Nope. Two applications of the same condition use the least convenient duration.

Could you give me a page number for that? Thanks.



..EDIT: Never mind! p 278. Excellent!

 

[Nail]

Well cool: Since you can't overlap conditions, it's "obvious" that you can't be marked by more than one person. No need for a special note in the class features of Fighters and Paladins.

....'Cause it's obvious!

 

[Matt Black]

Funny, it sees they -explicitly- mention conditions. My PHB might be different than yours tho.



It isn't obvious that someone would tear into the powers before reading the instructions on how to interpret them, which is the section -just before- the classes themselves, in the section marked 'Classes.' You can't predict the actions of everybody. However, you cannot with any reasonable argument claim they didn't instruct players to read how powers work before reading powers. The 'What the hell does all this mean?' section is -just before- the 'All this' section. That's like complaining that 3E shouldn't assume you knew how to read a spell before reading a spell.

It's not the books fault, books are inherently a poor medium for players attempting Random Access of it.

Yes, they use the word 'conditions' in the 'reading a power' section... as part of an off-hand list of things that attacks can do. All mention is perfunctory at best until you get to the 'conditions' section of combat, which is never explicitly referenced. It's particularly a problem with the fighter and paladin class features, because it isn't obvious from the text that marking imposes a condition. This is all evidenced by the many people who are confused by these features.

Books are not an inherently poor medium for a manual (no one said anything about 'random access'). However books without thorough cross-referencing are very much an inherently poor medium for a manual. It should be possible to go to a class feature and understand it quickly in the middle of play, without having to remember that there might have been relevant notes in a section on powers.

 

[DracoSuave]

When conditions are included in a list of things important to read, I take that as a sign I should read about conditions. Turns out, it's important:

Given doing so is necessary to understand powers available to a Level 1 character of -every class in the game-, you're going to end up looking on that page to determine what:

immobilized is (Cleric, Warlock)
prone is (Fighter)
dazed is (Paladin)
slowed (Ranger)
blinded (Rogue)

and pretty much everything a Wizard does.

In fact, the ONLY class that doesn't assign conditions in their first level powers in the PHB is the Warlord.

You most -certainly- need to understand conditions to get an understanding of how powers work -at first level.- Might as well learn marked while you're there.

 

[DracoSuave]

Could you give me a page number for that? Thanks.



..EDIT: Never mind! p 278. Excellent!

Oh yeah, overlapping durations, dur!

See, I totally forgot about that reference too!

 

[Matt Black]

When conditions are included in a list of things important to read, I take that as a sign I should read about conditions. Turns out, it's important:

Given doing so is necessary to understand powers available to a Level 1 character of -every class in the game-, you're going to end up looking on that page to determine what:

immobilized is (Cleric, Warlock)
prone is (Fighter)
dazed is (Paladin)
slowed (Ranger)
blinded (Rogue)

and pretty much everything a Wizard does.

In fact, the ONLY class that doesn't assign conditions in their first level powers in the PHB is the Warlord.

You most -certainly- need to understand conditions to get an understanding of how powers work -at first level.- Might as well learn marked while you're there.

Sure, if you even figure out that 'marked' is a condition in the first place. It certainly wasn't obvious to me when I first read those classes. Mostly because the wording is almost always on the form: "you mark the target", which is less suggestive of a condition than something like: "the target becomes marked"... or, heaven forbid, the use of the word 'condition' in those paragraphs. There's an art to writing reference books, and the 4E PHB doesn't practice it.

 

[HarbingerX]

Nope. Two applications of the same condition use the least convenient duration. So if you have stunned (save ends) and stunned (no save) then you get no save against stunned. Ongoing damage works the same way.

Marked is different in that it has a specific 'marker' and thus only the last creature to mark applies, unless otherwise stated. You aren't 'stunned four times' You either have stunned or do not have stunned. Same with marked. Regardless, defender marks -explicitly- are lifted when someone else marks.

And yeah, they -should have- stated it outright rather than assume it when they make their rulings.

Just to get clarification - a Paladin's Divine Challenge mark gets removed if a Fighter does a Combat Challenge on the same enemy? We had been playing those as different 'marks'; essentially like Warlock's Curse - you can only have one Warlock's Curse on an enemy, but it doesn't interfere with other classes 'mark-like' abilities.

My Paladin and Fighter PCs won't like loosing their 'choose-who-smacks-you-down' double-marking....