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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WalterKovacs" data-source="post: 5545752" data-attributes="member: 63763">Again, even if they cause forced movement against the knight on a miss ... they still have to attack the knight. So, for at least ONE of the enemies, the knight has done his job. Also ... the party is what ... 8 to 10 squares away from where the weaponmaster is? I guess it comes down to the group being extremely effecient in it's strategy, but the "not close enough to shift + charge" seems like a weird scenario. And of course, there are always ranged attacks [which you'd still want to get away from the fighter for ... the weaponmaster would only get one interupt vs. those shifts, while the knight would get one each time, but lose out on penalizing the rolls]. The weaponmaster's ability to pretty much stop an enemy from making a full distance move to another target and use a non-basic attack is very good ... but it is trivally simple to use one of his stances, which comes in the book, to at least deal with it normally. As far as monsters with built in movement powers (I'm thinking lurkers especially), many have shifting ones (which would get around the fighter's OA stopping power) or have their movement part of their standard action ... meaning that a shift then using that power is still an option. I'm not saying that knights are better than the weaponmaster. I'm just saying that knight's aren't horrible useless piles of trash unless they optimize (and, really taking a feat along with something that comes with the class is hardly optimizing ... especially when they are being compared to weaponmasters who have an option to not get combat superiority or no take the -3 mark penalty, etc ...)   True ... but unless any of those negatives REQUIRE a mark to work ... all those penalties still apply in the case of the enemy not being marked. Having a -8 penalty compared to a -10 penalty will still only make a difference 1 in 10 rolls. If the goal is to make it impossible to miss, it is true that every penalty counts. But, ultimately, losing one penalty doesn't cause any of the other penalties to be lost. The rest of the penalties (or bonuses to defenses) work with or without the mark (aside from that one power ... I know there is a power that makes marks do -4, can't remember the name). NOW, it does suck even more that the feats which improve marks to being -3 and the like don't apply to the aura. That is something they should hopefully address as it does mean there is tons more feat support, etc for the older defenders.  I'm not saying the -2 penalty isn't worth it. I'm saying that it isn't ALWAYS worth it. I'm pretty sure that people aren't building characters looking for effects that will help them turn a crit into just a hit so I don't get killed outright.  The mark penalty is great, in part because it SHOULD end up happening frequently enough where those 1 in 10 (or 1 in 6.666) times where it causes a miss end up occuring frequently throughout the course of the defenders career. I was merely pointing out that the scenario you put forth of the three enemies adjacent to fighter, one pushes them away, etc, etc, etc ... is probably not going to happen that often anyway. If nothing else, the fact that the enemies seem to CONSTANTLY be going away from the fighter and going to other targets, it would seem that the fighter would only rarely get next to three enemies in the first place (start of the fight, and come and get it ... maybe with the help of the rest of the party using forced movement effects, but even then, since the party is half a map away to be out of shift+charge range they need a very long distance forced move to get the enemy back over to where the fighter is, etc. All I'm saying is it seems that you are putting the knight in the worst possible light by having it face only situations in which it's deficiencies compared to other defenders are made all the more glaring, while completely discounting that it could very well end up taking more enemies down a turn early because of it's increased likelihood to get to throw out OAs. EDIT: Basically what I'm saying is that the -2 for the mark is relevant in the long run. But when someone gets effectively a -8 to the attack, the extra -2 to nice in all, but you can't say that with a knight in the part, you aren't still getting that -8. And are the monsters seriously thinking "Well, with the -8, I might still hit ... but -10? Why even bother." It's like the old children's story of the king who was never full, eating feast after feast until finally, he had a single cookie, and then was full. "If only I had that cookie first, I wouldn't have needed all those feasts". Just because the mark contributes to a TON of defensive bonuses, doesn't mean that it was key to making those bonuses work. It still only did it's small part of a bigger whole.</blockquote>

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