How do you RP marking?

[ourchair]

Leaving behind the the whole aggro thing, why do you believe the monsters should cooperate with you to make an interesting story that ends in thier defeat?

I don't.

I just think the monsters and the story would benefit if they didn't always and I mean ALWAYS ignore the marks. I'm not saying they have to always make my warden look good. Sometimes they have to recognize the marks, and sometimes they have to ignore them.

The monsters want to tell a different story, one that ends with them killing you and taking your stuff.

Oh noes GM FIAT waaaah!

 

[Starfox]

Striking at a clothy even with a -2 penalty is probably easier to get a solid hit against than your defender.

It becomes a little odd when the defender is the "clothy ". I have a Swordmage in my group. To most monsters, she looks like a wizard. In fact, she thinks of herself as a wizard... a very aggressive wizard. This means monsters will often ignore her in favor of the fighter, at least until she puts her magic charm (mark) on them.

...as a Warden there are several things you can do to help your allies, and making a reach build probably isn't one of them.

Reach really is a good way to make the most out of your Warden’s Fury.

 

[UltimaGabe]

So the defenders are hogging each other's spotlight, or stealing each other's thunder.

Works for me.

Absolutely. When Guillermo applied his Divine Challenge, one of two possible scenarios happened:

Either A. Gomez had been taking quite a beating, and needed someone to get the Titan off his back, so he asked Guillermo (most likely out of game) to Mark the baddie. In this case, Guillermo comes in at the last second and places a Divine Curse on the Titan, challenging him to forget about the (now slightly less-threatening) Fighter and concentrate on him.

Or B. Guillermo doesn't care much for party dynamic, and decided to Mark the Titan because he didn't know any better. In this case, Guillermo is trying to hog the spotlight from Gomez, who (the player and the character) most likely asks Guillermo, "Dude, wtf?" and Marks the Titan on his turn to get the attention back.

Both work thematically.

 

[UltimaGabe]

I just think the monsters and the story would benefit if they didn't always and I mean ALWAYS ignore the marks. I'm not saying they have to always make my warden look good. Sometimes they have to recognize the marks, and sometimes they have to ignore them.

As I said earlier, this is basically a case of Working as Intended. If there's little to no danger of repurcussion when an enemy ignores your mark, then he's going to ignore your mark, and you should probably rethink your character to be better at punishing enemies who do so. And if there IS danger of repurcussion for ignoring your mark, and they ignore them anyway, then that means that you're pumping out lots of extra attacks and penalties. Either they attack you (and you're doing your job), or they don't attack you and you punish them (and you're doing your job).

If you're dissatisfied with your punishing capabilities, then either remake your character, talk with the squishies to get them to be less of an easy target, or learn to live with it. As a defender, you should love when enemies ignore your marks. And if they do it 100% of the time, then you should still change your build up- switch some points out of Dexterity and put them into Strength (since you're not going to be getting attacked as often as you should, so why bother boosting your defenses?). Or swap out some defensive feats for offensive ones. Switch out all of the magic armor and defense-boosting items for magic weapons and such. If a DM ignores your marks 100% of the time, then your class just became that much more awesome.