D&D General Improved Marked Option for 5e.

OptionalRule

Adventurer
There's an option in the 5e DMG to implement a Marked option in combat. Basically, a martial can designate one target they attack that wont consume their reaction if they make an Opportunity Attack. This seems needlessly complex to me and I wrote a post recently suggesting the following improvement below.

Mark (Improved)​

This option amplifies the capability of melee combatants to challenge each other with opportunity attacks.

An Opportunity Attack against a creature that the attacker has struck with a Melee Attack since their last turn does not consume the attacker’s reaction. Characters are still limited to one Opportunity Attack per turn.



That's basically the TLDR of the post I made on my blog. Thoughts and feedback?
 

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EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
Given the idea is intended to support more tactical play, making it this simple seems to contradict the goal of the thing.

Maybe I'm just coming at it with too much if a 4e mindset but this mostly seems like a waste of time. Marking groups is difficult at best, and still provides extremely marginal value; there is very little incentive involved, and none at all if only engaged with one opponent (quite a common occurrence in my experience); and the process seems to require just as much tracking as the original.

Further, the "needless complexity" of the original isn't that deep. It's literally just...you need to still be able to take Reactions, even if you don't consume your Reaction to do it. I'm pretty sure you would want to preserve that restriction.

And if we aren't removing that restriction... I'm not sure what your edit is actually changing. Nothing about the Mark action in the 5e DMG says you can only Mark one target. Indeed, this is a significant nerf as well, as you no longer have Advantage on attacks against marked targets.

Overall, I still think this is just an ultimately wrongheaded idea from the very beginning, the original 5e "Mark" action being a stunted, malformed translation of 4e's stuff. You'd be better off just ditching it entirely and trying again from first principles.

Something like

Marked (condition)
A Marked target is being actively tracked by some other combatant, harried or hindered, whether directly with physical objects, indirectly with observation and interference, or at a distance, perhaps using magic or projectile weapons. If a target is Marked by a second combatant, the first Marked condition ends.
While Marked, all attacks made the target suffer a -1 penalty unless they include the source of the Marked condition, and all saving throws for abilities used by the Marked target have their DC reduced by 1 unless the source of the Marked condition is among the targets of that ability.

Then, separately, give various classes and/or feats tools to make use of Marking as a feature, both ways to apply it and ways to exploit it. Presumably Battle Master Fighters should be the preeminent users thereof (probably give some nice hooks for both Fighters in general and BMs specifically), but I could see features for all classes that are primarily about physical combat (Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, maybe Paladin, maybe Ranger, Rogue.)
 
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OptionalRule

Adventurer
Given the idea is intended to support more tactical play, making it this simple seems to contradict the goal of the thing.
If that works for you then go for it. Yes, I think you're trying to convert the 4e version of Marked to 5e.

Simple isn't a flaw, it's a feature. The post I made is an improvement on the Mark Option in Chapter 9 of the 5e DMG.
 


Bardic Dave

Adventurer
Simple isn't a flaw, it's a feature. The post I made is an improvement on the Mark Option in Chapter 9 of the 5e DMG.

I think the poster's point is that it depends on your design goal. Making a tactical option simpler while also making it slightly less tactical may or may not be seen as an improvement. Certainly, your version is more elegant (and in practice is effectively the same as the DMG version in most cases).
 

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