Marking via Dragon's breath

[Kzach]

Isn't it? Everywhere I go here, I see posts essentially amounting to "It seems clear that the author's intent was ... " or "It is clear that it was designed to work in some way and not another". The 2 most prevalent examples that come to find is the issue of fighter marking and whether a paladin can "mark and run".

Probably because that's how a lot of us have learned how to play RPG's. That was the intent behind the other thread I started, ie. to show-case a difference in how people come at rules.

I wouldn't consider myself old-school, more middle-school, but having learned to play RPG's with Chaosism, AD&D 1e/2e, GURPS, Palladium, etc. where interpretation of rules was the done thing. People who quoted RAW were 'rules lawyers' and that was considered a bad thing.

I'm not saying it is a bad thing, and I guess I could've phrased myself less aggressively, just trying to show you where I was coming from with what I was saying.

As far as telling you how to play your game, that to me is out of left-field. I really don't care how you play or if you play with aliens and furries. That's totally your call. I was just saying what I think, that was all.

 

[Xorn]

Kzach I've played 4E preview games with you, you're a cool guy as far as I'm concerned. But when you state "one is a paragon power and the other is a clear abuse of a loophole" you are in fact labeling everyone that disagrees with you as cheaters (intentions aside). Expect flak.

 

[Kzach]

Kzach I've played 4E preview games with you, you're a cool guy as far as I'm concerned. But when you state "one is a paragon power and the other is a clear abuse of a loophole" you are in fact labeling everyone that disagrees with you as cheaters (intentions aside). Expect flak.

Fair call. Sometimes when you live in your mind as I have for the last six months due to isolation, you tend to lose perspective. I'll try and remember to be less aggressive

 

[sukael]

From a record of a panel Mearls was on at Origins at http://www.critical-hits.com/2008/0...hing-you-wanted-to-know-about-fourth-edition/

Thanks! This is exactly the sort of thing I was referring to before, though I wasn't sure of a specific source for it.

 

[XCoconutMonkey06X]

Q: Fighters can take Ritual Casting, making them feel like “multiclassing without multiclassing.” Was that intentional?
A: “I’m glad you noticed that.” People can see other ways of multiclassing in addition to the feats. You can have pious Fighter who isn’t necessarily a Cleric. And all of these things play better than they read. For example, one of the characters in his groups is a Fighter that can throw a fireball and mark all of the monsters.

Not to change the subject here, but I'm curious as to how a straight fighter can take Ritual Casting? Don't they need the pre-req in Arcana Training? If I remember right, thats not on the list of available skills to train for fighters.

@Scadgrad
In my own defense, I had seen the breath weapon/marking bit on the DDI forums which spured my attempt at it last session Once I had looked at it all, it looked to me that it worked that way.

 

[NorthSaber]

Not to change the subject here, but I'm curious as to how a straight fighter can take Ritual Casting? Don't they need the pre-req in Arcana Training? If I remember right, thats not on the list of available skills to train for fighters.

It does require you to be Eladrin or to take Skill Training or one of the multiclass feats that givevs you Arcana or Religion, you're right.

 

[sukael]

It does require you to be Eladrin or to take Skill Training or one of the multiclass feats that givevs you Arcana or Religion, you're right.

Or take one of the multiclass feats that gives you skill training in Arcana or Religion.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't see much of a problem with it. If the Fighter isn't adjacent, some of the benefit of the mark is lost, anyway. It just nets a -2 attack penalty lasting one round to the breathweapon - not overwhelming.

 

[Lurker37]

Not to change the subject here, but I'm curious as to how a straight fighter can take Ritual Casting? Don't they need the pre-req in Arcana Training? If I remember right, thats not on the list of available skills to train for fighters.

The Skill Training feat isn't limited to your class skills list.

 

[Victoly]

All of 4e is cheese. Seriously, if you don't see that, I recommend a visit to the opthamologist, stat.

Kzach's Premise 1: All of 4e is cheese.
Kzach's Premise 2: Fighters marking with Dragon Breath is cheese.

Therefore, Fighters marking with Dragon Breath is consistent with what we should expect from 4E rules.


Sorry Kzach, I'm only poking fun, but when your retort amounts to saying that the whole system is bad it doesn't make you look like you're considering the debate very seriously.

As the rules are written, there's no reason a Dragonborn fighter couldn't mark using his breath attack. As was mentioned earlier, this interpretation is given further plausibility by the fact that none of the fighter powers which target more than one creature say anything about marking (implying that they can be used to mark more than one target).

That said, if it doesn't make sense to you for whatever reason, don't allow it. The worst a creature at range has to suffer is a -2 on their attacks for a single round (it's unlikely that the attack-for-a-shift benefit of Combat Challenge will come up that often for a creature that's already 3 or 5 squares away) and that doesn't seem like a huge deal to me one way or another.