Multi-attack actions = one attack or three?

[CapnZapp]

Eamon, I am, effectively, suggesting a houserule to Hospitaler's.

Or are there other abilities that key off "each attack" in the game?

 

[eamon]

Eamon, I am, effectively, suggesting a houserule to Hospitaler's.

Or are there other abilities that key off "each attack" in the game?

All marks do: For instance, a is ranger marked by a fighter. If he uses twin strike to attack the fighter and someone else, the attack against "someone else" currently violates the mark. A monster that has a multiattack currently needs to attack the PC by whom he is marked with all attacks of that multiattack or take a -2 penalty (and suffer class-dependent additional effects) on all attacks that don't target the defender. A creature can forgo attacks to avoid violating the mark, of course.

In the general case, this is particularly complex; since multiattacks may include non-attack portions such as moving things around on the battlefield. Or, someone may use an immediate reaction or interrupt (or whatever) in the middle of the multiattack. In any case, multiattacks can't be simultaneously resolved, and that means that you can get into paradoxes if you consider the overall attack to not violate the mark if just one of the attacks targets the marker (i.e. the attack versus the marker turns out to be impossible or simply unattractive by the time it's made, or, the creature takes penalties that turn out to have been invalid since it later attacks the marker).

 

[eamon]

Possible fix:
A character can only benefit from hospitalers blessing once per turn. Problem solved.

That would work fine. (Not that I'm advocating a fix, I don't know the hospitaler that well, but if you want to fix it, this is simple and effective). Nice!

 

[DreamChaser]

One problem with monsters is, mostly, Elites and Solos, whose attacks are equivalent to several monster attacks.

So if a defender trumps all of these attacks, it's comes as too strong (because he wouldn't be able to mark the equivalent amount of monsters).

Likewise, if only one defender can mark an Elite or Solo, then it's too weak (because anequivalent amount of monsters could be marked by several defenders).

This breaks down when one figures in two things:

First, a defender can only ever "trump" one attack per round no matter how many creatures he has marked or how many attacks that don't include him an enemy makes.

Second, all of the defenders have ways of marking multiple creatures in a single turn (divine sanction, power effects, multiattack powers, and just the way wardens are).

Given these points and the points tha you made, it seems clear that the intent is that multiple attack powers are intended to count as multiple attacks for the purposes of marking. Why?

If a solo is the equivalent of 4-5 creatures but can only be marked by one defender, then the party essentially gains 1/5 the benefit of any one defender (who could conceivably mark several of the creatures) and even less if the party has more defenders (who could easily mark all of them). While a defender marking virtually never eliminates the damage of an enemies attack (PP not withstanding), it grants an edge to demonstrate that the defender is doing his job: running interference for the rest of the party. For an equal-level solo, this is likely to be a pretty minor edge and far from game breaking and given that the party cannot stack on defender effects for a solo, defenders would be nerfed in solo fights if every solo / elite creatures "make 3 claw attack" attacks essentially ignored the mark.


My suggestion (in agreement with some above):
Melee & Ranged = each target equals one attack
Close & Area = one attack
# attacks = # damage rolls.

DC

 

[Doctor Proctor]

In almost all cases, however, the mark wouldn't be 4 times as effective. A normal paladin's challenge can only trigger once a round. A fighter can only use CC once a round. A warden could use his interrupt or reaction only once a round.

Of course the plain old mark effect does apply several times. However, it imposes a -2 penalty to separate attacks, rendering each less effective. Similarly, if you could grant resistance to all damage, that resistance would apply to each attack separately. That's actually very similar to what hospitaler's blessing does; except the mechanics are subtly different: instead of granting resistance to the attack, it heals damage per attack.

Now, it's perhaps not a wise mechanic, and perhaps Hospitalers blessing should be fixed again - but as is, it clearly applies to each attack and will apply several times when there are several attacks - just like resistance does.

If there should be a change; it should be to the Hospitaler, not the general notion of an attack or of a mark. Granting resistance is strong, and healing can even reduce damage below 0, so that's even better. On the other hand, let's not exaggerate the effect here; the monster can easily avoid this healing by not violating the mark - that's why these mark penalties are so high in the first place. Further, the hospitaler isn't the only marking defender that has the ability to severely cripple foes that violate the mark.

Getting the blessing right is a matter of balance - I don't think tweaking the interpretation of marks and attacks is the best way to address that balance.

Edit: To be clear, I (now) realize you're suggesting a house rule, but I just don't think the Hospitaler should be the inspiring example here. It's so far from ordinary that changing the way marks on monsters work in general because of the hospitaler is just approaching that problem from the wrong side.

I'd have to agree with this... Marking and Multi-Attacks aren't the problem, it's that Hospitalier's Blessing is a bit too strong when Multi-Attacks are involved.

Part of the point of marking is to get an enemy to focus solely on the Defender, or suffer the consequences. If that enemy can now attack two, three or four of your allies, as long as you're included, that becomes really powerful. This is why things like Close Bursts can get really annoying when playing a Fighter, is because the baddie is now hitting your allies, but you can't do anything about it.

But giving that same level of protection to powers that are clearly Multi-Attacks really hurts Defenders a lot, when it's only the Hospitalier's Blessing that's causing the problem.

 

[Felon]

I had similar ponderings about the bard paragon path Karmic Shaper and its 11th-level encounter power, Karmic Wound. It says:

"If the target hits with an attack before the end of your next turn, it takes 1[W] + your Wisdom modifier damage."

 

[flashedarling]

I was curious about this too but it was pointed out in another thread that the PHB covers this.

Players Handbook Page 270:
Melee Attacks:
Targeted: Melee attacks target individuals. A melee
attack against multiple enemies consists of separate
attacks, each with its own attack roll and damage roll.

Ranged Attacks:
Targeted: Ranged attacks target individuals.
A ranged attack against multiple enemies consists of
separate attacks, each with its own attack roll and
damage roll.

So a dragon can't divide its triple claw attacks around without triggering the fighters mark.

I was looking this up because a whole bunch of the new shaman powers put have your spirit mark an enemy and since spirit companions can only be targeted by melee or ranged attacks this makes a big difference for them.

 

[keterys]

The last time this discussion came up... apparently a couple weeks ago - http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...rike-area-attacks-ignores-fighter-mark-2.html - I noted that there were many more than 100 creatures whose attacks were setup to specifically target multiple creatures, but still melee or ranged, and I'd suspect that they're intended to cope with marks but weren't necessarily designed correctly to do so.

RAW is clear, however, on how to handle things, but I'd say that it's probably reasonable to have any power that can multiattack/target only require one against the defender (or soldier, when this happens to a PC). The mark is still very much affecting things, by diverting an attack.

 

[eamon]

The last time this discussion came up... apparently a couple weeks ago - http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...rike-area-attacks-ignores-fighter-mark-2.html - I noted that there were many more than 100 creatures whose attacks were setup to specifically target multiple creatures, but still melee or ranged, and I'd suspect that they're intended to cope with marks but weren't necessarily designed correctly to do so.

RAW is clear, however, on how to handle things, but I'd say that it's probably reasonable to have any power that can multiattack/target only require one against the defender (or soldier, when this happens to a PC). The mark is still very much affecting things, by diverting an attack.

Some of those multi-attacks can be pretty hefty though; I'd say it's definitely abusive if you have a triple attack attack once against the defender and twice against the neighboring warlock, say.

I think it's an unreasonable nerf to defenders to let most multiattacker ignore the mark like this. Most multiattacks have the option of hitting the defender; they should be forced to make that choice. If you look at solo's, for example, many have multiattacks. But if these solos are still effected by things like prone +daze normally (generally), and still usually have the choice to actually focus on the defender. Or; if they don't they violate the mark which is usually OK. In any case, solo's present all kinds of weaknesses (by being vulnerable to status effects), of which marking is certainly not the worst.

Multiattacks generally have an option to do something else in any case; it's not like they're forced to multiattack several targets - that's a perk. If an attacker had one big damage attack he couldn't split it half of it away from the defender either. It's pretty rare (as far as I can tell, I just skimmed through the MM again) for a multiattacker to be forced to pick two different targets; most of the multiattacks are in the style of "the goristro makes two slam attacks".

In general, I'd keep PC's and monsters alike to this rule - marks are intended to restrict an attackers flexibility, I think it's a pretty big (unnecessary) nerf to let em split multiattacks. Multiattacks are fairly common too...

I could imagine a few specific exceptions; but those would be the exception, not the norm, and I think that'd be a sign of a design flaw in a monster (i.e., in need of errata). If many DM's are regularly playing fast and loose with the marking rules, then there's something wrong, somewhere: those rules were obviously intended mostly for the PC's to use against monsters (though occasionally the other way around), and they should at the very least work in that normal case.

 

[CapnZapp]

Some quick comments:

1) allowing the monsters to "cheat" isn't a bad thing. Really. Some comments treat monster attacks like they were PC attacks, which they aren't
2) some of you are advocating that monsters "should" be forced into using the smallest subset of actions if they want to avoid the mark. But using all the powers in the statblock equates to the most fun. Reducing that fun is no fun.

Besides, the Hospitaler ability is very strong regardless.

So I strongly suggest you don't look at monsters as if they were player abilities that could be "abused". Monsters can't "abuse" the rules - they can and do break them outright, but not out of spite, but because the game is more fun that way!

I suggest a monster with a triple attack only needs to direct one attack onto the defender, and the rest on whomever.

The fact it needs to make that single attack is in itself a big win for the defender and the party. Now the rest of the PCs simply need to make sure it's awkward for the monster to hit both them and the defender at the same time.

But if this ability meant the monster had to spend all attacks on the Paladin all the time (to avoid triggering the mark) that might mean a small boost to the Paladin players fun, but a big loss to the overall fun of the game.