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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5242041" data-attributes="member: 51942">Why is it reasonable to put heavy weight on multiattack melee powers that must target distinct targets, but not put such weight on multiattack melee powers that don't have such a requirement?Solo's are problematic in any case precisely because they have the acknowledged weakness that status effects can easily be abnormally useful against them.  Being marked is not so onerous as to require attacking the defender - it's one of the weaker status effects.  Solo's have advantages when it comes to marking as well, though - they're a single entity and parties with multiple defenders cannot divide and conquer nor could a single defender choose to mark those that have a particularly hard time of hurting the defender.  Edit: Let me rephrase less confrontationally: Solo's get screwed by marking but that's due to issues with solo's more than issues with marking.The fighter has to be included in any attack power - but why? - what's the purpose of marks in general?  The way I see it, they restrict choice - your choice of target must include the defender.  Each time you have a distinct choice to make, you must choose to target the defender.  That means that if you have multiple melee attacks, each individually targeted, each must target the defender.  If you've a close burst, you must target the defender - which may happen to include collateral damage.How that?  It doesn't say attack power - it says attack.  There's some discussion of what else is an attack depending on context, but so far as I know, it's generally acknowledged that the attacks defined in the PHB section on attacks (being melee, ranged, close and area) are certainly attacks.The secondary attack - which is called a secondary attack in the power - is an attack.  That attack, just like the primary attack, must include the defender or it's an attack which does not include the defender and thus suffers the consequence of violating the mark.Let's suppose that attack powers are attacks.  That does not mean that individual sub-attacks within complicated powers are not themselves also an attack.  We call these things multiattacks colloquially because they're powers which consist of multiple attacks.Fortunately, for an attack power (at least all common ones) we never need to make the decision whether the attack power itself independently of it's sub-attacks is considered an attack.  It's also clear that even though something having an attack roll may automatically be an attack, an attack roll by itself does not make an attack - it's just a key component.  As such, if a power has secondary attacks, they're considered attacks.  If a power includes attacks with multiple attack rolls, each attack roll is not necessarily an individual attack.The marked condition specifies:You take a -2 penalty to attack rolls for any attack that doesn't target the creature that marked you. So for any attack of "all of those attacks" the above condition must be satisfied or the mark is violated.There's a big difference though: a close burst is targeted not individually but as an area of effect, whereas a hydra can choose each target - and so could, for instance, happily attack the flanking rogue 7 times and the fighter just once.(Force Orb is an example of a misdesigned power - the secondary attacks on that almost certainly make more sense as an area burst rather than as individual ranged attacks by the wizard).In summary: Solo's and some monsters can be particularly affected by a mark, but it's not clear whether that's by design or by accident.  Monsters are there to be killed; and whatever you decide. the marked condition isn't powerful enough to be battle-ending (it's not like a stunlock, say).  Secondly, the attack power vs. attack distinction isn't a pretty one, but you don't need that distinction for marking effects to work per melee/ranged/close/area attack - they're called attacks and if you consider them attacks for the purposes of marking you arrive at my position.All this gets extra messy with things such as the new magic missile <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" /></blockquote>

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