Paladins mark "fix" a plazebo?

[Plane Sailing]

Which only works when you are in a dungeon with lots of curves and no straight corridors.

...or a dungeon with, you know, corners. And doors. And rooms. With cover. Like pretty much every dungeon that has ever been designed.

Furthermore, works *anywhere* that there is cover. There is a reason I pointed out that the problem only really exists on the equivalent of featureless plains.

I'm surprised that you can't admit the validity of a point such as this.

Cheers

 

[Derren]

...or a dungeon with, you know, corners. And doors. And rooms. With cover. Like pretty much every dungeon that has ever been designed.

Furthermore, works *anywhere* that there is cover. There is a reason I pointed out that the problem only really exists on the equivalent of featureless plains.

I'm surprised that you can't admit the validity of a point such as this.

Cheers

Sure, but you also forget that in such a environment the fighter has a much easier time to keep the monsters away from the paladin. Does that weight more or less as the restricted line of sight? I don't know.

 

[TwoSix]

Sure, but you also forget that in such a environment the fighter has a much easier time to keep the monsters away from the paladin. Does that weight more or less as the restricted line of sight? I don't know.

Yes, but in that environment why would the monster run TOWARDS the paladin with the bow and the nasty curse? Just duck behind a pillar and his magic fails.

 

[Derren]

Yes, but in that environment why would the monster run TOWARDS the paladin with the bow and the nasty curse? Just duck behind a pillar and his magic fails.

Which means the monster takes an AoO and practically does nothing this turn. Why is that bad for the PCs?

 

[Fanaelialae]

In the wilderness the paladin has a lot more room to evade the monsters and can move in a way so that the monsters have to walk past some other PCs to catch him while he only has to stay within 40 squares of the marked enemy.

Let's assume, for simplicity's sake, that this outdoor area is vast and featureless (because difficult terrain and the like could be just as bad for the pally as the enemy, depending on placement).
-The paladin can start a maximum of 5 squares from the enemy (max range for DivC). Let's assume the enemy moves at the same speed as the pally (quite reasonable, since the pally is most likely wearing medium or heavy armor).
-As soon as the fighter engages one of the enemies, the pally marks (minor), shoots (standard), and runs (move= 7 sq). The pally is now 12 sq from the enemy.
-Marked enemy asks his buddies to help him and sends them after pally. X enemies perform a double run (standard + move= 14 sq). The fighter can't stop them because they have enough extra movement to run around him and still reach the pally, assuming the fighter is even between them to start with (they only need 12 sq movement to reach pally and they have 14 total to move). If they began from a position where the fighter could not interpose, they're now in a position to flank the pally.
-If flanked, the pally must provoke AoOs to move away from them. If not, he can shift (move) and move 5 sq (standard). Except now the mark fades off since he could not attack his target this round. Additionally, he's too far away to remark that target. He could provoke AoOs to move and still shoot, but then he's doing so every round. He could drop his bow and melee these enemies, but his mark is gone in that case too.
-Sure, the Cleric, Wizard and Rogue are all doing their own thing during this, but does the Pally honestly expect them to interpose and block the enemies from going after him? That would be pretty silly, IMO. That's the defenders' job, not the other roles.
-4e assumes the party will face an equal number of enemies to themselves. If the enemies are elite, this number is halved; if minions, it doubles. I expect it will be fairly difficult for the fighter to sticky himself to ALL of these enemies outside of the narrow hallway encounter (for which this tactic would work fairly well assuming the enemy couldn't push the fighter out of the way, teleport past him, or some such).

It applies because the fix doesn't fix anything. The only thing which prevented the DDXP paladin from attacking every round is that the pregen only had two throwing weapons. But the exploit itself, marking and making sure that the enemy can't reach the paladin, stays the same.

I've posted this in at least one thread. I can't recall if it was this one or not. According to the stats I have for the Young Black Dragon (to the best of my knowledge, this was the "boss" encounter at DDXP) has a power called Cloud of Darkness, which is an AoE that blinds everyone in it aside from the dragon. I wasn't at DDXP, so I can't say how the DMs there did or did not use this ability. If it was me though, I'd have dropped this AoE on the fighter (and as many of the other party members as possible) and flown over to the pally to attack. Before the fix, the pally could have shifted and run (move + standard) while the rest of the party chased after the dragon. After this fix, the pally who shifts and runs hasn't attacked the dragon this round, so the mark fades. If I recall correctly from the fix, the pally also cannot use his mark next round.

As far as I can see all it does is make it very likely that your mark will focus on you. IMO, working as intended.

 

[mlund]

I see absolutely no problem with this implementation.

Either the Paladin is drawing the foe towards his person up and down the battlefield - away from his allies - or he is calling down divine retribution to scourge his opponent. Either outcome works perfectly well.

Running around the battlefield with a Longbow, drawing the solo / elite monster back and forth across the brunt of your allies' attacks seems highly appropriate for an Eladrin, Halfling, or Elven Paladin, in my opinion.

Elites and Solos have many hit-points, broad attack options, and high to-hit modifiers so even if they ignore the Paladin and suffer a Radiant smiting of some sort they still function well.

Meanwhile mobs and minions really aren't important enough that having the Paladin spend all his time suppressing one with mediocre damage up-ends an encounter.

- Marty Lund

 

[Derren]

I wasn't at DDXP, so I can't say how the DMs there did or did not use this ability. If it was me though, I'd have dropped this AoE on the fighter (and as many of the other party members as possible) and flown over to the pally to attack. Before the fix, the pally could have shifted and run (move + standard) while the rest of the party chased after the dragon. After this fix, the pally who shifts and runs hasn't attacked the dragon this round, so the mark fades. If I recall correctly from the fix, the pally also cannot use his mark next round.

It was used but many people here have said that the DMs allowed the light cantrip of the wizard negate this power. So the next turn the paladin shifts or moves away and attacks while the fighter moves up close and locks the dragon again.

 

[Kraydak]

The mere existence of melee strikers as a viable concept mean that both of your points are weak - they have to have competitive ACs and decent hp/healing surge numbers, even if they are less. Meanwhile:

The paladin lacks the striker's mobility to reestablish range
The paladin loses out on his "strikerish" damage, while the actual striker keeps it up.

Which makes him utterly fail at being a striker once the line's broken or the mark acquires a ranged attack.

It is a fine indictment of the Paladin as a striker, because actual strikers get their own class abilities that help them deal with this situation, and Paladins have to fall back on being a defender instead.

If you assume that strikers have adequate defensive abilities that defenders are unneeded, then yes, a paladin striker would be unoptimal... Then again, a non-striker paladin would be unoptimal too. I was operating under the assumption that strikers needed defenders to protect them. Silly me. (And yes, I do worry about precisely that point, whether the defensive/mobility abilities of strikers make defenders obsolete. But that is hardly justification for bringing along defender paladins, now is it?)

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Which means the monster takes an AoO and practically does nothing this turn. Why is that bad for the PCs?

So, to make sure I am up-to-date on the conversation, the two (presumably) strong heavily armored guys take a turn to block the advance of a critter and uses a per-encounter ability in the process (I think I read somewhere above that the paladin ability was per-encounter - I could be wrong on that).

In exchange for ignoring the rest of the battle and using a power - one monster (out of who knows how many) takes one extra attack and doesn't strike at one of the good guys for a round.

I still fail to see the problem.

If the PCs use up a power in a combat they SHOULD get something good in return (damage, attacks, healing, NOT being attacked, etc).

 

[Fanaelialae]

It was used but many people here have said that the DMs allowed the light cantrip of the wizard negate this power. So the next turn the paladin shifts or moves away and attacks while the fighter moves up close and locks the dragon again.

If he shifts he's still in range of the dragon's bite attack (which deals ongoing acid damage). If he moves he suffers an attack of opportunity and is in range for the dragon's Frightful Presence encounter ability (burst stun). He can also be targeted by the dragon's Breath Weapon (33% recharge). The Cloud of Darkness (66% recharge) might be countered by the Wizard's light cantrip, but only on the Wizard's turn. The Dragon can still use it to free himself to chase after the paladin, every time it recharges. It seems to me that the dragon has plenty of ways to chase after and damage the pally, denying him his "striker" role and affirming his defender role.

If the designers had been perfectly happy with the way the DivC worked at DDXP, they wouldn't have fixed it.