D&D 4E Should spellcasters still be priority targets in 4e?

[DracoSuave]

As a DM, your priority target (for intellegent monsters anyways) should be leaders, strikers, then controllers, and lastly defenders.

Leaders obviously, but they tend to be good at sucking fire. Strikers do the most damage, and are the easiest to take down. Controllers are obviously easy to take down, and defenders -want- you to prioritize them, that's their whole shtick.

For PCs, it depends on role and tactical concern.

 

[Lord Ernie]

It largely depends on the situation, I think. I switch between playing and DM'ing, myself, and I usually go for either the team's taclord. My monsters tend to switch their targeting to the wizard, however, whenever he pulls out his dailies and starts messing with the entire encounter; we've just reached level 6, and the wizard's level 5 dailies (first Stinking Cloud, then Grasp of the Grave) have basically determined the outcome of every encounter they were used in until I interrupted his chance to sustain them.

On the other hand, my co-DM has often despaired at the amount of healing my cleric can hand out each combat, especially if I burst out my own daily healing powers.

 

[Shin Okada]

As a DM, your priority target (for intellegent monsters anyways) should be leaders, strikers, then controllers, and lastly defenders.

Leaders obviously, but they tend to be good at sucking fire. Strikers do the most damage, and are the easiest to take down. Controllers are obviously easy to take down, and defenders -want- you to prioritize them, that's their whole shtick.

For PCs, it depends on role and tactical concern.

Tend to agree. Another logic in the intelligent monster's mind would be that "Whom I can kill/lock up easily".

For example, monsters who attacks against AC will likely to attack someone lightly armored and yet one is not dodging blows well (low dex/int).

Soldier monsters with defender-like abilities or something with threatening reach will try to lock up PCs who are using area or ranged attacks.

By the way, IMHO in 3.Xe, "spellcasters" were not the right category for choosing primary target. Usually, clerics were.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Order of priority:

1)Monsters that summon other monsters
2) Monsters that heal/buff other monsters
3) Monsters that impose debilitating conditions
4) Monsters with high damage output
5) Everything else

 

[WalterKovacs]

From the monsters point of view, based on the roles:

You want to take out the striker ASAP. Even getting him down for a round could give you some breathing room. If they are smart, they may go after the leader first, because taking out the healer might mean that he stays down. The controller is probably only a target if he's sustaining a nasty effect. Dropping him means the effect goes down. For the defender, it's situation of, once he starts tying people up, everyone works on the defender at once to try to get him to back off (or at least lay off marking as many as possible, and trying to get him down to free up those stuck to him.

It's up to the DM to determine the monster tactics in part based on the creature type/intelligence. A lot of times my monsters will attack the closest person, and sometimes use "lightest armor" or relatively lightest armor (i.e. cloth/chain, scale/leather and plate/hide are the three levels of armor) to find who to go after, etc. For a villain that definitely knows what is going on in the party (either has them scouted, or is able to figure it out after a round or so) would likely go after the leader first, than either the controller (especially if there are sustainable effects to cut off)or the striker. Of course it also depends on what the monster does. It doesn't make a lot of sense to immobilize the controller unless you are going to trapping him for melee guys. On the other hand, a well timed immobilization of a defender or striker early in the fight can render them useless for a short period of time.

 

[CapnZapp]

should spellcasters still be priority targets in 4e?

In 4E whether you cast "spells" or you cast "prayers" or you perform "exploits" is of little concern. The difference is mostly a fluff one.

A more relevant question for 4E would be "should controllers and strikers be priority targets in 4E?"*

Whether you cast spells or not is simply an outdated outlook. In 4E, an archer or poison spitter or electric javelin hurler can be exactly as lethal as a spellcaster with fireballs or magic missiles.

Conversely, you could cast spells but still be a low-priority target, if you're an arcane defender.




*) The answer btw is "yes": it's often beneficial to take out artillery monsters before the brutes and soldiers.

 

[Ryujin]

As the others have said, it tends to be situational. If that Archer Ranger is devastating the opposition, then you concentrate on pinning him down. If the Leader is actually acting like a leader, you might want to make him have a bad day early on. If the Controllers start limiting the field, then they need to be stopped.

In general though I would concentrate on Strikers, then Controllers, followed by Leaders.

 

[KarinsDad]

But strikers generally have just as many surges as controllers and seem less likely to emphasize CON on most characters (warlocks being the huge exception here). And many strikers will be exposed as a matter of routine, as opposed to controllers that often take more work to get to. So damaging them is easier, and is just more likely to seriously hurt the group on surge depletion.

The issue of surge depletion might be relevant to the DM over the course of an adventuring day, but it should be irrelevant to target selection over the course of a single encounter.

The NPCs don't know about surge depletion.

 

[Akaiku]

Always focus on the leader. Unless there is some horrible cost to do so.

If a striker is devastating the opposition, you might focus fire on them, but only if you have ranged attacks, and that only works cause you get one immediate interrupt.

 

[RossGarner]

Leaders first nearly always.

If the goal of the monster is surviving and winning the battle then they need to reduce the total amount of damage a party can produce quite quickly. It might seem counter intuitive then to target the parties leaders rather than their strikers or DPR focused controllers / defenders, but in the grand scheme of things leaders allow their partners to continue fighting through healing or due more damage through buffing / debuffing. Once a leader has been eliminated, the fight becomes more of a cleanup, take out the lightly armored strikers / controllers, and then kill off the defenders. If the monsters focused on any other type of player first, the player would simply be revived by their leader and the fight would continue on. This is situational though, a party of regenerating trolls, would probably remove the fire casting wizard first; for instance.