D&D 4E SRM Marking Marked and Other 4Eisms

[JahellTheBard]

it is more of a combat minis game than role playing game!

I have the same feeling !

 

[Lizard]

Ninja WotC Employee Attack! 4th Edition Anime Thunder Dragon Tail Golden Wyvern Cut Slash Strike!

To address some concerns in a totally informal way:

Concern 1: Hey, can't the paladin just mark the target and just run away?

Answer 1: Gee, that does seem like the kind of thing the ability should take into consideration. Last I checked...it does. (Deletia)

Concern 2: Can't you just mark an ally to remove another mark?

Answer 2: Last I checked, you can. I have serious doubts you'll want to. (More deletia)

As I said...I didn't THINK the rules would be so lame as to have direct prohibitions against these things.

Rules balanced so that seeming 'exploits' bite the exploiters in the ass==good rules.
Rules "balanced" by declaring expoitable tactics just can't happen 'cause I said so==bad rules.

WOTC apparently writes good rules.
Some of WOTCs defenders, however, like to spend a lot of time justifying the possibility of bad rules.

Interesting.

 

[Cadfan]

"it is more of a combat minis game than role playing game!"

I have the same feeling !

There should be a name for this fallacy, in which one reasons that the more combat options a game has the less roleplaying options it must have as a result. Its similar to the "D&D Fallacy," (which I just named) where people apply D&D character balance rules to real world people: "He's strong, so he must not be agile." "She's attractive, so she's not smart." Just as not all real life people are created from a limited point buy that forces them to skimp on statistics in one category to excel in another, real life gaming systems do not have a finite amount of positive traits which must trade off against one another.

Once this fallacy is given a name, we can then vastly overuse the name, working ourselves to the point where both the name, and the argument it represents, are greeted with groans of annoyance. I will consider that a victory.

 

[hong]

As I said...I didn't THINK the rules would be so lame as to have direct prohibitions against these things.

Rules balanced so that seeming 'exploits' bite the exploiters in the ass==good rules.
Rules "balanced" by declaring expoitable tactics just can't happen 'cause I said so==bad rules.

WOTC apparently writes good rules.
Some of WOTCs defenders, however, like to spend a lot of time justifying the possibility of bad rules.

Interesting.

Call it experience gained from the hit point wars.

 

[Kraydak]

Ninja WotC Employee Attack! 4th Edition Anime Thunder Dragon Tail Golden Wyvern Cut Slash Strike!

To address some concerns in a totally informal way:

Concern 1: Hey, can't the paladin just mark the target and just run away?

Answer 1: Gee, that does seem like the kind of thing the ability should take into consideration. Last I checked...it does. If a paladin calls upon the power of his god to lay his divine vengeance upon any who are to cowardly to face him...he'd better be ready to face them.

Oh really? How, pray tell? Paladins aren't going to have striker mobility, and the suggested marks we have heard about do not reduce the target's mobility. This means that the mark *needs* to be able to work at range, and *needs* to not need a frequent melee refresh.

Concern 2: Can't you just mark an ally to remove another mark?

Answer 2: Last I checked, you can. I have serious doubts you'll want to. Lets see, I can damage my ally with my attack and impose a penalty on attack rolls...or let the monster impose the exact same penalty on attack rolls. Also, I've wasted a precious action in doing so. Possibly a standard action. Also, I'm no longer actually defending my allies, and the monsters are now in no danger of being targeted by any of my powers that deal with marked foes. Yep. That was a good decision.

Marking a friend will probably usually not come up. But slow moving melee specialists are the group *most* likely to have spare actions. Several suggested marks (AoO triggering, for example) have *no* penalty for having a friend's on you. If you cannot inflict a mark with an unarmed strike, prison break and noble's party scenarios are going to be all kinds of interesting. While people will probably rarely bother overwriting marks, if marks are strong enough to dissuade certain actions, they are enough to warrant possible dispels.

Concern 3: What kind of in-world sense does marking make?

Fighter marks someone: The fighter's stance and attacks keep an opponent's attention focused on him; that foe knows that if he wavers his attention for just a second, it might give the fighter the chance to strike, and strike hard. Even when attacking someone other than the fighter, that foe keeps looking out of the corner of its eye at the fighter, wary of another incoming attack.

Paladin: A surge of divine energy flows from the paladin to the enemy, giving the weight of the gods to the words of his challenge. As a sanctified agent of that god, the paladin acts as a representation of that deity's power, and when the paladin has given his word that he will challenge that foe his god makes sure all know that his word is law.

Concern 4: What kind of in-world sense does "no overlapping marks" make?

Answer: Aside from the fact that sometimes a game rule has to happen for balance reasons and rationalization concerns come second, let's look at the two possible explanations:

Paladin overwrites fighter: The enemy has been keeping a wary eye on the fighter, not daring to give him an opening. When touched by a power flowing directly from the gods, that foe has bigger things to worry about; the power of the divine is not to be trifled with.

But stopping paying extra attention to the fighter doesn't overwrite the fighter's mark. It *triggers* it. Unless you are saying that your god is protecting your foe from your ally.

Fighter overwrites paladin: A divine challenge has been issued, and the gods have backed the paladin's challenge. With the fighter's intervention, the sanctity of the challenge is tainted, and the paladin must once again seek out an enemy to challenge directly without he fighter's intervention.

By that argument, the paladin's mark should drop if *anyone* does *anything* unkind to his mark. How does a fighter paying extra attention to the target taint the sanctity of the challenge more than, say, a rogue's sneak attack?

Sure, everything makes sense if you are allowed to say "because the gods make it so, even if it makes no sense given the tactical situation or the god's personalities". But, then, if an explanation could cover any situation, it is worthless.

 

[Lizard]

Seems like they've reduced the *rolls* in combat but introduced whole new layers of tactical complexity at the same time. :\ .

It's a lot easier to keep track of booleans than numbers. It seems that many 4e mechanics are gated or triggered.

"This gives me +1, that gives me -3, this is +4, but only with my sword, unless it's a Tuesday" is more complex for most people than "If A is true, I can use attack Y. If B is true, I can use attack Z. Both A and B are true; I will pick an attack."

Or maybe it's just because I've been a programmer for 30 years. I'd rather have my options be dictated by tactics then try to juggle ever-changing numerical modifiers, and if that's the path 4e took, it will succeed in 'simplfiying' combat without removing tactical depth.

 

[Lizard]

Well, heavens above, it's not like we want to reduce it to a noob's game, now do we?

No, and I'm pleased it looks like they haven't. Even if have to learn a whole bunch more silly immersion breaking rules to replace the old silly immersion breaking rules we finally got used to. (Hey, WOTC apologists! Wanna explain to me how 'muscular action closes the hole'?)

 

[jtrowell]

While it's certainly not "the rules" - the phrase from the article is "a creature can be marked by only one opponent at a time and new marks supersede old marks" - which certainly seems to imply 1) you can mark an already marked creature 2) It replaces the existing mark.

Note the *opponent* part ...

 

[hong]

Sure, everything makes sense if you are allowed to say "because the gods make it so, even if it makes no sense given the tactical situation or the god's personalities". But, then, if an explanation could cover any situation, it is worthless.

No, it makes it very useful.

(Empirical falsifiability? What's that?)

 

[Lizard]

Do all of those who are complaining about having to distinguish between allies and enemies have trouble with the 3.x flanking rules?


glass.

Hmm?

If I end up in a situation where I and an 'enemy' are flanking a PC, and I decide I want to play 'find Fred's spleen' (mebbe he cheated at cards), I would expect to get the +2 flank bonus on him. Hell, Fred should be flat-footed against me, since he wasn't expecting it...