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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 4630986" data-attributes="member: 996">Well, or an extra leader or controller.  Yes. If you ignore a defender you either take auto-damage (paladin) or a basic attack (fighter).  The ranger's ability to make two attacks (without a stat bonus to damage, + a die of HQ) is striker-level damage, in fact, Twin Strike is often considered the Ranger's best at-will.  Given that, isn't being able to make two basic attack per round (which include a stat bonus to damage) also striker-level damage?  So, in the two-striker scenario, the monster is taking striker damage x2, and going down fast, but, he can concentrate damage on one of the strikers, taking him down fast (or, at least, chewing through some healing surges, with which strikers are not abundantly endowed).  A few encounters of this scenario, and either both strikers are running out of surges (if they've been good about splitting damage between the two of them somehow), or one is dead.  For instance, if you have a TWF ranger and a rogue flanking and killing monsters, the best target is generally the ranger, since killing him ends his damage and reduces the rogues be eliminating the flank.  The adventuring day will thus end when the ranger runs out of surges, which'll probably be in the 2nd encounter.In the Striker & Defender scenario, the monster can either attack the fighter, who is higher AC and doing less damage, in which case he'll do take longer to eliminate him than he would the striker, or attack the striker and take striker x2 damage, /and/ hit the striker less often.  In either case, the monster inflicts less total damage on the party.  It probably inflicts more damage if it chooses the fighter, since it'll last a little longer taking striker + defender damage than striker x2 damage.  But, the fighter doesn't just have more hps, he has more surges, as well, so he can soak it up, both in that encounter, and over the course of the day.Now, from the monster's pov, being more likely to hit, and likely to take less damage is better; from the party's point of view, it might be better, in terms of eliminating that one monster, if the monster attacked the striker.  I think that's as far as you got in your analysis.  The monster attacks the defender, because it's the best thing for him to do, and the worst for the party.  But, it's /not/ the worst for the party, because the defender has more surges and more hps than the striker.  Over the course of the adventuring day (which the monster couldn't care less about, since, in the long run, it's dead), the party is better off if the monster lives a litttle longer and inflicts a little more damage on the defender than it would have on the striker, because the defender has the surges to recover from that beating and keep going for 3 or 4 or more encounters, while the striker would be lucky to survive two such encounters in a row, at all.So, the 'best' decision for the monster can also be the better one for the party, because monsters have 1 surge and no particular interest in what happens after it's dead, while the party has a lot of healing surges, and has to worry about future encounters.PCs are going to get hit 4e, it's better that the guy with 60 hps and 12 healing surges (204 hps of daily resilience) gets hit than the one with 44 hps and 7 surges (121 hps for the day).</blockquote>

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