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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrozenChrono" data-source="post: 4634916" data-attributes="member: 70738">In response the the OP:Most of the time it's already in the best interest of the party for the marked enemy to attack someone other than the fighter. So your proposed solution isn't necessary and so we can go strait to the paradox. (I'll discuss Paladin specifics below)The paradox you bring up is basically the same as hedging your bets, or diversifying investments. Investing your powers/actions into making any decision the enemy makes benefit you as much as possible so that your powers are as effective as possible. Alternately the enemy doesn't know everything about the results of his actions. The fighters attack could miss, which would make it totally worth it to charge the wizard, but if he hits you're stopped and you've wasted your action. Sometimes it's worth the risk. He also doesn't know exactly how many hp someone has left. If he sees a warlock who's blooded and taken a few hits he'd probably think "one more hit could take him down" but you're warlock would know he only has 2 hp and one more hit will take him down, so marking the bad guy, and dropping a dire radiance on him helps the party either way. If the bad guy stays with the fighter your warlock can keep pounding him, if not he has to deal with taking a bunch of extra damage which could get him killed before his buddies arrive to help.It would be great if we could just make the enemy choose to jump off a cliff with there actions every time, but that's not gonna happen. Limited control is better than no control over an enemy's actions.Paladins:A few things haven't been taken into account in the paladins favor. At least not adequately. -The ability to effectively give your healing surges to your allies has the same effect as taking the damage yourself in the first place. (so the enemies might as well attack you and not bother with the automatic 3+ damage)-Abilities like Martyrs Blessing, and Divine Bodyguard have the same end effect as Lay On Hands. Your hp get taken no matter who gets attacked.-Paladins are more effective against the enemy they've marked. You can either do extra damage or give them an additional -2 to hit anyone including you with your at wills. (or -4 to hit anyone that's not the Paladin)-Paladins have several other powers, even at heroic levels that make allies harder to hit, or heal them. -Divine Power has not been released yet so factoring in fighter powers from Martial Power is not taking the whole picture into account.I would say Paladins are about as effective at tanking as fighters. They just do it in a very Leadery way, Fighters do it in a strikery way, and Swordmages do it in a controlery way.I do agree this doesn't exactly match the image of a shining champion hit me instead type Paladin many of us may think of, but with the proper flavoring you could do a lot to get to that. You can also multiclass between them to get the perfect mix that you're looking for. (or just make a fighter and call him a paladin)</blockquote>

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