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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 7704873" data-attributes="member: 6801252">Gosh, that's an awful lot of baggage! Are you sure you don't want to put some of it down? 4e... apologists? 4e Justice Warriors? I think that's more than a little inappropriate, particularly considering the political implications of the latter. A lot of people started playing with 4e, love 4e, and consider it an important part of DND, let's try to avoid othering them shall we?Anyway, I think you're sort of straw-manning the arguments of people whom happen to be pro-mark! I don't think anyone would argue the effect is that extreme, it represents the stress, physical, or in some cases magical interference of a warrior trained (as defined by their selection of class, or in this case, subclass) to protect others. Marks take a variety of forms, the basic mark is a -2 to a single monster, a verbal distraction- or a threatening stance, or an aggressive pushing attack, where the onslaught is designed not to land a hit, but keep the foe right here. Class marks, which are the ones usually used, vary considerably which is probably why the default presentation is so abstract- a fighter is standing ready to cleave them in two should they drop their guard to attack someone else. A sword mage has a magical shield ready to spring up if their allies are attacked, like a hex. In fact it's only the fighter that even relies on non-magical effects for it.Marks might also be enforced in different ways, the act of marking someone, is a reference to marking them out for special treatment so to speak. We have the magical shields of the sword mage, or maybe it's a verbal onslaught that keeps an intelligent foe off balance- a threatening stance that keeps an animal wary, or a partial tackle as that golem tries to attack your buddy, timed to physically throw their attack off. The trick of it is that the character is inventively doing something as part of defending their allies. In a way, it's very freeing- because the mark can represent a variety of things, it models a lot of different things.If the player says "I'm going to watch him and try to tackle him to throw their attack off" the DM would normally have to adjudicate some janky way of handling it, or say no. If the player says "I'm going to get him to focus on me by taunting his mother" the DM would normally again, just sort of fiat if it can work. But these are pretty core aspects of combat, so its nice to have an abstract mechanic- "Ok so you have them marked, they'll take a penalty if they try to attack someone else" -to implement to cover such situations where the character is harassing their opponent to throw them off of other people. But such abstract mechanics that are "mechanics first" have always featured prominently in the game, take for instance HP- it doesn't do a great job of simulating meat, and it's kind of annoying think of something as "hitting but not hitting" yet it's always been constructed that way. How about Treasure as exp in very early editions? That made players stronger by spending money REGARDLESS of what they spent their money on, why your strength would be proportional to the money found in that way is nonsensical. AC is another such element of the game that depends on abstraction- in the real world maces that could collapse plate were more effective against people in armor, not less, but in DND, you might as well have dodged it completely. People's wounds typically knit themselves up over night, and a single 8 hours of rest brings pretty much every character from almost dead to good as new, but that isn't narrative-breaking? In editions prior to 4e, there were spells that could detect alignment in the default game- "Well regardless of anything else, my evil-radar says you're evil so never mind any intrigue or moral questions!" and adventuring parties are often made up of people whom seriously hate and would never realistically travel together. Your rant about how an effect with a variable narrative is ridiculous just seems absurd given the basic premises of the game we're talking about. About that last bit, you're going to have to run by me again how 4e mechanics are the only thing in UA? Because if that's the case I haven't been seeing it- it seems like the majority of the subclasses and classes in UA have been using the "modified 2e, modified 3.5e" design that most of the PHB uses. Mostly vancian casting spellcasters, and martials that hit things with their sword, with some neat utility. Especially out of the recent UA's I feel that this is the first one with any real 4e inspiration- mostly just in the shape of the marking technique of the knight, and the "special arrow" powers of the Arcane Archer. At best, the samurai feels like essentials design ( i hit things! and i get to add neat stuff using rest based resources to hit things better) but since essentials was employing a unified design dynamic where some of the more successful 4e principles were applied to more traditional DND designs in a less extreme way... that kinda seems to be the gold standard for the actual goal of 5e, which is to create a unified DND tabletop. There is no other way to BE included, other than to have some options that do cater to the fans of 4e's design... the same way we have things that cater to design choices from earlier editions. It kinda seems like someone who likes 4e would be over stepping to you, unless there was none of the things that represent them in the game. It's not like a knight is hard to play without happening to have the word knight in your subclass- it COULD be a background, or a battlemaster, or many other things, the fact that this is called a knight is because they sat down to think of a fighter kit specifically for that, and realized that this mechanic was the best fit. Why not avoid it to make knights you do like, and let people who like it use it to make their knights?</blockquote>

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