Community

Okay, okay. Maybe it's pretty obvious; maybe some of you have done this already, but a fighter and paladin can lay down some reasonably heinous punishment on a chosen target this way:

Fighter moves up to and locks down a chosen enemy, or enemies. Paladin with spear moves around to the side, attacks and marks opponent. Opponent must attack Paladin or suffer 8-10 damage; opponent must not move away from Fighter or suffer attack of opportunity. If enemy is smart, he attacks the Fighter -- he's more likely not to have his options restricted and take both sourcs of damage.

If I were the DM, I would have the enemy shift and attack the Paladin.

Sure, the fighter may stop him if he hits, but as a DM, I wouldn't have a monster NOT move because "oh well this guy has a special ability where if I move he can stop me". To the monster, shifting is a safe way to move, so it makes the most sense.

Otherwise, if the DM never moved the monster, you may as well change the fighter's ability to "monsters in melee range with fighters, cannot move at all"

But yeah, it is a good combo. Essentially what that happens is that the fighter gets a free attack and possibly stops the monster. If the fighter attack succeeds, monster attacks Fighter and feels some pain. If the monster makes it within range of the paladin, he attacks the Paladin. This combo allows us at most a free fighter attack + pally mark damage OR if the fighter misses, we essentially get nothing. One thing to keep in mind is that this tactic is good against ONE opponent. I'm thinking there will be less fights where you are up against one opponent, so this may not be as optimal as it seems. I think in many fights it wouldn't be used until there is 1 monster left, as a lot of the time you don't want both defenders simply trying to abuse 1 monster really hard, as other monsters are likely going after more vulnerable targets.

It is interesting how the Paladin having a melee weapon with reach kind of changes everything. Without that, there really isn't much of a combo to see. Forcing the monster to move a square just to hit the Paladin and his reach weapon, is really what makes the combo powerful.

Consider if the Paladin was a striker. Assuming the monster stands still and attacks the Fighter, it will take Paladin melee dmg + 8-10 damage. Can the striker deal that much? Very possible. Assuming the monster moves towards the Paladin(something he wouldn't do if the Paladin were a striker), it will take Paladin melee dmg + 8-10 + fighter melee dmg. That is more damage than a striker can deal, but also consider that it required the fighter to land his melee hit, so you can really only count on maybe half of his normal damage and half of the 8-10 damage(assuming he hits on 11+). So clearly the combo is much more powerful if the fighter lands his hit. If you assume the monster just stands there and hits the fighter, it looks like this is possibly around par with having a striker instead of a Paladin, depending on how much the striker deals on average.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but I doubt any of the groups I play in will have 2 defenders in the same group, so I will likely need to come and read about others abusing the combo!

skipdog172 wrote:

Assuming that the Paladin mark overwrites the Fighter's mark(I'm not sure if this is the case or not, can anyone clarify?), it seems like this combo is not all that effective.

Yes, only one mark per monster. Otherwise, I'd pity anything facing a 5-pally team.

braro wrote:

Can I get a link to the thread that Logan posted on?

Sure thing. It was on a different forum, I thought it was this one.