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1 year ago ::
Mar 17, 2012 - 10:49AM
#1
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Date Joined:
Jul 29, 2009
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I'm finding it very hard to implement marking as part of a role playing experience. It seems to me that marking opponents breaks my immersion to the game completely because I can't find any basis to support how a fighter makes his opponents unable to attack others than himself...
How do you handle it?
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1 year ago ::
Mar 17, 2012 - 11:03AM
#2
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Date Joined:
Jul 21, 2004
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I'm finding it very hard to implement marking as part of a role playing experience. It seems to me that marking opponents breaks my immersion to the game completely because I can't find any basis to support how a fighter makes his opponents unable to attack others than himself...
How do you handle it?
He doesn't make them unable, he makes it more difficult.
There are lots of ways. Mostly they rely on the understanding that there's more going on in combat than just what's rolled for.
For instance, the fighter is moving his body and his sword a lot. He's a master with his weapon, so imagine any cool fight scene from a movie and that's what's going on. He rolls for only one attack a round, but he probably makes a dozen in the space of 6 seconds. Once he has marked a creature, he has given it a large part of his attention and is using those unrolled attacks and unmeasured moves to harry and block that opponent from making attacks against anyone other than the fighter, and to exploit the opening the opponent gives when he DOES attack anyone else.
That's the main way I think of it. It gets trickier when the opponent has moved away and is still marked, which I think is why Essentials uses auras more than marking. Again, you can assume there are things going on that the game doesn't detail. Again, it's common in movies for attacking enemies to be blindsided and have their attacks miss. Since the fighter is paying attention to the marked opponent, maybe the fighter is doing cool stuff like kicking a dropped weapon or severed body part at the marked opponent, or jabbing his sword in the ground, hurling a dagger (abstracted) and grabbing the sword again faster than anyone can even blink. This isn't something he can normally do, but only sometimes when he's in the flow of combat. And this attack doesn't hurt the opponent, just throws off its aim.
You don't have to describe these things going on, but just think about them enough to assure yourself that there IS something going on.
I hope that helps.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
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1 year ago ::
Mar 17, 2012 - 12:08PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Oct 24, 2001
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The standard visual I use for marking is simple -- a fighter watches his enemy so closely that if that enemy attempts to turn his attention anywhere else, the fighter makes it harder.
Here are the PHB essentia, in my opinion: - Three Basic Rules (p 11)
- Power Types and Usage (p 54)
- Skills (p178-179)
- Feats (p 192)
- Rest and Recovery (p 263)
- All of Chapter 9 [Combat] (p 264-295)
A player needs to read the sections for building his or her character -- race, class, powers, feats, equipment, etc. But those are PC-specific. The above list is for everyone, regardless of the race or class or build or concept they are playing.
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1 year ago ::
Mar 17, 2012 - 4:25PM
#4
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Date Joined:
Jul 29, 2009
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The standard visual I use for marking is simple -- a fighter watches his enemy so closely that if that enemy attempts to turn his attention anywhere else, the fighter makes it harder.
How can a fighter who fights in melee watch his enemy closely (and make it harder to fight) if his marked enemy is 10 squares away?
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1 year ago ::
Mar 17, 2012 - 4:45PM
#5
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Date Joined:
Jul 21, 2004
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The standard visual I use for marking is simple -- a fighter watches his enemy so closely that if that enemy attempts to turn his attention anywhere else, the fighter makes it harder.
How can a fighter who fights in melee watch his enemy closely (and make it harder to fight) if his marked enemy is 10 squares away?
Well, the description you'd use depends how an enemy is marked 10 squares away, and it can change every time.
The mark only functions until the end of the fighter's last turn. That's only a handful of seconds since when the attack was made. The target, even 10 squares away, could still be readjusting its stance from whatever the fighter forced it to adopt to keep from getting completely smahed. It could be working out whether it made the right decision to disengage, looking over its shoulder to make sure the fighter isn't barrelling after him, or lining up a throw.
Also, bear in mind that the -2 penalty is only going to matter about 10% of the time. The rest of the time, the attack would have hit or missed anyway, so you could tell yourself that the fighter didn't make it harder for the target to fight.
Primarily, you have to want the effect to work the way it does. If you have some sort of problem with it apart from how it functions, you're not going to bother coming up with flavor for it, and nothing we can say will help you.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
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1 year ago ::
Mar 17, 2012 - 4:47PM
#6
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Date Joined:
Oct 28, 2010
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They get distracted by just how ridiculously scarily protective he was of his allies. Or he shouts imprecations about their courage or heritage at just the right moment.
Or, you may want to look into the Knight, who tends only to threaten people adjacent to him, which cuts out the issue entirely. Or another defender with a less martial flavour, such as the Paladin or Swordmage.
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1 year ago ::
Mar 17, 2012 - 4:48PM
#7
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Date Joined:
Aug 15, 2011
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The standard visual I use for marking is simple -- a fighter watches his enemy so closely that if that enemy attempts to turn his attention anywhere else, the fighter makes it harder.
How can a fighter who fights in melee watch his enemy closely (and make it harder to fight) if his marked enemy is 10 squares away?
Intimidation. He's rattled the foe, so it's not attacking right because it's shaking or constantly looking over his shoulder at him.
Distraction. He's yelling at the foe, taunting him for his cowardice and demanding he come back over here and fight like a true warrior. Or throwing rocks at him; harmless, but diverting attention.
I'm sure there are more.
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1 year ago ::
Mar 17, 2012 - 5:01PM
#8
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Date Joined:
Aug 30, 2010
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Also, keep in mind the "you go, I go" organization of combat is an abstraction. In reality, the moves are happening all at once. So while to us it looks like the opponent is 10 squares away, next round the fighter is going to close those squares, which means that he was on his opponents heels the entire time, hounding him.
Or, you know, several other dozen explanations, some of which have been offered. Point is, combat is a lot more complicated and messy than our turn-by-turn approach accounts for.
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1 year ago ::
Mar 17, 2012 - 8:19PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Jan 29, 2005
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The fighter is standing there with his sword ready to strike going "You want that wizard, don't you? Go get him. Go ahead. Walk on over and hit him. Do me the favor. What are you looking at me for? He's right over there." Enemy turns his attention to the wizard for one brief moment (tries to shift and/or move away)and THWAP! "Yeah. Go on. Do it again. Do me the favor".
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1 year ago ::
Mar 17, 2012 - 10:53PM
#10
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Date Joined:
Mar 15, 2008
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Fighter's mark is super easy to deal with in an RP aspect.
The creatures aren't "Marked" they're "Marked Distracted" by the giant bag of death standing over there in the armor. Basically the monsters are unwilling to let him out of their field of vision, and as a result when they try to focus on anybody else, they can't get the fighter out of their head, and don't attack as accurately. In so doing, they leave themselves open to the fighter itself attacking them in an exposed area they've left open because they're not paying full attention to what they're doing.
Fighter and Paladin marks are both super easy to RP. Actually most of the defender marks are easy to RP, that one just happens to be the one I have the easiest explanation for (besides Paladin, which is pretty cut-and-dry).
"Not only are you wrong, but I even created an Excel spreadsheet to show you how wrong you are." --James Wyatt, May 2006
Dilige, et quod vis fac
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