Unintelligent enemies and marks

[Eurus]

So, in DMing 4e, one question I've never quite come up with a consistent answer for is how enemies should respond to being marked. Especially how that response might differ between more intelligent enemies and unintelligent or animalistic enemies.

Most of it depends on exactly how a mark is defined fluff-wise. I tend to assume that marking is obvious; that is to say, that a creature knows that it's been marked. It may not know exactly what violating the mark will do to it, but it at the very least knows that it'll be penalized for making an attack that doesn't include the marker. To that end, I usually assume that marking represents some sort of aggressive combat stance, putting obvious pressure on an enemy and forcing it to deal with you, distracting it from focusing entirely on other enemies and potentially punishing it for trying.

Intelligent enemies, one assumes, can take whatever seems to be the most beneficial action. That might involve using area attacks to hit both the defender and others, trying to get away from the defender, or gambling on whatever punishment might be involved to push/shoot through and attack softer targets.

Animalistic and unintelligent enemies are a little harder to decide on. Does a zombie even realize that it's been marked? It must have at least some capacity and instinct for self-defense to be capable of dodging attacks in the first place, so maybe. I usually have them treat marks as absolute; they'll just attack the marker if they can.

There's also, of course, the strategic element to consider. A fun game usually involves giving your players the chance to do things that works. So what's the purpose of a mark, generally speaking? Is it to discourage enemies from attacking the squishies, or is it to get off that sweet punishment? Should that influence my approach?

Anyway, I was curious. How do you all handle it?

[Inevitability]

Generally, you mark an enemy to keep it away from the squishies. Damage is the job of a striker.

And as for unintelligent enemies, just let them attack what makes sense.

If a zombie is adjacent to the fighter, with all the other party members 10 squares away, it isn't going to run + charge in order to get to them.

If, however, the fighter marked a zombie at a distance, while the zombie is adjacent to three of his allies, the zombie isn't going to walk to the fighter in order to attack him.

Corner case: If the fighter and a couple of allies are adjacent to the zombie, I'd say it attacks randomly. It's a zombie. It probably doesn't understand more than: 'move to enemies, attack enemies, repeat until dead.'

[Airk]

I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the rules, there is a confirmation of your belief that things KNOW they've been marked in some way. How to use that knowledge when playing a "Dumb" opponent is just part of the bigger question of "how to play a 'dumb' opponent at all". And it's going to vary by what the "dumb" opponent is.

If it's mindless undead, it probably won't have a problem with flailing away at whoever is closest, regardless of whether it's getting punished for it (though it might be more offended by the searing radiance of getting hit by a paladin mark and change its mind next turn). These same creatures might have no issue with shambling through a zone full of fire to get to their target.

On the other hand, if it's an ANIMAL, it's not going to take a lot of risks. It's probably going to try to minimize the damage it takes. Which it might not be able to do right away, because it might not understand that, say, the fighter can't punish it from 5 squares away, but the paladin can. And animals AREN'T going to rush through an area of obvious danger just to get to their prospective lunch.

So, yeah. Use your judgement. How dumb is that creature? It may not understand the -real- consequences of violating a mark until it watches one of its buddies get consumed with holy fire. Or it might not even notice until it feels the burn itself. Or it might just go for whoever's Braaaaaaains are closest. It depends. :P

[Calen]

I usually have my enemies go after whatever they consider the most dangerous. For dumber foes this is closest/whoever hit them hard recently. For the more intelligent they know that the big guy with sword is dangerous and should be treated with caution but there is still a chance that they will try to attack that guy that just hit them with a bolt of lightning a round ago.

Mechanically I try to let "reward" the person marking the targets by provoking every once in a while because I am DMing for new players.

[Kurald Galain]

While I don't think this is in the rules anywhere, I would have it depend on the intelligence of enemies. That's basically what Calen said, too.

[Hiro Protagonest]

The Paladin's mark outright states that it is a taunt made in a divine universal tongue, or something like that.

[Yakk]

So, "unintelligent" enemies are not unintelligent in the way we might think of it.

They aren't like a gun with a laser trip wire sensor that makes them fire.

Knowing how to walk, how to swing your arms to hurt something, having the "desire" to eat something -- these are all at or beyond the limit of what our smartest AIs can do.

As for "unintelligent" animals, animals are going to have a keen sense of cunning and tactics. They may not have abstract reasoning, but they won't behave like idiots in battle. You can fool an animal but only if you do a bunch of work to model its theory of mind and close its decision loop and cause pain from beyond its ability to sense you.

Something as tactically simple as "bob over there is swinging a sharp thing at you in a way that means if you turn away, it will stab you" isn't going to befuddle a creature of animal intelligence.

Now, for such a creature, I'd take the RAW that the creature knows about the mark, and riders on the mark effect, but not about abilities the marker has. And it may not figure them out just because an ally was exposed to them.

More intelligent foes might pull off the equivalent of a "knowledge" check and know about your character's capabilities *beyond* what the effects currently on them are.

So an animal marked by a Paladin's divine sanction will know "go after the Paladin, or be hurt", and weight that reasonably tactically against attacking the other creature next to him, or the sickly and weak one over there shooting fire out of its eyes (attack the weak members of the opposing pack).

An intelligent foe, meanwhile, might know about the Paladin's arcane at-will and white lotus riposte and pact blade, and know that attacking the paladin is also going to cause pain, even before the Paladin pulls off the trick. And even if the foe doesn't have foreknowledge of the trick, once the trick evaluates once the foe will figure out the triggers reasonably fast.

The animal will figure out what effects are on them, and what happened in the past, but may not work out how the abilities interact. And it might respond in a relatively simplistic way (attacks Paladin in a charge. Gets punished for it (ouch). The Paladin doesn't activate the trick next turn, but the animal doesn't understand what caused the trick, and still decides to move away from the Paladin and attack someone else. An intelligent foe would suspect that the "pain" from attacking the Paladin was actually tied to the Arcana keyword of the spell the Paladin cast on it (as the spell did damage of the same type as the pain), and behave accordingly.

Zombies might have the unlife intelligence equivalent of an animal. Or maybe they are just the equivalent of a bunch of triggered behaviors and half-decent balancing "AI" and their tactical program doesn't cover marking.

[Kimera757]

There are animals that use "defender tactics" in real life.

Musk oxen, for instance, will form circles with males on the outside, females next and young in the middle when attacked. Any creature trying to eat the vulnerable young must somehow get past the biggest musk oxen on the outside.

It's more of a "maybe" for lions. Lionesses could probably be modeled as skirmishers, and lions as elite brutes (not really defenders) but their job is to protect their cubs by killing hyenas that come near.

And some species of ants, especially army ants. The smaller workers ("minors") pin an enemy in place while the bigger works ("soldiers" or "majors") then kill it. However, the minors are just using a tactic, not actually trying to protect the majors.

Wolves sometimes try to eat musk oxen, so presumably they try to bypass the adults somehow. Enough musk oxen makes this impossible. (A group of wolves could probably take down a single adult musk oxen, but musk oxen live in groups and don't break the party.)

I don't think animals would find an adventuring party to be tasty. They would probably instinctively avoid anyone wearing metal armor (they don't smell right or taste good) but some squishies (such as Con-invokers) also won't smell right for the same reason. Ranged weapons alone give a huge advantage against beasts, and magic would just confuse them to huge advantage. Indeed, animals would probably instantly run away if hit by any magical damage effect (fire, psychic, whatever).

I presume a beast would try to eat a lightly-armored squishy, ignoring marks (trying to zip past fighters and other sticky defenders) but might deliberately engage a defender if they're trying to protect their territory. Animals aren't likely to be used to marks or opportunity attacks. (While in 4e virtually everything gets OAs, I suspect that I could run by a really vicious dog without it getting a "free attack". Not that it would do me much good; a dog's speed is probably better than mine.)

Some very tough beasts, like a T-rex, might simply run into a group of adventurers and try to run off with an unarmored character, ignoring marks and getting confused by the fighter's ability to stop it in its tracks.

As for zombies, they're dumb enough to walk through fire. They would probably just go after the nearest food source, regardless of marks, unless whoever is marking them is just as far away. Zombies are probably too stupid to be distracted. This means zombies by themselves don't make interesting combat encounters. You need necromancers or smarter undead to direct them.

[Inevitability]

Remember that many animals have poor eyesight, so a tiefling wearing leather armor may just look like a bull for a lion, causing it to attack the tiefling.

[Kurald Galain]

As a rule of thumb, creatures of animal to average intelligence obey marks. Creatures without intelligence do not notice marks and act as if the mark wasn't there. Creatures of above average intelligence ignore marks when they believe it's tactically sound to do so.