DMG Marking

[Theodoxus]

I literally read the option on Saturday, and I'm away from book now and have no idea what it actually does... I do recall thinking 'well, this is a serious downgrade from how marking worked in 4E' but I can't for the life of me remember the specifics...

Let's see what the interwebs state: "Whenever a creature makes a melee attack, it can choose to Mark its target (whether the attack hits or not).If the Marked creature provokes an Attack of Opportunity from the attacker that Marked it, the Attack of Opportunity does not consume the attack's Reaction. This Attack of Opportunity can only be performed once. That is, a second AoO will consume a Reaction.
Any AoOs made by the Marker against its Marked target, whether the special non-Reaction one granted by Marking, or the regular one that uses a Reaction, has Advantage." (Per Reddit, from 7 years ago, hence the 'AoO' rather than 'OA' language.

Ok, yeah, interesting. Granting a free OA that doesn't burn your reaction... that's a pretty progressive stance for a game that takes a very strong 'no additional reactions'. But it still isn't replicating Marking from 4E, which made the Mark have Disad when not attacking the Marker. This is less of a 'look at me' option, and more of a 'I might be very sticky, maybe.'

If you're looking at making it a Fighter only ability, I don't see anything wrong with it, though it would definitely encourage Sentinel builds (which from my experience don't get as much love as I personally think it deserves - so such an update would make me happy. Even better would be adding the marking to Sentinel itself - although I can certainly see where doing so would make the feat nearly a tax for any frontliner (not that I think that's a bad thing, but it does start down the slippery slope of 'well, if we're giving it for free, why not 'X Y & Z' too'). (Basically, it's a Catch-22 solved by combining the options into one, but if you're gonna do that, why make it feat at all, just drop it into the Fighter chassis wholesale, amirite?)

Personally, I think 5E is way too light on OAs and OA triggers. It makes combat pretty boring and repetitive when basically anyone can sit on top of another and cast or shoot, with the only negative being disadvantage; easily solved all kinds of ways. For some reason people (WotC) think that removing the Move Action as a thing meant that OAs should be pared down to just moving out of someone's threat (or into, or casting next to, both with feats). But since OAs are not interrupting, but rather inconveniencing (outside of a PAM Sentinel build), there's no legit reason that a 3.x/4/PF style OA system couldn't be used. Yeah, it potentially hurts to run past the warrior... it kinda should.