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What is a “mark” actually supposed to be?

How does combat challenge work? I mean. does any monster know that he was challanged? Is there any difference between marking (challenging) a scared kobold who will run away, a rat swarm, or a lich? How will different types of creature react?

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Take a look at rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/15605/… which is closely related – Simon Withers Aug 21 '12 at 22:09
@Simon I'd say it's an exact duplicate, actually. Any answer to this question is an answer to that one, and vice versa. – SevenSidedDie Aug 21 '12 at 22:11
The question is actually about "marking" and is a duplicate as @SimonWithers mentioned. "Whenever an enemy marked by you is adjacent to you and shifts or makes an attack that does not include you as a target, you can make a melee basic attack against that enemy." – F. Randall Farmer Aug 21 '12 at 22:31
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@SevenSidedDie: That other question is about marks in general, while this one is about fighters in particular. Most people don't really have a problem with the idea of putting some sort of arcane/divine/primal/whatever debuff on an enemy, but the purely martial version is a lot harder for some people to comprehend. – Oblivious Sage Aug 21 '12 at 22:37
Okay, sure. I'm still standing by my closevote, as I don't see that as making the questions and their answers any less functionally interchangeable. – SevenSidedDie Aug 21 '12 at 22:40

marked as duplicate by SevenSidedDie, F. Randall Farmer, RMorrisey, Simon Withers, Iszi Aug 27 '12 at 14:58

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You can think of marking a foe as paying special attention to that foe and using a fighting style that allows the fighter capitalize on any openings in their defenses. Presumably this combination of attention & stance is sufficiently threatening that most intelligent creatures, and many animals, can recognize the threat it entails (i.e. recognize that taking their attention off the fighter is a good way to get smacked).

Mindless creatures (oozes, plants, some undead, etc.) are incapable of noticing the fighters actions; this doesn't mean that they don't take the attack penalty (the fighter interferes with their attacks) or that they don't trigger combat challenge attacks by attacking the fighter's allies or shifting (the fighter can capitalize on those openings even if the foe doesn't realize the fighter is ready to do so). It may (depending on your DM) mean that those sorts of enemies don't take being marked into account when deciding what to do during combat however (so they might choose to attack the fighter's ally instead of the fighter, even though it's a tactically inferior choice).

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Im starting to think that you are the only person answering questions =] Thanks alot for all your help. – Guard No. 67 Aug 21 '12 at 21:47
@GuardNo.67: Happy to help. :) Not everyone has the time to lurk here all day (unfortunately), and of those of us who do, not everyone specializes in 4e; if you were asking Shadowrun questions, I wouldn't be much help. On a side note, you should have enough reputation now to upvote questions & answers. – Oblivious Sage Aug 21 '12 at 21:50

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