[Request] Automated Mark Tracking

[NuptupTDOW]

I have made similar posts for Combat Advantage #215 and Condition #243 tracking for automation purposes, so I figured I should do the same for Marking since it's in the same vein as those, while being mechanically distinct and it's implementation will almost certainly be completely different.

At a surface level, automating a mark must cause the enemy to have a penalty to all of their attacks when you are not a target from said attack. This bonus is typically a -2, though can be different (for example Mark of Warding making it a -3).

The mark should clearly show who is doing the marking. (ideally by just having a condition on the marked enemy that shows the marking actor's token for the condition icon, or it could instead have a more visually stunning option such as the enmity lines used in games like final fantasy 14, where there's a visual arch that pulses between the marking actor and those marked by them. This could be done in a way to only show the line when either character's turn is active, leaving only the icon visible on all other turns.)

And that's pretty much it.

Breaking this down into it's component parts, showing who is marking a creature should be easy. Assuming there's a way to use the marking actor's token image as the visual for the condition, it should be simple enough to make marks apply a "Marked" condition to the creature that uses the token image as the icon for the condition, and then applies the baseline mark rules (-x to attack, which could default to -2, and can be modified with effects on the actor sheet such as mark of warding). I'm not entirely sure how this could be implemented, my first thought would be to make the enemy have a flat -x to all of their attacks, and then just give them a +2 to their attack if the target's name is equal to the name of the actor who marked them. I can't think of a more system-coded method since that's beyond my level of expertise, but I am just trying to get the discussion started about options.

Besides that though, anything else would be in addition to those base effects. For example, we could potentially set up a reaction trigger that, when a marked enemy performs an action that would trigger the defender's mark, as designated by the defender's marking power, it would prompt if the defender wants to use their punish mechanic. This would likely be very similar to the https://foundryvtt.com/packages/pf2e-reaction module made for Pathfinder 2nd Edition. Alternatively, maybe someone could just make a conversion of that module. (I'll do some preliminary looking to see what's possible with that route.)

If action tracking becomes a thing that ends up getting supported as mentioned in the earlier linked issues, we could even have the punishment trigger when actions of a specific type are used and/or have the defender's usage of their punishment be tracked so that it's not usable again before they would gain that action back.