There I was, my almost-lifeless body laying motionless on the ground, bleeding out from an arrow to the chest followed by a 40-foot fall off of what basically amounted to the Bridge of Khazad-Dum from LOTR.  And my fellow party members were actually considering letting me die.  It was many rounds, and many VERY lucky saving throws later before they finally made their way to my unconscious sorry-excuse-for-an-adventurer self. 

Let me explain.  My current character, Exodann, a genasi swordmage, is a bit of a risk-taker.  Although he makes a halfway decent tank, he seems to excel at the mark-and-move strategy.  While he is not the best at straight-up melee over extended periods, he is pretty devastating if he can maintain a high level of mobility.  Typically Exodann will rush into combat quickly, drop one of his AoE encounter powers, mark whatever seems scariest with Aegis of Assault, and move on to another group of baddies.  When whatever he marked attacks someone else, he uses the Aegis to teleport back to use another AoE power.

This strategy has some pretty clear ups and downs.  The big upside is that he can deal a substantial amount of damage to many monsters in a short period of time.  The big downside is that, because he attacks everything in sight, he also aggro’s everything in sight.  Though not always, oftentimes he ends up being the target of multiple attacks per round, which is perfectly reasonable, but can have devastating consequences.  Case in point:

Our party in the above-mentioned scenario has very, very little ranged firepower.  We are so melee-heavy, it is kind of ridiculous.  So while my party members were hanging back and waiting for the orcs across this chasm to come to them, I decided to go with my normal routine of brazenly charging across the bridge to engage some of the orcs.  Well, I had not planned on these orcs having these horrid weapons called Belly Bows which push you one square upon failing a saving throw, which I did the very first time I got hit.  Now, I am only 3rd level at this point, so the combination of damage from the arrow and the 40-foot fall easily knocked me unconscious, and over the subsequent rounds, I came within 1 death save of dying. 

So the moral of this story is: Always have multiple strategies for the various kinds of situations that can come up.  No two fights will ever go exactly the same.  Sometimes charging in is a terrible option, but other times it is your best bet.  Watch the board, keep track of conditions and marks, breath weapons, special attacks, and what-have-you, and actively make decisions based on those.  I don’t really blame my party for considering what it would be like without Exodann in it.  While I am normally a fine contributor to the group’s efforts, that particular battle saw me only make things disastrously harder for them.  Be versatile and stay on your toes.