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Mob targeting seems to be off it is wholly ignoring the formation command and pets in particular seem to be the first choice of a mob when you enter a room no matter the fight mode of the pet.

Formation of your group:
Front Rank: character
Middle Rank: {F0}An elegant white mare

Every single bandit encounter between Westgate and Zhentil Keep targeted the mare first while walking the mare and due to level can not rescue it.

Every single bandit encounter from Zhentil Keep to Waterdeep while mounted attacked the mare first though being mounted it then pushed the attacks to the character. In the mounted case the mare was in formation front with the character.

I haven't really been able to test formation enough with a group of players yet.

I've been having similar problems with grouped PCs, enough that I keep wizards friends in the front rank with me.

Testing in progess...much more is needed.

Plea for help: could everyone please post relevant logs if you encounter this? I'm particularly looking for logs where three or more PCs are grouped. Thank you!!

I'm guessing that what's happening is when the leader enters the room, the mob targets him first; then, as the rest of the players enter the room (since they do so sequentially) the mob automatically targets the newcomer, and finally ends up targeting the last person to enter. This would explain the behavior of bandit wizards, where you get something like this:

A bandit wizard begins to chant.
A bandit wizard stops chanting.
A bandit wizard begins to chant.
A bandit wizard utters the words, 'abrazak'

Or something like that. The bandit re-targets the most recent arrival, since he hasn't had a chance to actually engage in combat with the first person to enter the room yet. Once he engages in combat, he doesn't change target, but until then he does.

Grenwyn's got it, I should think.

They're hitting everyone that enters the room, and they do so in the order they enter. However, the one they fixate on and continue attacking is always the last person to enter. If you're travelling around with a pet, it's going to be the pet. If there's a fighter leading around a trio of wizards, it's going to be one of the wizards (I don't think they'll hit the same one every time, but they might).

Here's an interesting example that I've seen happen (I wish I had logs; sorry!). There's a group being led by Person A. Person B and Person C are both squishy people that need guarded, but Person D is tough enough to take a few hits. To keep B and C safe, they have A still lead and B and C set to follow A, but then they have D set to follow either B or C.
When the group enters a room, A enters first and ticks off the hostile mob. B and C follow right behind, and they get smacked as they enter. However, since D is following either B or C, he enters last and ends up getting the focus of the attacks.

The strategy right now is to have the person least able to take hits leading the group. Formation commands don't seem to be doing anything at all.

This is Confirmed. Updated Bugzilla (105).

Thanks everyone for the reports!