Is there a way to have a submit button that runs a validation group but doesn't care about required fields?

Question

We have a wizard of multiple steps that can be filled in by the user in any order, so "required" fields aren't actually required to be filled in until the final step (at which point we are checking which ones are left blank and requiring the user to go back and fill them in before final submission). However, we also have several fields that need to run more complex validations. Is there a way to have a submit button run validations for a validation group, but not check on the required status of fields? 
 
 Alternately, is there a good way to approximate the look of the "required" asterisk without setting the required attribute of a field?

Mike Schmitt · Answer

If your desire is that the user can't progress to a subsequent page when one of the complex validations (as opposed to "required") has fired, my suggestion would be to consider evaluating the validation logic inside WITH() variables, and disabling the "next page" buttons if there are any errors. I know this won't work in some specific use cases but it's a powerful workaround to this type of situation.