AoE attacks

[PalladiumBrony]

Hi, sorry if this is a really easily-resolved question but I thought I would see if anyone had some answers for resolving AOE attacks? By which I mean determining who might be hit. Some examples of the type of attack I mean:

> "spray" attacks from a shotgun/blunderbuss type weapon, or a gout of fire from - for example - a flame spell, or a flamethrower or a dragon's breath
> "splash" attacks like from a grenade or an oil flask or a bottle of acid
> "Sweeping" or cleaving attacks. For example, a suitably massive creature might be able to sweep with its tail, attacking multiple characters in a single swing. Or a suitably armed character might be able to make similar swings with their weapon (think Sauron in the Lord of the Rings, where a single stroke of his mace smashed aside 4-5 enemies. Notably this is a huge advantage with a sword even IRL - a spear can only "offend" a single opponent per strike, while a longsword can "offend" a wide area to threaten multiple enemies at once. Even IRL, it was possible (though very very unlikely) for such a wide, sweeping stroke to hit not just one man, but the guy standing next to him too - especially if you got your first opponent across the throat or caught them with a tip-cut, any blow that really solidly hit the torso would likely be stopped by the first target unless you had absurdly inhuman strength.

For the first two I would be inclined to say you roll to strike a specific target (probably requiring lower than the usual 8 if your "target" is just to land the attack somewhere in a general area rather than beaning a specific enemy directly in the face) and then once you've determined that your gout of flame/grenade/vial of acid has landed in the spot you aimed for, everyone within the AoE rolls to dodge? No parry, just dodge. Not quite sure how I would resolve cleaving attacks - whether to limit them to characters with high P.S. or just make them extremely unlikely to work (but with a pretty high payoff), how to determine hits etc.

[Veknironth]

Well, as far as I know the only real AoE attacks in the fantasy game are spells. Most of them have the effects spelled out in the description. It is generally the full effect for everyone in the area. Other spells have areas of full damage for the epicenter of the spell, for example Fulminate or Tornado, and decreasing damage as you are farther from the center of the spell target.

As for thrown items, I’d just go with full effect for everything it touches.

-Vek
“I don’t like to mix genres so I have no firearms opinion.”

[kiralon]

Grodnelite in the mount Nimro book will help a little, you cant dodge the blast but you can dodge the direct hit.
also vials and bottles aren't really designed for throwing at people, beer bottles for example rarely break when they hit a person (I have never seen a beer bottle break when thrown at someone, and only breaks when it hits the ground, and then usually only on ground that is hard. And carrying around vials of stuff that is designed to break is a bad idea, one fall and your stuff is gone/covered in oil. Do a test, buy a cheap bucket, half fill it with water and throw it at something and see what gets wet. See how hard it is to throw and how much liquid you need. If you need something reliably set on fire get a fire warlock, they are quite good at it.
As for sweep attacks, only paired weapons allow for hitting multiple things at once, so if a dragon swipes at a swarm of those demonic ants, somehow he will only hit one of them.

I house rule it to be an area effect, and it will hit people in order and one strike roll is used and each extra thing hit depending on size class reduces the strike roll, this prevents a critical hit on everything in an area, but it does depend on the size of the hitter and the size of those getting hit.

[ShadowLogan]

Hi, sorry if this is a really easily-resolved question but I thought I would see if anyone had some answers for resolving AOE attacks? By which I mean determining who might be hit.

This is where some type of hard visual representation is very useful. That can be done with Mini's set to scale easily enough, more complicated might be drawing it out and tracking positions on paper. There is also the virtual aspect.

The "Sweeping" attacks would be easy enough. You just need to know the positions and "reach" of the attack (limb plus weapon). Center it and measure distances (which can be simplified with a physical representation of appropriate size/shape). I would suggest modeling it after the Twin Simultaneous strikes against two opponents in the WP: Paired rules, though you might want to to see if something exists/detailed in Palladium Martial Arts styles from other lines that works better for what you want.

The "Spray" attacks would follow a cone, so you'd have to do some Trig and measurements to see who might fall into the cone (as done above also works here). Note some of the older main books with modern weapons (Rifts Main Book, not Rifts Ultimate Edition, or N&SS or HU or RT1E or Macross 2, probably some others like TMNT and ATB) have rules for how sprays work in this instance (one strike roll and you hit X number) but those rules are really absent in more recent "modern" settings (Rifts Ultimate, Dead Reign, 2E Robotech).

The "Splash" attack would also be easy enough, you just measure the distance from the center of the "blast" to targets.

Where the Center is for Spray/Splash would be assumed to be the intended target. Targets can still defend as usual. The way that PB works is if you are in the zone of effect you get hit (unless otherwise indicated by the nature of the attack).

Now if you don't want to use a hard visual representation, well that is more of a GM call, but have the players tell you how close they are together and are from the enemy (and the GM should keep track of NPCs) at the start of combat (or even before).