Targeted Areas

Some of this is quoted and some of it paraphrased form Ultimate Power page 97

Essentially a Targeted Area is an Area of Effect with an Attack Roll.

The attacker makes a single attack roll for the effect, comparing the result to the Defense of each potential target in the area, meaning the effect may hit some and miss others. The targets hit by the attack receive the normal saving throw against it, but do not get a Reflex save to reduce or eliminate the effect, unlike general area effects.

Since there is no Reflex save Evasion has no effect. Since there is an Attack Roll you may use PL Tradeoffs with it.

It sounds plausible. I can think of certain situations that this mechanic could work for. It might need to be regulated so that it is used only for things that it actually makes sense for, instead of used on everything that's area of effect. Wouldn't want to make Evasion completely useless... But then, if you took Evasion, you hopefully have a high defense and can avoid the effect anyway...

I'd love it. I was going to use it last night as a Power Stunt/Extra Effort when I realized that it was only in Ultimate Power.

That sounds perfect for a spell I'm tinkering with. Or any kind of attack that sprays an area with multiple targeted "sub attacks," like I could imagine a small squad of soldiers with automatic weapons doing, for example.

Among many scary corner-cases, the main problem I see with this is the following--

When you trade off to hit modifier for higher DC on a single-target attack, if you do the math of it, it is extremely balanced in the way that your total chance for your attack to not 'fizzle' stays about constant (though you do get advantages for balancing it out to match the enemy's defenses, which is cool).

However, if you trade away to hit for higher DC on a many-target attack, assuming you legitimately have a bunch of targets and aren't wasting the Area part of it, you can usually count on the fact that you get a bunch of rolls to raise your chances of hitting someone to a relatively high number and couple it with a devastating DC on the attack.

Rystil Arden said:

Among many scary corner-cases, the main problem I see with this is the following--

When you trade off to hit modifier for higher DC on a single-target attack, if you do the math of it, it is extremely balanced in the way that your total chance for your attack to not 'fizzle' stays about constant (though you do get advantages for balancing it out to match the enemy's defenses, which is cool).

However, if you trade away to hit for higher DC on a many-target attack, assuming you legitimately have a bunch of targets and aren't wasting the Area part of it, you can usually count on the fact that you get a bunch of rolls to raise your chances of hitting someone to a relatively high number and couple it with a devastating DC on the attack.

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It is one attack roll applied to the defenses of everyone in the AoE so I dont understand the many rolls part. can you explain?

hero4hire said:

It is one attack roll applied to the defenses of everyone in the AoE so I dont understand the many rolls part. can you explain?

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Yup, a simple explanation--my reading comprehension was clearly shot to hell by the late hour

In that case, though, it circumvents the "well I know I'll hit with at least one" problem but moves into two other problems, one specifically with autofire (but to a lesser extent present with rolling a 20 any time):

1) Autofire (or crit) problem--the uber-autowipe.

Put on autofire to a Targeted Area and roll a 20. Pretty much without fail, the entire enemy team just died. They are taking somewhere between 10 and 15 higher than your usual Toughness DC (so maybe DC 40), giving them a 75% chance to be unconscious/dead, and the rest is all staggered/stunned/bruised (or equivalent) unless they also roll a 20 and get the automatically-only-bruised result.

2) Attack Rolls are better for the attacker than letting the enemy get a Reflex save--

This is undeniably true. I'm going to assume (based on experience) that some of the best, most cinematic, and most fun fights come when the good-guy supers fight an interesting grouping of enemy supers in a big fight. In something like this, an area attack has the potential to end it all at once. One huge counterbalancing factor is that all area attacks have a Reflex save, which is good for the defender for two reasons: First, the defender can buy Improved Evasion for 2 Points and automatically take half damage from the area effect (which is a huge bonus on the Toughness save--it is hard to fail too badly on one of those unless you already have a lot of bruises) . Second, the cap on Reflex save Bonus is PL + 5, and the cap on Reflex save DCs is PL + 10. This means a super with fully-capped saves can make the highest-DC save on a 5 and is only affected 20% of the time.

Contrast with attack rolls. There's no Improved Evasion for those, first off, and also the cap on Defense Bonus is PL, while Attack bonus is also PL. That means that for fully-capped attack and defense (ignoring trade-offs, of course, since that affects the Toughness save as well), the target is affected 55% of the time, more than twice as often as with the fully-capped save.

Rystil Arden said:

Yup, a simple explanation--my reading comprehension was clearly shot to hell by the late hour

In that case, though, it circumvents the "well I know I'll hit with at least one" problem but moves into two other problems, one specifically with autofire (but to a lesser extent present with rolling a 20 any time):

1) Autofire (or crit) problem--the uber-autowipe.

Put on autofire to a Targeted Area and roll a 20. Pretty much without fail, the entire enemy team just died. They are taking somewhere between 10 and 15 higher than your usual Toughness DC (so maybe DC 40), giving them a 75% chance to be unconscious/dead, and the rest is all staggered/stunned/bruised (or equivalent) unless they also roll a 20 and get the automatically-only-bruised result.

Click to expand...

I must say I am not entirely comfortable with that combo.

2) Attack Rolls are better for the attacker than letting the enemy get a Reflex save--

This is undeniably true. I'm going to assume (based on experience) that some of the best, most cinematic, and most fun fights come when the good-guy supers fight an interesting grouping of enemy supers in a big fight. In something like this, an area attack has the potential to end it all at once. One huge counterbalancing factor is that all area attacks have a Reflex save, which is good for the defender for two reasons: First, the defender can buy Improved Evasion for 2 Points and automatically take half damage from the area effect (which is a huge bonus on the Toughness save--it is hard to fail too badly on one of those unless you already have a lot of bruises) . Second, the cap on Reflex save Bonus is PL + 5, and the cap on Reflex save DCs is PL + 10. This means a super with fully-capped saves can make the highest-DC save on a 5 and is only affected 20% of the time.

Contrast with attack rolls. There's no Improved Evasion for those, first off, and also the cap on Defense Bonus is PL, while Attack bonus is also PL. That means that for fully-capped attack and defense (ignoring trade-offs, of course, since that affects the Toughness save as well), the target is affected 55% of the time, more than twice as often as with the fully-capped save.

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I am outgunned when it comes to determining probabilities for certain, so excuse me if this is wrong, but didnt you leave out that it has to hit when determining the 55% of injury?.

Wouldnt a fully capped character vs a fully capped characters only have a 55% chance of hitting to get a 55% chance to do damage, therefor having a singnifantly less chance of hurting someone, while the other area always hits?

In my simplistic non number crunching brain that sort of evened it out a bit, THEN I have to consider the amount of capped reflex saves I see compared to capped defense.

Very few characters max out thier saves. Most characters max out thier defense.

In actual table top play the targeted area rule has not made a huge impact on my game, though no one has applied autofire to it.

hero4hire said:

I am outgunned when it comes to determining probabilities for certain, so excuse me if this is wrong, but didnt you leave out that it has to hit when determining the 55% of injury?.

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I think that both the determined probabilities were for the chance to hit (a specified individual with in the area). 20% for area, 55% for targetted area.

Although actually the 20% is chance to hit a full damage and 80% to hit at half dammage so the two are not quite comprable, and a half dammage toughness save is still failable.

I think the real difference is that because a targeted area attack is only one roll it will either hit everyone or miss everyone. (this assumes that tradoffs are small and no one is stunned etc. but characters with the same defence will all either be hit or not.) Whereas with an area attack characters with the same reflex save each get a roll for half dammage so you one can be hit for full dammage and another for half.

Because of its one roll nature targeted area will be much more all or nothing.

I can't tell whether that is a bad thing or not, so would vote to allow it.

(I might be a bit dubious about allowing improved critical or autofire on targeted area both will start to mean that if you hit everyone ends up hurting. And stunning everyone on the other team with one attack is probably a bad thing even if it is only a 10% chance.)

hero4hire said:

I must say I am not entirely comfortable with that combo.



I am outgunned when it comes to determining probabilities for certain, so excuse me if this is wrong, but didnt you leave out that it has to hit when determining the 55% of injury?.

Wouldnt a fully capped character vs a fully capped characters only have a 55% chance of hitting to get a 55% chance to do damage, therefor having a singnifantly less chance of hurting someone, while the other area always hits?

In my simplistic non number crunching brain that sort of evened it out a bit, THEN I have to consider the amount of capped reflex saves I see compared to capped defense.

Very few characters max out thier saves. Most characters max out thier defense.

In actual table top play the targeted area rule has not made a huge impact on my game, though no one has applied autofire to it.

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Both were the chances to hit.

Assuming no tradeoffs and assuming capped bonuses to all (though I do admit more people cap Defense than Reflex saves) here it is *including* the Toughness save to avoid damage:

Normal Ref Save Area vs No Evasion (though Evasion is a no-brainer):

5% chance staggered+stunned+bruised
25% chance stunned+bruised
25% chance bruised
45% absolutely nothing

Normal Ref Save Area vs Evasion (spending just one more point)
5% staggered+stunned+bruised
5% stunned+bruised
5% bruised
85% nothing

Normal Ref Save vs Improved Evasion (spending just one more point)
0% staggered+stunned+bruised
5% stunned+bruised
5% bruised
90% nothing

And the Kicker, Normal Ref Save vs Improved Evasion but only +5 Ref Save (saving tons of points, having spent only 7)
0% staggered+stunned+bruised
17.5% stunned+bruised
17.5% bruised
65% nothing

Targeted Area
13.75% staggered+stunned+bruised
13.75% stunned+bruised
13.75% bruised
58.75% absolutely nothing


So basically, the Ref save part is doomed to fail compared to the Targeted Area--the only reason the numbers are even close is the half damage from a successful Ref save might still make a Toughness save fail with bad enough luck. Of course, as PL increases towards 20, the half damage Reflex save area becomes a joke that can't even stun the enemies (unless they fail the save), and a single point or two for Evasion or Improved Evasion completely neuters the Reflex save area attack, whereas there is no such way to defeat the Targeted Area so easily. Add to that the all-or-nothing nature of the Targeted Area (the Reflex save statistic calculation was much harder math because it required all sorts of contingencies and different DCs, but the Targeted Area is simple)--if you roll 10 or above on the d20, all of the other team has a 50% chance to be stunned or worse. If you happen to roll a 20, the entire other team has a 75% chance to be stunned or worse. If you roll below 10, your turn does nothing.

EDIT: Autofire (perhaps combined with Accurate Attack to make sure you hit) makes it horrifying even--I'll run the stats on that now actually.

EDIT: D'oh! All the numbers here are slightly off because I calculated as if failing by 5 was still a Bruise.