Targeted Areas

Rystil Arden · Jan 29, 2007

Targeted Area Autofire Exploit #1--the guaranteed hit:

Trade-off to get +5 to Hit -5 to Toughness Save. This makes your Blast have fewer ranks, so it is a piece of cake to add the x3 Autofire for up to +10, 1-for-1. Also take Accurate Attack. Your plan is to Accurate Attack x4, which allows a 1 to hit.

The following is per enemy--all of them have to make Toughness saves, although if the roll is low, all are more likely to make it out fine.

2.5% unconscious
16.25% staggered+stunned+bruised
22.5% stunned+bruised
20% bruised
38.75% nothing

Exploit #2--Trading Accuracy for Unconsciousness

Don't use Accurate Attack now. You hit on a 5. Notice that while the chance of nothing happening increases, the chance of being staggered or unconscious increases by more

10% Unconscious
13% Staggered+Stunned+Bruised
20% Stunned+Bruised
16% Bruised
41% Nothing

Exploit #3--If This Works, Your Whole Team is Going Down

Don't even do a trade-off at all. Now you hit on a 10, so your chance of nothing happening is much higher, but if you manage to hit at all, there's a 79% chance per enemy of being at least stunned (divided evenly among the three groups of stunned and worse).

13.75% Unconscious
13.75% Staggered and Stunned
13.75% Stunned
11% Bruised
47.75% Nothing

Hand of Vecna · Jan 29, 2007

Seems to me Targeted Area Attacks are no worse than having Duplicate or Summon Minion and having your dupes/summoned minions make lots of attack rolls.

You're making more attack rolls (or making one attack roll and comparing it to the Defense of each target in the Area), and the targets won't get the benefit of their Evasion feat... but they will be getting their full Defense (and any Dodge Focus they have), which they wouldn't get on a General Area Attack.

'Course, the msot common use of Area Attacks is to take out Minions, and they're mostly their to serve as a round's distraction [at most] and then be taken out anyway

rgordona · Jan 30, 2007

Rystil Arden said:
Targeted Area
13.75% staggered+stunned+bruised
13.75% stunned+bruised
13.75% bruised
58.75% absolutely nothing

Ouch so 4 or 5 characters working together all with a targetted area attack can pretty much keep everyone inside their area of effect stunned contiuosly. Plus every succseful bruise makes it easier for the next attack. (Your only real chance against this tatcic would be to sit outside the area and snipe.)

Of course it should probably be stated as:
45% absolutly nothing (for everyone)
and then for each character
13.75% for each stage.

Which is different.

(I have not checked the maths.)

Rystil Arden · Jan 30, 2007

The numbers are slightly off because I did the edges wrong for Bruise and forgot to add crits for rolling a 20.

It should be instead:

1.25% Unconscious
13.75% Staggered+Stunned+Bruised
13.75% Stunned+Bruised
11% Bruised
60.25% Nothing

So the chance to be stunned is actually *higher* than stated.

And for the Reflex save one, it is actually

5% Staggered+Stunned+Bruised
25% Stunned+Bruised
20% Bruised
50% Nothing

rgordona · Jan 30, 2007

Hand of Vecna said:
[sblock]Seems to me Targeted Area Attacks are no worse than having Duplicate or Summon Minion and having your dupes/summoned minions make lots of attack rolls.

You're making more attack rolls (or making one attack roll and comparing it to the Defense of each target in the Area), and the targets won't get the benefit of their Evasion feat... but they will be getting their full Defense (and any Dodge Focus they have), which they wouldn't get on a General Area Attack.

'Course, the msot common use of Area Attacks is to take out Minions, and they're mostly their to serve as a round's distraction [at most] and then be taken out anyway [/sblock]

Except that sumon and duplication are caped at 5 and can not be heroic. So once you summon them they will be taken out quickly and you can not then repeat the trick round after round.

And of course if you can summon five minions and have them each make an attack, you can instead summon five minions and then have each of them make a tartgeted area attack.

Hand of Vecna · Jan 30, 2007

rgordona said:
Except that sumon and duplication are caped at 5 and can not be heroic. So once you summon them they will be taken out quickly and you can not then repeat the trick round after round.

Not if the Minions take out the threat first

And if you've got Horde, you can summon your 5 minions round after round.

rgordona said:
And of course if you can summon five minions and have them each make an attack, you can instead summon five minions and then have each of them make a tartgeted area attack.

Which, to me, seems only as bad as summoning 5 Minions each with General Area Attacks, or Autofire Attacks. Easy enough to add another House Rule to Duplicate/Summon saying dupes/minions can't have Area Attacks or Autofire.

As was said, folks tend to have higher Defenses than Reflex saves, and more commonly max out Defense than Reflex, so shooting off something calling for a Reflex save to avoid is going to do better in most cases than something against Defense.

rgordona · Jan 30, 2007

How do I send private maesages? As I think this discussion would be much better off list.

I think you(or I) are failing to read the statisics right. The comparisons in post 14 are for:
10 point targeted area against Def and Toughness of 10.
10 point normal Area against Reflex 5 with Improved evasion and toughness 10.

I thought you could not re-summon a minion until it had recovered from any injuries. But the point is if a targeted area is the same as summoning a load of minions then letting the minions have the area attack is worse.

All that said there are plenty of ways to build obscenely powerful characters, or at least powerfull attacks. I would be happy if Targeted Area was allowed; I just think it is one of many things which need to be watched at creation (and during the game if someone is useing it and it turns out to be overly powerful)

Hand of Vecna · Jan 30, 2007

And I'm still not seeing Targeted Areas as any worse or better than General Areas. But, I'm not in any shot-calling position, so whatever the GM's decide -- leave as-written in UP, House Rule, or ban altogether -- I'll readily abide by their decision.

Yes, there are lots of ways to build munchkiny characters. That's why GMs have Rule 0 on their side

Rystil Arden · Jan 30, 2007

Hand of Vecna said:
And I'm still not seeing Targeted Areas as any worse or better than General Areas. But, I'm not in any shot-calling position, so whatever the GM's decide -- leave as-written in UP, House Rule, or ban altogether -- I'll readily abide by their decision.

Yes, there are lots of ways to build munchkiny characters. That's why GMs have Rule 0 on their side

Normal Areas are basically shut down completely by Evasion or Improved Evasion) (note the 85% and 90% chances for nothing, which become 86% and 91% after I fix for my mistake on Bruised). Targeted Areas are not.

Rystil Arden · Jan 30, 2007

rgordona said:
How do I send private maesages? As I think this discussion would be much better off list.

I think you(or I) are failing to read the statisics right. The comparisons in post 14 are for:
10 point targeted area against Def and Toughness of 10.
10 point normal Area against Reflex 5 with Improved evasion and toughness 10.

I thought you could not re-summon a minion until it had recovered from any injuries. But the point is if a targeted area is the same as summoning a load of minions then letting the minions have the area attack is worse.

All that said there are plenty of ways to build obscenely powerful characters, or at least powerfull attacks. I would be happy if Targeted Area was allowed; I just think it is one of many things which need to be watched at creation (and during the game if someone is useing it and it turns out to be overly powerful)

Actually, the Improved Evasion isn't the one in Post 14 for the normal Area--that's the foolish one that forgets to take Evasion. Here's the +5 Ref with Improved Evasion one:

0% staggered+stunned+bruised
17.5% stunned+bruised
14% bruised
68.5% nothing

This is far far less dangerous than a targeted area, and it costs very little compared to building up maxed out defense to get this much to Reflex saves (it costs 7, whereas maxed out defense is at least 10, and that's only if you want to risk losing it all when you lose your Dodge bonus)

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