AOE Spells - 1 attack roll vs. All Targets?

[GoodKingJayIII]

The reason I'm considering this is because it makes sense for two reasons:

1. it reduces the number of attack rolls I need to make for one NPC
2. one spell, one attack roll.

But really, this is in the interest of making things easier for me as a DM. This is likely not a rule I would apply to PCs, as players tend to like rolling multiple dice, damage and getting criticals. Here's a way I could see it working

- one attack roll vs. all appropriate defenses in the effect
- average damage, rounded up (e.g., a 1d6+10 fireball deals 14 damage to all targets hit)
- 1 is an automiss, 20 is an autohit, damage is not maximized.

So AOE damage remains swingy for me, but even if all targets are hit, damage will be pretty consistent.

 

[keterys]

The problem I have is with things like Frightful Presence - stun all targets on a good roll, or none on a poor roll?

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Hmm... yeah. I'm just thinking about things in terms of damage right now. Maybe that's not the best idea given the wide variety of AOE effects besides damage.

 

[Burr]

You might do one roll but engineer "degrees of success" into the system. Minimal success gets one enemy within the AoE, above average success gets half of the enemies within the AoE, critical success gets all of the enemies within the AoE. I'm not sure finer granularity than that is needed.

 

[Voss]

The reason I'm considering this is because it makes sense for two reasons:

1. it reduces the number of attack rolls I need to make for one NPC
2. one spell, one attack roll.

But really, this is in the interest of making things easier for me as a DM. This is likely not a rule I would apply to PCs, as players tend to like rolling multiple dice, damage and getting criticals. Here's a way I could see it working

- one attack roll vs. all appropriate defenses in the effect
- average damage, rounded up (e.g., a 1d6+10 fireball deals 14 damage to all targets hit)
- 1 is an automiss, 20 is an autohit, damage is not maximized.

So AOE damage remains swingy for me, but even if all targets are hit, damage will be pretty consistent.

Ouch. I could actually see it for players, since there are situations where there are just so many targets. But as the DM? Ouch, no. Rightly or wrongly the feel is 'I'm going to kill you all'. particularly with things like what keterys points out, that stun the entire party. Thats a short step from DM brutality and a TPK.

 

[drjones]

I think this came up somewhere else but doesn't the prerelease info we have suggest rolling once for damage on multiple targets? If you do that and you roll once for attack then you get REALLY swingy fast, remember that rolling 5 attacks and 5 damages is going to give you a bell curve so on average you will do middling damage to a middling umber of targets. With 1 roll you turn that bell curve into a straight line.

If you are willing to fudge dice a lot I suppose it is fine but when your wizard rolls a 20 in the climactic battle ending it before it gets started that might kinda suck. The alternative, that aoe spells do not critical is kinda lame for the player.

I personally would be more comfortable with the 1 damage many attack situation as it seems less swingy. Also from a RP perspective it is easier (for me) to imagine the wizzies fireball going awry and only hitting half the goblins than that he hit all of them perfectly or he missed every one of them.

One question I would have is why are there so many targets in the first place in the encounter? If you have so many that rolling would bog down (10? 20?) then are they not likely to be minions and likely to be killed automatically (assuming the base damage of the attack is high enough)? For me I would be more interested in that situation to have each attack rolled and ignore the damage except for non-minions.

Anyway this is mostly my taste, if you want to roll once I don't see why you can't. You just have to be aware that the math balance of the game will be effected and be ready to fudge rolls/hps/damage if one spectacular roll is going to TPK or mess with your story.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Ya, I think it is this. I know in SWSAGA they where having cases of the entire party being killed by a grenade on a crit and errated it to make an attack role for each target.

This could be alleviated by stating that the critical only affects the target closest to the point of origin of the effect (the central square for bursts, the caster for blasts). Choosing, when several targets are equidistant.

For mass stun... well, the save mechanic makes it quite simple to get out of it... but one has to see the actual range of powers. Though I wish that a more-or-less working houserule can make it possible to resolve it with a single roll - so much easier...

Cheers, LT.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Ouch. I could actually see it for players, since there are situations where there are just so many targets. But as the DM? Ouch, no. Rightly or wrongly the feel is 'I'm going to kill you all'. particularly with things like what keterys points out, that stun the entire party. Thats a short step from DM brutality and a TPK.

Actually, I think my method would work for damage-based AOE, but you're right about all or nothing non-damage effects, especially when dealing with things like stun which could spell TPK for the entire party. Frankly, I just don't know enough about 4e to make a judgment.

On the other hand, if all the PCs are bunched up inside an AoE... either they're in a very tight space, or they're doing something wrong.

 

[Nytmare]

How messy would it make things if you made it a single to hit roll unless that first roll was a miss or a crit?

 

[ZetaStriker]

This could be alleviated by stating that the critical only affects the target closest to the point of origin of the effect (the central square for bursts, the caster for blasts). Choosing, when several targets are equidistant.

For mass stun... well, the save mechanic makes it quite simple to get out of it... but one has to see the actual range of powers. Though I wish that a more-or-less working houserule can make it possible to resolve it with a single roll - so much easier...

Cheers, LT.

I humbly disagree on your second point. You're looking at half the party being stunned for 2 turns or more in that situation, which against a solo monster(which is all we've seen with such a powerful effect) kind of ensures defeat, if not TPK. If you can't Second Wind because you're stunned, and the Cleric/Warlord is stunned, what choice do you have but to die? AoEs might work with houserules on the one-roll ruling, but powerful AoE effects will not. They deserve seperate attack rolls, and since you don't have to roll damage anyway, why not do it?