Caster check vs Spell Resistance

[Veritas]

There a just a couple places showing the answer to this.

Pg. 299 of the DMG (first column)
“Targeted Spells: *snip* If several different resistant creatures are subjected to such a spell, each checks its spell resistance separately.”

The reason you roll SR checks separately for each creature is because each creature to resists the spell individually (as indicated above). It is more of a relation between the power of the caster (level) and that particular creature’s (“anti-spell”) power.

As I said above, I agree the grammar of the text does seem to favour individual rolls, however, in your quote above with targetted spells... burning hands and fireball are not targetted spells. If you target specific creatures, I can see you trying to overcome the individual SR of each target you specify, however, with burning hands and fireball, you simply apply the spell to a certain area of effect, and anyone who's in that area will end up being afffected by it.

With magic missile, you roll damage separately for each missile, regardless of it being targetted at one creature or multiple creatures, however, with the area of effect spells, you only roll damage once and that's applied to the entire area. And the creature's SR is a static number, not an active defense on their part, so it's hard to see how a spell that has the same damage applied over the entire area would potentially affect creatures with the same SR differently.

For targetted spells, I can see individual rolls, but for area affect spells, the one roll seems more logical.