Large Area Injury As Innate Attack?

[Christopher R. Rice]

So how would you price something like this? Anyone try it before? Any thoughts? My gut says its a form of Cosmic.

[GodBeastX]

I'm not certain I feel comfortable making an effect automatically Large Area Injury. The reason being it might be large area against a person, but what about an elephant? And why is this large area injury only affecting one individual?

Looking at it that way I feel like the Cone enhancement already covers the case of the large area injury. And if it's some sort of big object being used, why forbid melee enhancement on the cone? That certainly make the melee attack interesting when engaged in close combat. Hitting everyone in the hex instead of just one individual?

But if it is absolutely necessary I'd probably price it based on some logical breakdown of slightly limited cone (Because it can only target 1 object) and use SM as the price guideline. Cone being 50% and 10% per level, my gut feels this might be 30%+ for SM1 and 5%+ for additional SM.

[Maz]

Area is a +50%. I gives a 2y area (which is a Large Area attack).
A 1y Area could be a +30% maybe. But this also allow the attack to scatter or target ground instead of character. To have 1y, no scatter, no indirect fire, could maybe be argued to be a +20%.

[Wavefunction]

From the looks of it the two main effects of this are averaged out DR, and affecting Diffuse targets.

The best possible result of averaged out DR is effectively Armor Divisor (2), I'd say this component of the enhancement is worth roughly half that, for +25%.

Any Area Effect attack will inflict normal damage against a Diffuse target, the lowest published value of Area Effect being 1-yard for +25%. This is more restricted than that, so this component should be at most +20%, but probably less.

Finally, large area injury cannot target hit locations unless it's the only part exposed, so there's some limitation involved here, perhaps -10%.

All in all I'd ballpark it around +30%, maybe +40%, if you really wanted you could just call it Cosmic, +50%, but you really don't get that much from Large Area Injury.

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by Wavefunction

All in all I'd ballpark it around +30%, maybe +40%, if you really wanted you could just call it Cosmic, +50%, but you really don't get that much from Large Area Injury.

That was pretty much my feeling. Cosmic makes me feel you're breaking a rule needing 50%. This feels more like you're staying in the rules, and you're just leaving out some advantages of an area attack.

[Nereidalbel]

A 1-yard Area Effect is +25%. Since this is basically what you're going for, that would be the reasonable price.

[Wavefunction]

After some more thought, a bit of clarification might be helpful. Is this essentially an Area Effect attack that can only hit one target at a time? Or is it an attack that hits the target's entire body simultaneously regardless of size?

The first is really Area Effect (One target only, -60%), +10%/level. The limitations is guessed at, but it does seem to remove most of the utility.

The second is more complex and warrants a breakdown closer to what I gave before.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

I'm not certain I feel comfortable making an effect automatically Large Area Injury. The reason being it might be large area against a person, but what about an elephant? And why is this large area injury only affecting one individual?

Looking at it that way I feel like the Cone enhancement already covers the case of the large area injury. And if it's some sort of big object being used, why forbid melee enhancement on the cone? That certainly make the melee attack interesting when engaged in close combat. Hitting everyone in the hex instead of just one individual?

But if it is absolutely necessary I'd probably price it based on some logical breakdown of slightly limited cone (Because it can only target 1 object) and use SM as the price guideline. Cone being 50% and 10% per level, my gut feels this might be 30%+ for SM1 and 5%+ for additional SM.

Originally Posted by Maz

Area is a +50%. I gives a 2y area (which is a Large Area attack).
A 1y Area could be a +30% maybe. But this also allow the attack to scatter or target ground instead of character. To have 1y, no scatter, no indirect fire, could maybe be argued to be a +20%.

Originally Posted by Wavefunction

From the looks of it the two main effects of this are averaged out DR, and affecting Diffuse targets.

The best possible result of averaged out DR is effectively Armor Divisor (2), I'd say this component of the enhancement is worth roughly half that, for +25%.

Any Area Effect attack will inflict normal damage against a Diffuse target, the lowest published value of Area Effect being 1-yard for +25%. This is more restricted than that, so this component should be at most +20%, but probably less.

Finally, large area injury cannot target hit locations unless it's the only part exposed, so there's some limitation involved here, perhaps -10%.

All in all I'd ballpark it around +30%, maybe +40%, if you really wanted you could just call it Cosmic, +50%, but you really don't get that much from Large Area Injury.

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

That was pretty much my feeling. Cosmic makes me feel you're breaking a rule needing 50%. This feels more like you're staying in the rules, and you're just leaving out some advantages of an area attack.

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

A 1-yard Area Effect is +25%. Since this is basically what you're going for, that would be the reasonable price.

Yeah, this is where my thoughts were going as well. I'd think you need to make it a leveled trait - each level affects a SM of maybe +1 your size? Hmmm, no that seems a little to complicated. So yeah, consensus is around +30% to +40%. I think I'll go with +40% since it is quite useful - just a bit more useful than Overhead.

Originally Posted by Wavefunction

After some more thought, a bit of clarification might be helpful. Is this essentially an Area Effect attack that can only hit one target at a time? Or is it an attack that hits the target's entire body simultaneously regardless of size?

The latter. I'm envisioning it as an attack that affects the entire body of the target. I suppose you could also add Area Effect normally as well.

[Humabout]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

So how would you price something like this? Anyone try it before? Any thoughts? My gut says its a form of Cosmic.

How about this approach:

1) The typical armored person has torso DR but not DR everywhere (in most settings I've seen; ymmv based on your campaign world).

2) The result of large area damage is to average torso DR with lowest DR.

Given (1), the average of Torso DR and lowest DR = 1/2 x Torso DR. This is functionally equivalent to Armor Divisor (2), which costs +50%.

Armor Divisors can normally be reduced by hardened DR, which doesn't normally affect normal large area damage, but this would be offset by the fact that someone could get get DR everywhere to bypass this enhancement. This amounts to a feature.

Based on this, I'd price large area damage at +50%.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Humabout

How about this approach:

1) The typical armored person has torso DR but not DR everywhere (in most settings I've seen; ymmv based on your campaign world).

2) The result of large area damage is to average torso DR with lowest DR.

Given (1), the average of Torso DR and lowest DR = 1/2 x Torso DR. This is functionally equivalent to Armor Divisor (2), which costs +50%.

Armor Divisors can normally be reduced by hardened DR, which doesn't normally affect normal large area damage, but this would be offset by the fact that someone could get get DR everywhere to bypass this enhancement. This amounts to a feature.

Based on this, I'd price large area damage at +50%.

Interesting. Hmmm. That's actually something I totally forgot: You're essentially ignoring the Hardened modifier...