Area Attacks--Am I Missing Something?

[Sdrolion]

I'm wondering if I'm missing something here, because right now it seems like Area Effect, for +50%, can give you an amazingly powerful ability for not much cost (effectively nearly the same value as the +300% Cosmic modifier that disallows active defense).

Basically, if I'm understanding right, Area Effect, at +50%, gives you a 2-yard radius attack, covering the target hex and 1 hex in any direction around it. You can Dodge & Drop to defend against an Area Effect attack, but it only has any effect if you can get out of the Area with it or can get behind cover. Since unless you have Move 11+, you'll only go 1 yard with a D&D, that means that if you're at the center of the AE attack, the attack is undodgeable. As far as I can tell, it is also unparryable, and unblockable (though maybe shields can grant cover)?

So, yeah, a 2-yard radius isn't much as far as attacking multiple targets, but it is giving you an attack that cannot be defended against for a relatively low cost.

This just seems odd to me...wouldn't it have been a little better, maybe, to just make "Area Effect" mean that your attack struck at everything in the area, but the things in the area got a normal Dodge defense like with any other ranged attack? Then if you wanted to make a "filling" AE attack that just plain hit, there could be another modifier that would let you do that for a higher cost (if your GM allowed it).

Explosions make a little more sense--though honestly I don't like the top level (Damage divided by yards) as it can result in a similar effect for the person at the center (and yes, I know being at the center of an explosion should very realistically be very bad, but in game terms, saying "it doesn't matter what you do, you can't defend" doesn't seem very good to me).

Am I just horribly misinterpreting something here? I understand GURPS is a system that requires a lot of GM management to run smoothly sometimes, but this just seems like an odd cost/benefit relationship if I'm reading it right. (Especially as there's no "Can Be Dodged" modifier that I can find anywhere...)