Area Effect Accurate

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I am having trouble with the power advantage AoE Accurate and it causes me a great deal of trouble in my game. I think this is because I am not 100% sure how it works. So I thought I would throw out a question here to see what your guys take on this power advantage is. Just looking for a little discussion on this advantage ;)

I will be up front here and say I do not like the advantage as I feel it offers nothing, new. To me if a person wants to make an accurate attack they should by combat levels, to simulate this (like a scope adding to accuracy of a gun). You can always buy the 5 point CSLs as “powers’ to simulate a wide range of effects to simulate an accurate attack. However, my bias here might be based on me not understanding AoE Accurate correctly.

I have read the FAQ, searched the boards and web and found no answers - so please dont blast me if this has been discussed before and i missed it ;)

My questions are:

Does a power with this the accurate advantage target a hex or character?

Let’s say you had an EB with the Accurate advantage, and your target was surrounded by your friends. You can not see your target very well. Say you only saw 1/8 of your target, who is surrounded by your friends. Normally you would have a DCV 3 to hit the target because it is an accurate attack. My question is would you have any minuses to hit the target (even though your attack is accurate), because you only see part (1/8) of your target who is surrounded by your friends.

I realize a lot of this is based on special effects of the powers, but I am just looking for some general ideas here.


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[Trebuchet]

It hits only a single target as I read it. Area Effect attacks target hexes, not individuals. I would still apply penalties for partial cover. So even though the base DCV is 3, penalties for range and cover could easily add up to -8 or more when using the Accurate adder. Apply them all.

If you really don't like it or feel it's being abused, ban it in your campaign. That's why you're the Game Master. :D

[megaplayboy]

The attack targets a single character in the hex they are located in. Instead of their DCV being DEX/3, it is simply DCV 3(and in the event of a HTH attack, DCV 0). It's possible for the target of an AE-accurate attack to dodge or dive for cover--in the first case they get the DCV bonus of the dodge, in the second case they can avoid the attack with a dex roll -1--but of course their DCV against follow-up attacks is halved.

Basically it's for attacks that are extremely accurate(think "magic missile" in D&D).

If you bought such an attack with a +1/2 level indirect advantage you could probably negate cover bonuses as well.

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Interesting points. You guys are thinking the same as me. The player is not abusing the power... However he did not feel the negative modifiers should apply because he could only see 1/8th of the target.

Mind you, he did not argue with me about it, I really have a great gaming group. But, to be fair on my part I thought I would seek out other opinions..for future reference. ;)

I gave him a -4 to hit the person and my justification was that as stated above the target was completely surrounded by people (1/8th cover). I guess I was seeking agreement or non-agreement on my ruling, going by the book.


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[Marcus]

Hmm... see, if my GM came along and told me that I was taking penalties to hit with my 1 Hex AOE 'Accurate' attack because I couldnt see the whole target, I'd just go get a regular 1 Hex AOE... 'Accurate' 1 Hex AOEs are (IMHO) an example of a player taking concept over point-crunchyness (lets face it, a +1/2 advantage on a 40 AP attack to get 60 Active Points... dude, just buy 10 2-point CSLs. Unless the target has a DCV >13, your still in the same relative boat.. AND you can, instead, buy a bigger attack and stay within AP cap)

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by Marcus
Hmm... see, if my GM came along and told me that I was taking penalties to hit with my 1 Hex AOE 'Accurate' attack because I couldnt see the whole target, I'd just go get a regular 1 Hex AOE... 'Accurate' 1 Hex AOEs are (IMHO) an example of a player taking concept over point-crunchyness (lets face it, a +1/2 advantage on a 40 AP attack to get 60 Active Points... dude, just buy 10 2-point CSLs. Unless the target has a DCV >13, your still in the same relative boat.. AND you can, instead, buy a bigger attack and stay within AP cap) Accurate is a -0 Limitation on Area Effect; in essence you sacrifice the ability to hit multiple targets in exchange for the ability to more easily hit a sngle target. It says nothing about not applying ordinary range or other penalties to the attack; only that you are attacking a 3 DCV instead of the character's (undoubtably higher) DCV.

It's a good Advantage and I often use it to represent guided weapons and the like, but it is not a magic way to always hit. Range modifiers are often overlooked in this equation, if a character is only 17" (35 meters) away from his target he suffers a -6 penalty to hit. That means a character with an Accurate Area Effect attack and a 9 OCV still needs a 11- to hit. That's only a 62.5% chance of a hit. That beats the odds of hitting his target by a big margin if said target ordinarilly has a decent DCV as do most superheroes, but it's still not a magic bullet. :)