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Spreading Mental Attacks


bigdamnhero

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6e2 p50 sez: "The only Mental Power characters can Spread is Mental Blast." So RAW is pretty clear. But there are times when a mentalist with a non-AOE Mental Power wants to affect multiple targets. Say a mentalist with Telepathy wants to lightly scan a crowd of normals for surface thoughts, or use a Cosmetic Mental Illusion on a roomful of civilians. Both are very common genre examples. The low effect roll needed means the attack doesn't have to be used at full power, but how do you affect multiple targets?

 

Multiple Attack is an obvious possibility, but the OMCV penalties add up quick so you couldn't really use this effectively against more than a handful of people. Paying END for each attack adds up quickly too, even at less than full power.

 

Another option would be to require the character to buy an AOE version of the attack as a separate Power or separate slot in the MP. That seems...overly mechanical to me.

 

What I really want is a simple mechanism by which a character can use their powers on multiple targets at a reduced power level, essentially trading power for area. Kinda like...Spreading.  ;)

 

So my questions for the group:

  1. Do you ever allow Spreading for Mental Attacks other than Mind Blast? Or now that I've got you thinking about it, would you if it comes up? Why or why not?
  2. If you would allow it, would you treat Spreading Mental Attacks any differently from other attacks?
    1. I assume you'd still want to require a separate ECV Attack Roll against each target, as with normal Spreading, rather than allowing one attack vs. the area as per Area Effect rules?
    2. Counting hexes for a Mental Attack doesn't seem to make intuitive sense to me, since physical proximity doesn't seem like it should be the driving factor in an LOS attack. I thought about making each -1 DC double the number of minds you can affect, but that seems like it could be unbalancing? Maybe each -1 DC lets you add one additional target instead of doubling?
    3. Area Effect rules for Mental Powers state that you do not need LOS on all targets, as long as you have LOS to the target point. I would say this wouldn't apply to Spreading, and you can only attack targets you have LOS on?
    4. Would you throw on any other conditions, like 1/2 DCV, Extra Time, Increased END?
  3. I've mostly been talking here about Spreading to hit multiple targets. Would you also allow Spreading to increase OMCV? For some reason that seems more unbalanced to me, but I can't articulate why.

Thanks!

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Ultimate Mentalist has a quick paragraph on Spreading Mental Attacks; p248 if you have that book

 

For -1D6 of ongoing Mental Effect the character gets either +1 OECV or fills one hex - alternately the book suggests +1 Mind provided all targets are in LOS instead of filling hexes.

 

Personally, I see no reason to create Special Snowflake rules for different kinds of Attacks - Attacks are Attacks and I would just apply the same rules to Mental Attacks as Physical Ranged Attacks; with the extra Option at GM discretion of switching out counting Hexes for Counting Minds.

 

Any OCV/DCV penalties obviously become OECV/DECV penalties. It's simpler, and it uses existing mechanics.

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Villains will soon realise they can mind control crowds, of course...

 

If you want to lightly scan a crowd, you could buy Mind Scan to find the one you are looking for?

 

The problem with spreading, and this applies to normal attacks too, is that it does, to an extent, undermine the value of AoE attacks.  It is a conflict between the character creation part of Hero and the Play Rules: other systems allow a trade off of damage against CV (or their equivalent) or allow you to trade effect against number of targets, so Hero should too, right?

 

Hmm...

 

If this was something that was a one off, I'd probably allow it with a Power roll as a power trick.  If it was happening a lot...

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Spreading Telepathy to allow more than one target mind to be read at a time also seems to be adding a form of Rapid Sense in addition to the Area of Affect like ability. Losing 1-2 dice of Telepathy just doesn't seem like enough of a drawback to scan 2 mind simultaneously because they are in close physical proximity.

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Spreading Telepathy to allow more than one target mind to be read at a time also seems to be adding a form of Rapid Sense in addition to the Area of Affect like ability.

That's a good point.  Actually I'd probably look for Rapid to be added in order to easily make sense of multiple streams of consciousness at once, especially if they are excited.  That would be whether the attacker used AoE, spreading, or simply successive attacks to lock on to multiple minds.  I suppose it should be possible to tune some out with the lock still active, but that's a little different.

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The problem with spreading, and this applies to normal attacks too, is that it does, to an extent, undermine the value of AoE attacks.

That's a fair point. I think to some extent it's a matter of design philosophy and/or GMing style, in terms of how much flexibility you like to allow characters during play, as opposed to how much you require to be statted out on the sheet? I tend to lean a bit towards allowing more flexibility, because I think it's more fun and allows more focus on roleplaying rather than on mechanics, but obviously it depends on your game and what your players are like. And of course consistency matters: if Player 1 spent points to buy an AOE slot in her MP, but Player 2 gets the same effect for free by Spreading, then you have balance/equity issues.

 

Spreading Telepathy to allow more than one target mind to be read at a time also seems to be adding a form of Rapid Sense in addition to the Area of Affect like ability.

Hmm...I hadn't thought about it from that angle. I guess it depends on how "hard" you see mental contact being in your campaign. In some fiction, telepaths have to actively concentrate to go inside the other person's head to read their thoughts. On the other extreme, in Babylon 5 people's surface thoughts are projected outside their heads, and telepaths can passively overhear them without trying; in fact, they have to consciously work to block out the "voices" of everyone around them. Hero RAW assumes Mental Awareness functions as a Sense, but other Mental Powers don't by default, implying at least some level of active concentration is required (whether or not it's enough to justify a Concentration Limitation).

 

The other way to look at it from a mechanics standpoint is to compare it to how other sense work in the game. So if my Sight is able to take in multiple opponents enough to do an Autofire or Spreading attack against them, why can't my Mental Senses do the same? If I'm in a crowded restaurant, my Hearing probably can't follow the details of multiple conversations at once, but I can perceive that multiple conversations are going on and "lightly scan" them to pick out the one I want to concentrate on. If I wanted to actually follow all the conversations at once, then that would likely require Rapid (or a very good PER Roll).

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Spreading requires a voluntary reduction in firepower for a wider effect. So unless the AoE player intentionally bought a weak power level, I'm not really seeing a disparity based on the "free".

I most often see AOE attacks built as one slot of an MP or VPP, in which case yes you do have to reduce power level in order to stay within the AP cap.

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I most often see AoE as stand alone powers. In which case, no, you don't have to reduce power level.

...unless you're hurting for points, or the GM considers AoE an Advantage that affects damage and there's an AP/DC cap.  I do see the point that Spreading can tend to diminish the value of AoE.  I'd try to mitigate that through a couple different points, and options for play:

  • AoE is typically less selective, but it often has the potential to hit a big group of targets that you're not likely to be able to effectively Spread across.
  • AoE typically requires an easy attack roll, while Spreading still has to hit targets' DCVs.
  • I often allows AoEs to be Spread also, smearing the area by the number of hexes instead of covering that many targets in successive hexes.  Depends a bit on the SFX and the rest of the power's build.
  • If powers were Spread too often, I'd consider additional drawbacks such as -1 OCV per extra target on top of the -1 DC (take another -1 DC without an additional target to counter the -1 OCV for one of them), or minor side effects (such as damaging the environment and having a chance of hitting close by allies/bystanders).
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I'm not fond of the idea for several points raised above.  Spreading is a bit questionable to me to begin with because it does degrade area effect viability (since AE cannot be reduced to single target attacks, spreading is significantly more flexible, for example) and I haven't seen it used much in play.  I suspect most players think its a bit iffy as well.  Its sort of a throwback to the comics where a character blasts a swathe of people rather than a single target like usual, but doesn't do it regularly.

 

I do like a variant where you can voluntarily reduce an attack by one Damage Class for a boost of +1 OCV, though.  Or vice versa.  I know from personal experience in hand to hand combat at least that you can pretty much always hit someone, if all you want to do is have contact.  But if you want to hit them hard, it becomes a lot more difficult.

 

 

EDIT: fixed a confusing typo.  Its been that kind of day.

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Since the interaction between LOS and Spreading is unclear, I posted the question to higher authority. :)

 

I would go with how the Ultimate Mentalist rules it: All targets have to be in LOS; unlike AoE where targets themselves don't have to even be visible to the Attacker, just the target point.

 

Also, even without that to me it's perfect clear: If you are targeting an individual, or individuals with Spreading, all of them must be in LOS to perceivable by a Targeting Sense. Otherwise, you can't Target them. Period. Not so with Area of Effect, only the Hex being counted as the starting/center point of a AoE effect needs to be Targetable.

 

Spreading is not a replacement for AoE, it's just another option with a series of tradeoffs. The Reduction in Damage Class can add up quickly, and Area Of Effect will always affect the same Area, no matter how many targets - 1 or 100. Spreading must specify a number of targets and has a definite cap: The number of damage classes in the Power itself.

 

To me, any house rule trying to "mitigate" a perceived imbalance hasn't looked at everything both options do - I agree with Greywind 100%: this is not broken, there is no problem.Spreading is not reducing or diminishing the effects of AoE attacks.

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  • AoE typically requires an easy attack roll, while Spreading still has to hit targets' DCVs.

That's a great point, and a huge advantage that AoE maintains over Spreading.

 

And then there's the problem of implementing house rules to fix something that isn't broken.

Well, whether or not we consider it "broken", RAW specifically say you can't Spread Mental Attacks other than Mental Blast. So allowing it is a house rule by definition. Which is why I asked the question.

 

Spreading was introduced to offset the inherent 2d6 STR offered.

I confess I'm not sure what you mean here?

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Bricks, well, everyone really, got a "free" 2d6 added on to their attack for the 10 STR that characters got at the start prior to character construction. That meant that characters not concepted around HtH had to pay an extra 10 points to reach parity of attack dice.

 

To offset that, spreading was introduced for ranged attacks.

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