Question on AoE attacks

[Glupii]

I apologize ahead of time if this questions seems very simple. I am still relatively new to actually running the system (Our primary GM passed away at Christmas and I am trying to pick up for him) and still trying to grasp the nuances. We are using the 5er rules and my question is with Shotguns/AoE Attacks. Shotguns do AoE Hex or AoE Cone damage. Am I reading the rules correctly in that if a target in the AoE is not fully covered in armor, as in has even one body part unarmored, they suffer the full affects of the attack?

[Ndreare]

The area of effect is accurate. Basically it is not affecting a whole area, but instead treats the targets DCV as 3 no matter what it actually is.

 

PS: not a bad question and I hope you learn to live the system.

[Glupii]

So if there is only one or two open areas (unarmored), do they take the damage modified by the location or is it straight full damage as if they were completely unarmored? It seems like that makes a weapon like a shot gun a little too powerful in a heroic game.

And thanks for the encouragement. When Tancred passed, he took 75% of our group's total combined knowledge of the system with him. We all played it and had fairly good player knowledge, and I even ran a short game a few years ago, but we were all very reliant on his presence and incredible knowledge of the system. So now I am a little behind on my understanding of some fairly basic things...as my question suggest, I am sure.

[Christopher]

I think you are asking: "How does Area of Effect interact with Hit Locations and Sectional Armor?"

I lack the full resources for 5E (only character creation handbook), so I can only give the 6E answer and hope somebody else tells if that was changed:

"Attacks that have the Area Of EffectAdvantage, or that otherwise affect an entire Area, use the standard Hit Location rules — the character rolls a Hit Location, and the GM applies the damage accordingly. The roll indicates the part of the target’s body that’s the most directly affected by the blast. Alternately, the GM can dispense with the Hit Location rules for Area-affecting attacks and just apply the damage generally with a rolled STUN Multiplier."

 

Sectional/Limited Coverage Armor applies to this based on the location hit.

 

Trying to aim for a specific hit location would propably suffer the normal "Palced Shoot" penalties. AoE only affects wich DCV you have to roll against it does not negate any penalties on OCV (wich is what Placed Shoot affects).

[TheRealDeal]

For the shotgun:

1) If it is treated as an AoE 1 HEX it means when you use it, you choose the target HEX (not target creature) and modified by the usual Range Penalty (if any) you make an attack roll against that HEX. A HEX has a DCV 3 (relatively easy to hit) or if it is adjacent to you, a DCV 0 (almost an autohit). If you miss the HEX, for each point of DCV you missed it by, the actual HEX you end up hitting drifts by 1 HEX per point you missed in a random direction. So if you fired at a foe 3 HEXes away and hit only a DCV 1, you roll randomly to determine the drift direction, and move the attack 2 hexes in that direction and that ends up being the place you actually hit (even if nothing is there or perhaps even an ally!). In any case, whatever is in the HEX you end up really affecting, they take the damage of the attack and apply the average of their defenses against it. So to figure out the average, just use the hit location fractions and calculate the overall average of the target's armor and use that against the AoE attack. So having some uncovered points will tend to reduce the average overall defenses by a little, but that is all.

 

2) If it is treated like a Cone, since the start of the cone must begin at the gun, you make an attack vs. DCV 0 and if you miss somehow (you have no range penalty for this attack) it would mean your Cone direction you wanted to use would randomly move, I would suggest moving the end of the Cone by 1 HEX (roll if it is left or right randomly) per 1 DCV you missed by. Whatever HEXes are in your Cone, those targets take the damage and apply the average defenses as detailed above in (1).

 

So target's personal DCV offer no protection. The only way to avoid this kind of attack is to use Dive for Cover maneuver and hope you can move far enough so you are not in any of the eventually affected HEXes.

[Glupii]

... In any case, whatever is in the HEX you end up really affecting, they take the damage of the attack and apply the average of their defenses against it. So to figure out the average, just use the hit location fractions and calculate the overall average of the target's armor and use that against the AoE attack. So having some uncovered points will tend to reduce the average overall defenses by a little, but that is all...

 

OK I am sorry to sound simple here but which fractions are you talking about for the hit locations? Can you give this sorry excuse for a gm an example?

 

[Glupii]

Or just point me to the right place in whatever rule book that talks about sectional armor, hit locations, and AoE Attacks and I will be glad to look it up. So far I have failed to find the answer I was hoping to find.

[IndianaJoe3]

IIRC, they're treated like a standard attack. Roll for a hit location and, if the armor doesn't cover it, the target takes full damage. I don't see it under the sections for AoE or Sectional Defenses, though. It might have been an answer tin the rule questions forum.

 

Establishing what percentage of a character is exposed and taking that percentage of the damage is, IMHO, a perfectly reasonable house rule.

[Glupii]

But how do I determine the percentage exposed? Do each of the areas equate to 1/16th of the total (except the chest which is actually 1/8th I guess)? So if their face and hands are the only thing exposed, then they take 1/8th of the total damage? Does the exposed areas damage modifiers play into it at all? I do not want to make this overly complicated, it just seems like in my current game the shotgun is too powerful vs other weapons since almost nobody is ever fully armored. And I do not want to throw only fully powered armored folks at them (yet).

[IndianaJoe3]

I'd use the percentage chance of failing the roll, and not worry about damage multipliers (or, if all exposed areas use the same multiplier, use that). That should keep shotguns for being overly powerful (they shouldn't be).

[TheRealDeal]

For the hit location fractions, it is based on the roll needed to hit that location, the % chance to hit that place equals the % of the armor over that location that counts toward the person's overall defenses.

 

Roll Area To Roll%

3-5 Head 4.6%

6 Hands 4.6%

7-8 Arms 16.7%

9 Shoulder 11.6%

10-11 Chest 25.0%

12 Stomach 11.6%

13 Vitals 9.7%

14 Thighs 6.9%

15-16 Legs 7.4%

17-18 Feet 1.9%

 

So if say I had 10 Armor on the Head (4.6%) and 8 on the Chest (25.0%) and 8 on the Stomach (11.6%) and nothing anywhere else. My overall Armor would be 10 x 0.046 + 8 x 0.25 + 8 x .116 = 3.388 which rounds to 3 Armor Overall. So if I got hit with an AoE attack, I would use 3 Armor against it.

[Glupii]

wow this gets serious complicated as a GM to run. Am I to suppose that nobody else uses sectional armor in heroic campaigns with a simpler way to deal with AoE attacks than this?

[L. Marcus]

I wouldn't use AoE for a shotgun to begin with.

[Ndreare]

It is not as complicated as it looks. You asked for percentages but you never see them in play.

You either ignore the hit location rules (what I prefer for most conflicts) or you roll on the hit location table.

The table and the modifiers are printed on the character sheet.

[TheRealDeal]

I use sectional armor like you in a HEROic game. I just calculate the above (in my last post) one time per PC and have it on their sheet as Average Armor. Then when they are hit with an AoE they just read off the already calculated Average Armor value. Simple really, not something you do every time, you just do it once and then it is set.

[Christopher]

IIRC, they're treated like a standard attack. Roll for a hit location and, if the armor doesn't cover it, the target takes full damage. I don't see it under the sections for AoE or Sectional Defenses, though. It might have been an answer tin the rule questions forum.

What I cited was in 6E2 under Hit Loaction Damage Calculation for Killing Attacks. But it seemed fully applciable for normal damage attacks too

[L. Marcus]

And under AoE in 6E1, it says that Accurate AoEs can use the Hit Locations, it eh GM wants to.

[Glupii]

I can see using hit locations for shotguns, but what about AoE attacks like flame throwers and grenades? What my group and I discussed last night was to use hit locations for normal shot guns but for larger AoE attacks we would still need to use the average armor score. What we decided to try is if the average def stops the attack, then any hit location that is not covered takes 1 point. And you can't take more damage than the total rolled on the attack. So if the average def is 3, the attack did 2 points of damage (thus stopped by the def) then each unarmored hit location would take 1 point of damage up to the 2 points that the attack did.

 

And Yes, I get that once you have the total calculated you do not need to mess with it again until you change your armor configuration. But as a GM that means I have to calculate that for every opponent, and it just adds one more task to an already daunting workload of running a game where I seem to have to come up with everything from scratch. (See my post in "Other Genre's" about the Chain Saw)

[Lucius]

Personally, I'd apply the highest DEF (which usually covers the most important parts anyway) and use the standard 1d3 for STUN multiple if it's a Killing Attack.

 

Same with falling damage, I don't roll for location for that either.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Have you seen the palindromedary's hit location chart?