Spreading Mental Attacks

[Greywind]

Well, it was Champions first.

[Sean Waters]

Slight derail, but...spreading works by trading damage against chance to hit or area.  That makes 'logical' sense - as Christopher Taylor attests, but if I were re-writing the rules myself I would probably remove it as an everyman option and reintroduce it as a skill, possibly with multiple levels:

 

5 points allows you to spread an attack over an area by reducing your damage by one die and hitting all targets in a hex

+1 point allows you to reduce your damage by an additional die and increase the area you can hit targets in by 1m radius

 

5 points allows you to spread an attack by reducing the damage by one die and increasing the OCV of the attack by 1

+1 point allows you to reduce the damage by an additional die and increase the OCV by an additional 1.

 

Something like that, the numbers might need a tweak.  Sort of autofire skills for ranged attacks without autofire.  Does not work with Beam attacks.

 

This allows more skilled characters to have more options in combat, and does not hand the freebie to everyone.  That would allow for better definition of the character and powers.

[Sean Waters]

Another point is that there seems to me to be a qualitative difference between spreading a 'straight' damage power (including Mental Blast) and spreading something like telepathy or mind control.  I know mechanically there may be no difference but it feels different.  It also (to an extent) treads on the toes of Mind Scan, although the spread effect will rarely be large enough to really have an impact on that.  Again it might be that this could be dealt with by adding in skills that allow you to be more effective with mental powers.