Gnome BODY (important!)

Emphasis mine. You cannot buy "+2 with Multiple Attack". You can use "+2 with Swords" in a Multiple Attack that involves only swords. If you Multiple Attack with a blaster gun and your eyebeams, you can't use "+1 with Eyebeams" because it wouldn't apply to the blaster gun.

It is also explicitly at the GM's option. That's a serious limiter on the potential abuse (unless the player and/or GM don't read the book and just blindly obey HD, which happens).

What is the attack trying to do that requires it to continue to function against all targets in the initial area?

I can find the +5 to double rule for Followers, Bases, Vehicles, Multiforms, Duplicates but not as a general rule for powers. What page is that on? E: Ah, it's in 6e2 (WHY?). That explains why I didn't find it.

Do mundane weather effects have any mechanical impact in your game? If not, I'd suggest a 1" Change Environment. (Or even ask your GM if you can have it for zero points but maybe some reasonable END cost, since it doesn't do anything mechanically). If they do have mechanical effects, we'd have to know what those effects are to build appropriate countermeasures.

Answer the question please!

These are basically my thoughts as well. On that note, Hugh, please put the telepath back where you found him. He has crime to fight and/or commit.

Yes.

I think the (well, a) reason for the dissent on the subject of having an Arcane CV is a gap in narrative understanding. It's certainly why I'm so leery of the concept. I don't have a mental picture of what an ACV rating says about a character. For example, (no hard feelings, you're just closest to the bottom of the page) What does a miss with this ACV-based fireball attack look like? What did the defender do to make the fireball go somewhere else? What does a high AOCV attacker's attack look like? What are they doing differently from a low AOCV attacker? What sort of person would be really good at hitting with this fireball? What does a high ADCV target look and behave like? A high DCV target is fast, evasive, nimble, etc. But what adjectives apply to somebody with a high ADCV? Who's hard to hit with this fireball, who's easy to hit?

I am horribly confused right now. As far as I can tell, you're arguing that 2x60AP is better than 1x60AP (obviously)? But why in the world would a GM check off on that? Are you assuming that the GM is a robot who blindly allows anything that fits within AP caps? If that's not the scenario you're presenting, please explain to me in what possible way hitting somebody with two attacks is an advantage, by providing an example. What single power could the character have used? What pair of powers could they have used? Why was the pair of powers superior? What were the campaign caps? Why did the GM allow the pair of powers?

Inanimate objects have BODY and DEF. But Foci don't, Foci just have DEF. Instead of BODY, Foci lose a power everytime they would have lost BODY, or all their powers if they would lose more BODY than their DEF. Which means that "cheap pings" such as Penetrating KA 1d6 Autofire 3 will obliterate Foci that a KA 3d6 would bounce off of. And this leads to some cheesetacular constructs. For example, RKA 1d6 (Standard effect) Penetrating Autofire 5 AoE 1". 52 AP to remove all Foci from a target, unless those Foci are Unbreakable or the target has a Hardened Force Field (Or bought Hardened RDEF for their Foci, but who does that?). When that should be slowly chipping away at but not breaking them, the way it would any other object.

You're stating a conclusion (Combined Attacks should take a Full Phase) as a fundamental assumption and reasoning from there instead of supporting it. And I feel it's a heavily flawed assumption. It relies on another assumption, that using more than one power at once is an advantage. If the GM is keeping things sane, using a Combined Attack is different, not better. If the GM is allowing 3x14d6 in a 14 DC game then of course it's broken, but arguing based on that is as intellectually dishonest as arguing that Hand Attack is OP because technically STR 60 and Hand Attack +12d6 are two 60 AP powers not one 120 AP power so you can have 24d6 in a 60 AP game. So I'm going to take a little digression here to talk under the assumption that the GM allows whatever as long as sum AP fits in the cap. What happens with combining two damaging powers? That's a rhetorical question, we all know that 2x6d6 is going to be nearly useless in a 12 DC game. In fact, you have to go to 2x9d6+1 to break even with a basic 12d6 (assuming 25 DEF). At 2x9d6+1, then a Combined attack is more expensive, better on soft targets but worse on hard targets, never inflicts Stunned, deals less Knockback, and costs half again as much. Combining a damaging attack and a non-damaging attack trades damage for utility, and means you bounce harmlessly off anyone with the appropriate exotic defense. Blast 8d6 + Flash 2d6 + Drain 1d6 means basically nothing if the target has FD and PowD 5. Ego Attack 3d6 + Mind Control 6d6 means you deal half damage and generally don't mind control meaningfully unless you're going for really low hanging fruit. In fact, the only time splitting your AP into two attacks is even a wash is 3d6NND + 3d6NND, and all you've done there is split your risk of losing damage and open yourself up to doubling the defender's Damage Negation. So in conclusion, because of HERO's subtraction based defenses and threshold based effects, a Combined Attack of powers that sum to a given AP is outright less effective than just using singular powers of the given AP. So what has to happen for Combined Attack to be as effective? I touched on this above, but you have to add enough additional DCs to overcome the target's defenses again. And this still doesn't help with Stunning and Knockback, a Combined Attack just won't do those well. Let's look at Damage Negation based defenses since they make things easy here. Defending Dan has 6DCs of DN. Attacking Anne has 12d6. She deals 6d6. If she were Combined Attacking with two attacks, she'd have to have a sum of 18d6 to get that same result, since Dan's DN would apply twice. Three attacks would need 24d6 sum to get 6d6 though. So on and so forth. So if for a single attack RAWDAM - DEF = DAM, then for a Combined Attack sum(RAWDAM) - DEF*Attacks = DAM. Plug in values for DEF and DAM and you can solve for RAWDAM. This gets a bit more complicated when exotic defenses enter the equation (you have to use sum(effectiveness*(RAWDAM-ThatDEF)) instead) but it holds. Except, whoops, what's happening to the cost per damage as the number of attacks goes up? Cost goes up too! So in conclusion, because of HERO's subtraction based defenses, a Combined Attack as effective as a singular attack costs more. So what has to happen for Combined Attack to be advantageous? You have to blow a giant pile of points and the GM has to check off on a construct that looks more powerful because there's more raw dice. There's some pretty efficient cases, (NND+NND for example) but they're also the most obviously powerful. And our counter-argument is simply one of logic: That thing is not this thing. Want "supporting evidence"? FRED puts the Multiple-Power Attack rules around forty pages away from the Rapid Fire and Sweep rules. Very clearly very different things! 6e just moved them together because they're similar, not because they're the same.

That's totally legal RAW. You just have to deal with the -142 OCV penalty. And paying END 72 times. And the other players glaring at you for the half-hour it takes to resolve assuming you don't miss immediately and end your turn. It's also a gross strawman of anyone's actual position. And illegal under Multiple Power Attack rules, it's a Rapid Fire. MPA is single target only, like Chris Goodwin mentioned.

The massive quantity of points it costs to even be able to do so. Also GM oversight. If you're throwing 2x12d6 every Phase, either something's evening that out (maybe your SPD sucks) or the GM needs to step in and address you blowing everyone else out of the water. It's a similar question to "Why don't I just spend ~10 points on END Only For Pushing and push every attack?" or "Why don't I buy a 16d6 attack in a 12d6 game?".

Linked is a Limitation. If you normally can't attack twice, then "Can attack twice with attacks A and B, but have to do so to use attack B" is an Advantage. A Limitation shouldn't be an Advantage. Why buy Linked? Because it gives you points back at the cost of control over the power. Or because it fits the description of the power. The "control or penalty" is that you have to buy all these powers separately. If Captain Either-Fire-Or-Ice pays 72 points for his Blast Multipower, then Captain Always-Fire-And-Also-Sometimes-Ice pays 100 for his Blasts and Captain Fire-And/Or-Ice pays 120 for his Blasts.

Both FRED and 6e1 have the sentence "The character makes the Attack Roll needed to hit a target with the power when the Trigger activates, not when he sets up the power. ". FRED page 271, 6e1 page 351. I can easily understand the landmine confusion, though.

The difference as I understand it is: Combined Attack (Called Multiple Power Attack in 5e): You have a bunch of powers. You want to use each one once, and on the same guy. You pay all the END, make just one attack roll, and if you hit it's with all the attacks. Multiple Attack (Called Sweep or Rapid Fire in 5e): You have one power. You want to use it multiple times, on the same or different targets. You pay all the END, eat some penalties, make multiple attack rolls, and each one determines the success of each attack. My best guess as to the rationale for permitting Combined Attack is "Hey, if you have RKA Linked to Blast you can shoot twice in a turn. But if you have RKA and Blast not Linked you can't? That'd make no sense, Linked is a Limitation. Clearly you can use both powers at once".

It's the underdog Advantage. It's really good for anyone way behind on AP. Guy throwing 60 AP at 30 DEF? Penetrating's a bad pick. Guy throwing 45 AP at 30 DEF? Penetrating doubles his expected damage. Guy throwing 30 AP at 30 DEF? Needs Penetrating to matter. It's generally great on mooks and terrible on big single villains, with heroes sometimes wanting it but often not. On KAs it tends to trickle tiny bits of BODY through and get people scared despite not being that dangerous. Edit: Forgot that it's also absolutely broken on a KA for smashing Foci, since Focuses have DEF but not BODY so even a 1 pip Penetrating KA instantly destroys them.

Numbers and graphs! At 60 AP and no Advantages, Duke's method generates about the same average BODY against 13 rDEF. Higher rDEF values give the lead to Duke's method, lower gives the lead to the existing method. Additionally, Duke's method has noticeably higher variance than the old method. As Hugh notes, 10AP per 1d6 STUN is generally going to result in little to nothing past defenses even without a divisor.

I'm of the opinion that the bulletproof Superman issue is more the result of firearms DCs being overtuned for supers (arguably due to the fact that there's no fractional KA DCs like there are for normal attacks, but more likely due to Normals having 8 BODY and people applying damage expectations based on that) and the old x5 possible stun multiplier. If the big guns in the campaign are 1 1/2d6 KA and the STUN multiplier is d3, Supes needs 9 rDEF and 27 DEF to be totally immune. Easily doable. A Normal can just be given a PhysLim or really low characteristics to keep it deadly to bystanders. If rifles are 2d6+1 and the multiplier is d(1,1,2,3,4,5}, Supes is looking at 13 (doable) and 65 (haha no). If the campaign premise involves "superheroes tough enough to ignore bullets", that should say as much about guns as it does the heroes. That digression aside, I support highly swingy KAs because I want KAs to be both threatening and unpredictable. I detest the mindset of "I've got 12 rDEF, he averages 14 BODY, I've got 10 BODY. I can take three attacks, absolutely no problem.". I want the tension of "Oh god, but what if he rolls really high on this second attack, maybe I should Block, I can't take an 18.". And when the distribution is "Within 2 of 14, 95% of the time.", that tension evaporates because people have seen the dice fall enough to get a vague idea of how it works even if they haven't mathed it. Because they know from experience that there's no 18 lurking in the wings. The swinginess creates, at least in my experience at my tables, psychological pressure that causes people to behave more in line with "Guy trying to murder me! Lethal force!". That's why I want the high variance. It creates desirable metagaming.

StoryTeller. White Wolf's title for the GM.

In a superheroes game you need a certain level of cooperation and genre-obedience. For example, "Don't kill, even if it would immediately solve the problem.". In a supervillains game, you need a much higher level of the same thing. The players and characters need to be on-board with certain codes of conduct. No betraying the party. This much killing is acceptable. Let the GM know what crimes you're planning far enough in advance that he can prep. So on and so forth. A villain game cannot function if it means "Do whatever you want, you're EEEEVIL!". A villain game can function if it means "You're supercriminals. You do supercrime together to get rich.". Basically, play Shadowrun and not "Joker and pals do New York" and it'll work out.

It also never rolls less BODY than it has DCs, which I think is swinging way too far in the opposite direction. The variability is also very low. Just 15 rDEF is enough to be pretty much immune to a 12DC KA under that model. I feel that being able to very confidently say "Oh, 12d6 KA? I've got 12 rDEF and 15 BODY so I'm totally good for four hits" will make KAs seem very nonthreatening.

Christopher, no! You have so much to live for! I've argued that it is, and I stand by my statement and reasoning.

This of course will vary by group, but my group meets every other week. That extra week gap leads to a lot worse retention of information. My group is also blessed with a constant stream of people hopping in for a session or two and then finding a different game, since we operate out of the central room for an entire gaming organization. So my personal view of what constitutes grokability is very heavily slanted towards "One explanation, then done" since I'm not in a situation where my group can afford to have a thing take 2-3 sessions to learn. That's the average playspan of a quarter of the people in each session! I'd argue the main driver of increased execution time will be that you have to sum thrice as many dice and count NDB on them. My personal experience is that experienced players handle "4d6 for BODY, times d6-1 for STUN" a little faster than "12d6, sum it, count NDB". We all know all the tricks, but summation just takes time. And inexperienced players tend to stumble a little over NDB or even forget to count it, but I'm not sure how they handle KAs since we haven't had many newcomers throwing KAs recently.