It may be that I'm just being dense, but...shouldn't the required 'minimum' dimension for explosions be a straight 2m per Damage Class, rather than (2 * DC) + 2?
Let me take Kasdrevan's 8d6 Radius Explosion Blast from 6E1 323 as an example of what I mean. If I understand correctly, that Blast does its full damage to anything within 2m, then loses its successive highest dice for every 2m or fraction beyond that. So it's 8d6 out to 2m, 8d6 - (highest die) out to 4, 8d6 - (2 highest dice) out to 6...until we get to 8d6 - (7 highest dice) out to 16m. That's it; beyond that range, we're removing 8 or more dice out of 8 and so not dealing any damage at all.
Yet Kasdrevan's Blast is bought with an 18m Area Effect Radius, not 16. (Which is indeed the by-the-book notional minimum for an 8 DC Explosion and also incidentally just happens to cross the threshold to the next larger AoE Advantage, making the power that much more expensive.) But, why? It's not as though he's actually getting anything out of those extra 2m at the outer edge, after all; the damage drops off to zero before it gets there.
Right now, I can see three potential explanations:
1.) Yes, Area Effects bought as Explosions are supposed to include and pay for that "no effect" outer edge (possibly to compensate for the reduced Active Cost relative to standard Area Effects), and the fact that this occasionally leads to spending points on nothing useful is a feature, not a bug.
2.) I'm misunderstanding how explosion damage is supposed to drop off and thus underestimating the damage radius by just those 2m.
3.) The formula in the book is just off. (It could happen. )
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Chimera 12
It may be that I'm just being dense, but...shouldn't the required 'minimum' dimension for explosions be a straight 2m per Damage Class, rather than (2 * DC) + 2?
Let me take Kasdrevan's 8d6 Radius Explosion Blast from 6E1 323 as an example of what I mean. If I understand correctly, that Blast does its full damage to anything within 2m, then loses its successive highest dice for every 2m or fraction beyond that. So it's 8d6 out to 2m, 8d6 - (highest die) out to 4, 8d6 - (2 highest dice) out to 6...until we get to 8d6 - (7 highest dice) out to 16m. That's it; beyond that range, we're removing 8 or more dice out of 8 and so not dealing any damage at all.
Yet Kasdrevan's Blast is bought with an 18m Area Effect Radius, not 16. (Which is indeed the by-the-book notional minimum for an 8 DC Explosion and also incidentally just happens to cross the threshold to the next larger AoE Advantage, making the power that much more expensive.) But, why? It's not as though he's actually getting anything out of those extra 2m at the outer edge, after all; the damage drops off to zero before it gets there.
Right now, I can see three potential explanations:
1.) Yes, Area Effects bought as Explosions are supposed to include and pay for that "no effect" outer edge (possibly to compensate for the reduced Active Cost relative to standard Area Effects), and the fact that this occasionally leads to spending points on nothing useful is a feature, not a bug.
2.) I'm misunderstanding how explosion damage is supposed to drop off and thus underestimating the damage radius by just those 2m.
3.) The formula in the book is just off. (It could happen.
)
But which is it?
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