[Broken Sky] How to balance Area of Effect damage
Nalanthi:
Quote from: Callan S. on July 23, 2011, 04:26:39 PM
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but I feel that itshould still be a creditable attack when thrown at a party of anti-pcs.
Well, if anti-PC's are built the same way as PC's, it wont be.
Creditable does not mean that it would have to be as effective as the magic sword would be against the anti-npcs, just that the attack needs to be at the level where it kills the mooks, wounds the supporting characters and inconveniences the anti-pcs. This likewise means that when it gets turned around and used against the party, it will do the same things. The magic sword is much more threatening to pcs and anti-pcs but it can only kill one mook a round.
This does mean that some character builds will be less inconvenienced and some builds more inconvenienced (or even wounded) by the attack. The mechanics can necessarily only check a few statistics, and if you are below level in those statistics (or of course roll poorly) it will affect you like a supporting character or even a mook.
Matthew M.:
In Mutants and Masterminds (third edition) AoE attacks automatically hit but they cannot score critical hits and cannot be modified by other manuevers to increase the attack check. In D&D (3.5) you can roll to save to reduce the damage you take from AoE's by 1/2, and if you have a aquired a special ability (uncanny dodge I beleive it is called) you can then avoid full AoE's. I find both of these ways of limiting AoE's to be fairly pleasing, but if you are going for realistic combat I feel the Mutants and Masterminds system is better.
Daniel36:
Perhaps you can have three different areas of effect within the spells / explosions? So the center is high powered and hard to dodge, the middle line is medium powered, medium to dodge, and the outer line is low and easy.
Or, to make things a little easier, choose any one PC (could be random), that one is, in essence, the center. This PC has a low percentage of dodge and gets the highest points of damage. Then whoever is closest gets slightly less damage and a slightly higher percentage of dodging, etcetera. Easy to calculate, fairly "realistic" and pretty tense. Also makes them think about their positioning. Perhaps the tank can have a skill where he can "take the blow" and as such be the center instead of a weaker character that is being targeted.
Hope this helps.
Danny Bridges:
Quote from: Nalanthi on July 15, 2011, 07:23:40 AM
From a gameplay standpoint, which do you guys think would be more satisfying to the user of an AoE attack.
...
Which do you think would be more frustrating to a party if the attack was used against the party?
To answer your original questions, science suggests that option 1 (higher hit chance) will be more satisfying to the user, and the latter is what players would prefer to have used against them. Basically, we prefer certain gains to uncertain ones, and uncertain losses to certain ones.
However, we actually feel worse about experiencing a loss if thought we might get out of it than we do if we know it's sure to happen. As such, I'd say it's actually a toss-up between the two options with respect to what would be better to have used against players.
That leaves option 1 as definitely better to use yourself, and neither option as definitively better to have used against you, at least from a psychological perspective. Hope that helps.
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