On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, Landon Darkwood wrote:

> On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 11:27:02 -0000, Adrian Price
> <AdrianFPrice@...> wrote:
>
> > I agree with you, but what about when the SMG guy wants
> > to shoot at two or more guys with his SMG? Seems a
> > reasonable request, and that's what I'm having trouble
> > with.
>
> If a dude with an SMG wants to shoot two dudes, he rolls
> in an exchange vs. both of them, but each of the two dudes
> takes a +1 for outnumbering SMG-dude. If SMG-dude beats
> both of them in the resulting rolls, the GM might rule
> that autofire allows him to damage them both, though the
> default rules state he can only damage one person per
> exchange in multiple-person combat.

One possible way to "balance" multiple targets would be
the idea that if you beat both folks, you can hit both of
them for the damage level you would have if you attacked
them separately, dropped by one level for each additional
"hit" over one.

Say you're shooting at three guys, and you beat them by
MoS 1, 3, and 5 -- Clipped, Hurt, Injured. You could hit
all three, but only by dropping each wound level two
levels -- Injured down two becomes Clipped, Hurt down two
becomes Scratched, and Clipped down two is below
Scratched, so call it Scratched. Beyond being vastly
unsatisfying, it's clear that the better choice here is to
miss the Clipped guy anyway, and just opt to hit the other
two, dropping each by one level -- so Hurt guy is actually
Clipped, and Injured guy is actually Hurt.

> Additionally, if he gets beat by both people, he's going
> to take two damage effects - could be pretty nasty for him
> in the end.

True, if each of their goals is shooting him.

I'm also going to speak to the idea of grenades and
explosions here. This is a "it depends on the game you're
running" sort of thing, I tend to feel. (Which honestly is
probably part of why we haven't addressed such things as
multiple targets and area effects yet -- there are a lot
of kind-of-game priorities and decisions that go into
that, and, yes, we should probably find some time to
discuss them.)

In such a case you should probably think about your
dramatic priorities. Is it appropriate to your game for
people to be able to jump free? Are any explosions too big
to get away from in combat time? Etc.

You also may want to think about how you see this sort of
thing playing out -- guy tosses an area effect somewhere
(here's a grenade!). Folks get a chance to respond to it
(I dive out of the way!). Maybe they have to ditch their
option to counterattack and instead go for something
completely defensive (the dive), in which case it's the
attacker vs defender (the attacker's Thrown skill roll or
whatever is the difficulty of getting out of the range of
the blast due to the placement achieved with the grenade,
the defenders are using acrobatics or jumping or whatever
to put lots of distance between them and the explosive),
or they can attack the guy back but take the full blast
(opting not to defend sounds like you're taking -4 on
something appropriate). Maybe they have the option to
shoot the guy with the grenade _before_ he manages to
throw it, and there's the possibility of the grenade
landing at his feet. Maybe if the thrower fails, there's a
bounce notion in effect, where a single Fudge die is
rolled and + means it gets further from the thrower and -
means it gets closer. Maybe maybe maybe.

What I'm getting at in all this is that a lot of you are
asking "how should X be handled" before you're answering
the prerequesite question -- "what's your reality like?"

Questions of multiple targets and area effects are very
much dependent on the reality answer, and I think the ways
to approach them vary far more than the "basics" of
combat... The basics are managable, in that when we give
you the three modes and show you that the wound track is a
challenge track and how to build challenge tracks, you've
pretty much got all the tools you need to implement your
reality answer. Multiple targets and area effects have a
lot more variables -- and you could probably write a whole
chapter with the suggestions of how to tackle them.

For example: in my running of Fate, I don't really allow
for the targeting of multiple targets unless they're
groups of mooks, in which case I tend to treat them as
single characters, and area affect things are rare -- but
when they happen, hell man, I just wing it.

--
Fred Hicks * "Curse you iago and your fast fingers!" - Rob Donoghue
Co-Author of Fate - Managing Editor of Fudge Factor - The 'fan' in fanatic
Fate RPG * http://www.faterpg.com/ Fudge Factor * http://www.fudgefactor.org/
Plink * http://www.rainlikely.com/ Jim Butcher * http://www.jim-butcher.com/