6th Edition Spreading Proposal Draft

Spreading Proposal
The following rules are proposed.


 * 1) Multiple Attack is not in use, in any form.
 * 2) Multiple Move By is restored; it functions as in 5th Edition.
 * 3) Spreading an Attack (6E2 49), only for use against multiple targets, is expanded as follows:
 * 4) You can substitute -2 OCV for -1 DC to fill 1m radius area.
 * 5) Spreading may be used with HTH attacks.
 * 6) You still have to pay for "empty areas" between two targets.
 * 7) Although it notionally works by 1m areas, in HTH you don't hit everyone in the target area; targets are individual. (Ranged attacks could also be defined as working this way if it makes sense with the SFX.)
 * 8) It is possible to used different combat maneuvers on each target while spreading. In this case your DCV is the worst of all maneuvers, while the OCV is reckoned normally for each attack.
 * 9) Spreading is usable with Stretching and Reach, though of course one has to pay for each 1m area between targets as usual.
 * 10) You may not buy Combat Skill Levels, Only For Spreading. Any dice in a Power, Only For Spreading, will count toward DC for balance purposes, as normal.

Rationale
There are several problems with Multiple Attack, varying from it being rather un-Hero-like (it makes a nonsense of the SPD chart) to problems of balance and excessively devastating tactics (shooting Multiple Attacks from all over the battlefield at any target who is at half DCV for instance). We weren't inclined to allow it in anything close to its full form.

But there was a deeper problem: neither Multiple Attack nor its more sedate ancestor Sweep seem well-suited to what is presumably their purpose. Basically, superheroes fighting their approximate equals in general ought to be attacking at the rate indicated by their SPD; while when attacking "mooks" or "goons" or whatever one calls them, they should be able to take on several at once without raising a sweat - and without taking too long. Before Sweep, taking care of mooks took too long, relatively speaking.

But Sweep wasn't the right answer. For one thing the half-DCV penalty makes it a risky proposition, which didn't feel right. A hero fighting 3 mooks is surely not any any more risk than one fighting a lone supervillain. At the same time, Sweep allows for attack at full strength vs three supervillains - if you're taking the risk, you can go for supervillains as easily as mooks.

So we decided to go for something that reduced the power of the attack instead of CV penalties, and this suggested using a variant on Spreading, which was the solution for this problem for blasters. The trouble with this was that it favoured bricks, who have lots of DCs to spare, over martial artists, who have more CV than they know what to do with against mooks but not so many DCs. Hence the rule about substituting two OCV for one DC. Given that it takes -4 to OCV to Spread at the minimal level attack two adjacent people the hope is that allowing this substitution will not make Spreading a useful option often against meta-level targets, while still being useful against mooks.

'Comments are welcome before we put this into playtest. --Stephie 20:27, 26 January 2010 (UTC)'