Zone wide evocation attacks to strong?

[Victim]

Eh.  A baseball bat is Weapon 2 and seems to lend itself to inflicting bruises and knockouts.  A .45 pistol is also Weapon 2, and seems to lend itself to more bleeding wounds and death.  Clearly, weapon rating, while generally indicative of how effective something is at taking out enemies, doesn't necessarily indicate intent or what kind of damage people take. 

A wizard's non lethal lightning blast could be designed to use the same principles as a taser so it incapacitates instead of kills even with high power.  Generally speaking, of course.  Accidents do happen.  And someone might be justified in Declaring that the non-lethal spell might be less effective against an inhuman physiology.  Maybe the rubbery bat body of a RCV just isn't bothered by high voltage, or microwave beams, whatever - so if you want to have full effect against monsters, you have to risk death to innocents.

[Papa Gruff]

The nature of the on going debate tells me a few things. First it seams, that there are very widespread opinions about the effects of stress and take outs. I can see reason behind all the different opinions here and that's kind of the problem.

It's true that the rules clearly state, that the take out gets decided by the Attacker within the realm of reason. In this special case considering the total damage inflicted i lean towards luminos opinion, that reason dictates that the damage of an attack such as the described clearly is intended to inflict great damage by design (+6 is clearly explosives grade in damage, the design of the spell is merely flavor here, since the explosive and zone attack rules apply).

My nameless NPC only take a minor for the reasons luminos stated. Yet a player can never by entirely sure about that and shouldn't be. The way I see it, if the wizard only wants to take them out he has to be subtle and use a less strong evocation if he doesn't want to kill the mercs. Who says that he has to attack with his max power? He can easily attack with only 3 shifts zone wide, still rolling his discipline to see if the attack succeeds (which it probably will).

At this point I'm actually glad that this came up during yesterdays session, because I as a GM I have learned to be even more demanding to my wizard's player when it comes to him describing his desired effect and alerting him to the possible outcomes of it.

[Tsunami]

Ok, me being the player who made that attack I thought i'd pitch in.

The Attack was actually a 6 shift evocation. 4 shifts for stress, 2 shifts for zone.
The Original idea was to fill the zone with a Electrical-Taser Field. Using Earth Magic.

Since there were only 4 targets to hit I described it badly making it sound like a spray attack, causing all that trouble with discussions and so on.

I'm of the opinion that 4 shifts of power are definetly in the realm of "Incapacitate but not kill" a target.
(Especially in the current case. Thinking of how the mercs were described as being well trained and equipped. They had freaking Flamethrowers and Rocket Launchers dammit )

What i believe to be a useful limitation for Zone attacks is to take shifts from the attack roll out of the equation.
No extra stress from those shifts for Zone attacks.
Shifts from the attack are supposed to describe how well I've hit a target. When i fill a whole zone with an effect, how does quality of hit facture in?? Right... it doesn't.
So my Weapon:4 Zone attack would do 4 stress if it hits, no more. Regardless of how bad the targets rolled for defense.

just an idea.

[luminos]

What i believe to be a useful limitation for Zone attacks is to take shifts from the attack roll out of the equation.
No extra stress from those shifts for Zone attacks.
Shifts from the attack are supposed to describe how well I've hit a target. When i fill a whole zone with an effect, how does quality of hit facture in?? Right... it doesn't.
So my Weapon:4 Zone attack would do 4 stress if it hits, no more. Regardless of how bad the targets rolled for defense.

just an idea.

Thats not a bad compromise.  It certainly makes it a lot more reasonable to not expect them to die.

[Papa Gruff]

Ok, me being the player who made that attack I thought i'd pitch in.

The Attack was actually a 6 shift evocation. 4 shifts for stress, 2 shifts for zone.
The Original idea was to fill the zone with a Electrical-Taser Field. Using Earth Magic.

Since there were only 4 targets to hit I described it badly making it sound like a spray attack, causing all that trouble with discussions and so on.

I'm of the opinion that 4 shifts of power are definetly in the realm of "Incapacitate but not kill" a target.
(Especially in the current case. Thinking of how the mercs were described as being well trained and equipped. They had freaking Flamethrowers and Rocket Launchers dammit )

What i believe to be a useful limitation for Zone attacks is to take shifts from the attack roll out of the equation.
No extra stress from those shifts for Zone attacks.
Shifts from the attack are supposed to describe how well I've hit a target. When i fill a whole zone with an effect, how does quality of hit facture in?? Right... it doesn't.
So my Weapon:4 Zone attack would do 4 stress if it hits, no more. Regardless of how bad the targets rolled for defense.

just an idea.

For the purpose of this thread can we please not change the parameters of the example? However the values of power and shifts are, the effects possible to create with this in my opinion merit a greater downside then "your friends get hit too". No Friends, no downside...

I don't like the idea of not using extra shifts, because the zone wide attack clearly lacks control. You spend two shifts to attack the hole zone with the energy you unleash. You hit everything not able to get out of the zone in time. You inflict the damage on everything in the zone and possibly create scene aspects as well. To me extra shifts to stress should apply simply because you gave up a lot of focused control over your energy by not targeting anything in particular.

[Tsunami]

For the purpose of this thread can we please not change the parameters of the example? However the values of power and shifts are, the effects possible to create with this in my opinion merit a greater downside then "your friends get hit too". No Friends, no downside...

I don't like the idea of not using extra shifts, because the zone wide attack clearly lacks control. You spend two shifts to attack the hole zone with the energy you unleash. You hit everything not able to get out of the zone in time. You inflict the damage on everything in the zone and possibly create scene aspects as well. To me extra shifts to stress should apply simply because you gave up a lot of focused control over your energy by not targeting anything in particular.

But shifts from an attakc actually ARE control translated into damage, by better controling the spell i can use its energy more efficiently, inflicting more stress... less control translates into only having the powers that ist there doing what it does, and nothing more.

Also, doesn't the player get to decide if/or if not he wants to use shifts as damage in any case ? at least that's how i interpret the rules.

It wouldn't make much sense for an highly disciplined wizard who is casting a 3 shift evocation with a really high dicipline to suddenly do a lot more damage because he hit so well... that would actually translate into less control with higher dicipline...
You get to choose if you want to use shifts for damage, since shifts represent control and quality.

[Falar]

Dresden's Force Ring is a Weapon: 4 attack, exactly equal to using a hand grenade on someone.  He uses it on mortals all the time, to date none of them have been blown into little pieces by an "artillery level blast of power", to use your description of it.  Not some of the time, not occasionally, never, not even once.

Does Dresden have a clear intent to kill when he uses a force ring on a mortal?  You say it's clear he does, I strongly disagree.

Having just read Summer Knight, where he is using the force ring to defend against mortals, he is EXTREMELY cautious to point it away from the assassins that were after him and make sure it was only a glancing blow. Why? So he didn't kill them with it and he didn't pick up another Lawbreaker and be happily joining Bianca in the land of the dead.

Other than that time, the only two major times I can think of him really cutting loose with the force rings don't have mortals as the targets. Ghouls and the Big Icky. But I'd love to see your cites on him using it on mortals.

[Wordmaker]

Why not compel an Aspect of the wizard to tempt them to pour enough into the spell to kill the targets? That way the choice is still there for the player, but in making them pay a Fate Point to not kill the mercs, you're representing the self-control needed to not pour too much power into the attack.

Also, just because the player doesn't kill the targets, that doesn't mean they get to decide exactly how badly they're hurt. You could end up with 4 unconscious mercs in your yard with electrical burns in critical condition. They need medical attention, and fast. What is the wizard going to do? Will he ask the Council for help? Drop off four heavily-armed men to the nearest hospital and hope he gets there in time, and manages to avoid some serious questioning?

Not to mention that, Lawbreaker or not, the Wardens are going to start paying close attention to a wizard willing to lay-down a massive area-effect electrical charge on mortals. And we all know that the Wardens can be more than happy to take someone down based only on the mere suspicion that they have broken or will break the Laws.

Narrative solutions to issues like this are always more fun for the group than enforcing mechanical restrictions, I feel.

[TheMouse]

Attacks have a minimum of 0 shifts to succeed.  It won't do any damage without a boost, but it still does connect. 

I just checked, and you're right. I stand corrected. I guess I'm not totally used to this version of FATE yet.

And being mercenaries, they probably have a rank in Endurance

Irrelevant to this scenario. You posited mortals with 2 box stress tracks in the text I quoted, and I'm responding to that. So we're talking about mortals with 2 box stress tracks, not mortals with high ratings in Endurance.

Eh.  A baseball bat is Weapon 2 and seems to lend itself to inflicting bruises and knockouts.

Baseball bats are totally capable of breaking bones, even tough ones like skulls and femora.

[GoldenH]

You only get to concede before the dice are rolled! I think the same rule of thumb could inform mooks taking consequences. Once the dice are in the air, the mook is going to take Stress and/or Consequences. At that point the mook may concede, bargaining for a non-Lethal taking out result. But, if all the mook's stress and consequences are used up, you can tell the player that the only acceptable Taken Out result is death.

This is, I think, what someone concerned about being killed when Taken Out would do - take the hit, and consequences, and then immediately Concede. If they really thought their opponent would kill them, they would not immediately let themselves be Taken Out where they could die without having a chance to use their Consequences first.

Besides, if mooks never used their Consequences, they would never show up in a hospital, and where's the fun in that?

[Ala Alba]

But I'd love to see your cites on him using it on mortals.

He does use one on that thug in SmF, in Helen's office. However, the charges in his rings are extremely variable, so it's plausible that there wasn't enough of a charge in the one he used to kill a tough human.

[Falar]

Well, seeing as he went for the energy of one of his four tripled bands, I'm pretty sure in that case he was shooting to wound. If it's Weapon: 4 with about 4 charges, then I think he'd have been pulling a Weapon:1 or some such by only activating one band, although it's unclear how much power he really put into it. Either way, I'd say it wasn't a full charge just because it was meant only to get them off him. And they did walk out under their own power.

[Biff Dyskolos]

What i believe to be a useful limitation for Zone attacks is to take shifts from the attack roll out of the equation.
No extra stress from those shifts for Zone attacks.

I like this! I'll defiantly be using this at my table.

[Biff Dyskolos]

I don't like the idea of not using extra shifts, because the zone wide attack clearly lacks control.

By definition, if your Discipline roll beats the power of the evocation it is controlled.

In my opinion, if the caster controls the power of the spell and the mercs are taken out then the player narrates the effect. If they fail to control the power and the mercs are taken out then it seems fair that the GM narrates the effect.

[Papa Gruff]

By definition, if your Discipline roll beats the power of the evocation it is controlled.

In my opinion, if the caster controls the power of the spell and the mercs are taken out then the player narrates the effect. If they fail to control the power and the mercs are taken out then it seems fair that the GM narrates the effect.

Sorry, I could have been more clear. By control i meant that he gives up his ability do direct his magical energy to a narrow point. As everything gets hit by the same amount of energy, I see no reason why extra shifts from not defending against these energie shouldn't apply. It would only be consistent with the attack mechanics.