There seems to be a bit of an omission when it comes to the “Blast” quality. It says the attack can hit multiple people, but… what exactly are the rules for doing so? Can every target of the attack do active defense? If so, do they each generate momentum separately, possibly turning one bad grenade attack into a huge momentum pool for the other side? Or can none of them actively defend and are they all simply hit when a flat difficulty of 2 is reached? That might not sit right with players who feel there’s nothing that can be done once a grenade gets pulled.
Any help with this or pointing out rules I may have missed in this regard would be greatly appreciated!
(My house rule would probably be that you first make a test against difficulty 2 to throw it, and then if you succeed everyone who would be hit separately makes a Move Swiftly test against difficulty 2 (increase difficulty by 1 for every 2 momentum spent on the grenade attack, perhaps) to jump out of the way, but it’s a bit clunky and very different from any other attack/test…)
Blast: The weapon can affect multiple targets. The GM will determine how
many targets you can hit, and whether or not trying to hit multiple targets
will increase the difficulty of the attack.
So as a GM you could simply set the Difficulty for such an attack in any way that seems plausible to you.
Very narrow corridor, packed with people - D2 (standard Difficulty for ranged attacks like grenades).
Less number of people, wide room or some solid cover - D3.
Wide space, people spread out - D4.
Usually, grenades will outright kill people. So a grenade in a narrow corridor will kill everyone in the Nearby zone - adding 2 Chaos for each one killed.
Chokedust grenades will inflict their Truths on every target in the zone.
For mines it is less clear what the standard Difficulty is. I would say, placing a mine would be D1, but you can spend Momentum to create Truths to better conceal them.
An character gets one chance to detect the mine before triggering it, which will be a D1 task unless you had some Truths like “Well concealed” or such, which raise the Difficulty. If they get triggered, they catch every target in the Nearby zone.
Player characters are bit of a different matter as well as NPCs with a Stress Track. The NPCs might get some stress automatically filled, but I would expect PCs to get a chance to avoid the Blast effect - probably D2, unless there is no cover, a very narrow space, etc. - The latter could be modeled by giving the zone the Truth “No Cover” or “Narrow Space” to raise the Difficulty of any attempt to dodge a blast.
So, in my view, your house rule is very reasonable and I would do it quite similarly - but not allowing NPCs without a Stress track any chance of dodging at all. They are not important enough to justify individual dodge attempts.
Sounds reasonable for the NPC minions. It does indeed state difficulty may go up, but it’s more the mechanics of who gets to dodge, who might generate momentum, etc… I guess with that the question is answered: there’s no complete rule for Blast, so we have to fudge it ourselves a bit. Works for me.