Grenades, spell effects, breath weapons, and other attacks that cover a large area are “area effect attacks.” The most common are Small, Medium, and Large Blast Templates, and the Cone Template and Stream Template. There are copies you can print out and durable acrylic versions as well.

Area effect weapons target a location rather than individuals and so ignore defensive bonuses for specific targets covered by the template, such as the Dodge Edge or speed penalties. Cone templates are placed with the small end emanating from the attacker and fired with the Shooting skill (or Athletics for breath weapons and other natural attacks). Any power or other effect that uses a Cone Template may use the Stream Template instead. This is a straight line 1” (2 yards) wide and 12” (24 yards) long. A basic success means those beneath the template are hit. Failure means the attack didn’t occur for some reason—the creature failed to belch up noxious gas, the flamethrower malfunctioned, etc.

To attack with a blast template, the player places the template on the tabletop (or describes where he wants it to land) and rolls Shooting, or Athletics for thrown weapons and breath attacks. If the attack fails and there’s a chance it might deviate and hit someone else, see Deviation, below.

If the roll is successful, any target even partially beneath the template is affected, regardless of any attack penalties to hit such as the Dodge Edge. If the effect causes damage, roll for each victim separately. Attacks that hit with a raise cause bonus damage as usual.

If an attack with a Cone Template fails, it goes over the targets’ heads, hits the ground, or simply falters for some reason. The GM may still decide the attack affects the area around it—perhaps a flamethrower sets a room on fire or a gas canister spews a cloud of gas— but there’s no game effect on characters or other targets this time.

If a blast template misses, it deviates 1d6″ for thrown weapons (such as grenades) and 2d6″ for fired projectiles. Multiply by 2 if the attack was made at Medium Range, 3 if Long, and 4 for Extreme.

Next roll a d12 and read it like a clock facing to determine the direction the missile deviates. A weapon can never deviate more than half the distance to the original target (that keeps it from going behind the thrower).

Attacks Solid obstacles like trees or brick walls protect against area effect attacks if they’re between the origin of the blast and the GM reasonably thinks they’d apply. Reduce the damage by the amount listed on the Cover Bonus table under Cover & Obstacles, page 93.

Use the measurements below when you need to figure out how many enemies a template might affect.

The GM can also use the Targets Affected column to determine how many enemies are hit in narrative situations, modifying the results if the targets are more spread out (highly trained agents) or bunched up (a horde of zombies).