

Dungeons & Dragons is the Trope Maker, having included areas of effect (typically in the form of dragons' breath and certain magic spells) since its very first edition.It's used to turn regular single target attacks into this. Champions has Area Of Effect as a Power Advantage.In Castlevania: Nocturne of the Tabletop, Eric Lecardes Mirror of Truth hits all enemies, no matter how far away or who they are engaged with.Instead, for the low, low cost of 1 character point, the "selective" variable lets the user choose who is and isn't harmed when using the weapon. However, the "Weapon" attribute (which covers all forms of attack) automatically affects everything in range to begin with. In most cases this goes hand-in-hand with the "target" variable to identify how many individuals within the area that an attribute can affect at one time. Big Eyes, Small Mouth has "area" as a standard variable to enhance the effects of attributes.Flames of War uses a similar plastic piece for representing bombardment. Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 have several round plastic templates and two "flame blast" templates (dragon breath, flamethrowers, "napalm," etc). Sometimes, the distance from a certain point on the table is measured instead to see if something is affected. These are ubiquitous in wargames, where area of effect determines what pieces are hit by artillery shells, spells, and similar attacks.

Less orthodox variants can also include the summoning of large swarms of biting or stinging creatures. Abilities that call down rains of damaging projectiles, such as a Rain of Arrows, Storm of Blades, or multi-bolide variant of Meteor-Summoning Attack, also tend to take this form. They aren't necessarily offensive in nature, either - healing or protection abilities often work in an area of effect as well.Ĭommon forms taken by these attacks include powerful explosions, waves of fire, storms and blizzards, and other elemental phenomena that can cover a wide area. However, they'll usually avert Friendly Fireproof, adding another layer of strategy to their use. Popular in Tabletop Games and Strategy Games, area of effect attacks are very useful for taking out large numbers of weak enemies simultaneously. This area is the "area of effect", and attacks/buffs that work this way are called area of effect attacks/buffs. Some effects, rather than having a single target, affect everything within a given area.
