I've been stewing this one for a bit, especially now that I'm making some of the higher level opposition for my party to take on (it's a bunch of layers, and I'm ensuring there's tough situations at each step), so I have to ask:

How would you handle hitting many non-minion targets with a single object?

Note that I am specifying non-minions as any narrative way to crush multiple minions works out in the end.

I have two examples as to HOW it can happen, followed by how I think it can work mechanically:

Example 1: Physically Moving

Let's say I have a wookiee with Brawn 6 that wishes to club the party members (or Rival/Nemesis NPCs) with the large table they are all sitting at (on the smaller end of Silhouette 2). In this example, the victims are all considered "engaged" due to sitting in close proximity.

In this example, it is entirely feasible to hit all of the targets.

Example 2: Force Power - Move

After checking out the power in detail, I realized a strong enough Force user can lift a ship, such as a YT-1300, and throw it at a target (and deal 40 wounds in the process!).

That said, let's say that a powerful Dark Side Adept needs to escape from a party that is chasing her. She sees a speeder truck that can hit them and, barring that, block the road.

In this example, the party isn't exactly engaged with each other, but they are pretty close (close enough that more than one can possibly be hit by something with a Silhouette of 3)

The Mechanics

I have a few ideas here, but I don't know which one is really best.

Blast Quality: My least favourite option is to use the Blast Quality equal to the Silhouette + Brawn (or in the case of the Move power, Silhouette + the number of pips rolled for the power). This means a strong character with Brawn 6 swinging a Silhouette 2 table has a Blast Rating of 8.

Sadly, this doesn't feel as great for the Move power, as that means the Blast rating of a Silhouette 3 truck being thrown at the party will be around Blast 7, which feels less than deadly with something weighing in the area of tons can be stopped by decent armor. An alternative was using the standard damage for throwing things with the Move power (Silhouette x 10), but that may be considered too deadly (in the example, 30 damage is the blast rating).

Auto-Fire: This one feels a bit more realistic. Do the usual increase the difficulty for auto-fire, and spend the advantages to his multiple targets. Narratively, anyone that is "missed" got out of the way before the object in question landed.

GM Caveat: Everyone gets hit, regardless! To be fair, Destiny Points can be spent to make this happen.

I know, it's cheap, but sometimes you need this to happen.

Initiative Decision: Roll for Initiative; whomever acts before the object connects (i.e. when the attacker's turn comes up) gets out of the way. Again, not horribly balanced.

The first two are serious approaches, while the latter two aren't nearly as well supported, but they are still options.

Any and all input would be appreciated here!

My first instinct would be that the Silhouette has some say on how many people can be struck by it, i.e. the Silhouette 2 table could hit two targets. That simultaneously seems a.) too big for a table, and b.) far too few targets.

So Silhouette could dictate how many people are hit in a range band of each other. To wit: the player must designate a single target for the thrown item. With a Silhouette 0 item, only that target may be hit. With a Silhouette 1 item, that target and any that are within Engaged range may be hit. With a Silhouette 2 item, that target and any within Close range may be hit.

It falls apart a bit around Silhouette 4, since the range bands seem to increase exponentially rather than geometrically, but at that point you have a YT-1300 screaming towards your head. There's not a lot of room for logic.

Off hand, I'd say simply use your judgement as a GM rather than try to hammer out a hard-and-fast rule. Silhouette 2 is pretty large in size; I'd say roughly Jabba at the least, but also things like Tauntauns and Wampas, while the quite tall Wookiees only measure in at Silhouette 1.

Also, bear in mind that with how minion groups handle wounds, your Wookiee could quite easily clobber a bunch of guys all at once with said Silhouette 2 table, simply by dealing enough damage to take down more than one minion as well as triggering a critical (which automatically takes out a minion).

Regarding Move, in WotC's Saga Edition the move object Force power had a similar issue, was it was astonishingly easy to pick up a Large object (DC 20 Use the Force check, which most low level Force users could pull off thanks to Skill Focus), which was a 2x2 square area, but by RAW only affected a single target, and only got wonkier from there, up to something the size of a YT-1300 (12x12 square area) still only being able to affect a single target (admittedly for a pretty obscene amount of damage).

Again, much like table-swinging Wookiee, I think the case of taking down multiple opponents with one really big object would be a feature of the minion group rules, with a Silhouette 2 object dealing 20+successes damage to the group, and probably wiping out 3 or 4 of them in one go (I know, as I've done this with my own PC a few times). If the PC wants to hit a second minion group, even one that's "right nearby," then they'd need the Magnitude Upgrade to hurl a second sufficiently large object. Or if the hurled object is deemed sufficiently big enough by the GM, just allow the PC to trigger the Magnitude Upgrade to attack the additional target(s) with said object instead of the RAW of allowing the PC to hurl a second object. Move's already sufficiently powerful that it doesn't really need extra rules to do things like hit multiple individual targets (such as a trio of Rivals) with a single hurled object sans the Magnitude Upgrade, no matter how big that object is.

My first instinct would be that the Silhouette has some say on how many people can be struck by it, i.e. the Silhouette 2 table could hit two targets. That simultaneously seems a.) too big for a table, and b.) far too few targets.

Off hand, I'd say simply use your judgement as a GM rather than try to hammer out a hard-and-fast rule. Silhouette 2 is pretty large in size; I'd say roughly Jabba at the least, but also things like Tauntauns and Wampas, while the quite tall Wookiees only measure in at Silhouette 1.

This is where Silhouette gets a bit wonky. Speeder Bikes are Silhouette 2, yet there are just a bit longer (albeit heavier) than a human. The same can be said about Wampas and Tauntauns; they are not THAT much larger but they are heavier.

So Silhouette could dictate how many people are hit in a range band of each other. To wit: the player must designate a single target for the thrown item. With a Silhouette 0 item, only that target may be hit. With a Silhouette 1 item, that target and any that are within Engaged range may be hit. With a Silhouette 2 item, that target and any within Close range may be hit.

It falls apart a bit around Silhouette 4, since the range bands seem to increase exponentially rather than geometrically, but at that point you have a YT-1300 screaming towards your head. There's not a lot of room for logic.

I agree that it could work, but as you said, it falls apart rather quickly.

Also, bear in mind that with how minion groups handle wounds, your Wookiee could quite easily clobber a bunch of guys all at once with said Silhouette 2 table, simply by dealing enough damage to take down more than one minion as well as triggering a critical (which automatically takes out a minion).

This is true, but I did note that we're not looking at minions in this example due to the narrative structure of beating minions.

Regarding Move, in WotC's Saga Edition the move object Force power had a similar issue, was it was astonishingly easy to pick up a Large object (DC 20 Use the Force check, which most low level Force users could pull off thanks to Skill Focus), which was a 2x2 square area, but by RAW only affected a single target, and only got wonkier from there, up to something the size of a YT-1300 (12x12 square area) still only being able to affect a single target (admittedly for a pretty obscene amount of damage).

Again, much like table-swinging Wookiee, I think the case of taking down multiple opponents with one really big object would be a feature of the minion group rules, with a Silhouette 2 object dealing 20+successes damage to the group, and probably wiping out 3 or 4 of them in one go (I know, as I've done this with my own PC a few times). If the PC wants to hit a second minion group, even one that's "right nearby," then they'd need the Magnitude Upgrade to hurl a second sufficiently large object. Or if the hurled object is deemed sufficiently big enough by the GM, just allow the PC to trigger the Magnitude Upgrade to attack the additional target(s) with said object instead of the RAW of allowing the PC to hurl a second object. Move's already sufficiently powerful that it doesn't really need extra rules to do things like hit multiple individual targets (such as a trio of Rivals) with a single hurled object sans the Magnitude Upgrade, no matter how big that object is.

Yeah, I think the "smacking individuals with large objects" department is pretty poorly done in most games; it's either overkill or not very well fleshed out (that included games that are focused on superheroic-levels of strength).

Your approach with Magnitude should work out. It feels like a bit off as it forces a character to spend more pips to hit people that are feasible to hit with such a large object, which is my concern.

Thanks for the input on that so far; I'll keep that in mind if it comes up!

I'd go with auto-fire rules. Increase the difficulty by one if more than one target is in the way and spend advantages to hit targets beyond the first up to the number of targets that the GM determined could be hit by the size of the item. Could be hard to hit many targets with a table unless they are engaged with each other. Force Move with the speeder truck would be easier for hitting targets in close range of each other.

The Force Move Control Upgrade reads: The number of targets affected by a single object is up to the GM, but in general, a single object should only affect a single target, unless the object is particularly large. Which leaves it open to GM call on how many can be hit. It goes on to talk about hitting multiple targets with multiple objects would require the auto-fire rules. I think the auto-fire rules would still work for the one big object against several targets. The increased difficulty and advantages required simulate the targets being able to scramble out of the way so less are hit.

I'd definitely go with Blast, but ditch those guidelines for the damage and just decide what it should be by situation. A lot of cases, like a giant boulder, I'd see having the Blast damage be the same as the regular damage.

I'd say Blast, because that's what a blast is (an impact or damage effect over an area, rather than Auto-Fire, which is various individual effects over time). But why would you tie the Blast value to the Brawn/Force roll of the character making the attack? The table the Wookiee is hitting someone with isn't going to become physically larger just because he is stronger than someone with a Brawn of 4. I would just assign a Blast rating and damage value at the time of the attack and move on. I agree that there is no point is trying to create a unified mechanic for this, since that means you are going to have to measure and scale things where measures and scales may not exist.