Hello,
yesterday evening I had my first DOOM game. I bought both game and expansion and me and my friends decided to start with a Deathmatch game to test combat rules.
Everything was fine, the second scenario is great with the Reactor Core rule (scored a couple of funny Frags with it). The winner scored his last Frag in such a weird way that I have to ask a question about the Scatter Rule. Sorry if this was discussed somewhere else, I searched the forum for a dedicated thread but couldn't find anything.
- Scatter Rule is used when a Blast weapon attack misses its intended target, because of a Miss on the dice or insufficient range . If the attack scatters you draw an Invader Card and see what happens.
This works nicely in most cases but in the above mentioned Deathmatch the player tried to hit my marine with the Rocket Launcher 11 spaces away. He missed because of insufficient range (no surprise to anyone, he scored Range 8), the attack scattered and resulted in the rocket exploding 1 space NE from the intended target. Damage was very high (9) and fragged a Marine with 4 Lives left!
I spent some time reading the rules in order to find a clarification but we did everything right. You can declare an attack with a ridiculous range and Scatter rule helps you hitting a target which is almost impossible (11 is the maximum range for the Rocket Launcher). According to the rules, you may declare an attack on an enemy you can see. If you don't roll enough range, you may miss the shot; with Scatter, you may attack very far enemies and hit them somehow. BFG has a wider radius and can hit the targe even if the attack scatters 2 spaces away.
I might accept such a rule to help the Marines in the normal game(only Cacodemons have Blast attack), but in Deathmatch/capture the flag it's not fair.
Related topic: Grenades have the Seeking attack limitation to 8 spaces, which prevents the above mentioned use of Scatter Rule. Can you declare a Seeking Attack on a Space up to Range 8, even if Grenade max. range is normally 6? You will surely miss, but you can always count on a lucky scatter.
Don't you think that Scatter should be calculated from the space on the intented Line of Sight, where it was destined by rolled Range? (hope this is clear enough)