By Richard W. Smith ©2000
The major problem with the sweeping blow rules in regular TFT was that if you had a high DX, it was almost always a good idea to make a Sweeping Blow. Beginning characters that were strong enough to use a two handed weapon had low adjDX so the -4 DX was a severe disadvantage.
But once you had experienced characters with a high DX, they could do a sweeping blow every turn for a huge net increase of damage.
Another problem was that while things did not get too out of hand for human figures with only 3 front hexes, the rules did not address races with more fronts or people with Eyes Behind spells. If sweeping blows were allowed to go thru more than 3 front hexes the rules became even more unbalanced.
These rules underwent a large amount of experiment before we finally decided on the following.
Figures with a two handed cutting weapons may swing at multiple enemies in their front hexes, potentially hitting several targets in the same turn. This is called a `sweeping blow`.
You are at higher DX penalties the more different targets you take a sweeping blow at. For the first extra target you are at -4 DX. For the second extra target you're at -8 DX, and so on with a further -4 DX on all attacks for each extra figure.
Any successful hits done by a sweeping blow do one half damage.
If a friend is in one of the hexes that the blow sweeps thru, do not count your friend as one of the targets but you must roll to miss your friend at the same DX adjustment as the rest of your attacks.
A talent helps figures make sweeping blows and allows sweeping blows with 1 handed cutting weapons:
IQ 12
MULTIPLE SWING (3) preq. A speed of 14+. You may make sweeping blows at only -2 DX per extra target. You may make sweeping blows with 1 handed cutting weapons. The damage on each hit is still halved.