Area Effect

"Most human problems can be solved by an appropriate charge of high explosives." - Blaster

"Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?" - J. Cobb

There have been a couple of times where having something which dropped an area effect have been useful in gaming.

One time it came up in GURPS was when dealing with Standing Bear's True Companions.

Their main magic defense was to bounce all damage back to its source.

The reason you wanted to snuff a True Companion was to get hands on their swords.  They did a massive amount of damage and rarely missed.

I was running an alt-history Roman equipped with TL7 technology.

Turns out their damage bounce would send it back in the direction it came from and a rifle grenade aimed at the hex next to them would bounce it back at the center of the explosion.  Pity their magic didn't affect the depleted necronium fragmentation jacket...

When I was making GURPS stats for a displacer beast, FuzzyGeff mentioned that a hand grenade is the way to deal with one, or any area effect spell.

It hit me that the character has to know what a displacer beast is before they know that.

Considering the rarity of such critters, it's likely that most people have never heard of one, let alone encountered one.  And, since they are pretty damned mean, most encounters will result in becoming Purina Displacer Beast Chow.