Area Fire DCs and MAPs

[Kishmo]

I'm putting this under the Soldier subforum, since it's the most likely place for it to come up, but I guess it's relevant everywhere. So: do attack penalties, like the multiple attack penalty, apply to DCs from that attack?

For example: if a soldier makes a Strike, and then throws a grenade (which uses the Area Fire action, which has the Attack trait) would the grenade's DC be lowered, from MAP?

Area Fire, for reference, p. 173:

Area Fire [two-actions] (area*, attack) You hit each creature in the designated area with a range equal to the weapon’s range increment (for cone or line) or the designated radius of the explosion (for burst). For burst, you can position the center point anywhere within your first range increment. Any creatures in the area must succeed at a basic Reflex save against your class DC plus the tracking value of the weapon (you do not roll an attack roll). This damage is area damage. Creatures who critically fail this save are subject to effects that occur on a critical hit with this weapon, including the weapon’s critical specialization effect. Area Fire has an expend equal to the value listed on the weapon.
* Side Note: is the Area trait defined anywhere? It's not on PF2e AoN, nor the SF2 Playtest Core, that I can find /shrug

Reading through the available 2e stuff on AoN suggests no - I can't find anything in the MAP entry (linked above), nor in the section on calculating DCs. There doesn't seem to be a counterpart to SF1e's rule: any penalty you would normally take to your weapon attack roll also applies to this DC, including penalties from the weapon’s range increment.

I don't know if this is intentional or not. It feels weird to me that if you throw a grenade and then Strike, your Strike takes a MAP; but if you Strike and then grenade, the grenade's DC is unaffected?

[Karmagator]

Yes, according to the rules you linked, area/automatic fire wouldn't take MAP.

The problem is that there isn't just one place for the MAP rules. There is a second.

And that second one says the complete opposite, it affects all attacks, no caveats about "your checks" and all that.

So in essence, we have no clue.

But yeah, it feels really weird. My guess is that they are going to go with "yes" to avoid shenanigans with "Strike first then auto-fire" and make it simpler.