I don't know if this has come up before... I thought it did but I can't find it.
I just got the IH like a month ago and I notice the Thermal Grenade... it has the same stat line as the Fire bomb but cost 6 times as much.
Is it just me or the 6 pen on the Fire bomb is a little much. A flamer has half the pen of a fire bomb. Did they fix this in the errata? Did I miss it?
My guardsman has been caught in far to many "friendly fires"

Khorne-ucopia said:

Nah, you've got it right on. The thing that I've done with the firebomb though, is simply make it you know, fire. It's by far one of the best buys ever but, it has started to screw over the acolytes a lot more than being useful.

An example I have, is one PC throwing it at a group of guys on the only stairs out of this place. As such of fire's abilities of being fire, the fire spreads through all of the flammables. They just made the only way out on fire.

I'd suggest you look at the errata. Fire Bombs have a Pen of Zero.

I just quick checked the Errata, I didn't see that. Can you tell me where in the Errata it is

Thanks

MILLANDSON said:

Not to bust chops Milly, but I seriously cannot find where it says that.

Fire bombs in the errata are a lot weaker. I think they are primitive weapons, and armor gets double value against them.

In what Errata? I looked throught the one on the FFG site and saw nothing.

HELP!!!

It's not in the errata, but it does seem really broken... Unless the writers intended it to be a cheap weapon for a raging mob, that can really make a difference in the firefight between the mob and Arbites riot squad...

I made a house rule back in the day, when I saw PC's abusing the cheepness of firebombs, every time they bought one I rolled a D10, on a 9 I had enforcers break up the transaction and take the PC into custody. They could bribe their way out for 30 thrones. Or use their Inquisitorial ID's to get out. But use of the ID breaks cover and pisses the inquisitor off.

Kinda makes players prefer to get frag grenades from reputable sources.

There any reason they couldn't just make them? I think fire bomb is along the lines of molotov cocktail...

The fire-bomb IS a molotov cocktail.

Here's a very important difference between the fire-bomb and the thermal grenades.

While the F-B is a cheap throw-able weapons, the thermal grenades can be used with grenade launchers, and are NOT made of glass/cheap plastic that can break due to enemy (weapon-)fire.

The thermal grenade is therefore safer (won't go off when you get a nasty hit) and has a higher range (when used in a GL). A price six times higher than a bottle of hooch with a few other extras is, in my opinion, a fair trade.

I've never seen this errata you're talking about. In the officaly one I'n pretty sure there is no entry about ut at all. I mean, primitive weapon?

Imperial Guardsman: "Argh they hit me with the firebomb! I'm burning!"

Officer: "Don't worry, it's only primitive flames made of primitive petroil or some other highly flammable liquid"

??

I've houseruled Fireboms down to Pen 2. A Flamer, a military grade weapon that uses promethium, only has Pen 3. A molotov cocktail really shouldn't be more deadly than it.

I say the GM should make secret rolls every time a person with a firebomb in his pack does some heavy physical activity.

Dive into cover? Get hit in melee? Dodge?

*roll*

"You hear the sound of glass breaking, and the smell of prometheum... Oh I do love the smell of prometheum in the morning!"

Now, the character being drenched with highly flammable liquid, a test should be made to see if it ignites whenever the character comes near sparks, like... a gun being fired or something like that

Imperial Guardsman: "Argh they hit me with the firebomb! I'm burning!"

Officer: "Don't worry, it's only primitive flames made of primitive petroil or some other highly flammable liquid"

??

Well... yeah. Compared to military grade incendiary grenades, that's pretty much exactly what would happen - at least if that's the exchange that would take place between the guardsman and his officer if he was hit by a regular sword compared to a mono sword.

Cifer said:

This is the stuff they used to burn russian tanks with in the finnish winter war. And even with good armor it gets hot very quickly, assuming you have 100% coverage of armor and no open areas - which isn't the case for flak armor. A space marine might not be bothered, but most other people surely would be.

Fireboms, or molotov coctails often contains jellied gasoline, motor oil to make it stick and other nasty mixtures. This is fairly close to militairy napalm. White phosphorus grenades might be even nastier in burst area and has a more intensive fire per fragment, but unless you're wearing a suit specifically designed to counter fire damage the difference is not that important.

Still, lowering penetration to 3 might not be a bad idea. So far I'll keep it as it is as no PC have used em yet (probably overlooked them - time to intriduce mutant terrorists with firebombs )

This is the stuff they used to burn russian tanks with in the finnish winter war. And even with good armor it gets hot very quickly, assuming you have 100% coverage of armor and no open areas - which isn't the case for flak armor. A space marine might not be bothered, but most other people surely would be.

So? Running someone through with a sword would likely bother quite a few people in real life, but it's quite survivable in Dark Heresy. Also, I refer you to the above argument about mil-spec incendiary grenades and flamethrowers - if the specialized equipment doesn't get it, why should the dime-a-dozen? Finally, the armour-negating nature of the fire is already incorporated in the "Catch on fire" rules: If the soldier catches on fire, it's irrelevant how much armour he wears, but the first damage roll is just for the first splash of the stuff And yes, you'll be a lot better off if only a few free areas of your body get burnt and the armour holds off the rest for at least a few seconds than if you're essentially nude.

Cifer said:

I don't really care about your sword anologies. Fireboms are not swords, and primitive armors are not designed to counter them the way they are designed to protect against swords etc. Thus the non-primitive armors are not that much better against it. The heat pretty much makes them insignificant, unless power armor or equally good.

And your point about this being Dark Heresy and RL physics doesen't matter - well the fireboms have these awesome stats in Dark Heresy. They are still quite survivable just like being hit by swords are, mono or not.

Being on fire is only d10 damage, which means you are likely to take 0 damage some turns and burn to death only slowly unless you manage to put yourself out.

How about making the test to extinguish flames alot harder for the militairy grade incendiaries and promethium?

I don't really care about your sword anologies. Fireboms are not swords, and primitive armors are not designed to counter them the way they are designed to protect against swords etc. Thus the non-primitive armors are not that much better against it. The heat pretty much makes them insignificant, unless power armor or equally good.

And your point about this being Dark Heresy and RL physics doesen't matter - well the fireboms have these awesome stats in Dark Heresy. They are still quite survivable just like being hit by swords are, mono or not.

Being on fire is only d10 damage, which means you are likely to take 0 damage some turns and burn to death only slowly unless you manage to put yourself out.

How about making the test to extinguish flames alot harder for the militairy grade incendiaries and promethium?

Being on fire is 1 fatigue per round, you're not going to be standing for very long regardless of damage rolls.

My fix for the problem is to simply make fireombs primitive.

Friend of the Dork said:

Surely, Cifer's fundamental point isn't about swords, it's pointing out that the DH system isn't terribly realistic. 90% of hits from small arms, melee weapons, you name it, will be survived by most characters (even mooks with no talents or armour!). So it doesn't make a lot of sense to critique the system on the basis that being set on fire should kill you pretty quickly regardless of whether it's caused by a molotov cocktail or a military-grade incendiary device. Almost every weapon in DH should be more deadly than it in fact is.

I think people are reading too much into this, and that Segara82 hit the reason dead on the head.

The firebomb is a type of molatov cocktail, relatively fragile. It might leak or break any time something physical happens (hit, dodge, etc). Whereas, military grenades will not do so. They also cannot be used in grenade launchers.

The point of the 6 PEN is that the fire from the friebomb gets *everywhere* as well as burning very hot, thus negating the protection of whatever armor the target is wearing.

Firebombs seem reasonable to me, and if players are loading up with firebombs and causing problems then the GM needs to better police their realistic use (and danger) rather than make up house rules to fix something that isnt really broken.

dvang said:

This would be a very fair point, were it not for the fact that flamers have a lower pen. They too get everywhere and burn very hot.

I use pen 3 for firebombs, FWIW.

Sorry, I was incorrect. It isn't in the errata, but one of the DH devs back with BI mentioned that it was a typo way back when on the BI forums. Not sure why FFG wouldn't add it to the errata they made up, however, and since I believe the BI forums aren't up anymore, there's no way for me to get the quote.

But yea, it's meant to be Pen Zero, from what I've been told. I'll see if I can get a PM off to Ross Watson on Dark Reign and ask him if the Pen Zero comment was correct (in FFG's opinion).

And ****, must have caught Ross at a good time. Here's his comment on it.

Quote from: MILLANDSON on Today at 11:19:12 PM

For Fire Bombs (in the main rule book), is the Pen meant to be 6 or Zero? Or some other number? Just for 5 thrones, it seems a little insane.

(My comment)

I'm thinking that it was meant to be zero. This is on my list of things "to be addressed."

(Ross' comment)

So yea, according to Ross, it's Pen Zero.

Cardinalsin said:

I'm not critiquing the system here, he is. Fireboms with pen 6 is part of the system until an errata is made. Sorry but the argument "thats not unrealistic enough" doesen't fly for me. Fireboms are cheap because they are easy to make with chemicals and liquids readily available to a modern society, while militairy incendiaries are not. You could argue that the incendiary grenade in IH is underpowered (which makes it special for IH as most guns there are overpowered), but that doesen't mean the fireboms should become useless against people in flak armor.

Lowering penetration to 3 like the Flamer should be sufficient.