My players have come up with a plan, to deal with enemies in a barn. They have managed to successfully sneak close enough, undetected to the barn, where the "bad guys" are holding up, and have caught them unaware.

Their plan is simple, lob a few molotovs in to the barn, and bar the door so they can't escape. Their exact plan of action is-1 is aimed at the group of NPCs and the 2nd at the hay loft above,

So, any suggestions as to how I should resolve this would be very helpful.

Hm, what kind of firebombs? Bottles of strong spirit with a strip cloth in the top?

Make a Stealth check for them to sneak up to the barn without being detected. (Add a Misforutne Dice or two if they're trying to sneak up with burning bombs.)

Make a Easy coordination check to make and light the bomb.

Then a Ballistic Skill to throw it, with a Misfortune Dice or two seeing as it's not an item designed for throwing.

Then another BS test for the second bomb.

Things that might go wrong:

Chaos Stars or failures at the bomb making/throwing can have some hilarious results.

After the first bomb is thrown, chances are the NPC won't hang around inside. They'll jump out of windows and even through fire if there's no other way. Are there windows? If not, the players have to throw the bomb first, then bar the door. Can they bar it in time? If not, it's a STvsST check to get it closed.

The "Bombs" they have selected are: an earthware pint jar, filled with oil and stuffed with an oil soaked rag, the second a scrounged lantern oil with glass panes.

I guess I am looking at, how to handle damage-assuming it doesn't all go horribly wrong.

I don't have the rules w/me. And, don't recall if they have anything dealing with fire damage.

Off the top of my head, I am thinking of handling as follows.

The "bomb" tossed at the enemies (assuming success) ignites 1 npc per success-which means that unless the player gets very lucky they will manage to hit 1 or 2 of them.

I am thinking the fire should do continuing damage. How much per turn I am not sure of.

I am also thinking that maybe it should ignore Toughness soak?

Then of course their are the net results of having your "hide out" unexpectedly bursting in to flames. Panic and pandemonium-and that is easy enough to handle w/Misfortune and narative.

How fast the fire in the loft would spread, I think(?) could be handled by counting the number of successes, and a little common sense?

The only other in the barn is a hatch/window , up in the hayloft -with a winch & pully through which stuff is raised-so that is why they want to set the loft on fire, to cut off that exit.

Of course then there is the little matter of Smoke Inhalation....I suppose that could be handled with a NPC T check?

Or maybe I am just over thinking the whole thing.....

For the Damage, i'd go with :

Successes on the Ballistic check as direct Wounds (no Soaking, target is partialy on fire) and a base duration of (Successes+Boons) as recharge Tokens. Remember to remove a token at the end of the thrower's turn.

At the victim's turn, he can use his action to remove one Token (Immobilizing Shot style).

The Wounds applied on subsequent rounds (at the start of the thrower's turn) should be equal to the recharge Tokens left. This can result in more damage on the second round than the 1st, even if the target actively tries to limit the fire, in the case of lucky rolls (like 1 success and 4 boons). I find it funky and appropriate for the dice pool system

The number of targets hit is 1 (the one aimed at) with the possibility of hitting additionnal targets in the same engagement (like 1 per boon) and a possibility of early explosion on a Chaos Star (hurting the player and possibly those engaged with him)

This should not yeild massive damage unless you are very lucky (lots of successes and boons)

As said above, the Ballistic check should have at least one misfortune for the improvised projectile (like an unbalanced Dagger) and be limited at Close Range. The target should be able to Dodge for an extra misfortune die.

I think everyone above had some good ideas for the sneaking/throwing portion. As to the fire?

Probably overthinking it. Unless their opponents are incredibly tough (a pack of black-orcs hiding in a barn, or some demons playing poker) we know they'll burn to death. So every turn they try to escape.

This is probably best signified by making a tracker for 'the baddies escape'. Maybe have event markers every 3-4 turns where they try to use something inside to ram the door down. Depending on how far along the tracker they are, give them wounds (or fatigue if appropriate) and reduce their strength or agi as they come out gasping for air.

ah, i forgot about the barn taking fire, i was thinking about damage upon being hit with a cocktail.

Well, they most likely will die unless they find a way out, from burning or suffocation alike. In any case it would take a few minutes at the least.

Cwell2101 said:

Heh, yeah. That was my first thought, as i watched the plan come together. I am not above giving them a "win" for a good idea (or even a bad one, that works out well through dumb luck...ha).

I just don't want to to give them an "automatic win".

Thanks one and all for the ideas.

There's actually a Burning Building location card in the GM's Toolkit . If you have that, then simply use those rules for the fire damage to those inside.

(Sorry, I'm away from my cards at the moment)

I actually had to deal with a similar situation. During An Eye for an Eye ... one of my PCs used an empty wine bottle to smuggle some of the manor's stock of Bugman's XXXXXXX and fashion an explosive out of it. He didn't get to use it until several sessions laterduring the battle with Izka Madtooth in The Gathering Storm , in fact.

Rather than worry about ongoing fire damage or anything like that, I just ruled that the Bugman's was so potent it was outright explosive instead of flammable. When he threw it at Izka, I had him roll Ballistic Skill, which he heartily succeeded at. For damage, I secretly rolled a bunch of expertise dice (literally all the ones I had on-hand): a success dealt a normal wound, while a comet dealt a critical wound, no reduction for armor or toughness.

Izka was left with 7 wounds when all was said and done.

Maybe not the most balanced way to handle the situation, sure, but the battle was going poorly, and I just wanted to give the PCs a nice moment of awesome.

Keep in mind a few things:

1) It will take a while for the barn to really start burning unless something more combustable gets set on fire. Essentially, throwing the cocktails against the walls of the barn won't do a whole lot, at least not for a while. The PCs would need to land one of the cocktails in a big pile of hay, for example, to get quicker/more dramatic results.

2) It's not impossible to think that the NPCs could make their own hole in the barn wall, rather than getting stuck in the barn and dying. Or, depending on the story, there might be a hidden exit in the barn that the PCs are unaware of.

3) Smoke inhalation can be covered by the rules for drowning/environmental effects.

Otherwise, it depends on how dramatic you as the GM want the fire to be. Lamp oil isn't really as quick-burn as you might think, especially in that small a quantity. The act of shattering out of the jar will spread the oil pretty wide, meaning there won't be a lot to assist the fire. So, it's easily plausible that the cocktail and fire themselves will do minimal damage, although it might present a Fear test or force the affected NPC to "stop and roll" to put the fire out. That's probably more realistic. However, for a more cinematic and dramatic effect, having an explosion and the NPC turning into a human candle might be more the way to go. I'd probably just narrate that, rather than worrying about actual damage.