Let's say you want to set someone on fire in WFRP3 (and why wouldn't you?) - what are the rules? I haven't seen anything about it in the core set books, but there might be some in an expansion?
(Bright Order spells do not count, but they might provide us with an idea of how flaming attacks and burning damage might work in mechanical terms.)
If not, I say we make some. Depending on your replies, I might post some of my own suggestions.
Environmental challange based on coordination, resiliance or athletics, difficulty depending on area covered by fire.
Challenge=wounds suffered
Banes=fatigue, conditions
Chaos star+ fire gets bigger!
Environmental challange based on coordination, resiliance or athletics, difficulty depending on area covered by fire.
Challenge=wounds suffered
Banes=fatigue, conditions
Chaos star+ fire gets bigger!
Let's say that we have three sizes of fire:
- Small fire: your clothes, hair etc. are one fire. You suffer 1 wound/stress/fatigue (what seems to be the most appropriate here?) each round. Pass a 1d check to put out the fire.
- Medium fire: a part of you is burning. Suffer 2 W/S/F, 2d check
- Large fire: the flames completely envelop the target. Suffer 3 W/S/F, 3d check.
Then, weapons that might cause fire damage fall into two categories:
- Burning item: a lit torch or lantern (improvised), a burning arrow or bolt, or unarmed damage if you are on fire yourself. If you roll a number of boons (1 or 2) on an attack, the target catches fire.
- Incendiary explosives; a fancy dwarven fire bomb, or a primitive Ribbentropp longdrink (ten points if you get the reference). Thrown blast weapons that do low damage to all members of an engagement, and has a chance of setting them on fire.
Does that make any sense?
The Scorched condition is nice reflection of getting burned (it's in TEW I think, for burning barge) and with its continuing effect can be seen as "still smoldering until put out"
Let's say that we have three sizes of fire:
- Small fire: your clothes, hair etc. are one fire. You suffer 1 wound/stress/fatigue (what seems to be the most appropriate here?) each round. Pass a 1d check to put out the fire.
- Medium fire: a part of you is burning. Suffer 2 W/S/F, 2d check
- Large fire: the flames completely envelop the target. Suffer 3 W/S/F, 3d check.
Then, weapons that might cause fire damage fall into two categories:
- Burning item: a lit torch or lantern (improvised), a burning arrow or bolt, or unarmed damage if you are on fire yourself. If you roll a number of boons (1 or 2) on an attack, the target catches fire.
- Incendiary explosives; a fancy dwarven fire bomb, or a primitive Ribbentropp longdrink (ten points if you get the reference). Thrown blast weapons that do low damage to all members of an engagement, and has a chance of setting them on fire.
Does that make any sense?
I suspect the numbers been discussed above are a little higher than is safe and could quickly lead to a TPK.
Fatigue tends to be very swingy and extreme. You can laugh off a point or two per encounter without effect, but once you get consistent or large numbers at once it becomes a land-slide. Anything that consistently does more than 1 Fatigue per round will very quickly overwhelm most characters. Just 2 Fatigue per turn will KO an uninjured Toughness 3 PC in 3 rounds or less. The numbers are small and pretty tight, and there's not a lot of room for variation.
Wounds are much less swingy than Fatigue, but you should probably keep in mind that the most common methods of wound-reduction (armour and toughness-based damage-reduction) won't apply. Unless you make it very easy to put out the fire, even just a few wounds per turn can add up quickly.
If you're looking for "official" fire rules, you might thumb through the Location and Condition cards, several of which set relevant precedents:
The " Burning Building " and " Burning Barge " location cards do just 1 Fatigue per turn for your first few turns of exposure, and if you stay inside for long, it turns to 1 wound per turn. Their damaging effects are very slow, and an uninjured low-toughness character has more than a dozen turns to escape before death is likely.
The " Burning City " location card simply adds a line to all actions: "Chaos Star: Suffer 1 Stress and 1 Fatigue". So that's a bit harsher when it triggers, and could KO you faster if the dice are unkind, but overall the risk is low unless you're taking a lot of high-difficulty actions.
On a related note, the " Scorched " Condition is very similar to the Burning Barge, but not actually the same thing. The noteworthy difference between the Burning Barge and Scorched is that jumping into the water to escape the Barge's fire is a single maneouvre, but there is generally no way to end the Scorched Condition before the next Rally Step. Scorched was introduced in Winds of Magic, as a boon-result for a Rank 5 "Fireball Barrage" spell. So the designer's intent seems to be that this would represent a pretty significant level of conflagration.
One last precedent can be found in the Creature Guide. Treemen and Treekin are literally made of wood. They have the " Flammable " negative trait, but it's effects are relatively tame. If you score a crit against them with a flaming weapon or fire spell, they take bonus damage equal to the severity rating.
For a torch, I'd personally follow that lead, and simply use the stats for an improvised weapon , with a bonus parallel to the poison or flammable effects. That is to say: DR3, CR3, and if you score a Critical you inflict some bonus fatigue or wounds. That would probably model the fire well enough without introducing too much complexity or making it overpowered compared to other attacks.
The idea I initially had was this:
- A Flaming attack does aditional immiediate damage equal to the number of successes rolled. Then, the target is burned for one damage each turn for a number of turns equal to the number of boons rolled.
This could easily be combined with my previous idea of these attacks needing a number of boons to trigger this effect.
Here are a few other ideas:
- Ranged attacks targeting someomne on fire gain one fortune die, as they are much more visible.
- Burning targets cause Fear 1 to anyone engaged.
- Anyone engaged with a burning target suffer 1 wound if the roll a Chaos star,
Finally, to alter the options for more advanced burning damage, I would suggest this:
- "On Fire" could be a condition card that has 3 levels of severity. Which level it's currently at could be denoted by tracking tokens. Different coloured tokens could be used to indicate different burning targets.
- SR1: your suffer one stress each turn
- SR2: as above, and 1 fatigue
- SR3: as above, and 1 wound.
- Targets on fire may spend a maneuovre to try and put out the fire using either Atheletics or Resilience.
- The difficulty level or this check is equal to the severity rating of the fire.
- Successful checks will decrease the severity by 1. The fire is put out once it reaches zero. Appropriate environmental factors might make the check easier.
- Each challenge symbol rolled on this check inflicts 1 wound
- Each bane inflicts 1 stress or fatigue
- If a chaos star is rolled, the fire's severity rating increases. This cancels out any successes. If the fire is SR 3, it will spread to an engaged target (if possible).
Is this too powerful? Too complicated? Let me know!
Trying to hit someone who's running around or rolling around on the floor should get harder not easier.
I also do not see the effects of fatigue, stress and wounds. If you burn which means it's not just your shirt you are dead within seconds.
Burning people cause fear? Well, I do not see how that happens. If you see your enemy burn you might want to dodge if he runs at you but that's it.
I wouldn't base putting out the fire on stats. You just drop and roll. (maneuovre)
In the end I think your ideas are interesting but just too complicated.
If you want to set people on fire take items that are made for that. Flamethrower or some kind of medieval molotov cocktail. Which means: They get hit, they may spend a maneuovre to stop the flames (which takes 2 rounds so its like a kind of cc effect) and if they don't they just die. Setting people ablaze should be simple with the appropriate tools and deadly. I also like the idea of using chaos stars as "oops you set yourself on fire".