Being on Fire

By Magellan, in Only War Rules Questions

Being on fire is a major inconvenience. The actual damage is negligible to most characters in the game I'm currently running, but the fact is a single autogun with fire bullets can panic an entire room of space marines (or force one to test agility ten-twenty times), regardless of whether they're immune to the damage. Vehicles can also be taken out simply by spamming them full of fire-bullets until the driver fails his test. This is not a fear (x) effect, so Fearless, Unshakable Faith and so on are useless. Shocking has similar problems, but stunning can be overcome with Iron Jaw and Frenzy, at least.

As far as I can determine, the only talent that makes you immune is the Rite of Pure Thought, which makes you immune to emotion-based effects, which is an extremely vague and broad category. Rite of Pure Thought also doesn't jive very well with 99.99% of character concepts and so never gets taken, at least in my group.

So, other than giving certain enemies specific homebrew traits to immunize them to an undignified, fiery death, how do you deal with excessive amounts of fire, and how do Flame weapons affect your games?

Edited by Magellan

Well, this isn't spelled out in OW since power armour isn't really used, but in Deathwatch IIRC the panic effect only starts when the armour is no longer environmentally sealed = when its AP is exceeded, which means you have to exceed 10 damage to the body.

They may only take damage 20% of the time (assuming TB8 for Space Marines), but doesn't the Fatigue knock them out? My experience with this is that the fire will actually mess things up quicker than you think since it will RF 10% of the time and so a Space Marine unconscious on the ground on fire is going to wind up looking pretty gruesome long before he actually dies (which statistically should take around 4 minutes of game time, I think, without actually doing the math).

I've never run a game with people using incendiary bullets, so all my experience is with flamers.

Edited by bogi_khaosa

If we were actually playing Deathwatch, I doubt anyone would have less than 10 TB. Heck, with Orks and tech-priests running amok everywhere, I wouldn't be surprised at TB 10 popping up in my campaigns. At TB ten, Fatigue would knock you out for 10-10=0 minutes and then restore you to zero fatigue, which I've always found a little odd.

Hadn't even noticed the Fatigue bit, though. Fatigue, damage and panic all in one, eh? Yeah, that's one hell of a debuff.

I wouldn't have fire count for Righteous Fury, however. The book does say "when damage is rolled after a successful attack", so I wouldn't allow environmental damage, traps or lingering effects to cause Righteous Fury.

I say thee nay, absolutely allow it for traps and so forth. Why not? It's a powerful damaging blow; it doesn't matter what causes it.

Plus otherwise you have space marines that are literally immune to flame, which is silly. This is one of the reasons I greatly like the BC/OW RF rules more than the older ones.

Plus it makes it possible to actually, say, fall and sprain your ankle without being near death,

When I GMd Deathwatch we didn't have anybody with a TB of 10. That was just one adventure though.

Nobs as listed in EotI have a TB of 9; I don't recollect what the Warboss has.

I don't think it's possible for a tech-priest in Only War to get a TB of 10. (?) Especially on the Body location; the +2 TB is for cybernetic limb parts, if I recall correctly, not for implants in the body (?)

BTW note that the -10 from Fatigue affects the Willpower and Agility Tests...

Edited by bogi_khaosa

Nah, that would lead to far too much extra dice-rolling and checking crit tables for my taste. We're too busy building interstellar empires to worry about sprained ankles. Never mention what happens when the entire party dual-wields incendiary autoguns and stun-locks the universe.

It's easy enough to be immune to a number of other things - most basic weapons, for instance. I don't see why ceramite and adamantium would catch on fire in the first place.

I never use NPCs as listed. I don't want anyone metagaming, and they're usually far too weak to pose any threat to my intrepid Rogue Traders.

As for tech-priests, we play an amalgamation of Rogue Trader and Only War (I post here for mechanics, since we're using the basic OW system for combat and such). An explorator with a +15 Toughness from his origin path, 20 points allocated to Toughness, 20 points from advancement purchases, the Brute mutation from Genetor and Machinator Array reaches 100 Toughness. In power armour, he has 100 Strength as well. It's not a very productive build, but it doesn't get any manlier than that. I call him Brick Shithouse, MD.

I GM PbP, so I have plenty of time for dice rolling. :)

I think the idea is that promethium is a burning adhesive liquid like napalm, and hence adheres to tthe armour.

But you can be set on fire by environmental effects, incendiary ammo, flaming swords and all kinds of things that don't involve promethium in the first place.

I assume incendiary ammo uses promethium (or a substitute like gasoline). Really a bullet wouldn't be likely to set anything on fire otherwise; it's too small and in contact with the target for a very short period of time. Flaming swords are magic and stuff.

Environmental effects would be a judgment call.

Anyway as I said before if we are talking space marines specifically, to get the "aagh! I'm on fire!" effect the initial attack has to exceed the armour's AP (hence making it not environmentally sealed), meaning it has to do more than either 8 or 10 damage (depending on location); 14 for Terminator armour. Meaning BTW that a flamer can do this to termie armour (1d10+4 Pen 2 > 14) but an autogun cannot (1d10+3 < 14).

Edited by bogi_khaosa

Tangentially related: Why would I ever take Weapon Training (Flame)?
Not having it gives me a penalty on BS, but since most flame weapons have the Spray quality, it's not like BS matters...

We're not talking specifically about space marines. I'm running a rogue trader game and will probably never run deathwatch. But since I can't help myself, I have to point out that an Arch-Militant with 80 BS and Mighty Shot could do up to 1d10+9 damage with an autogun. But that really is a tangent.

As for you, Myrion, I believe that Only War specifically added the clause that if you don't have weapon training with Spray weapons, enemies get +20 to avoid the attack. Still nothing to penalize you for using a flamer one-handed, though.

We're not talking specifically about space marines. I'm running a rogue trader game and will probably never run deathwatch. But since I can't help myself, I have to point out that an Arch-Militant with 80 BS and Mighty Shot could do up to 1d10+9 damage with an autogun. But that really is a tangent.

As for you, Myrion, I believe that Only War specifically added the clause that if you don't have weapon training with Spray weapons, enemies get +20 to avoid the attack. Still nothing to penalize you for using a flamer one-handed, though.

Personally, I do. One of my players just lost his arm and I decided it was silly to be able to use a rifle-sized weapon like a pistol with no problem, so I added a +20 to enemies' Agility Tests to avoid being hit.