Fire!

If you listened to the last part of our Forbidden Lands Actual Play, you will have heard our confusion, when the party wanted to set fire to a Gryphon’s nest, and we realised that the rulebooks contained very little guidance on fires and damage. In fact, a similar question had been raised in an earlier, unrecorded adventure. Then, the adventurers had discovered that ghosts could be dispersed with fire, and set about making fire arrows. There are no rules for fire arrows, either for their construction or for their damage. We fudged something about needing cloth and lamp oil to make the arrows. But we never actually needed to work out the damage until this adventure.

In the FL Players Handbook is a reference to being broken by fire damage (it suggests using the the non-typical critical “table”) and a couple of very specific applications of fire damage. Well actually one of those, the Immolate spell, isn’t a fire attack as such. Let be quote from the book “You can heat up your victim’s blood to the point where he literally bursts into flames.” So the damage is done internally, the flames are a symptom of the damage, not the cause. Demons can have a fire attack, which uses the same mechanic as other monster attacks rolling a number of base dice (in this case, between seven and twelve) for attack which can not be parried but can be dodged. Such attacks can’t be pushed. So that means a low powered (seven base dice attack) has something like a one in ten chance of inflicting serious damage*, and with twelve base dice, the probability of being hurt increases to something like one in three. That said, the victim continues to take damage every turn until putting the fire out with a move roll.

There is also the Making Camp mishap, Fire!, wherein the campfire gets out of control, characters must suffer an attack with five base dice.

In Coriolis the rules state “If you are in, or within Close Range of, a large fire, you will suffer attack rolls once every turn. The GM rolls the attack at your turn in the turn order, and before you get to act. The size of the fire determines the number of dice on the roll, and that is up to the GM to decide.” with no guidelines. Well, we could apply the guidelines from Forbidden Lands, five for an out of control campfire. Seven to twelve for a demon attack. But those aren’t terribly relevant. There is the example of a wildfire in Mutant: Genlab Alpha – “Roll six Base Dice“ if you are caught, which for a *wild* fire seems somewhat small. And given that Coriolis characters are roughly twice as resilient as characters in the other year Zero games, fire doesn’t seem to be that big a risk in the Third Horizon.

But Coriolis goes on to say “The number of dice is then increased by one per turn” and “As soon as you suffer 1 or more points of damage from the fire, your clothes catch fire, and you will continue to suffer the attack rolls even if you get out of the fire itself. Putting out burning clothes demands a successful dexterity test (you or someone else within Close Range of you may attempt the roll). Armor may be tested.“

And indeed there is similar text, in Alien, which starts “A fire is measured in Intensity. A typical fire has Intensity 6.” So now we have a word at least for the attack strength of the fire. And in a similar paragraph to the one from Coriolis, it adds “As soon as a fire attack inflicts no damage, the fire goes out by itself.” I am taking this to mean, as soon is no successes are rolled, rather than damage being mitigated, by armour for example.

So, from clues between these games we can pull together a set of rules for fire in Forbidden Lands. And in particular guidelines for intensity. I am thinking for example, that your fire arrow has an intensity of one. It does it’s normal damage (one for a bow, or two or three from crossbow bolts) then rolls another single dice then, and every subsequent turn. On a 6 you take a point of damage and your clothes catch fire. On a 1 or 2 it goes out. This differs from the rules as stated in Coriolis and Alien, I will put this down to them lamp oil. You can put it out with a move roll too.

If you take damage, your clothes catch fire you roll two dice the next turn, then three and so on.

Get pushed into a camp fire? Then it’s three attack dice.

A room that’s partially on fire has an intensity of four. And it’s worth pointing out that the attack still happens even if your player says “I am avoiding the fire.” It’s about the radiating heat.

The whole place (zone) is burning? Well who am I to argue with Coriolis AND Mutant: Genlab Alpha. We’ll call it intensity six. But remember, all these increase by one die the longer you are in it. You can justify the increase by the fire using the fuel and oxygen in the room (or wherever).

Escape the fire with move rolls. But if you take any damage on the way it comes with you, you are the fuel now. Your clothes are on fire, treat that with escalating dice as above. Oh, and that demon fire we mentioned at the beginning, that doesn’t escalate in the same way. The rules in Swedish clearly state that you take the same amount of damage every turn until you put it out. Why is is different from my rules? Demons. They are just weird.

*Which for the purposes of this calculation I counted as three or more successes