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Incendiary Rounds?


Merudo

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My players may be facing a monster that is resistant to conventional weaponry but not to fire.

They have the credentials and resources to obtain Incendiary Rounds. However, the 7th edition rulebook does not contain stats for such ammunition.

Maybe a previous edition manual has stats for incendiary rounds? If not, what do you think would be balanced?

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I assume you are running a modern game.  Incendiary rounds used in WW1 were mostly smoke tracers and don't exist in the form that the players may be assuming they did in the 1920s.  Of course, if they have high level access maybe they have prototypes?  And maybe there is a risk of misfires causing a gun to catch on fire with early versions.

Investigator Weapons Volume 2 by SixtyStone Press has a lot of options.  I don't own it so I can't tell you if it has Incendiary Rounds.

I don't know the nature of your game so it is difficult to comment on balance.  My general gut says that "silver bullets" are antithetical to terror role-playing.  Our players are not supposed to have the means to combat threats with tough defenses.  That said, any group can do whatever it wants.  It would just feel a little too DND for me.

If you feel like the rounds would "gut" the threat, then consider other in game ways that stop the "guns, lots of guns" mentalities of players:

1) Legalities (this is checked off according to your OP)

2) Risks of collateral damage.  If its in a city, then incendiary rounds would be a foolish thing to use.  If its in a dry forest, players become responsible for the forest fire and any accompanying property damage. You get to place the threat wherever you want.  Of course, these things happening provide additional role-playing opportunities and potential adventure hooks.

3) Supply problems.  Out of stock right now and you're on a time crunch.

The downside of all of those suggestions, of course, is that you don't want to punish player creativity.  I personally don't consider "get the round type that kills it, checked that box" to be very creative when compared to dealing with it in a way when not being able to damage it.  

Edited by klecser
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Do you mean in terms of direct damage to the monster if it were hit by such a round, or in terms of starting a fire that might hurt the monster?

 

In terms of direct damage, it would be slight. There isn't all that much material in an incendiary round, and they wouldn't do much more damage than a branding iron or a torch, which I believe is something like 1D6 damage. Yes, the incendiary materials can burn very hot, but there just isn't all that much room for it in the bullet. Such bullets are designed more to ignite something than to do damage. Even a couple of road flares would probably be as effective. 

If the group needs to kill the monster with fire, they would be better to acquire or make some sort of flame thrower. Ideally something that could keep burning for several rounds. A White Phosphorous Grenade might be just the thing, but they are very tricky to use safely, something that holds true for all fire based weapons.

A lot of just how effective fire will be as a weapon depends a lot on how you run it. If you just mark off hit points and have the monster ignore the damage, then the fire won't be all that effective as far as keeping the PCs alive. On the other hand, if the fire can drive off the monster, or get it to panic or in some way cause it to "react" to the whole being on fire thing, than it might be quite effective. 

 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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7 hours ago, klecser said:

Investigator Weapons Volume 2 by SixtyStone Press has a lot of options.  I don't own it so I can't tell you if it has Incendiary Rounds.

Thank you! I'll check it out.

7 hours ago, klecser said:

I don't know the nature of your game so it is difficult to comment on balance.  My general gut says that "silver bullets" are antithetical to terror role-playing.  Our players are not supposed to have the means to combat threats with tough defenses.  That said, any group can do whatever it wants.  It would just feel a little too DND for me.

If you feel like the rounds would "gut" the threat, then consider other in game ways that stop the "guns, lots of guns" mentalities of players:

It's a Delta Green scenario, with very strong monsters. The description of the monster (Ubbo-Sathla) explicitly states, "The agents will likely resort to incendiary rounds or explosives - or else will run, which isn't a bad choice".

 

Edited by Merudo
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Investigator Weapons Volume 1: The 1920s and 1930s talks about tracer rounds, which do a small amount of burn damage in addition to their normal kinetic damage, on p. 103. The same approach seems to be used in Investigator Weapons Volume 2: Modern Day, though the burn damage is higher for some of these newer ammo types. See, for instance, the .50-inch APEI round described on p. 97.

(And I'm specifically not giving exact details because these are great books and you should buy them.)  🙂

— 
Self-discipline isnt everything; look at Pol Pot.”
—Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

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23 hours ago, Merudo said:

It's a Delta Green scenario, with very strong monsters. The description of the monster (Ubbo-Sathla) explicitly states, "The agents will likely resort to incendiary rounds or explosives - or else will run, which isn't a bad choice".

Have they got a Flamethrower or White Phosphorous bombs? Both were used in World War I and should be available to enterprising Investigators with the right connections.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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If relatively modern, and military flamethrowers are out of the question (as they probably should be) a brush and weed burning torch might be an option. Simple enough to make as well if the PCs have basic metal fabrication skills.

https://flameengineering.com/collections/weed-dragon-torch-kits

 

A pesticide sprayer filled with a flammable liquid like gasoline would be an easily acquired and complementary weapon to the above torch. 

 

Agree with those who say incendiary bullets are probably of limited use, just not that much material in them. They are intended to ignite flammable gasses (hydrogen) or fuel. A flare gun or 12 gauge flares for a shotgun would do as much if not more damage.   

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It's not all that hard to make an incendiary with household items. Even a can of hairspray will "work" to some extent, and making some sort of thickened fuel is easy. The big problem is finding something that can drop a Mythos nasty before it gets to attack, or being able to scare it off with fire. The latter is more up to the GM than the game.It's a lot like scaring off a bear. In the real world, making a lot of noise, banging pans together and such, can actually scare a bear off. But that only works in game if the GM is aware of it, and decides to run it that way. 

So you kinda need to know if waving a torch is going to be effective in driving something away, or just aggravate it. 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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