A poor man's, low magic flaming blade...

[Tolen Mar]

I'm DMing a game, and I want to make this encounter possible for them, but not too easy.

Suppose we're in a land of practically nil magic items. You cant go down to the corner market and ask them for a +3 Flame Tongue.

Now, we're going to be fighting a Troll. We also have a bucket of pitch we can dip our blades in before the fight starts. The idea being we coat our blades in pitch, and light them off the torches when the time comes.

A) How much extra (fire) damage should that do?

and

B) How long (in hits) should the flaming pitch be effective?

As far as A goes, you could say that you just treat the damage done as fire damage. However, that seems a bit excessive to me, leading to killing that troll entirely too easily. Another option is to add either 1 point of fire damage or 1d4 points of fire damage.

For B, I think it will depend on the answer to A. If you treat the damage dealt as fire damage, then one hit is best I think. In this case, its like poison, one hit - one flame attack. If you add a smaller amount of fire damage, then you can justify a longer duration.

I just did a dry run before coming here to ask this. I decided that the pitch would be effective for three hits, and that the weapon did fire damage until the pitch wore off. They slaughtered the troll, hardly taking any damage themselves. I want to make it so that they end up having to use their torch to finish the thing off. I just dont know where the balance is. Any ideas?

 

[Fieari]

Personally, I'd add 1d6 fire damage, as that's how much mundane fires do naturally, but I'd either only allow it to work once... or, perhaps even better yet, cause the fire to damage the sword, as per a sunder attempt. So yeah, you can make your weapons flaming, but it'll warp the blade and make it brittle. Which is pretty true to life, if I recall correctly.

 

[Hodgie]

In addition to damaging the sword, I'd say there are pretty good chances it would damage you as well. At minimum I'd say 1 point of fire damage per round for wielding such a weapon.

 

[Pyrex]

Swords have a Hardness of 10, Wood-hafted weapons have a hardness of 5.

Also, Fire damage is halved before being subtracted from hardness, so you really have nothing to worry about w.r.t. the burning pitch damaging your weapons.

 

[Baron Opal]

For me, I would have the first three hits count as fire damage, then the weapon does half standard damage thereafter. The heat damages the steel, removing the temper, and bashing the poor troll with these hot weapons mangles the edge. The party will have to buy new weapons after the encounter.

However, the party may be given new weapons by a thankful populace for removing the troll infestation.

 

[Cheiromancer]

I think folks can fight fire elementals all day and not worry about their weapons losing their temper. Or they can fight creatures made of solid stone and their blades won't lose their edge. I would go easy on them with regard to their weapons being damaged.

But actually I don't know why all this is necessary. Just knock the trolls unconscious (by any means necessary) and then set them on fire. Lamp oil + torch, or alchemist's fire. If you want to do damage beforehand, throw alchemist's fire or flaming oil on them.

If you allow pitch covered weapons to do extra damage, I'd say have it do 1 point of fire damage, but also make 1d6 points of weapon damage count as fire damage on the first attack, 1d6-1 points on the second attack, and so on. If the modified d6 roll comes up 0, then there is not enough pitch to be effective. You have to reapply it and start over. This is basically your idea about weapon damage counting as fire damage, but a little bit more limited.

 

[helium3]

Here's a better way to think about it. In a world with not much in the way of magical items (and I guess not a lot of magic in general either?), the best you can hope to do when fighting a troll is to beat it to the point it's unconscious, and then coup de grace it with fire. Even a torch would probably do at that point. So, maybe your expectation should be that the party is going to pummel it with non-flaming weapons until it is unconscious, then coat a blade with pitch, light it and coup de grace the thing. Course, make sure that your party has an idea that this is the appropriate tactic.

I once had a party that fought a crystalline troll until it got knocked out from subdual damage, and then they had to sit there and beat it while someone went back to the nearbye city to buy a scroll that would allow them to cast a spell that dealt sonic damage to coup de grace it. T'was very funny.

 

[Nyaricus]

I think folks can fight fire elementals all day and not worry about their weapons losing their temper. Or they can fight creatures made of solid stone and their blades won't lose their edge. I would go easy on them with regard to their weapons being damaged.

Cheiromancer, just remember that this is a low-magic campaign, it says it right there in the main entry - so this troll is obviously a much bigger threat, and fire elementals might never be seen in their entire adventuring careers. BTW if you want awesome hardness and HP mechanics for D&D, buy From Stone To Steel - it will do everything for you in that regard, and A LOT more.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Hi Nyaricus!

Nonmagical weapons should behave the same way in a low magic setting as in the default setting. And you can subject a weapon to a lot of abuse in a default setting without damaging it.

Now perhaps Tolen Mar wants to aim for more "realistic" or "gritty" effects with regard to armor and weapons. Repairing armor after taking damage in a battle, having blades become blunt if used against hard surfaces, etc.. But that decision is independent of the magic level of the setting.

Whatever mechanic is devised for putting flaming pitch on weapons, it should be kinda suboptimal, or we'd see more of it in default games, especially at lower levels. So, for example, I wouldn't have it do an extra 1d6 damage. That's too much. 1 extra damage (and making some weapon damage count as fire damage) would be enough, especially if you have to spend a full round action every few rounds to reapply the pitch.

 

[Kristivas]

I had this come up once, a bucket of pitch and a troll. I had slipped a scroll of scorching ray into some treasure, but the PCs used the pitch instead (they were in an old foundry that some goblins were trying to repair and use, the troll was the BBEG's bodyguard lol). I had to come up with something on the fly...

Pitch lasts for 1d6 combat rounds and does an extra 1d4 fire damage.

The reason I made it 1d6 rounds is because of the nature of burning tar. A friend of mine who helped us plan a halloween party applied some tar to a sword he'd bought for this little show. Sometimes it would go out after a few swings, and sometimes it lasted for a good while. I know middle-ages pitch and tar today can be quite different, but I think it's a good element and added well to the game. They didn't breeze by the troll IMC.