Fighting fire with... what?

[Watus]

This must have come up before, but searching through the archives as best I can, I've come up with bupkiss.

On Sunday I'll be running my players through Exit 23 as an introduction to our d20 Dark*Matter campaign, and in that scenario, if things go as planned (and they may well not), there will be a situation in which the characters will have to choose between putting out a relatively small fire, or fleeing into a snowstorm to face a winter demon in his element. I'm expecting they'll choose the fire.

Much to my irritation, there don't seem to be any rules for fighting fires in the core books, and so I've come to consult your collective wisdom. How have you handled this in the past? I would really rather not have to cobble something together to cover this one situation...

 

[VirgilCaine]

You might look in the web enhancements for D20 Modern, but here's what I'd do...

Treat a fire extinguisher as a "breath weapon" that deals a certain amount of "damage" to things on fire. The bigger the extinguisher, the more damage and range.

A person on fire takes 1d6 fire damage with a failed Ref save, so lets say you have to do 5 "hitpoints" of damage to a 5' x 5' square to put that square.

As for objects, if the object is made of dry wood or is a car thats on fire thats also leaking oil, it takes 2d6 damage per round (that goes through hardness). Anything more flammable than wood, it takes double damage--4d6.

 

[Henry]

I don't know, but my personal feeling is that that's making too big of a mountain out of a molehill, to use the old phrase.

If the PC's use the right materials to put out a fire, they're going to put out the fire, especially if it's small. if the building were a burning inferno, then I'd say there's no hope. But the reason most of the time you see a small fire get out of hand is when someone uses the WRONG thing to put it out (for instance, water on a grease or electrical fire). If you have a proper (Type C, I believe?) Fire extinguisher, then you will put out a fire to anything short of a whole room on fire.

 

[jezter6]

If you really want stats, I'd use the flamethrower stats and reverse it for water. Then for the fire, take some sort of fire elemental without intelligence of supernatural abilities. (Or just make up "hit points" for the fire and see how long it takes them to put it out).

 

[takyris]

Yeah, I'd try to keep it simple. Say that it's an attack to use, and you automatically douse one normal fire in a 5x5 square, or, with a touch attack, you can douse the fiery properties of a flaming creature for 1d4 rounds (assuming that it's a medium-sized creature that can restart its flames without trouble).

Large-area fires should best be handwaved, unless you want to come up with a lot of new rules, or co-opt some rules -- turning the fire into a swarm-type creature, for example, that occupies contiguous squares and can only be damaged by water (for many fires) or fire-retardant spray (for others).

Skills like Profession(Firefighter), Knowledge(Tactics), Knowledge(Physical Sciences), and Survival would all be useful in handwaving a way for PCs to escape or put out the fire.

 

[Watus]

I guess I would handwave it under most circumstances, but in this case I feel this should represent a fairly tense encounter, though not most intense of the session.

The situation, for those unfamiliar with the scenario, is this: it's the middle of the night and the characters are trapped in a highway rest stop by a freak snowstorm. Trapped along with them are a whacked out cultist and an object he greatly desires. After several failed attempt to recover the item, he determines to drive everyone out of the building and into the arms of his frosty ally by lighting a fire in the convenience store. That is to say, he douses the magazine rack with some gasoline and applies a match. Now, it's reasonable to assume that he doesn't do a very good job, because let's face it: he ain't that bright. I mean, how is he going to look for this thing while the building's on fire? Still... this sounds like it would represent a fairly significant threat.

Treating the fire like a creature is an idea that hadn't actually occurred to me. If I give it some hit points and the ability to regenerate and an attack which allows it to ignite adjascent squares, that might work. Or it could go horribly awry and force me to fudge my a$$ off. But still... it's the idea that most closely matches the notion of the encounter I have in my head...

If anyone else has any ideas, I'd be glad to hear them.

 

[VirgilCaine]

I kinda like the "Fire as Creature" idea. That could work.