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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7992267" data-attributes="member: 18">That's my point. It's a double-edged sword. You can't say "if" definitely means "each time" and I can't say "if" definitely means "the first time". It's bad wording.Logically, it makes more sense if it goes up in a single round, because you don't then get the irrational situation where the oil immediately stops burning the moment fire damage isn't being applied, or burns super-intense if a lot of fire-damage is applied (but again goes to a dead stop if fire damage isn't applied).Balance-wise, it makes more sense for it to be one-time too. Especially considering the very low cost of the oil. Otherwise this becomes a hysterically insane booster for Firebolt or the like. Good ol' Sorcerer Twin Firebolt, Quicken Firebolt, has +5 damage on every roll, which is very nearly double damage, and every round thereafter (for an entire minutes!) by your reading. You basically want to just get everyone to do as many hits with Fire damage as possible, because +5 damage, even at quite high levels, is totally mad. Imagine a party with multiple characters able to do fire damage. Hell, my current party in Odyssey has 3 PCs who have cantrips which can do Fire damage, and spells too, like Chromatic Orb. If this does +5 fire damage every single time the target is hit with fire for an entire minuteAnd there's no countermeasure possible. You can't "remove the oil". It's not an option. You can't make a save. This is is incredible.Your proposed usage is powerful, but not broken. But the same logic that powers your oil+alchemists fire deal makes this completely broken, and I do mean broken, because it means anyone not Fire Resistant (which is still like, the vast majority of monster/NPCs), basically the party should just get someone to throw oil on them, then victimize the hell out of them. It's so good you might even want to take whatever Feat it is that gives you Improvised Weapon Proficiency so that you get +Proficiency to hit. Everyone in the party should look at getting a way to do fire damage if they can, to just really pile it on (so long as their main damage doesn't suffer too much).So, in summary, yes, you interpretation is possible, but it's broken, balance-wise, and not very logical (because either the oil is on fire or it isn't, or it all burned up), and there's no common countermeasure or save (a DM might allow a spell which produced water, or even Prestidigitation to fix it, but almost no monsters or NPCs will have either). As a DM you can rule either way, but if you rule "+5 Fire damage for an entire minute with nothing you can do about it haha!" expect your PCs to go "OHO!!!!" and exploit the hell out of that.If you just want Alchemist's Fire to suck less, maybe just go with JC's take of +DEX damage/round?10 damage is not actually bad for a usage of your Action on an ability your class is supposed to use or the like (even accounting for a miss), and its actually very good for a non-class ability. It compares extremely favourably with the Help action in combat, for example, which gives Advantage for one attack, to an ally. As poor [USER=7019027]@Asisreo[/USER] knows from the extremely lengthy discussion on True Strike, in most situations, Advantage on a single attack is worth like 3-5 damage. Therefore the default 5 damage is not out-of-line. 10 isn't excessive either, because you could miss with the vial (whereas Help always succeeds). It would just require a house rule.(Btw [USER=7019027]@Asisreo[/USER] I enjoyed your reddit post re: exploration adventures, assuming that's also you! Some good pointers!)</blockquote>

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