Fire

                squigger's rules to deal with, of course, fire


Fire isn't dealt with in Warhammer.  Understandable, really, as fire isn't
a big part of pitched battles.  It turns up at sieges instead.  Must be the
people involved.

Of course, there are various magical effects which cause fire, amongst a few
mundane items which do it too.  What should be done about this fire?  Is it 
to be ignored, assumed to go out instantly?

So here are some rules to deal with fire.


First, fire can be caused by anything which, in its description, causes flames
of any sort.  Fiery spells, warpfire throwers, flame cannons, the Black Hammer
of hashut, flaming breath weapons, all of these will start fires.

Second, things which burn are anything which is easily inflammable and also 
inanimate.  The first reason is obvious, the second perhaps not.  Animate 
objects which burn are not going to simply stand by whilst they are 
incinerated - they will beat the flames out and move away from any other 
fire.  So, even though a treeman will burn, he will not be covered by these 
rules.

To make things easier, there are three categories of things which will burn 
- wet, normal, and tinder.  Wet things are less likely to burn, tinder dry 
things far more likely to burn.   Examples of each, which you might find on 
a battlefield, are given below:

		Wet		Normal		Tinder
		jungle		house		hedge
				woods		reeds
				fence

I leave anything else up to the discretion of the players at the time - you 
might for instance decide that your woods are a pine forest in summer, and 
therefore tinder dry.  Or it might have rained the night before the battle, 
making everything wet.  Have fun with scenarios.


Whenever a fiery thing or effect covers or comes within one inch of an 
inflammable object, you must test to see whether or not it has caught fire.  
It's simple enough - wet has a 5+ chance of burning, normal has a 4+ chance,
and tinder has a 3+ chance.  

Once something is burning, it may blaze away for the rest of the day, or it 
may just burn itself out immediately.  This is tested in the Start of Turn 
phase, each turn, until it goes out.  On a 4+ the fire burns on, on anything
else it is extinguished.

If the fire does not go out, then it may spread to any nearby flammable 
objects.  If it touches or is within one inch of another flammable item, 
then that item must be tested as above.  This is also done at the Start of 
Turn, after testing to see if the fire burns out.

Should fire spread from one burning object to another, then it may not 
spread from the second object that turn.  No item may be tested to see if it
catches fire more than once each turn.

Of course, fire doesn't spread all that quickly.  It won't start on one side
of a large forest and be at the other side immediately.  In the case of woods
and long hedges, the fire may affect only six inch sections at a time.  In 
the next turn, assuming that the woods or hedge continue to burn, the fire 
may spread another six inches.  You should never have woods or hedges so big
 that they cannot be completely inflamed within two turns.

All this is just wonderful, it'll make a nice looking battlefield with
various markers for what's on fire.  But what is the purpose of all this 
apart from that?  The fire has some fairly nasty effects on anyone caught 
in it, for a start...

Any model within one inch of a burning object will suffer 1 S4 hit with no 
armour save allowed, except for magic armour.  Models actually in the fire 
take d3 S5 hits with no armour save except for magic armour.  The model, 
should it survive, must be moved to one inch away from the fire in order to
escape it.  Should the model be in a wood, or any other comparable situation,
it is moved to the nearest edge of the fire and then placed one inch away. 
No model may enter a fire, or even go within one inch of one, unless it is 
somehow completely immune to the effects of fire.  Remember that certain 
troops take double wounds from fiery attacks - this counts as such.


As you can see, fire can potentially have a serious effect on the battle.  
It might not affect anything more than a single wood, but if that wood burns 
all battle, and is in the middle of the table, and one of the armies is Wood 
Elves, and they wanted to hide in there...

If you find that it is having too large a part in the battle (and it shouldn't
have all that much effect - I wrote this because there's nothing in the rules
to cover fire), downgrade the dice rolls a point or two.

You might like to add your own refinements, such as misfiring and exploding
cannons starting fires, setting fire to buildings as part of a scenario's 
requirements, and so on.  Perhaps a victim's movement in a wood to escape 
should be limited to however far they could normally march?  Have fun with 
it.