Dragon (line of) Fire

[hcobb]

A dragon's breath weapon is a column of fire that extends from its head its own size in hexes. The dragon gets an independent roll to hit (or miss) everything in this path.

Example: A four hex dragon scorches a line of four hexes. If 50 rats where in the second hex and 50 where in the third then around 32 die in the second hex (DX 13 - 2 for range) and around 25 die in the third hex (DX 13 - 3 for range).

Each target is only attacked once for each blast but one multihex dragon breathing on another would get a DX bonus from all those potential target hexes. (c.f. Barn, broad side)

If this line of fire hits a solid wall or the ground then it will spread out evenly from that point. For example a seven hex dragon breathing down on the ground from just overhead would roast a megahex.

[Skarg]

The TFT dragon breath as a one-target thrown weapon does seem a bit light, especially when it costs several ST points to use.

Your version here is a bit like the version I liked in the old Interplay article, which made it work a bit like the blunderbuss rules, with a cone of effect that varied with the dragon's size, required one DX roll by the dragon to breathe effectively in the desired direction, and then gave DX rolls to targets to avoid being hit, with harder rolls and more damage done to closer targets.

Vertical fire attacks are of course an important tactic, since dragons can fly over targets are roast them from out of hand weapon range vertically without worrying about being engaged and with little or no DX penalty.

I like the image of breathing down and having the flame spread on the ground into a megahex shape. For other-than-seven-hex dragons though, the GM would need to determine which hexes the fire would spread to.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Skarg

I like the image of breathing down and having the flame spread on the ground into a megahex shape. For other-than-seven-hex dragons though, the GM would need to determine which hexes the fire would spread to.

My visualization is that the effect splashes forwards then spreads to the side and only goes past one hex radius once the megahex is filled in.

So 2-hex dragon roasts target hex plus the next hex forward along line of flight.

And 4-hex roasts those two hexes plus the two hexes adjacent to both of those.

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by hcobb

My visualization is that the effect splashes forwards then spreads to the side and only goes past one hex radius once the megahex is filled in.

So 2-hex dragon roasts target hex plus the next hex forward along line of flight.

And 4-hex roasts those two hexes plus the two hexes adjacent to both of those.

I like the implied physics of this, but I would double the range (i.e. a 4-hex dragon gets 8 hexes of fire). I prefer something like this rather than using the rules for 'thrown spells'.

[hcobb]

Using just one hex per hex of dragon the 14-hex dragon claims the top FP crown away from the hydra.

http://www.hcobb.com/tft/firepower.html

It is kind of worth it to expend five fatigue to roast a squad at a time.