[HoE] [HOPLER] Arson ?

[Matthew Steflik <grifflik@stny.rr.com>]

Steve Crow wrote:

> Are bullets consider "flammable or explosive" for the purposes of Arson?
>
> Probably not.  But what about grenades?  I'm not sure that even a modern day
> grenade would necessarily be detonated by (relatively brief) exposure to
> fire such as that generated by the "burst" of Arson.  Would a 2081 version
> one...?
>
And Darrin Bright responded:

> Well, that depends a lot on what kind of grenade, but exposing any grenade to a
> lot of heat or an intense flame is a bad idea, unless you want it to blow up. I
> don't have my books handy, but isn't there a power called Detonate to handle
> this? If that's the case, I'd say Arson has a low chance to set off bullets and
> grenades unless the heat/fire is of sufficient duration.
>
I agree with Darrin on this - yes, the bullets could be considered
explosive, but this would of depend on whether or not the target
carrying said explosives stays on fire after the first round because of
the Arson, and how long thereafter it remained ablaze. The way I look at
it, the longer the target is aflame the greater the chance of them going
off.  I've run into this before and the way I handled it for bullets,
grenades and such (explosive, but not AS explosive as, say, a can of
spook juice exposed to a blast, which was the example given with power
description in CoTA) was use an initial TN of 9 on a d10, and take it
down a point and reroll for each item, each round the target was on fire
(8 for the second, 7 for the third, etc.).  For explosive effects, I
used the friendly fire rules, etc. from the Detonate power when
appropriate.  This seemed to work pretty well, making it less likely to
set ammo off, but not taking outside the realm of possibility for those
punks that like to carry an arsenal worth of ammo and explosives
everywhere they go.  I suppose if you wanted to be nice you could make
the initial TN a 10, and then bring it down a point each round if you
thought a 1 in 5 chance of a blowup too probable.  Any other thoughts
from anybody?

Matt "still more burning questions" Steflik