Re: [HoE] Flamethrowers in HOE?

[Darrin Bright <darrin@neobright.net>]

Patric Nylén wrote:
> 
> I'm marshalling a HOE campaign and (to my regret...) none of the players have a junker character. One character have a serious craving for a flamethrower. Are there any official (or inofficial) rules for flamethrowers in HOE? I suppose there are rules for the Mad Scientist variety in WW, but I don't own those books, so how do I handle flamethrowers in HOE rulewise, either ghostrock-powered junker devices or the ordinary kind, perhaps using spookjuice as "ammo"? Any suggestions?

Use the Flamethrower rules from Deadlands, and just ignore the
Reliability roll. Keep the range the same, but you might want to tweak
the fuel consumption a bit, since more modern flamethrowers might make
use of pressurized tanks and better fuel. Now, I'm not an expert, but my
guess is modern flamethrowers use jellied gasoline/kerosene (i.e.,
NAPALM), which is very easy to make. You could make it in your kitchen,
for example... ingredients should be cheap and easy to get ahold of,
even in a post-apocalypse setting. 

You could use Spookjuice, but that'd be kind of wasting an extremely
expensive resource... I mean, you could probably use 100-year-old Scotch
as tractor fuel, but at $500 a bottle is that the best way to get rid of
it when a $5 bottle of the cheap stuff will work just as well? 

If you did use Spookjuice, my guess would be you'd have to "jell" it
somehow. The thicker the liquid is, the less it will atomize out of the
nozzle and the better range you'll get. Otherwise, if the liquid is too
thin, it'll just turn into vapor which won't go as far and might even
drift back towards the user.