Carpet Bombing..?

[Red_Dog]

Hello All. This is relatively quick[I hope] RAW/Modding the rules question.
*I did my googling prior to asking, I did not find a definitive answer = \ *

Lets say, an Areal Unit would like to make a carpet bombing-like maneuver. How would I as a DM should handle it? Normally Areal Bombardment involves a single attack roll from an attacker[as per Heroes of Battle], to hit a particular target/square.

However... Same book contains Alchemical Charge which is basically a clay ball filled with Alchemist Fire. It has 5ft initial blast and 8 squares[all adjacent area] that it sets on fire. Being dropped from 500ft should be enough to shatter the ball.
Incidentally 500ft of fall normally takes roughly 5.8 seconds. Which is pretty much one round. At best estimate the bomb will fall in the same round, and at worst, the next.

So could a creature[s] just get a these balls[perhaps have some bag with strings, where each string pull[free action] is a drop] at this altitude and drop them using a double move[or "running", can flyers use "run fullround action"? I always forget that >_>]] and drop them in a straight line. The balls explode and force reflex save vs people who are in area.

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So would something like this be possible? Would the ball on impact also deal maximum fall damage it accumulated via falling? Granted, if I allow the balls only impact the following round that they are dropped, this would means FAR less casualties as targets would have a chance to scatter and leave the area.

This maneuver is however limited by the amount of these balls a creature can carry[the creatures I have in mind, can only carry 8+there swag to stay below light load]. This would mean, only one wave and likely only effecting the buildings and causing panic.


So... I hope for some mechanical advises on this matter. I realize that it is not intended use, but it seems balanced by the amount of inaccuracy it has.

Thanks in advance! ^^

P.S. Sorry for a potentially incoherent post, I am handling few things at the same time.

[Keneth]

It's actually more like 5.6s (slightly less) if simply dropped. Amusingly D&D rules also dictate a 500 ft. drop in the first round and a 1000 ft. drop in the subsequent rounds, which is more or less the terminal velocity for a falling medium-sized humanoid.

But putting the physics aside, I would allow a creature to simply drop multiple bombs but with little to no accuracy. The bomb would by default land somewhere around the spot where dropped + the creature's current velocity (twice its speed if double moving) and then you'd apply a random error to the spot much like if you missed with a splash weapon, 1d8 to determine direction (or maybe 1d6 or lower if you want to rule out certain directions due to wind or something). I'd say, since the weapons are dropped from 800 ft., the error could be about 1d8 * 5 ft. in the determined direction. Either way there's a lot of rolling involved here to simulate the random element.

As for the damage, yes a falling object causes damage from falling if it hits something. Though it's only a DC15 Reflex save to avoid a medium-sized falling object. No way to avoid the splash though.