Fire arrows

[Waldmarschallin]

Hi. I'm working on a physician build, which means looking into lots of alchemical options. I found this on the d/D wiki

"Fire Arrow- 3.5 equipment"

Arrow, Fire (5)
Exotic Light Ammunition Critical: —
Range Increment: -15 ft.
Type: —
Hardness: —
Size Cost1 Damage Weight1 hp
Fine * +1d2 * —
Diminutive * +1d3 * —
Tiny * +1d4 * —
Small 10 gp +1d6 1 lb. —
Medium 10 gp +2d6 3 lb. —
Large 20 gp +3d6 6 lb. —
Huge * +3d8 * —
Gargantuan * +4d8 * —
Colossal * +6d8 * —

The SRD only gives a means to determine costs and weights of weapons for Large and Small versions based on the Medium weapons. Any other supplied values are the author's best determination.

Fire arrows are arrows that have a small charge of explosive alchemical powder in a thick paper or wooden tube tied to the shaft. These charges are set with a fuse to first rocket further than normal, and shortly after impact, to detonate in a powerful and lethal explosion. However, in practice, the rocketing action decreases the accuracy with which the weapon may be used at range.

A weapon firing a fire arrow increases its maximum range to fifteen range increments, but cumulative penalties still apply on the attack's accuracy. The extra damage dealt by a fire arrow is treated as fire damage.

A fire arrow always breaks when used, whether or not it hits its target. The only exceptions are when the user is outside in the rain, underwater, or rolls a 1 on her attack roll. In any of these events, the fire arrow becomes a normal arrow of its size, and has a 50% chance to break if it misses its target.

A fire arrow used as a melee weapon is treated as a light improvised weapon (-4 penalty on attack rolls) and deals damage as a dagger of its size (critical multiplier x2). It does not deal its extra damage when used in this manner, but it does break.

Crafting five fire arrows requires a successful Craft (alchemy) check made at DC 30 at the end of an hour of work, and 7 gp 50 sp worth of materials. Failure of 5 or less creates arrows that deal only 1 extra fire damage on a successful hit. Failure of more than 5 causes the arrows to be useless, and ruins half the raw materials. They must be taken apart and remade again. " End quote

Hard to make, and you'd need to be a lvl 10 gnome to reliably make them, but these still seem a tad overpowered. Does anyone know where this came from? Do you agree that this is broken? My writing partner and I thought multiplying the creation cost by ten would be a good start...

[Morcleon]

Considering it's from the wiki, it's most likely homebrew.

As for power levels, it's not that bad. You probably won't be crafting them yourself, buying them instead, so that's not an issue. The +2d6 fire damage is only good as low levels where HP isn't that high, and few opponents have fire resistance. Later on, everything and their mother has fire resistance, and archers need nice things.

Also, why do you have to be a gnome (you could probably do it at level 1 if you really wanted to). And the cost to craft should be 3 gp 3 sp 3 cp.

[Sagetim]

Multiplying the creation cost by 10 would be excessive and unnecessary. Do bear in mind that the DND wiki is Not the SRD. The SRD site is a website that is about as close as you can get to the core rules of dnd 3.5 in website format, with the only changes that I am aware of being for legal reasons (like, they can't use the word illithid).

The DND wiki is the home of homebrew, which I'm fairly sure is written on their site all over the place, in the background, on the main page, and so on. It's safe to assume that anything found there is something that a person homebrewed and put up on the site. Which means they made the rules up and put them up on the site. So your mileage will vary widely with anything you find there. Some of the stuff on there is bound to be fair and balanced. But I wouldn't expect it. It would be a nice surprise.

To get back to the subject of flaming arrows however, I don't recall any nonmagical options for 3.5. There might be some alchemical ones that suck and are expensive ferreted away in some official dnd splat book somewhere, like the complete scoundrel book or maybe some kind of item compendium. However, logically speaking you should be able to dip an arrow in some oil, light it up, and shoot someone with it. The rules for pots of oil and fires caused by them are in the player's handbook under equipment, as I recall. However, that's a bit tricky, and it's not like you could keep your arrows sitting in oil all the time without a fire risk, or gunking up your quiver, or what have you. So let's look at an old edition for some inspiration: in Second edition you could get nonmagical fire arrows that did an extra 1d2 fire damage per hit pretty cheap. They were only a few gold pieces each, and just what the doctor ordered to finish of trolls when you don't have a magic weapon (or magic) to do the job.

However, 1d2 damage sucks in 3.5. It's just...awful. Awful and expensive by 3.5 standards even. Remember, in ADND you were probably going to be rolling in tons of gold pieces. Dropping a couple on some fire arrows wasn't going to set you back too badly. So when I look at what's presented here, I see some fire arrows that are reasonably powerful and priced pretty fairly given their one shot nature. Buying a bundle of 50 flaming arrows is...dumb, in 3.5. It will cost you 8302ish gold, 2ish for 50 arrows, 300 for masterwork arrows, and 8000 to make them +1 and flaming. That's insane. That's unreasonably expensive for some fire and forget ammunition. You could get a wand of fireballs for cheaper or comparable price than that. You could get an Eternal wand of fireball for cheaper than that.

So, let's look at this fire damage from a long term perspective: It's going to be pretty helpful at low level, like strapping a great sword swing to your arrows. But a lot of things have fire resistance, even low level stuff (I think even basic demons have some fire resistance). And once fire resistance hits 10 or more, those monsters are basically immune to the bonus damage from the arrows. Additionally, there are low level spells that can negate that 2d6 right off the bat, like Resist Energy. That second level spell starts at 10 resistance to a chosen element and goes all the way up to 30 based on caster level.

There are also armor enchantments that cost straight cash that can grant energy resistances, starting at 5 (which has a chance to negate the bonus damage entirely on low rolls). In the grand scheme of things, 2d6 fire damage isn't that impressive because of it's damage type. Hell, the pyrokineticist prestige class is entirely based on doing fire damage to stuff, but it's bolt of fire (which does prestige class level in d6's) is still going to have a hard time dealing with 10 fire resistance, let alone 30.

So, what I'm trying to say is that the rules you have quoted here seem like they would be fine on the condition that the game continues to higher levels. At low levels, the arrows will be a cheap enough investment that you'll probably want to stock up on quite a few of them. +2d6 damage is pretty nice, and can be very deadly at low levels. But by mid levels fire is much less useful, and 2d6 isn't that impressive on it's own. And by high levels it's probably not going to be as helpful as using, say, cold iron arrows or alchemical silver arrows.