Anyway, I'm watching tim warp right now and I've discovered the existence of a rather interesting whip technique.
The idea is simple; you take a bullwhip, soak it is gasoline, and then crack it. The forceful swinging of the whip causes a fine mist of fuel to come off of the whip, while the crack ignites that mist, essentially turning the whip into a reach 2 flamethrower that's only good for a couple of shots.

And I'm wondering what the appropriate damage code modifier for this is. Certainly, having a small fireball at the tip of your whip should improve its damage code somewhat.

I also wonder about other melee weapons that could be set on fire. Clubs, torches, nunchucks, flaming swords (okay, maybe not that) and other such weapons. It is reasonable that you could pick up a board or a broken chair leg and beat someone with it. It is also reasonable that you could soak the same board or chair leg in gasoline and set it on fire to cause even more damage. But how much?

I'm also wondering about appropriate damage codes for fire-breathing (the technique or spitting out a fine mist of kerosene and igniting it with a torch) and whether mist-spiting should be available to all characters or if it should be made into a martial arts maneuver.

There are also issues with other elemental effects, as well. We know the damage code for magical acid, but not for dumping a bucket of acid on someone, for example.

Acually, fire on melee weapons would be more intimidating then anything else. Any burns that acually occur would be minor(skin isn't as flammible as you think), which would be off set by the fact that the fire would cauterize any open wounds caused by the weapon.

Attacks that cause fire damage generally come in two varieties, super hot quick heat(mainly fire magic, some explosives) or by applying a burning substance to the target(flamethrowers, napalm). The ongoing DV for a fire is usually equal to last rounds DV +/- a number which represents the growth or shrinkage that occurs.

I generally handle fire damage as follows, it's not completely raw but it works pretty well. For super hot fires, they get to roll body + half impact armor each round to reduce the DV, representing that they tend to burn out quickly. Then can also, as a complex action make an acrobatics check and reduce the DV by their hits. (For example, Joe gets hit with a flamthrower spell and takes 5 fire damage after his wound check. Next turn he makes another wound check and gets 2 hits, taking 3 damage and lowering the DV of the fire for next round to 3. If he wants to end the fire prematurly he's going to have to try to put it out(gymnastics test) or jump in some water or something).

For fuel based attacks, I use the same idea but the wound check doesn't reduce future turns fire DV, in fact the DV increases by 1 (or 2 or more if the fire is nasty or the character has lots of flammable materials and/or ammo/explosives. The only way to put out the fire is through gymnastic tests, or finding some other way to reduce the flames.

Acid damage is covered in Arsenal if I recall. It does (Rating)P... there are a few other rules but that's the gist.

And unless a fire is ridiculously hot people don't catch on fire (by the time they do, they usually aren't alive to care). Now all that gear on them... that shit usually burns fairly well (mmm.. plastic) but hitting someone with enough fire to light their gear on fire is a problem as well.

In the BBB there should be something about catching fire, too lazy to check the page for you but give it a try, might help (lost some subjects along the way...oh well).

Well, barbed wire does has much base damage as a light pistol so being on fire should be about DV 15...

What?

Phipps, quit baiting the young ones. They don't know how to fight back.