Looking to start a big inferno in my next module. The rules for fire damage in the SR4 Core Rule book are not crystal clear on rules for fire damage.

1. How would sustained fire damage affect the character? For example if a character is hit with a moltov cocktail at base 4DV, would the have to resist another 4DV combat turn?

2. What are the official or house rules on how to put out a fire in case one starts. I had a character stop drop and roll when he was hit with a moltav a few weeks ago, using body and another attribute/skill as well (Escapes the mind right about now). Any help would be appreciated.

Alpha Omega has rules on using Wielding (cough, spellcasting) to do "damage over time" and while the difficulty of getting the casting off goes up as you select a longer duration, but the base damage is reduced by half, and it does that amount every turn (of course, the mage has to concentrate on the spell to keep it going, thus making DoT completely useless).

D&D also had a "damage next turn" which was half the base initial damage.

So I'd say the molly does 4DV with 2DV for the next couple rounds (until extinguished).

Of course, in SR, 2 damage is something you can ignored without penalty. To which you should probably start imposing reductions in armor for every round that it burns.

Does the fire remain burniing at the end of the turn? If so; is it as intense, less, or more? I would rule that a fire increasing (as in: no attempt to extinguish the flame upon flammable material, ie clothes) then take initial damage again. Each turn the fire gets hotter the damage increases by one, it turn it cools, decrease by 1. Characters should make a roll vs. panic to extinguish via stop drop and roll. Think Logic test threshold = damage vaue of flame. Success means the character drops and extinguishes flames after tking one more round of damage at one half value.

The rules for Fire damage (outside of 1-hit damage) are effectively non-existent. I have been working on-and-off for a mechanical effect for how a fire continues to burn, without much success so far. My current premise is Fire damage is resisted as normal; the next round, it is resisted again at a DV of the previous unresisted damage + some given amount.

Thus, if you do poorly, the fire grows - if you do well, it diminishes. I have no satisfying rules for this system, however, so if you come up with something you think works, I would appreciate you showing how it works.

For additional fun, people who are severely burned often live for quite a while before their body finally shuts down. In SR they might well survive in a full blown hospital, but if they don't get there...

A few weeks ago, we used a simple threshold test using the character's body and logic or body and athletics with a threshold based off the cause of the damage. A character suffering from first degree burns would have a 1 or 2, a moltov had a threshold of 3, someone who emerged from a flaming car wreckage would have 4 or 5, etc.

These are more house rules then anything though.

If you can get a good mechanic for setting people on fire, you can implement all kinds of awesome things, like white phosophorous burning you to the bone.

Then you need rules for attempting to apply copper sulfate in combat situations.

But, yeah, in-game entities catching on fire is hardcore awesome. Depending on how Smash Brothers you want your combat to be, you might want to have someone on fire run around in random directions waving their arms if they fail a dice roll of some kind. And then there can be a lot of fall hazards and things to fall into.

Insert image of a bunch of soldiers from Mud and Blood 2 that are on fire, setting more soldiers on fire here.