New Skills: Firefighter & Arson

[Leora 31]

I would like to suggest some new fire features for the game. Of course this is a rough idea. I am no game planning expert or anything. But when it occurred to me, I had to bring it up because I love Wurm. Here is what I thought of:

 

New skills Firefighting & Arson could be added.

Can shoot fire arrows

- This would require arrowheads to be coated in an accelerant and be lighted before shooting them.

Can set walls on fire

- This would have a progressive damage and could be put out using a bucket filled with water

- Burning walls would have a chance to catch touching walls on fire.

Can shoot ignited fire balls from trebuchets

- Same as arrows: stones must be coated in an accelerant and lit before fired.

Able to light things on fire.

Arrows and Trebuchets ( or other fire weapons) would have a chance based on Arson Skill, enchantments and Weapon Quality to light the object fired at 'on fire'.

Boats of all types can be caught on fire.

- Boats would slow as damage increases.

Fire elemental monsters in game could catch carts on fire.

- This would happen only if they get too close or with a fire attack from the monster.

Having a high firefighting skill could make someone require less water to put out a fire.

Priests could have arson or firefighter spells added to help wooden objects resist fire or increase chance of fire on a weapon.

Driving carts into water could remove their 'on fire' status.

 

Mechanics

- Once an object is successfully caught on fire, the QL and wood type of burning object would control how quickly the burning object would tick a 'burning' percentage.

   >For example: a QL of 50 on a Cherry Wood boat might tick a 4% burn every minute while a QL of 90 on an Oak boat might tick 1% burn point with every minute.

- The higher the burn percentage, the more prevalent the fire effect and the faster damage accumulates.

- Boats that have become destroyed  while burning on water can drop floating debris  equal to their passenger limit that players can sit on to float back to shore or until rescued. These floating sit-able debris would travel slowly toward shore on their own with the current.

When a wall or boat that is on land finishes burning, it would produce an ash pile.

-A large amount of water ( say 10 kg) would be required in a bucket to put out 10% burn of a burning object. this could be more at first and as firefighting skill increases, less water might be required.

 

Post Note:

I am sure this could lead to all sorts of other ideas for this and would add a new dimension to the game that would be a lot of fun for all servers. PVP for obvious reasons, but on the PVE servers, burning down a house or even a fence instead of destroying with a weapon, would be another way to generate ash and possibly gain Arson skill. Also keeping water in a cart might be more necessary, so all carts could be made to include a built in small water barrel excluded from the already established weight limits.

 

I would love to hear anyone's thoughts or expanded ideas about this replied below.

Edited August 30 by Leora

[fossil 14]

I'm still waiting to see the infamous Quacking Duck to be implemented lol

[John 255]

Siege weaponry is destructive enough in PvP imo, no. The thrill of smashing things down and repairing them are already there, and have a similar enough dichotomy to fighting fire vs starting fire.

[OGK 1]

Some thoughts:

• Needs to be balanced vs. bashing & using siege machines in terms of time/resource investment
• I would prefer this combined with "Firemaking" (which gives the "Arsonist" title @ 70)
• In terms of skills, it has to be locked behind having 21.0 in some characteristic, probably Mind Logic (which governs Firemaking)

Possibilities for balance:

• The accelerant could be somewhat rare
• The raw materials for the accelerant could require controlling/working a certain number of tiles (farming, planting sprouts, mining)
• The accelerant could take a bit of player time to refine from raw materials
• The chance to ignite could be very low

 

edit: I think I like Sulfur as a material. Apply boiling water to crushed sulfur ore to get sulfur. You could also use this material to make matches (which would substitute for steel & flint and kindling), add a matchbox item for flavor, etc.

Edited August 31 by OGK

[Taltos 179]

-1 this would just lead to horrible bugs and abuse.

[Karrde 395]

Dunno... as much as Id love forest fires. That could get laggy fast in Minecraft when a blaze gets out of control.

 

Let alone general destruction in pve... maybe Epic only.

[Kulthar 112]

Don't need arson skill, firemaking is already a thing, could add arson as a subskill to that though. 

[Leora 31]

thanks for all the replies! Lot's of great input for and against the idea that I hadn't considered. Thanks for the feedback everyone!