Thursday, April 13, 2017

Heavy Torch

The modern Torch (p. 341 EP) is good as a utility weapon, for specific purposes of close quarters, terror or shock fighting and as a defense against certain hostile activities like Nanoswarms. However, it suffers from a lot of limitations which hurt its usefulness in major combat situations. Considering it's size and ammo storage, it has a very slow rate of fire. While dangerous, the fuel is not self-oxidizing and thus does not function in vacuum and does not always stick to a target to cause ongoing damage. Thus, military engineers have attempted to redesign the weapon so that it's positive qualities can be more universally applicable in combat situations.

Heavy Torch: This bulky, military flamethrower resembles a Torch, but is larger and armed with a bigger fuel storage tank. Instead of single shot pressurized capsules it features a larger tank which uses computer assistance to draw a specific amount of fuel per trigger pull. Also special about the heavy torch is the fuel blend, a much more adhesive, hot-burning and self-oxidizing mixture which produces it's own oxygen at high-heat, and thus burns until it runs out of fuel, or is doused in a retardant which prevents the reaction such as NotWater. Luckily for most, the torch fuel itself can only burn a few minutes before putting itself out - it requires an appropriate target to burn for long periods. Any character or object hit with the Heavy Torch immediately catches On Fire (p. 198 EP) and takes 1d10/2 DV per action turn, which grows normally. On an Excellent Success, this damage becomes 2d10 DV per action turn. Even though it is a spray weapon, the Heavy Torch can use the Sweeping Fire (p. 194 EP) and Concentrated Fire (p. 195 EP) rules. [High]
AP -4 3d10+5 DV SA Ammo 50
10/30/60/100

Due to it's fuel blend and large risk of collateral damage, Heavy Torches are banned in most enclosed habs as an issue of public safety - similar to some railguns or conventional firearms. Even "lawless" Outer System habs consider it in incredibly poor taste to carry one around in a beehive or cluster hab. This doesn't mean they don't see a lot of use, and milspec response teams often have at least one Heavy Torch in storage for the right situations. They are also often seen in the hands of response teams for Hypercorps, able to quickly dispose of experiments and research run amok. This also means that anonymous "boogeymen" like Firewall and Project OZMA are fond of using the Heavy Torch when they run clean up missions. Fire is a great equalizer.

1 comment:

  1. Oh man, I've got a player who would kill for one of these. So I'm definitely going to need to use it on him.

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