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Thermobaric Seekers and Swarms

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TadanoriOyama TadanoriOyama's picture
Thermobaric Seekers and Swarms
No special mention of thermobaric weapons is made regarding swarms. During a recent review of the sections on swarms and seekers I noticed this and it struck me as odd. Thermobaric weapons are described as filling an area with ignition fuel and detonating a uniform blast. Area of Effect or fire based attacks do 1d10 damage (instead of the normal 1) so while there is some benefit there is no significant different between using a thermobaric grenade and a frag grenade. My thoughts are thus: a swarm typically fills a 10x10x10 meter area. The blast radius on a thermobaric seeker is 10 meters, filling the same area with a uniform blast. It seems like if those areas overlap, the swarm should be destroyed completely. However that assumes the areas overlap entirely which seems unlikely to happen. I'm curious if this means that a thermobaric seeker's blast is (despite being uniform) much cooler than that of a plasma seeker (the most effective anti-swarm weapon). Does a house rule that thermobaric weapons do 2d10 (as they are both area of effect and fire based) instead of 1d10 seem reasonable? This makes them more effective than other seeker types while still being less effective than EMP or plasma seekers.
jackgraham jackgraham's picture
Yeah, if you're talking about
Yeah, if you're talking about something like a micromissile. I'd caution against simply doubling the damage for the larger thermobaric weapons, though, or you're looking at a hideous/possibly unbalancing numbers of damage dice.
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TadanoriOyama TadanoriOyama's picture
My assumption with the larger
My assumption with the larger missiles would be that one increases the area of the explosion, not it's force. The point of a thermobaric weapon seems to be the uniform blast addition, which equally damages everything inside the area of effect. More fuel would spread to a great area. With my limited understanding of aerial dispursed explosive effects I believe that you can't just double the amount of fuel in the same area and get a hotter flame; you need the right fuel/air mixture to ignite properly.