Basically, fighting at night can really suck for ranged groups – or polearm users with heavy helmets – and torches / fiery arrows could be a possible solution. I’m going to discuss how and why I’d want these tools implemented.
WHY
Scenario 1: You’re heading into a battle with orcs. It’s night. You don’t have the legendary helmet that lets you see at night because you either didn’t buy the edition of the game that gives it to you OR the helmet was broken and thus destroyed in a previous battle. So, you enter the field of battle and your vision is… well, crappy.
You move your melee units into position, but your archers can’t really see far enough to contribute. Worse yet, they have stark penalties due to you fighting at night. Not good. You really need some light, or some way to expand your field of vision…
Scenario 2: You’re exploring and stumble across some dilapidated castle, a pile of crumbling bricks in the middle of a swampy morass. You don’t know what you’re fighting, but you know from previous experience that the enemy won’t be all neatly lined up in front of you. And since it’s swamps, you’re REALLY afraid of the enemy having goblins on their side, since that would mean wading through the swampy waters (complete with defense penalties) and being peppered to death by goblin ambushers.
If you had a way to light the path, maybe you could reveal a bit of the terrain before advancing into killed-by-poisoned-arrows territory.
HOW
Torches could be designed to fit in a variety of slots: a weapon slot, a shield slot, or even a miscellaneous slot. But here’s a fun fact about torches in the medieval world we should make clear:
Torches were used in war… as things you throw, not things you carry to see what’s in front of you. Okay, they were also used for signaling purposes, but largely they’re used to THROW, see?
Ergo, my suggestion is that torches, whatever slot they go in, have a 4 AP action to throw them, and maybe a 1 or 2 AP action to light them. They should NOT start lit, as if they did the enemy archers would easily notice the torch-bearer and his allies in the firelight and start peppering them.
When thrown, the torch lands (based on ranged attack skill) either on the terrain slot you threw it at or a nearby one. Assuming it DOES NOT land in water, the torch provides light to all hexes within X (2 or 3?) distance around it. Those areas are considered to be “daylight” areas for purposes of vision, meaning that if you’d be able to see that distance in daylight, you’d be able to see it in torchlight. This means that archers who are unable to see at night would be able to see things around the torch and shoot the living crap out of them.
Fiery arrows could function similarly, but either be a unique ammunition or be fired from a character that instead of throwing a torch plants it beside them and lights their arrows with it.
Neither the torch nor the fiery arrows should be able to deal damage to enemy characters (or if they do, it’s negligible). They exist solely to provide vision at night. Whenever buildings and structures are added, perhaps torches/fiery arrows can help destroy wooden structures or start forest fires.
Thoughts?
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