Mirabarran fire arrows

This week, as the players deliberated how to deal with the undead minions inside the cave blocked by the bonfire they'd constructed, I had to determine in my own mind what steps the mining company would take to combat the situation. After all, while from a DMing perspective it was important to give the PCs first crack at solving the problem, the score of individuals present beyond the party itself would still have to bear this burden in the party's absence, or failure.

The most pragmatic solution I could come up with was the use of fire arrows by the soldiers to fell the creatures from the cavern floor. This approach required the NPCs to either know or suspect that natural fire would still harm the undead, even though they'd already proved immune to “normal” weapons. I felt this was reasonable enough, particularly with the arrowheads also being doused in holy water.

Before allowing such a course, however, I wanted to make sure that it was actually feasible, and get an idea of how well it was likely to work. I ended up finding and reading the following four posts from a blog explicitly dedicated to warbow archery:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

This was pretty interesting, so thought I'd share. In the end, the fact that it was a short-range situation and the arrows would be shot through an actual raging fire gave me confidence that it should work, provided a reasonable amount of time to ready the ammunition beforehand. I also reduced the ROF (rate of fire) for these arrows to one/round, given the effort needed to ignite them, which felt similar to loading a bolt into a crossbow.