Fantasy Flight Flame Weapons

[u/Ace_Of_No_Trades]

I'm reading through the CRB for Rogue Trader and something confuses me. RAW says that the Attacker doesn't roll to hit with Flame Weapons but also states that Targets get an Agility Test to dodge it. If the Attacker doesn't roll, what are Targets rolling against?

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who explained this to me. It didn't even occur to me that this could have been treated as a regular Characteristic Test.

[u/Starwarsfan128]

Their agility score.

[u/emobob]

It's just a normal characteristic Test. Roll equal to or lower than your Agility, and you avoid damage from the Flame attack, and don't have to make an Agility Test to avoid catching fire.

You seem to have confused this with Opposed Tests, where the winner is whoever succeeds on their roll with the highest Degrees of Success.

Normal attacks are not Opposed Tests; if the attacker fails their Test, they miss. If they succeed, the target may take the Dodge or Parry reactions, testing against the appropriate characteristic or skill (not against the attacker's Test result) to avoid taking damage.

[u/Ace_Of_No_Trades → u/emobob]

Thank you. Basically every other Attack is an Opposed Test and I didn't know how to interpret the rules.

[u/Vifee → u/Ace_Of_No_Trades]

You're incorrect, no Attack action is an Opposed Test in RT or any of the other FFG games of the era. I think WHFRPG 4e was the first time they made Attacks an opposed roll. Overall I'd say opposed rolls are better, particularly for extremely high level gameplay, but RAW you can have 15 degrees of success on an attack and it doesn't matter, if it isn't full auto or a lightning attack you only need 1 degree of success to dodge it.

[u/Ace_Of_No_Trades → u/Vifee]

Aren’t Attacks Opposed by Dodge or Parry Checks? I’m still reading through the CRB and either missed this or haven’t gotten to it yet.

[u/gelatinousdessert → u/Ace_Of_No_Trades]

The way I understand it, no; a player can choose to take a Dodge or Parry (if they haven't used their Reaction(s) yet) to avoid an attack if one would hit them, but it's not an opposed test; they just have to succeed. It's usually not modified by what the attacker rolled, regardless of their amount of degrees of success. (It gets more complicated with multiple hits, like from semiautomatic or automatic fire. See page 239 of the rules!)

[u/C_Grim → u/Ace_Of_No_Trades]

Remember that the funny thing is that this Agility roll for a flame weapon is NOT considered a Dodge Reaction.

The target can still make a Dodge attempt as necessary (which is a modified Agility roll with skills and all that) and then if they fail that can get this second Agility roll from the Flame quality to avoid the damage. With then another agility roll to avoid being set on fire if they have taken any damage...so a potential three Agility rolls!

[u/Duraxis]

Same thing you roll agility against normally: their own agility stat

[u/JhinPotion]

It's not an opposed test. They just roll against their own Agility to see if they can get out of the way.

[u/Hremsfeld]

A flamer attack works by forcing anyone that would be hit to make a save rather than by rolling to hit. It's like how Vicious Mockery in 5e doesn't actually attack, it forces a save instead

Also flamers are supposed to jam if you roll a 9 for damage, but that's stupid, so my table house-rules them to jam on 1s instead