Luthor Harkon said:

That discussion has been had, many times :)

As for Flame weapons, they use a template just like blast weapons.

But I see your point. Blast weapons have a BS test. Thing is, you can "hit" even if you miss, if the Blast radius is larger than your scatter roll. Then what? Dodge a missed attack? Dodge the Blast?

Just what is the Target Dodging anyway? If you wait until the thing goes off, to discover if you will be caught in the blast zone, it is too late to Dodge.

If you have to decide when you see that it's incoming, you have to estimate a) how far away from me will/did it land, and b) what kind of grenade is it (ie, how large is it's blast zone).

I'd say the rules are a little "iffy" here. If you see someone pointing a grenade launcher in your direction, you do NOT wait to see where exactly he shoots. You dive for cover, and hope the grenade doesn't scatter the same way you dive :)

I had some similar misgivings about flame weapons early in my campaign. It took some digging, but I finally found that discussion:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=99&efcid=46&efidt=367921

I've tried to compensate somewhat for the effects of flame weapons, with gimicks like having the most tech-savvy guy in the bad-guy group just happen to have a portable fire extinguisher handy.  But yeah, flame weapons can really monkey-wrench a GM's plans…

Sorry for bumping this, but it pertains to a question I have about flame weapons.

Specifically, whether you can dodge AND make an ag test to avoid the flamer, or whether the ag REPLACES the dodge test.

The general consensus that seems to have been reached in this thread is that you treat the flamer attack as a (blast) attack; you can attempt to dodge it IF your AB is equal to or greater than the blast radius.

How do you determine a flamer's AOE radius though? Grenades have Blast, Blast(2), Blast(3) etc that specifically tells you, but how do you figure out how big the flamer's radius is? You can't just give it a flat number, especially since it's a cone, and I really don't think the writer of the rule intended for us to try to "math out" how big the AOE is of the cone.

"All creatures in the flame’s path, a cone-shaped area extending in a 30 degree arc from the firer out to the weapon’s range, must make an Agility Test or be struck by the flames and take damage normally."

In practice that means you have a ratio between the distance from the shooter (length) and the width of the "blast" of 1,9. Meaning it's easier to dodge the closer you are to the shooter.

In table form it looks like this:

I don't see what's the problem for a guardsman keeping a lasgun as his primary weapon; the fact that he works for the Inquisition dosen't explain at all why a solider would stop using a well-made weapon that is always reliable and that he excells in its use. Even in nowaday special forces, the soliders only use more equipped versions of the primary weapon of their army, or other variant of an assault rifle that suits best their need; they don't start to use special rifles, shotguns or anything else unless the operation absoluteley requires it.

On the other hand, it depends if you'd followed the Only war/black crusade update of the lasgun, which now has the variable setting, which transforms the lasgun in a pretty good killing machine.