Automatically effective, Karma, 2 Strain, consumes an arrow.  Prerequisite:  Direction Arrow.

A character with this tallent may tranform a normal arrow into an arrow of flame that deals mystical fire damage.

The damage caused by a flame arrow is based off of WL (not ST or the physics of the bow) with +3 + rank damage.  The karma is spent on the damage roll.

Flame arrows can ignite combustables.

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Is flame arrow damage doubled after armor, like impailing damage?  The damage appears to be resisted by physical armor, not mystic armor.

--zebediah

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Good question.  The arrow should still do its usual physical, impaling damage.
Letting the fire do mystic but non-impaling damage is an interesting idea.
Alternately, letting the entire thing be mystical but non-impaling damage could work.

I don't seem to recall claiming this was automatically effective --- I thought it was a Will roll to trigger it, and then it added some mystic flame damage. --bts

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Sorry, I was using the actual text from the ED rulebook, which said that you rolled the step as your damage test when using a flaming arrow, and your step was WP + 3 + rank, "add karma die to damage" i.e. use karma on the damage roll.  I'm not sure why the arrow should still do normal physical damage, as it no longer exists.

Personally, I'd expect the arrow to be doing physical impailing flame damage, with the neat special effect that it's karma, and thus dual (i.e. can hit spirits and matricies). -zebediah

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That's my instinct too, except that physical damage based off of WL just feels weird.  Hey Archers, any of you have opinions? -bts
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OK, looking back at the ED book--+3 is the damage add for most bows.  Thus WL+3 is the damage you'd do with a bow, if you were using WL instead of ST.
It's less than an Elven Warbow, but given a couple ranks you make it up--I suspect that the +3 was to make this a viable damage compaired to normal arrows.

Although the party, personally, has a pair of very strong archers, being Strong isn't really that much of an archer schtick (as compaired to, say, a raider schtick, a warrior schtick, oreven a calveryman schtick).  Archers are Direct and Focused, which maps a lot closer to WL, although their primary stats are still DX and IQ (the perception aspect, mostly).

Given all this, I think the way the tallent should work is probably this:  damage is WL + Damage add of bow (which is largely a function of ST) + rank, and is imp/fire dual damage.  (imp.fire damage means apply fire or imp damage, whichever is more advantagous, not fire damage doubled for impailing, and dual damage means soak with mystic or physical armor, not both.  I expect most karma-based damages to be dual.) --zebediah
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