| Essemecks |
Alright, here goes:
"The alchemist’s bombs now have a splash radius of 10 feet rather than 5 feet (see Throw Splash Weapon). Creatures that take a direct hit from an explosive bomb catch fire, taking 1d6 points of fire damage each round until the fire is extinguished. Extinguishing the flames is a full-round action that requires a Reflex save. Rolling on the ground provides the target with a +2 to the save. Dousing the target with at least 2 gallons of water automatically extinguishes the flames."
The Explosive Bomb says that the target "catches fire", but supercedes the Environmental Hazard rules for catching on fire in every way.
For reference, the Environmental rules:
"Characters at risk of catching fire are allowed a DC 15 Reflex save to avoid this fate. If a character's clothes or hair catch fire, he takes 1d6 points of damage immediately. In each subsequent round, the burning character must make another Reflex saving throw. Failure means he takes another 1d6 points of damage that round. Success means that the fire has gone out—that is, once he succeeds on his saving throw, he's no longer on fire.
A character on fire may automatically extinguish the flames by jumping into enough water to douse himself. If no body of water is at hand, rolling on the ground or smothering the fire with cloaks or the like permits the character another save with a +4 bonus.
Those whose clothes or equipment catch fire must make DC 15 Reflex saves for each item. Flammable items that fail take the same amount of damage as the character."
As you can see, the Explosive Bomb supercedes the initial save (no save mentioned if you take a direct hit from the Explosive Bomb), the action required to extinguish the flames (Explosive Bomb requires a full-round action to even attempt to extinguish the flames, mundane fire gives you a reflex save at the start of the turn), and the benefit from rolling on the ground (Explosive Bomb gives you +2 to your reflex save, mundane fire gives you ANOTHER SAVE at a +4 bonus).
It is clear from this that "catching fire" from an Explosive Bomb is not covered at all by the rules from the Environmental "catching on fire" section. With that in mind... when does the Explosive Bomb do this fire damage? The only thing Explosive Bomb says on the matter is that it happens "once per round". It's important to know whether it's at the start of the turn, the end of their turn, or on MY turn (since that would be one round from when they caught fire). In the last case, do they take damage immediately (since "each round" implies the round that they caught fire without text to the contrary). Finally, if this truly is a completely separate circumstance than catching on fire from a mundane source, the reflex save to douse Explosive Bomb fire is against MY spell save DC, right?