Abundant Ammution + Flamethrower Fuel Tanks

[Artemis Moonstar]

Got a very anachronistic game coming up (don't you love/hate time compressions?), and while I intend on asking the GM about it (naturally), I'm curious to know what others think about it.

prd abundant ammunition:

Abundant Ammunition

School conjuration (summoning); Level bard 1, cleric 1, ranger 1, sorcerer/wizard 1

Casting Time 1 standard action

Components V, S, M/DF (a single piece of ammunition)

Target one container touched

Duration 1 minute/level

Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no

When cast on a container such as a quiver or a pouch that contains nonmagical ammunition or shuriken (including masterwork ammunition or shuriken), at the start of each round this spell replaces any ammunition taken from the container the round before. The ammunition taken from the container the round before vanishes. If, after casting this spell, you cast a spell that enhances projectiles, such as align weapon or greater magic weapon, on the same container, all projectiles this spell conjures are affected by that spell.

As for the flamethrower in question, via the SRD (and Reign of Winter, apparently):

Quote:

Flamethrower Fuel Tank: This pair of tanks—one filled with oil, and the other a propellant— provides enough flammable material to use a flamethrower six times.

Naturally I'm under the assumption casting it on the tanks themselves won't work, though logic tells me it would (after all, the tanks are merely containers for the oil & propellant that is the actual ammunition), given that the tanks themselves are not cited as the 'ammunition' in the table, nor is the oil and propellant involved listed under an 'ammunition' section on the table. Yay technicalities!

OTOH, assuming the obvious that the tanks are considered the ammunition, have a set of the flamer fuel tanks in a container that you cast Abundant Ammo on, load them up, and then fire! What happens now? First impression of the spell states the tanks would disappear, and reappear in the container the next round, requiring you to reload them yet again.

Of course, allowing Abundant Ammunition to work with Flamethrowers has a curious effect on the aftereffects of firing it. Assuming you managed to make a few creatures catch on fire by failing their Ref saves, would the previously-fired oil disappear, thus making them no longer on fire? Or would they have been on fire "long enough" that they'd still be burning with the rest of their flammables, even if the original oil goes poof?

Yes, I know, RAW it wouldn't work (period) due to reasonings mentioned above (no list of "ammunition" for Flamers). Not looking for RAW, so much as suspected RAI concerning the state of a flame thrower's ammunition, and how others think such a thing should work.

[Rhatahema]

That fuel isn't considered ammunition could have been intentional. There might be options available for ammunition that the developer didn't want extending to flamethrower tanks.

That said, If you're willing to bend the rules to make it work as ammunition, you might as well extend those rules in a way that's intuitive and balanced.

As a house rule, I would treat each charge of oil and propellant as a unit of ammunition, and the tanks as the container. So if you wanted masterwork or magic ammunition, you'd pay the cost of six units per fuel tank. If you wanted to use abundant ammunition, cast it on the fuel tanks as say it refills the fuel that's been expended each round. The flames produced by the weapon are no longer ammunition, so there should be no worries about them disappearing the next round.

Not sure how much of the weight of the tanks are container and how much is fuel, but you could also break down the weight so that the tank becomes lighter the more fuel you expend. Maybe 4.lbs for the tanks and 6.lbs per charge?

[Trekkie90909]

I'm not familiar with the new tech material, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt:

My impression from briefly skimming the PRD is that advanced technology systems basically replace magical systems in this material. So a flame thrower would be analogous to a wand/staff of burning hands with a maximum of 6 charges. As such it would not be a viable target for abundant ammunition since the oil/propellant falls in a "magic-esque" category. BUT since your GM is combining the systems he'll probably see things differently and want to rule on possible wonkiness on a case-by-case basis.