So... Torch Goblin is a fun little feat that gives some entertaining advantages to an enterprising young goblin... as long as they are on fire. It requires that they be charhide goblins, which means that they both have resist fire equal to their character level and are more likely to stop being on fire in any given turn. So... we'd like ways for our goblin to start taking ongoing fire damage, but, ideally, ones that don't really take effort. Like, we want them to sort of incidentally burst into flame as a result of themselves or their party members doing other things. We already have a way for them to light themselves on fire with a single action and some materials, and we'd like to do better than that. So what have we got?
So far I've found...
- The Flames Oracle gets Incendiary Aura as their initial revelation spell. This 10-foot emanation causes everything in it to burst into flame (2d4 initially, but it goes up slow) whenever they take fire damage.
- The Alchemist's Exploitive Bomb feat (lvl 16) will give resistance penetration equal to their level, which is enough to slip a bit of splash damage through, so as to activate the Flames Oracle Aura. This is a greet way to trigger incidentally if the goblin in question is in melee, and there's a flames oracle (or archetype - perhaps the goblin themselves?) close enough to provide support. It's just that we'd like something before lvl 16.
So... at this point I guess I'm basically looking for area-effect stuff that deals ongoing fire damage, preferably without having to spend spell slots, and/or area-effect stuff that can deal small amounts of fire damage through a fire resistance equal to class level. Having support from other party members is no problem.
Summon Fire Elemental ?
Any fire elementals in particular? I took a look at a few of them, and none of the ones I saw were offering incidental ongoing fire damage or resistance penetration
edit: Also, the Flame Druid's Wildfire spell will inflict ongoing 1 fire damage on anyone who ends their turn in it and fails a ref save. Failing the ref save might get tricky in some cases, though.
edit: also also, there's a level 10 druid metamagic feat called Overwhelming Energy that (for an action lets a spell up to (druid level) resistance to acid, cold, electricity, fire, or sonic. That's still a touch later than we might like (Torch Goblin itself is level 5) but it's definitely getting closer.
edit: level 7 cursed item, Cloak of Immolation, will do the trick where taking fire damage inflicts ongoing damage on you (in this case 1d10 fire damage) without need of a dip into oracle or two actions for the focus spell. Admittedly, the focus spell may well be worthwhile for this build anyway, but it's at least a new way to do this thing.