Radioactive Magic

[FeiLin]

I was toying with the idea of making magic and it's exposure generate radioactivity, to make it a bit more dangerous to use too much and find a thematic explanation why magic is fairly rare but quite flashy.

Before I start; are there any ideas like that out there; fan-made or in official books?

[SteamBub]

The Tech School in GURPS Magic has radiation spells. Also, in GURPS Technomancer there are Atomic Liches.

[Refplace]

I used something simmilar a long time ago, the Corruption mechanics in GURPS Horror can work with this idea.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by FeiLin

I was toying with the idea of making magic and it's exposure generate radioactivity, to make it a bit more dangerous to use too much and find a thematic explanation why magic is fairly rare but quite flashy.

Realistic radiation makes any magic a slow killer. You might have to go low enough to make magic no more common than modern dental x-rays (i.e. carefully controlled and once per year) to keep the effects in the negligable category.

So no wise old wizards. They all got cancer before the got particularly old.

Now, unrealistic radiation might do whatever you wanted but you'll need to be careful in calibrating things.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by FeiLin

I was toying with the idea of making magic and it's exposure generate radioactivity, to make it a bit more dangerous to use too much and find a thematic explanation why magic is fairly rare but quite flashy.

A bit more dangerous? You're talking about certain early death.

[Flyndaran]

Cure Radiation Damage sounds like a very useful spell, likely heavily guarded and/or expensive.

[AlexanderHowl]

An alternative would be to allow magicians to draw extra mana in place of FP at the cost of dealing them radiation damage. Non-mages would take 1 rad per 1 FP replaced while mages would take 1/(Magery+2) rads per 1 FP replaced. It could also work with energy accumulating magic, spirit-assisted magic, and/or threshold-limited magic.

[Rupert]

In one of Jack Chalker's series of novels magic had the effects of making people blind if they saw too much of it (well, actually, their vision shifted so you could see magic auras, etc., but not the mundane world), either at once or over time. Thus all powerful mages were blind, and one reason they had familiars was so that they could see through their eyes (a fairly simple spell). If you were a non-magical sort that meant over-exposure to magic pretty much just hosed you.

[Culture20]

That Other Game had a setting (Glantri) where magic was highly altered and enhanced by an ancient nuclear reactor from a crashed spaceship. Its energies were employed by secret practitioners who fueled their magery to greater heights at the cost of their health and sanity.

This could easily be just story fluff instead of an ongoing game mechanic, and you could give your mages an option for Unusual Background: “fully tapped into magical background radiation” which allows them to ignore disadvantage limits at a 2:1 ratio as long as those disadvantages can be explained by radiation effects. i.e. they take your normal amount of disads and get back full points (the player does this with terminally ill), then they go into their extra radiation disads: reduce their health by 1, for 5 points (half of 10), a severe neurological disorder for 17 points (half, floored, of 35), lifebane for 5 (half of 10). They can thus choose to be more powerful at extra expense.

Or take a look at page 435 in Campaigns and determine what rads/mana is right for your campaign. 1rad per spell on caster and target(s) seems low until you start adding it up. 1rad/mana cast would be devastating for and of the higher spells or enchantments. Are powerstones safer than channeling mana via fatigue? Is sharing fatigue via ritual casting safer?

[Kromm]

Radiation is dangerous in high acute doses, modest ongoing doses, or merely above-average lifetime doses . . . but on the other hand, how much radiation is your magic generating? GURPS uses rads (which is somewhat controversial, but let's ignore that). I'd calibrate the rads per energy point to suit your vision and inflict the dose on the caster and all subjects: At 0.01 rad per energy point, only career wizards would be at risk; at 0.1 rad per point, most single castings wouldn't be noteworthy but even casual magic-users or subjects of magic would eventually be rolling for minor health effects; and at 1 rad per point, magic would be fantastically risky to everyone even in the short term.