Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself?
 

Hey, all.

This is my first non-Quick-Question post in a while. I'm tinkering around with some old ideas of mine. Namely, magic equals (weird) radiation. I was trying to create creatures that are radioactive and/or that rely/feed on radioactivity.

Increased Life Support (p. B139) says that you can be radioactive or require radiation! Neat! «Hmm, there are no rules here about that,» I thought to myself. «That must just be an oversight. But oh! There have recently been so many books that cover radiation. Maybe one has more info on— Nope.» But it's possible that I'm missing something.

So, if I have Increased Life Support (Radioactive), how radioactive am I? Mildly? Is that 1 rad/hour? 1 rad/week? 1 rad/month? Should I take Lifebane? What if I'm severely radioactive? Do I need Lifebane now? Should I take an Innate Attack? Am I immune to my own radiation? If not, how do I become immune to my own radiation? Wait, are my buddies of the same radioactive species immune to my radiation too?

Wait, but what if my Increased Life Support (Radioactive) means that I require a radioactive environment? How much radiation do I need? Does the radiation that I require also hurt me, or am I immune to radiation? Or should I take Radiation Protection? Or should I take Regeneration to heal my necessary radiation? Would this just be better modeled as a Dependency?

The idea is that the Spirit World is radioactive because mana is just (weird) radiation. Spirits are radioactive too, but not too much. A lot of the Spirits love nature, so they don't want to outright destroy it. Although, they do understand the balance between life and death. On this particular planet, we also have a Proto-Human species that are bonded to the Spirits by the Creators. So, they feed off of the radiation, which helps them power their magic, and then they come to actually be radiation-dependent. Maybe they don't need radiation all the time, they might just need it once-in-a-while. I don't know what's somewhat reasonable (without too much of outright hand-waving and yelling "because magic" again and again). Although, maybe the environment on the planet is somewhat radiation-resistant too.

Any ideas are helpful! I'm looking for general solutions and my-situation-specific solutions.

Hopefully I can attract some of the people who have worked on those supplements and articles that have been heavily dealing with radiation.

Thanks in advance! Y'all are great.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

The general answer is you get what you pay for. If you put out enough radiation to give people close to you a dose buy that as an innate attack, with the appropriate limitations since you can't turn it off.

If you require radiation as part of your life support, and you also put out radiation, you need a source of radiation separate from yourself to survive (otherwise you don't really need life support, at worst a quirk). You would be immune to your own radiation unless you took a trait saying you are not (Something like Terminally Ill, not sure how you would give yourself a constant radiation dose). You aren't resistant to the radiation given off from others of your race by default (But enough people together may sustain your life support requirement!), but you can definitely take complete resistance to radiation as normal and apply a limitation (Only own race, -??%. The price depends on how common your race is, and how radioactive they are).

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

As noted by VariousRen, you get what you pay for. That said, some things may need clarification.

Increased Life Support (Radioactive) seems to be giving you a choice, you can either be radioactive or you can require radiation and whichever you chose is worth -10 points. There might be some overlap causing a reduction, but I'd be willing to say that being radioactive and requiring radiation are two separate -10 point disadvantages, that are worth -20 points when taken together.

The implication for other types of Increased Life Support is that you're immune to the other effects of your condition, other than the requirement for Increased Life Support, or somewhat more accurately, you don't require immunity because it's what's normal for you. Increased Life Support is an Exotic Disadvantage and as such is intended for use on racial templates, more so than for use on individual character sheets, so members of your species should find the condition normal as well and be equally unaffected by it. They might be susceptible to an offensive use of the condition but I'd think that would require buying an appropriate attack.

I think you're severely underestimating your radioactivity, even at 1 rad/hr. Increased Life Support (Intense Heat) puts the environmental temperatures at a minimum of 200°F and human skin starts to burn at 160°F. Increased Life Support (Intense Cold) isn't quite as bad at 0°F, but is still potentially lethal to an unprotected human. Both conditions, like radioactive, are -10 point conditions. That should indicate that your radiation should be somewhere in the fairly quickly lethal range. I'd lean toward the 81-160 rad/hr. band myself, but you could go lower. Given the lethality indicated, I wouldn't be comfortable with anything below 21 rads/hr.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

Increased Life Support (Radioactive) indicates that YOU have special needs, not that those around you do. The radioactivity affects you only, just because it's the only ILS that makes you a generator rather than needing an environment doesn't change the intent of the disadvantage. IMO you need a technological or medical solution to low grade constant radiation damage being inflicted on yourself, rather than a rad suit to protect others from your condition.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

This all makes enough sense to me.

So, it sounds like, for my case, I might just be better off with a very small Innate Attack. But I don't know how to make such a minor Innate Attack that it only does something small like 1 rad/hour. Maybe something like that should just be quirk. That would be -1 point for 1 rad/hour-ish vs -10 points for 21+ rads/hr.

Then, I guess my question on the other side of things is how to price the Dependency. I figured it'd be by dose size. A 1-rad dose might be very common while a 100-rad dose might be uncommon, etc. If I have that as a Dependency, am I immune to [the harmful effects of] the dosage?

Last but not least, is it okay to take both Innate Attack (Costs Rad, -x%) [x] as well as Regeneration (Radiation Only, -0%) [x], or is that cheating? Similarly, what if I took Mana Generator and Dependency (Mana)? Those situations seem tricky.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

Toxic Attack with Radiation, Melee C, Aura (requires Melee C), Area Effect, Only Does 1 Point, and Onset: Exposure Time. That should get your Innate Attack done.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

Onset: Exposure Time was exactly what I was looking for! Thank you.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

Emanation on the toxic attack would probably be best. Radiation dissipates fast the farther from the source you are.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

Emanation doesn't make an attack weaker with distance by any means.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

Yeah, I think you mean Dissipating.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

Which still has no effect on a 1 point attack, what with minimum damage being 1 and all.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

I wouldn't allow Dissipating on a base 1-point attack, instead just having the player buy a smaller AE or Cone instead, rather than have the attack round to zero at some distance inside its nominal area.

It's not obvious to me that the rule about minimum one point of damage from a result that penetrates DR, yet is reduced to a fraction by a wounding modifier, is meant to apply to an attack that's reduced to 1 point before DR or wounding modifiers.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

Minimum damage is 1 point, except for Crushing. This means that 1d-4 still has a minimum of 1 point of damage, despite rolling -2 being a possibility.

Re: Increased Life Support (Radioactive)? How radioactive am I? Am I immune to myself
 

I didn't think you meant that rule, because it's even less obvious to me that the basic "Damage Roll" section applies to a constant rad exposure with a fixed value, with no rolling involved. Nor does it suggest to me that a rule that calls for a roll with a minus not go negative is equivalent to putting a floor on all damage and methods for calculation, such as one point being divided to a fraction by range and rounding down.

Would you say that all creatures at any distance from even the tiniest explosion all take a minimum one point of damage? It's not at all hard to reduce the damage to under one die, and if you roll before division, still not hard to reduce damage to below 1 point.

In this case, we're talking about radiation with Dissipation. If the source is 1 rad / hour, and it Dissipates, then two hexes away it's 0.5 rad / hour and four hexes away it's 0.25 rad / hour. But it will never go to zero, even for victims on the other side of the planet -- or solar system. Rounding down seems like a reasonable way to calculate a limit on the effective area. It also fits the rule on B9 about rounding combat effects down (with injury as a specific example).