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

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Raekai

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.

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.