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Old 11-12-2022, 04:10 AM   #1
johndallman
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Radiation Tolerance

Radiation Tolerance [5 to 45] is an exotic physical advantage. You are resistant to radiation: any dose you receive is divided by a factor of 2 [5] to 1000 [45], after it is divided by the Protection Factor of armour or other artificial protection. This advantage appeared at GURPS 4e.

In effect, this lets you buy Protection Factor (PF) as a personal trait, rather than getting it from equipment. You don’t add PF from different sources; instead, you can either do several divisions, or multiply all your PFs together and then divide your radiation dose by their product. Radiation rules are on pp.*435-36 of the Basic Set. While GURPS' portrayal of radiation is not fully realistic, it is sufficiently so that just having Radiation Resistance is not an option except in highly cinematic games.

This is definitely an exotic trait; there really isn’t a way for realistic humans to buy it without using ultra-tech, superpowers or magic. It’s much easier to justify for aliens that evolved in high radiation environments, cyborgs or robots.

After The End discards this advantage in its simplified and cinematic system for handling radiation. Bio-Tech offers it as a species modification, starting at TL9, and has a drug at the same TL that provides a little Radiation Tolerance. Meltdown and Fallout extends the radiation rules (“for every billion rads accumulated dose . . .”) and allows for living reactor vessels. Future History has people who’ve been modified to add this advantage, and Infinite Worlds has people who evolved it the hard way. Martial Arts allows it as a chi-based Body Control ability, while Powers suggests getting it via force fields, extends it to weird and unnatural kinds of radiation, and allows radiation with Armour Divisor enhancements or limitations. The Weird adds several kinds of weird radiation, while Sorcery: Protection and Warning Spells has magic that gives this advantage. Tales of the Solar Patrol is cinematic enough for humans to have this advantage, but Transhuman Space requires you to be a parahuman or machine. Radiation-spawned Zombies usually have this advantage, and can be radioactive enough to be a problem.

The occasion during my GURPS career when this advantage would have come in really handy was in my Royal Navy Transhuman Space campaign, rescuing Executive Decisions International staff from Io Station who’d soaked up too much radiation while trying to fight the Nanodynamics rebellion on Io, before it got settled by politics elsewhere. As it came out, most of the crew sent on that rescue had replaceable bodies of various kinds.

How has this advantage played in your games?
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Old 11-12-2022, 04:57 AM   #2
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Radiation Tolerance

I've used it a couple of times on racial templates and for one super who had the Radiation power. Otherwise? Not really. If I'm going to use radiation as a game centerpiece I'll use the ATE version.
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Old 11-13-2022, 02:40 AM   #3
Gef
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Yucca Valley, CA
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Radiation Tolerance

I kind of wish this were a category of Immunity instead of a separate advantage. That might be less realistic but is more playable. Especially if radiation is a rare threat, maybe only comes up once in a campaign, and even with a level of Tolerance you still get hosed.

Ran a supers campaign, an NPC manifested a radiation power. Sure, the occasional mutant had Radiation Tolerance but it wasn't widespread, so this kid had to be quarantined.

Applicable to a fantasy campaign with Radiation spells, but then you get your tolerance from another spell.

I've used Slow Regeneration (Radiation Only) and liked it better, but that was in a campaign where radiation doses were low, so it was really about wiping the slate clean between doses in order to avoid bookkeeping.
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