Radiation in GURPS
Radiation is something that is likely to come
up only in high-tech GURPS games, but does it have to? GURPS has abilities and
spells that can both irradiate and cure radiation, so why not use it in
low-tech fantasy games occasionally? Even in D&D, the deepest reaches of
the Underdark have sickstone that glows with a sickly-green light and causes
Constitution drain… and that sounds suspiciously similar to radiation. If I
recall things correctly, Pathfinder also blightburn crystals that are quite literally
radioactive. So, in this post, I would like to explain how radiation works in
GURPS.
As always, GURPS has multiple ways of treating radiation. GURPS Basic Set has radiation rules on pages 435-436. If you are using these radiation rules, prepare to do a lot of bookkeeping. Whenever a character is exposed to radiation, you have to write down both the dose and the date. Each dose diminishes separately, starting to heal 30 days after the exposure date and healing at the rate of 10 rads per day. However, 10% of the original dose never heals, unless you are using some special ultra-tech or supernatural treatments. GURPS Powers: The Weird also has the Radiation Recovery perk that removes these 10% of never-healing radiation, and it is included in Regeneration with Heals Radiation or Radiation Only.
Living beings and machines are affected differently by radiation. When a living being accumulates at least 1 rad, but no more than once per day, for continued exposure to a given source, it must make a HT roll. Depending on the accumulated dose, there might be a penalty of up to -5.
The effects depend on the accumulated dose and on the result of the HT roll. This table reminds me of combat resolution tables from some old RPGs and wargames. The first column is what happens on a critical success, the second column is what happens on a normal success, the third column is what happens on a normal failure, and the fourth column is what happens on a critical failure.
I will not explain the effects in great detail – if you want to know that, just read the book. But I will say that A is radiation burn and chronic somatic damage, B is hematopoietic syndrome, C is gastrointestinal syndrome, D is terminal radiation sickness, and E is rapid cerebrovascular death. As you can see, radiation can be very deadly, but these letter-marked effects are not everything!
In addition to all this, there are other effects – a single dose of 200+ rads causes sterility and blindness for 1d months, and a dose of 500+ rads makes it permanent. If you accumulate 100+ rads, then you should make another HT roll if you become a parent, at +3 if you are male. On a failure, the child has some sort of birth defect.
But these were rules for living beings – machines that have the Electrical disadvantage are affected differently, and machines without this disadvantage are unaffected. Each time an electrical machine accumulates a dose of 100 rads, it makes an HT+4 roll at -1 per 100 accumulated rads. On a failure, it stops working until repaired, and on a critical failure, it is destroyed.
Radiation damage ignores DR, but it is lowered by the Radiation Tolerance advantage. Radiation Tolerance does not subtract from the radiation damage, but it divides radiation damage instead. This is known as Protection Factor. Thus, if you have PF 2, then you halve all incoming radiation damage, and if you have PF 50, you divide it by 50 instead. GURPS Basic Set gives 9 levels of Radiation Tolerance that provide Protection Factor from 2 to 1,000. GURPS Sorcery: Protection and Warning spells allows you to treat the tenth level of Radiation Tolerance as total immunity to radiation.
You can gain PF not only from the Radiation Tolerance advantage, but also from gear and environment. GURPS Basic Set lists some values for different materials and their Protection Factors, but these values were updated in GURPS Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout. The same book also says that such advantages as Doesn’t Breathe, Filter Lungs, and Sealed can reduce the radiation dose, and explains how the Resistant advantage works against radiation.
GURPS Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout also has some additional rules for radiation sickness and neutron embrittlement that occurs when you accumulate billions rads, and some other effects if you feel that the rules from GURPS Basic Set are not comprehensive enough.
But what if you want a much more simple way of treating radiation damage? Then GURPS has Radiation Threshold Points for you – you can find these rules in two different books – GURPS Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout and GURPS After the End 1: Wastelanders. These rules do away with HT rolls and letter-marked effects, but instead introduce a new secondary characteristic – Radiation Threshold Points, abbreviated as RP. Your RP score by default is equal to (ST + HT)/2, rounded down, but you can buy it up or down for 1 point/level. 1 RP is roughly equal to accumulating 10 rads.
Now, when you drop to less than 1/3 of your RP, you get -1 to all attribute and skill rolls. When you reach 0 RP, you get -2 to all rolls and -1 to all active defenses, and each additional RP lost also makes you lose 1 FP.
At -1xRP, you get -4 to all rolls and -2 to all active defenses, and make an unpenalized HT roll every second or fall unconscious, unless you do nothing.
At -5xRP, you pass out and make an HT roll to avoid being mortally wounded.
At -10xRP, you die.
As for the recovery rate, you recover 1 RP every day regardless of rest, and Very Rapid Healing doubles this rate.
As you can see, these rules are simple and use familiar mechanics similar to what happens to you when you lose FP or HP. I actually quite like these rules, even though I never used them before.
But this is still not everything GURPS got for you. Did you know that there can be different kinds of radiation in the setting? For example, GURPS Powers: The Weird has weird radiation that instead of causing radiation burns and sickness does cinematic things, such as giving you temporary superpowers or super-disadvantages?
I find such things fascinating, so I adapted these rules to represent the D&D concept of faerzress. It might be unbalanced, but it seems fun. Radiation probably could be used to represent other fantasy concepts, such as chaotic mutating energies, or even taint that you can read about in Oriental Adventures or Heroes of Horror for D&D. I’ve even seen a person adapt the radiation rules to represent alchemical overdose to prevent player characters from using too many potions.
And that’s it. The purpose of this post was not only to explain the radiation rules, but also to show you how you can adapt existing frameworks to seemingly unrelated concepts.
As always, GURPS has multiple ways of treating radiation. GURPS Basic Set has radiation rules on pages 435-436. If you are using these radiation rules, prepare to do a lot of bookkeeping. Whenever a character is exposed to radiation, you have to write down both the dose and the date. Each dose diminishes separately, starting to heal 30 days after the exposure date and healing at the rate of 10 rads per day. However, 10% of the original dose never heals, unless you are using some special ultra-tech or supernatural treatments. GURPS Powers: The Weird also has the Radiation Recovery perk that removes these 10% of never-healing radiation, and it is included in Regeneration with Heals Radiation or Radiation Only.
Living beings and machines are affected differently by radiation. When a living being accumulates at least 1 rad, but no more than once per day, for continued exposure to a given source, it must make a HT roll. Depending on the accumulated dose, there might be a penalty of up to -5.
The effects depend on the accumulated dose and on the result of the HT roll. This table reminds me of combat resolution tables from some old RPGs and wargames. The first column is what happens on a critical success, the second column is what happens on a normal success, the third column is what happens on a normal failure, and the fourth column is what happens on a critical failure.
I will not explain the effects in great detail – if you want to know that, just read the book. But I will say that A is radiation burn and chronic somatic damage, B is hematopoietic syndrome, C is gastrointestinal syndrome, D is terminal radiation sickness, and E is rapid cerebrovascular death. As you can see, radiation can be very deadly, but these letter-marked effects are not everything!
In addition to all this, there are other effects – a single dose of 200+ rads causes sterility and blindness for 1d months, and a dose of 500+ rads makes it permanent. If you accumulate 100+ rads, then you should make another HT roll if you become a parent, at +3 if you are male. On a failure, the child has some sort of birth defect.
But these were rules for living beings – machines that have the Electrical disadvantage are affected differently, and machines without this disadvantage are unaffected. Each time an electrical machine accumulates a dose of 100 rads, it makes an HT+4 roll at -1 per 100 accumulated rads. On a failure, it stops working until repaired, and on a critical failure, it is destroyed.
Radiation damage ignores DR, but it is lowered by the Radiation Tolerance advantage. Radiation Tolerance does not subtract from the radiation damage, but it divides radiation damage instead. This is known as Protection Factor. Thus, if you have PF 2, then you halve all incoming radiation damage, and if you have PF 50, you divide it by 50 instead. GURPS Basic Set gives 9 levels of Radiation Tolerance that provide Protection Factor from 2 to 1,000. GURPS Sorcery: Protection and Warning spells allows you to treat the tenth level of Radiation Tolerance as total immunity to radiation.
You can gain PF not only from the Radiation Tolerance advantage, but also from gear and environment. GURPS Basic Set lists some values for different materials and their Protection Factors, but these values were updated in GURPS Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout. The same book also says that such advantages as Doesn’t Breathe, Filter Lungs, and Sealed can reduce the radiation dose, and explains how the Resistant advantage works against radiation.
GURPS Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout also has some additional rules for radiation sickness and neutron embrittlement that occurs when you accumulate billions rads, and some other effects if you feel that the rules from GURPS Basic Set are not comprehensive enough.
But what if you want a much more simple way of treating radiation damage? Then GURPS has Radiation Threshold Points for you – you can find these rules in two different books – GURPS Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout and GURPS After the End 1: Wastelanders. These rules do away with HT rolls and letter-marked effects, but instead introduce a new secondary characteristic – Radiation Threshold Points, abbreviated as RP. Your RP score by default is equal to (ST + HT)/2, rounded down, but you can buy it up or down for 1 point/level. 1 RP is roughly equal to accumulating 10 rads.
Now, when you drop to less than 1/3 of your RP, you get -1 to all attribute and skill rolls. When you reach 0 RP, you get -2 to all rolls and -1 to all active defenses, and each additional RP lost also makes you lose 1 FP.
At -1xRP, you get -4 to all rolls and -2 to all active defenses, and make an unpenalized HT roll every second or fall unconscious, unless you do nothing.
At -5xRP, you pass out and make an HT roll to avoid being mortally wounded.
At -10xRP, you die.
As for the recovery rate, you recover 1 RP every day regardless of rest, and Very Rapid Healing doubles this rate.
As you can see, these rules are simple and use familiar mechanics similar to what happens to you when you lose FP or HP. I actually quite like these rules, even though I never used them before.
But this is still not everything GURPS got for you. Did you know that there can be different kinds of radiation in the setting? For example, GURPS Powers: The Weird has weird radiation that instead of causing radiation burns and sickness does cinematic things, such as giving you temporary superpowers or super-disadvantages?
I find such things fascinating, so I adapted these rules to represent the D&D concept of faerzress. It might be unbalanced, but it seems fun. Radiation probably could be used to represent other fantasy concepts, such as chaotic mutating energies, or even taint that you can read about in Oriental Adventures or Heroes of Horror for D&D. I’ve even seen a person adapt the radiation rules to represent alchemical overdose to prevent player characters from using too many potions.
And that’s it. The purpose of this post was not only to explain the radiation rules, but also to show you how you can adapt existing frameworks to seemingly unrelated concepts.
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