The rules for the irradiate property of starship weapons state the following:
"A weapon with this special property creates a wave of harmful
radiation (see page 403) that penetrates shields and starship
hulls. Living creatures on a starship struck by an irradiating
weapon are subjected to the level of radiation noted in
parentheses for 1d4 rounds of starship combat."
Does personal armor protect against this? One would imagine that if a 200 point force field + 10 levels of armor + a bulk head doesn't protect you from the radiation, your level 1 light armor also wouldn't protect you.
And how does this really work? After the round of starship combat, an NPC ship is hit by a nuclear missile. What does the DM need to do? It would be good if there were a simple way to adjudicate multiple nuclear weapon strikes without rolling saves for every living thing on the ship multiple times, applying radiation rule each time.
For 5 PCs on a space ship, it is also fairly bothersome. Enough to make me want to put an old 'One Nuclear Bomb can Ruin Your Whole Day' bumper sticker on the slipcover to my core rule book.
|
I way I read it, the PCs would be subject to Radiation for the number of rounds rolled and at the level indicated. On page 403 and 404, the effects of radiation and radiation sickness are listed.
Radiation is a poison that uses the Constitution track. Poison effects are found on 415 and 416. So the PCs would need to make a Fort save vs the Radiation. If they fail, they move from Healthy to Weakened. They also take damage equal to DC-10
The next round, assuming the Radiation is still present, they would have to make another Fort save, this time with a -2. If they fail that, they become Impaired but take no more damage. If they make the save, they don't progress but also don't improve. The begin to improve once they are out of the Radiation.
Once the PC has reached the Impaired state, they would also have to make a DC 18 Fort save, with a -4 now. If they fail, they then get a disease called Radiation Sickness.
Radiation Sickness, being a disease, is long term and outside of space combat. Rules for diseases start on page 414.
Yea, it gets complicated. The important thing to remember is that the radiation only lasts for so long.
And no, personal armor would not protect.
I would not roll multiple saving throws for multiple strikes. I would just extend the time that the radiation is present.
I fail to see how your armor wouldn't protect you if your environmental protections were turned on.
There are two problems with your reading, Gary.
First, progression along an affliction track does not remove the effects of prior states. As a constitution poison, Radiation will inflict damage whenever you make a save against it - you're either subject to damage on initial exposure, or you've failed a previous save and thus take damage whenever you make further saves against progression as per the Constitution track's Weakened state, which is never overwritten by a later state. Including the Dead state, technically, though at that point it is mostly moot.
Second, there is nothing to mark radiation from irradiating weapons as being different from normal radiation. They use the same levels of low, medium, and high, and presumably could reach severe as well. Without any contradictory text, personal armor's environmental protections will protect you from Low irradiation when active. Armor with a level of 7 or higher will protect you from Medium radiation as well. As normal, no armor will protect you completely from High or Severe radiation, though the latter is not currently available via irradiating weapons.
As a nitpick, while it's understandable to read it as making new saves vs. initial exposure every round, the rules are mostly silent on that; frequency is saves against continued progression, not initial exposure. It's an annoying moment of ambiguity.
As for the original question, if the idea of armor protecting you from nuclear weapon radiation is bothersome narratively, consider this. Armor does not protect you from the full emissions of a nuclear bomb; it protects you from the last bits of radiation that penetrate your ship and shields anyway. Yes, by RAW, you could still survive the full radiation of a missile strike even if you're standing on the hull of a completely unshielded ship. By RAW, you could also still potentially survive the explosion producing that radiation. Adjudicate edge cases as they come up and move on.
As for multiple missile strikes, there's nothing to say additional instances of irradiation intensify the radiation. The ship is already irradiated; irradiating it again with the same level of radiation doesn't do anything extra. Roll and take the highest duration for the irradiation, or just save yourself some time and don't roll irradiation time for the extra missiles.
|
|
First, progression along an affliction track does not remove the effects of prior states. As a constitution poison, Radiation will inflict damage whenever you make a save against it - you're either subject to damage on initial exposure, or you've failed a previous save and thus take damage whenever you make further saves against progression as per the Constitution track's Weakened state, which is never overwritten by a later state. Including the Dead state, technically, though at that point it is mostly moot.
Your right. I missed the part about taking damage on the Weakened State. I do not read that a character be subject to a past state if they have already moved past it. I don't think a Debilitated character would take more poison damage every time frequency hits. Either you are at the state or your not.
Page 415 on poisons states the damage in only on the initial exposure. Unless I misunderstanding what you are saying, you would only take damage on the initial exposure, not every time a save is called for.
Second, there is nothing to mark radiation from irradiating weapons as being different from normal radiation. They use the same levels of low, medium, and high, and presumably could reach severe as well. Without any contradictory text, personal armor's environmental protections will protect you from Low irradiation when active. Armor with a level of 7 or higher will protect you from Medium radiation as well. As normal, no armor will protect you completely from High or Severe radiation, though the latter is not currently available via irradiating weapons.
Agreed. Armor would provide protection as normal.
As a nitpick, while it's understandable to read it as making new saves vs. initial exposure every round, the rules are mostly silent on that; frequency is saves against continued progression, not initial exposure. It's an annoying moment of ambiguity.
I didn't mean to imply that new saves is against initial exposure. Ongoing savings are clearly against the progression of the poison (radiation). Sorry if this caused confusion.
As for multiple missile strikes, there's nothing to say additional instances of irradiation intensify the radiation. The ship is already irradiated; irradiating it again with the same level of radiation doesn't do anything extra. Roll and take the highest duration for the irradiation, or just save yourself some time and don't roll irradiation time for the extra missiles.
By RAW, multiple strikes would increase the duration by 1D4. In home games the GM and rule differently but since I play in Society, the duration would increase. This being said, I don't think what you are saying is unreasonable.
You're looking at Poison specifically; the text you need is on P. 414 for all afflictions in general. Third paragraph, talking about saves vs. ongoing progression: "...failure means that the victim moves one step further along its progression track, gaining the effects of the next step and keeping all previous effects." The Constitution track's Weakened state is never overridden, and you thus take damage every time you save against progression. Every round, in the case of radiation.
As for multiple strikes, I was going to make a different point here, but looking at the Poison rules again I feel I must first add a caveat to my earlier statement. While I believe my initial reading will be simpler in most cases, looking more carefully at the poison rules and the exact wording of the Irradiate property, it is more RAW compliant to rule that yes, every instance of a nuclear strike warrants its own saves. Nevermind conceptual issues of how you can have multiple instances of the same poison completely suffusing an area without actually interacting with each other...
As for duration, I believe we disagree only through miscommunication; I read the OP as indicating multiple strikes within a single round. Additional missiles in following rounds would of course result in a longer duration. And speaking of the OP...
If your issue is with NPC crews specifically, you could and "should" roll for every NPC, or at least every Officier, individually by RAW. This of course could easily become time-consuming and wasteful, so while not RAW, any of the various time-saving tricks such as rolling for the group or simply automatically passing or failing would be useful unless and until something official is provided. Of course, I'm not sure that the game as presented is designed to handle NPCs dealing with this; the rules are certainly present for it, but I don't see any health totals or fortitude save bonuses provided for the crews of the example starships.
|
|
You're looking at Poison specifically; the text you need is on P. 414 for all afflictions in general. Third paragraph, talking about saves vs. ongoing progression: "...failure means that the victim moves one step further along its progression track, gaining the effects of the next step and keeping all previous effects." The Constitution track's Weakened state is never overridden, and you thus take damage every time you save against progression. Every round, in the case of radiation.
Yep, your right. Radiation is nasty..... The only way to stop the progression is to get the cure.. which is leaving the area of radiation. Hard to do on a ship.
There is a lot to be aware of in the rules and I can see this as one area where there will be a lot of table variance.
You're looking at Poison specifically; the text you need is on P. 414 for all afflictions in general. Third paragraph, talking about saves vs. ongoing progression: "...failure means that the victim moves one step further along its progression track, gaining the effects of the next step and keeping all previous effects." The Constitution track's Weakened state is never overridden, and you thus take damage every time you save against progression. Every round, in the case of radiation.Yep, your right. Radiation is nasty..... The only way to stop the progression is to get the cure.. which is leaving the area of radiation. Hard to do on a ship
Doesn't the radiation disappear in the stated amount of rounds, though?
Radiation from Irradiating weapons does disappear after 1d4 rounds, yes. However, even after a poison is cured, its effects remain until you have a chance to rest long enough to recover. If you're Weakened, you still take all the penalties of being Weakened, though in the case of Constitution poisons such as radiation you stop taking damage every frequency interval - one round, in this case. You'll still take the -2 penalty to Fortitude saves and Constitution checks, or worse if you're further along the progression track. If you're Debilitated or worse, for instance, you'll also lose 1 HP every time you take a standard action until you can rest enough to recover from that. Though if you're worse than Debilitated, it's likely moot; the next two stages are Unconscious and Dead, which will make it quite difficult to take standard actions.
It is unlikely you will get the two nights of normal rest or single day of full bed rest per stage to recover from radiation poisoning while engaged in starship combat.
You can also stop the progression of radiation by activating your environmental protections, of course, but that doesn't mean you automatically recover from any poisoning you took beforehand. Or protect you from the High radiation of a supergraser. Or a nuclear megamissile, which lacks the Irradiate effect but should probably have it. Likely an oversight.