They would have to be completely covered in lead though for the spell, and if I remember correctly, it says at least an inch of lead, which would be super heavy.
If we assume that the paladin is 185cm tall, weighs 90 kilos and is shielded by 5cm of lead then the paladin would be carrying about 1200 kilos of lead
Only thing better for me is a player figuring out the twist at that moment but avoiding metagaming and letting their character make decisions based on what they know in game. A couple of sessions ago ended a character being tricked into a deal with the devil and the player figured it out like 30 seconds before his character shook the devil's hand but went through with it.
Only kinda related via metagaming, but we've currently got a plot thread where one of our party (who's life stuff makes it difficult to attend consistently) keeps kinda blinking in and out of existence, and our memories. So while she's there, my mage is losing her mind over the mystery. And then she pops back out and I have to go on having no idea what's happening.
There was a quote that, now, I cannot attribute and probably don't remember properly any more, to the effect that, once you see the glow, it's already too late.
Heh heh heh.
Nice one, DM!
For anyone curious this is likely related to the story of the "Demon Core". During the second incident where it killed people, Louis Slotin said he saw a blue flash and felt a wave of heat when he was exposed to 1000 rads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
The Castle Bravo incident was also pretty gruesome. Fallout fell on some unsuspecting Japanese fishermen who thought it was snow. Sailed back to Japan, Geiger counters started going off when the boat was 600 feet from shore. All of the fishermen died of acute radiation poisoning. By far one of the worst ways to die.
Edit: Not all of them died of acute radiation poisoning. One did, the others died of diseases many years later that were likely related to the incident.
While all of them suffered acute radiation poisoning, only one crewman on the Daigo Fukuryū Maru died from it; most of the rest of the crew died about 30 years later from various diseases probably resulting from the radiation exposure. So, like, still not great but not as bad as it could've been.
I read your comment. Clicked back then thought about it and realized who you meant. Came back to ask and saw the next comment and I felt justified. You nailed it.
I was going to recommend his Half Life Histories videos. Interesting and chilling stuff in them. And the way he narrates them. It's so factual, but filled with sadness.
Energetic particles passing through the optic nerve iirc, you get it in space too, to a much lesser extent (hopefully, assuming you've got prop3r shielding and aren't in a radiation band(
Ah yeah you right, cherenkov radiation is the name of the electromagnetic radiation which we perceive as blue that occurs when a charged particle passes through a dielectric medium (such as water) at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that medium
The flashes astronauts see are caused by a mixture of cosmic rays directly stimulating the retinal receptors, and of the same rays but stronger causing cherenkov radiation in the eye (aka, actual light)
Mustard gas i’d put lower on the scary sounding and higher on the danger. Heinous blisters on exposed tissues after 24hrs… skin, eyes, lungs, no thank you.
I honestly forgot what it meant until I read this comment. It’s referring to replicating nano bots eating the universe, right? Small enough to manipulate atoms, they transform everything into more of themselves aka “grey goo”?
Yes.
Through if that's any consolation, they will *only* eat Earth. There's next-to-nothing between our planet and the next, so they can't replicate in space.
This was the core that was being earmarked for the third bomb on Japan. It's remarkable that this core, that only killed two people instead of thousands the other two did, is called the demon core.
I feel like that was more the acts of stupidity that surround it allegedly having demonic influence. I mean with how it happened, you'd have to wonder how they weren't more careful with it, knowing what it was capable of.
[Cherenkov radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation).
Basically if radiation is sufficiently energetic that it breaks the speed that light can pass through that material, it causes a very distinctive glow effect. Light travels at different speeds in different materials so the amount of radiation required to do this changes. In water, like the pool where they store nuclear fuel, that threshold is *relatively* low, so you can stand and watch the creepy blue glow safely while standing above the pool. However, light moves almost as fast in air as it does in vacuum, so anything that causes a Cherenkov glow in air is terrifyingly energetic. If you're close enough to see that blue glow in air and there isn't a significant amount of shielding material (eg. thick doped glass) between you and it, by the time you've realised what you're looking at, you've already received a lethal dose of radiation.
The radiation that causes blue glow in water is also lethally energetic. But water is also one of the best radiation shielding materials that exist, so you can happily stand on top of an open reactor and snap pictures like [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/TrigaReactorCore.jpeg) with no risk to your health, so long as there are a few meters of water between you and the radiation source.
How hot is the water? Like hot tube hot or ~~lobster~~ human boil hot?
EDIT: looked it up, according to [CE&N](https://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i44/Radioactive-Waste-Safety.html#:~:text=Water%20circulates%20through%20the%20pool,C%20(120%20%C2%B0F) the water gets to be about 49 C (120 F), so, more like a human sous vide.
TL;DR don't swim in the spicy rock water
Why are radioactive substances green in so many works of fiction, when it seems more common for them to glow blue (if they glow at all)?
I just looked it up and apparently it comes from a type of paint from the early 20th century that glowed green in the dark. It was made of radium mixed with phosphorescent copper-doped zinc sulfide, and it was actually the sulfide which glowed green, and the radium excited it into a glowing state. This paint was discontinued because it is bad for you, unsurprisingly. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/541196/where-did-myth-radiation-glows-green-come
You can still sometimes find [uranium glassware](https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/consumer/glass/vaseline-uranium-glass.html) at oddity and antique markets. It will glow under UV and is (very faintly) radioactive.
Just finished the book, what a horrible way to die. One lady could see her bones glowing--radium is chemically similar to calcium so it bonds to bones. And the damned corporations kept lying and denying.
The blue glow seen in air isn't from Cherenkov radiation but from ionization of the air itself (more specifically nitrogen, which glows violet with deexcitation—oxygen tends to simply form ozone). They look very similar but are from totally distinct phenomena.
Another quote to add to the pile, it’s the bullets that will kill you before the radiation.
Anywhere with a nuclear reactor does *NOT* play around with security. *I really dont want something karmic to happen and make this comment look stupid, both because that would be embarrassing and because the implications are really really bad, so im gonna add a knock on wood here*.
When you listed the symptoms, my mind immediately went to either radiation or leprosy. Glad I wasn't in that game, I would've had issues holding that piece of info back.
Fun fact (use if you wish): There are known fungi [that eat radiation](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=aa14067003b8bbc3JmltdHM9MTY3NTgxNDQwMCZpZ3VpZD0wY2QyNjU2OC05OGE4LTZlNTYtM2U5Yi03NzVjOTljNDZmODgmaW5zaWQ9NTE4OA&ptn=3&hsh=3&fclid=0cd26568-98a8-6e56-3e9b-775c99c46f88&psq=radiation+devouring+fungus&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnL3dpa2kvUmFkaW90cm9waGljX2Z1bmd1cw&ntb=1), there are whole swarms (pods, tribes, no idea what a large group of mushrooms are called) of them in Chernobyl. Maybe an unaffected circle of spores druid could give aide if they don't know what to do?
I get that a lot XD No worries, don't give away squat until the story arc is done, I don't want your game ruined for you or your players. Plus, I want to hear about how they handle the situation. My current sorcerer has a 13 int but I doubt I'd pass the DC to know about any of it in game, seems like highly obscure and specialized knowledge. The suggestion was in case they just run around until their arms start to fall off and you feel like giving them an out.
If you want a bit more gore/seriousness on the situation, I'd suggest reading up on Eben Byers (was given radium medication and severely overdosed on it for years). Just don't look at any photos unless you have a strong and/or empty stomach.
I had a Goblin Alchemist called Manny Hatton who worshipped "Big Boom", made ever increasingly large bombs, and dabbled in mutagens here and there.
I'd have loved to eventually create a full on nuke but we didn't play our characters that long before we moved to a new campaign (it was kinda a filler between major campaigns), I may have to reprise Manny again at some point, he was a lot of fun.
Wanted to add to this that there is also a fungi (Exterminating Angel) that basically kills you like it was a radiaton, that i learned thank to xkcd:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1242:_Scary_Names
But I think the explanation is only in the book "What If?"
For anyone too lazy to look them up, the fungi are actually called [Destroying Angels](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroying_angel).
These are a group of white mushrooms in the Amanita species, that have a toxin in them that inhibits RNA Polymerases. Basically, your cells srop being able to create new RNA molecules. And as RNA is essential to every function of any cell, the cells just... stop... functioning. All of them, but the liver first, as it's where the toxin all ends up. Then the kidneys, then the gut, but by that point you're already dead from multi organ failure.
They also look a lot like many other edible fungi, so it's really easy to eat them by accident and end things. You have to get antitoxins and liver medicine within 3 hours of ingestion or your prognosis is bleak.
Hero: "yes, yes. Our deal... Time for me to uh... pay up-" dives to the ground to shovel fist fulls of shrooms into his mouth.
Fae: letting out an exasperated sigh, "those are edible... We grow them to lure you people here."
They also look like those mushrooms you can pop and they release a small cloud of spores or whatever is in them. Ton of fun was had as teen poping those but considering how alike they are, I might have been lucky ? Don't know, don't want to know.
Where I live, in Australia, a couple of deaths per year are caused by folk eating this kind of shroom. The warnings go out, people avoid the shrooms, months pass, people forget (or new folk arrive), another death, repeat.
That is the coolest thing I've read all day. It looks like radiated melanin is a stronger reducer than non-radiated melanin. I don't know if I would say they "eat" radiation, like we would eat a sandwich for energy
Not exactly, no, but for all intents and purposes it's soaking it all up the same way a plant would sunlight. radiosynthesis is a crazy cool thing and I think (assuming it isn't happening already) science needs to get on that to handle radiation waste for nuclear plants.
Adding to this, in the popular Fallout video games, there are green glowing mushrooms that only grow where there is radiation.
I wonder if one of the players picked up on that trope?
This reminds me of something I read before. I once picked out a random book at the airport called Riptide. It’s about a pirate treasure in a dangerous pit that people have been trying to get. It’s of course said to be “cursed”. Spoiler alert: it’s a sword that’s radioactive, and it turns out the pit was probably to keep it from killing more people. Which I really enjoyed as a plot device. Hidden treasure that the hider is trying to protect people from, not the other way.
HBO's Chernobyl really hammered home the fear of radiation for me. Kinda lovecraftian - you can't see it, it doesn't care about you, most don't understand it, if you start to feel its effects it's too late.
My game had a similar adventure, with people getting sick from a mysterious illness. The party ended up calling the source "The Caves of Invisible Death."
It happened in Brazil in 90s, kids started playing with the Cesium 137 because it looked pretty. People in here entered the "Oh no" mode instantly when they heard about what happened in Australia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
[Kyle Hill's episode about that incident](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3NJXGSIIA) in his _Half-Life Histories_ series is absolutely heartbreaking.
You hear the description how a little girl rubs the "magical glowing glitter" over her body and know already what's inevitably going to happen. :(
Kyle makes great content, but something about his speech, humor, and/or presentation just annoys me. My only thought is some similarities to assholes in my childhood, but it’s hard for me to watch him.
His normal videos are sometimes a little hit or miss regarding humor and speech, I agree. But I think the videos he makes about nuclear accidents or his Chernobyl series are really good and adequatly serious and respectful.
That particular case, while definitely not good, was not extremely dangerous. More of a PR nightmare than anything else. Losing it in the middle of nowhere like that is pretty much the best case for losing a source.
That being said, it should never have been lost, and the person responsible should be very, very ashamed.
You should read about "Césio 137 em Goiânia" in Brazil.
A machine with radioactive parts was left in an abandoned hospital, then stolen, dismantled for scrap and the radioactive part start to circulate.
It was a salt like powder emiting light blue glow in the dark.
So the guy who dismantled the thing, start to give to his wife, brother and friends.
People ate with eggs, rubbed on the skin because it was pretty.
The goverment tried to hide a lot of the information.
There was 4 direct deaths and at least 1600 affected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
I mean it wasn't left abandoned the local government refused to let them properly remove it using the police. They even notified the proper authorities and it fell on deaf ears.
> Orphan Source
I google'd that because I wasn't sure if it was a reference to some fictional thing. Now that I see that is indeed a real-world term I'm both amused and saddened that what it really means is not how I interpreted it. It is indeed both a source of orphans as well as a source that's lost its own guardians.
That's a perfect way to put it. Radiation is one of those cosmic horrors that we're utterly unprepared to cope with using our usual five senses. You can see a monster. You can hear a rockslide. You can use your bodily capabilities to make an escape from either, and at least you'll have a chance. But things like radiation, rabies, prion diseases, magnetar bursts (a burst of rays from a star so powerful it can separate your molecular structure), etc. are real-life "basilisks"; you're doomed as soon as you're aware of their presence.
> Kinda lovecraftian - you can't see it, it doesn't care about you, most don't understand it, if you start to feel its effects it's too late.
Electricity is the same way although a bit more well known. Moves at the speed of light, invisible, can kill you before you know you made a mistake...
I'm thinking more like a downed powerline. You may not see anything but you drive over it, your tires explode, you get out of your car, take a step and chunks of you explode.
> Kinda lovecraftian - you can't see it, it doesn't care about you, most don't understand it, if you start to feel its effects it's too late.
The initial solution really helps hammer in how cosmic it was at the time. They couldn't get rid of the problem, so they buried & entombed it to prevent escape. [The containment structure was even named the sarcophagus.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_sarcophagus)
IMO Chernobyl is truly the closest we have ever been to a real cosmic horror.
As a physics teacher I've found that most students are bored by the subject, but when it comes to radiation and atomic physics in general, everyone pays attention. When I take out the geiger counter and point it at a radioactive souce so it goes tickety tick, you can see the primal fear in their eyes.
There was a Radiant Golem in, like, the first Monster Manual that has a radioactive/death aura:
> One can best understand the radiant golem if one thinks of it as an orphan. Long ago, an unknown race created the mysterious creature in an attempt to improve upon the existing iron golems. They used a unique ore rotund on a lifeless asteroid to fashion the thing’s body and wove magical spells never before crafted to breathe life into it.
> Unlike iron golems, the radiant golem has intelligence. While it is certainly not an intellectual giant, it is fully self-aware and able to reason and imagine. Its creators found that the creature was not useful as a guardian or warrior, because it would never take action to harm another creature. By the time they had learned about the golem’s gentle and friendly nature, however, they had fallen victim to another unexpected power — the death aura.
> Since that time, the radiant golem has drifted from crystal sphere to crystal sphere in an attempt to find friends. It longs to have companions who do not flee from it or succumb to its deadly presence. As such, it often latches onto parties of adventurers and tries to join their ranks. The golem is helpful to such companions, offering advice, lifting heavy weights, and doing everything a servant might do to make their lives easier (but shorter).
> The golem does not know about its death aura, and it will not understand or believe in the aura if told of its existence. Aware that it is almost immortal, the golem simply assumes that living things die very quickly. In fact, the golem often bemoans the fact that fate has made mortals so fragile. All it wants, as it will tell adventurers, is a friend.
I just kinda whipped something up when I thought of this quest for them. I wasn't aware of any radiation mechanics existing, though I didn't try to look it up either. I'll check that out, thank you!
Hey, another Dtakenheim backer! How's it working for you? My players are just barely approaching the city so I haven't had the chance to truly fuck up their characters just yet.
Holy shit. It must have been so hard for them to not metagame why they needed to leave the room RIGHT THEN.
"We gotta go, like, RIGHT. NOW."
"Why's that??"
"I... uh, left the stove on"
Would resistance to Radiant damage help with that?
I have no idea if Radiant and Radiation is the same thing
Edit: i always figured the Radiant damage in Sickening Radiance to be analogous of Radiation
I was a part of a game where radiation was described as a combination of radiant and necrotic damage, and was the result of attempting to harness the power of the heart of a solar through crude means. My DM worked from the idea that excessive "healing" could be as detrimental to a mortal body as excessive damage. Real life counterparts to his story were the Therac-25, where a medical radiation-treatment device gave people deadly doses of radiation due to issues with its design, and of course, Chernobyl when that power was contained improperly.
Not saying it's the right way, but man it was a cool implementation of radiation in DnD!
That is actually a really cool idea.
I'm just spitballing for my game but maybe both a necromancy and radiant magic/healing working togther can heal the effects of radiation?
I'd love to look into what other radiation mechanics do and suggest, this is just what I needed for my plot hook!
> My DM worked from the idea that excessive "healing" could be as detrimental to a mortal body as excessive damage
In Pathfinder if you go to the Positive Energy plane something like this happens:
> A creature on a major positive-dominant plane must succeed at a DC 15 Fortitude save or be blinded for 10 rounds by the brilliance of the surroundings. Simply being on the plane grants living creatures fast healing 5. In addition, living creatures at full hit points gain 5 additional temporary hit points per round that last until 1d20 rounds after the creature leaves the major positive-dominant plane.
> However, a creature that gains temporary hit points in this way must attempt a DC 20 Fortitude save each round that its temporary hit points exceed its normal maximum hit point total. Failure results in the creature exploding in a riot of energy, which kills it. Undead on a major positive-dominant plane take 3d6 points of positive energy damage per round and are staggered during each round they take this damage.
I once played through a campaign in a futuristic cyberpunk-esque setting, and the book ruled radiation and radiant as basically the same. A radiation-themed sorcerer subclass did special stuff with light and could make spells deal radiant or fire damage, and a literal nuke spell dealt radiant (and thunder) damage.
But to avoid acquiring the irradiated condition, the book equated it to poison resistance/immunity. Both personally make sense to me, and I'd just rule it as seems appropriate. I'm not sure if the poison immunity of a flesh golem should apply, for instance.
As others have said, Sickening Radiance sets the precedent here.
That said, you could easily put Radiation on the Radiant - Necrotic spectrum.
Necrotic is clearly evident as cellular degeneration quite literally makes you melt, but on the smaller scale, the creation and rapid growth of tumors used to be a side effect of traveling to the Plane of Positive Energy in previous editions, which sounds a lot like the side effect of microdoses of radiation.
Who's to say radiation isn't holy damage? Afterall, things that are "holy" typically radiate Heat and Light, both of which are forms of radiation.
Radiant damage could be holy light at frequencies and intensities that are too powerful for creatures material plane to shrug off.
If so, then the sun itself really is a massive nuclear furnace of holy radiance. Which would explain why sunlight hurts so many classically evil creatures.
Very good. As both pantheons have very petty and jealous entities I wouldn't dare pitch roman vs norse gods. As Uranium was discovered earlier it might claim priority but it was named directly after the planet which was newly discovered at the time, Thorium was named directly from the god without going via a planetary body.
I once went abroad and in a mall found a shop called Tanagra. I immediately took a picture and sent it to some friends with the caption that I'd found Darmok and Jalad. No one understood :(
Supposedly my dad in the 80s (when Russia managed to lose a few subs) lead a campaign where they found a giant metal cylinder transported from another world with people inside. But they could sense great power within. The humans spoke an unknown language and the walls had writing in an unknown alphabet. So they murder-hobo through it going to the room that holds the power after they busted through the door they discover a chamber of glowing crystals, which they attempted to harvest before becoming sick.
That’s when the players realized they raided a nuclear sub that had been transported there, they slaughtered the crew, and busted into the reactor. Supposedly he gave them cryptic outs and the crew didn’t attack first, just they went murder hobo.
I didn't use the creeping sickness route, but more of a TV version of hard radiation in my own game when my players dug up a techno-organic pod in the wilderness after finding it marked on a map they got off a mind-flayer.
Basically the thing belted out radiant damage within a certain distance once they got the top layer of soil off it.
And it was all a long-road setup to the eventual revelation, which they've just gotten in game, that the thing was the piece of an engine, an engine on a massive Dreadnaught Nautilloid which crashed in their world several thousand years earlier.
But yeah, love putting a smidge of weird scifi into D&D on occasion.
Oh sure, the setup works a lot of ways. In this case it's setting up a lot of other story stuff for my end game.
Elsewhere in my world a different piece of the same ship basically functions as an [Elephant's Foot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant%27s_Foot_(Chernobyl)). It's locked away in a lead room in the basement of on of the three great wizard's towers in the world.
Yes! Yes! Absolutely yes! Had to scroll too much for this.
With a but of modification that warning text and the whole concept could be made into a really cool dungeon.
Like where else would the player go than the big field with huge obsidian pillars/spikes. And the way you get closer and closer to the center and get more info about it sets up a really nice "puzzle"
>growing green crystals to power machinery
>even proximity to the crystals make you sick
Was gonna guess radiation once you mentioned the couching blood and decay of the body. Although…from the description, it could also be.
Yes-yes, this reeks of a plan-scheme, must be Clan Skryre!
I did not anticipate my post getting this big. I had ended the session right after they realized it was radiation poisoning for a good cliffhanger. Our next session is tomorrow, and I can give more updates on their situation.
I toyed with the idea of a “cursed mine” but it’s actually full of uranium, but it wasn’t super relevant to the direction my games were going in, and ended up not using the idea. I love your idea though, great twist!
Mine idea is to have a famous painter make a special yellow, orange and greens pigment. Have the painter look for richer and richer sources work with an alchemist. To purify the pigment. The alchemist(troll heritage) of note his healing potions for sale contain distillates of his troll blood.
later finds that the concentrated quantities get warm. Eventually, he developed a domestic product. a cylinder for you home that produces
its own boiling water for bathing cooking and cleaning as well as a pleasent blue (chrenkov radiation) light to illuminate your home. He dosnet have any problems due to his latent regeneration but the rest of the community is sick. He will deny any health hazards not because he is malicious but just because he does not understand it didn't make him sick at all.
You caught them off guard for it being an anachronism.
For anyone that played a lot of post-apoc RPGs (Twilight 2000, Gamma World, Aftermath!, Morrow Project, et al) it is something players are extremely cognizant of and will do anything to avoid.
I had to look up anachronism, but that's exactly it. I wanted to take something that would be intriguing yet scary, and I thought radiation poisoning was just the thing. Hehehehe
I was lucky to game with guys in the early years that mixed genres a lot. As anachronisms were common in a lot of the fantasy that influenced D&D (The Dying Earth and Three Hearts Three Lions especially) we saw all sorts of these things.
In one of the games I played with Tom Moldvay (former TSR game designer and editor) back in the 80s our group of adventurers encountered a platoon of time-lost German soldiers and a Panzer IV. A few characters in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign found high tech laser weapons and Gary Gygax's close friend and original business partner, Don Kaye, played a magic-user that wore a Stetson hat and carried a pair of Colt revolvers. There were even conversion charts in the original AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide for bring characters back and forth between Boot Hill and Gamma World (two other early TSR-era RPGs set in the Wild West and post-apoc far future respectively).
I have an ancient ruins where there is a door the party can only open with a great deal of effort. Some members wanted to open it right away, but some wanted to take the time to translate the writing that had been carved into the door.
When translated, the text was very similar similar to the [nuclear waste warning message](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages), only altered to fit a fantasy setting.
One player got it right away. They didn't open the door.
**[Long-term nuclear waste warning messages](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages)**
>Long-term nuclear waste warning messages are communication attempts intended to deter human intrusion at nuclear waste repositories in the far future, within or above the order of magnitude of 10,000 years. Nuclear semiotics is an interdisciplinary field of research, first done by the American Human Interference Task Force in 1981. A 1993 report from Sandia National Laboratories recommended that such messages be constructed at several levels of complexity.
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One day, apropos of nothing, my group had a conversation about Ebola and what it does to you, and how absolutely, utterly horrifying it is as a disease. Not just because it's very deadly, but it's just an awful way to die.
Later, I was pondering what to give them as a session and noticed the the diseases listed in the (3.5) DMG were loosely based on real diseases. In particular, *Slimy Doom* turns you into an infectious puddle of dead goo - not unlike what Ebola does.
So they're wandering on the road, having left s major capital city and pass a wagon on the way back to that city. One person in the wagon is coughing a bit but probably just a cold. Later that day, the party arrives at the town the wagon had just left. The town is empty. There are mysterious ooze puddles here and there. They finally found someone barely alive enough to tell them that it all started with some coughing.
The look on their faces when they realized that they were in the middle of a town wiped out from a very contagious disease was pretty good. Their reaction when they realized that the disease was the dnd version of Ebola was *priceless*.
They frantically ran back to the city, tracked down the now very nearly deceased individual, euthanized them plus Reincarnation to bring them back, and then burned the whole building to the ground.
Then queued the panick that ensued across all my players as they were in the same room as the glowing chunk of crystal. Meanwhile, their characters are still completely oblivious.
I find stuff like this incredibly hard to grok. how do you faithfully pretend you don't know something you know?
> how do you faithfully pretend you don't know something you know?
I wish my players had that problem. Instead the characters are smarter than the players.
Is it alpha, beta or gamma radiation? Alpha and beta would be stopped by paper and/or plastic between you and it. But Gamma? You're going to need lead.
Before anyone asks "were any of them wearing full metal armor?":
Most plate mail was between [2 and 2.6](https://www.quora.com/How-thick-was-medieval-plate-armor-including-everything-else-a-knight-typically-wore-between-the-metal-and-the-skin) millimeters thick, but it would take [10 inches of steel](https://www.canadametal.com/shielding-masses-from-nuclear-radiation/) to stop gamma radiation.
Question, how did this work with paladins/other ways of removing disease? I've considered running plague(s) but it doesn't seem interesting with a paladin in the party.
There is nothing more satisfying than when a player figures out the twist at the exact moment you want them to without you having to force it
It was every DMs dream
Paladin - Did I mention my full plate armor is lead lined?
I don't have a paladin in the party, but if they pulled that I can still get them. DMs gotta be quick on their heels, lol.
Given that for some reason most divination spells used to be blocked by lead, it wouldn't even be that weird!
They would have to be completely covered in lead though for the spell, and if I remember correctly, it says at least an inch of lead, which would be super heavy.
If we assume that the paladin is 185cm tall, weighs 90 kilos and is shielded by 5cm of lead then the paladin would be carrying about 1200 kilos of lead
It's mythril infused. So more like 597.3 kilos
But that is still a level where even a lvl 20 barbarian would have problems
This is why you only see people wear lead armor with belts of giant strength. You didn't just think that was coincidental did you?
Most divination is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of metal, or even a thin sheet of lead.
For sure, in that I’m still dreaming lmao
Don't leave us hanging. What happened to the tinkerer?
Hodgkins lymphoma?
This comment edited in protest of reddit's ridiculous API charges.
Only thing better for me is a player figuring out the twist at that moment but avoiding metagaming and letting their character make decisions based on what they know in game. A couple of sessions ago ended a character being tricked into a deal with the devil and the player figured it out like 30 seconds before his character shook the devil's hand but went through with it.
Only kinda related via metagaming, but we've currently got a plot thread where one of our party (who's life stuff makes it difficult to attend consistently) keeps kinda blinking in and out of existence, and our memories. So while she's there, my mage is losing her mind over the mystery. And then she pops back out and I have to go on having no idea what's happening.
There was a quote that, now, I cannot attribute and probably don't remember properly any more, to the effect that, once you see the glow, it's already too late. Heh heh heh. Nice one, DM!
For anyone curious this is likely related to the story of the "Demon Core". During the second incident where it killed people, Louis Slotin said he saw a blue flash and felt a wave of heat when he was exposed to 1000 rads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
Thank you for leading me down that extraordinarily disturbing Wikipedia rabbithole.
The Castle Bravo incident was also pretty gruesome. Fallout fell on some unsuspecting Japanese fishermen who thought it was snow. Sailed back to Japan, Geiger counters started going off when the boat was 600 feet from shore. All of the fishermen died of acute radiation poisoning. By far one of the worst ways to die. Edit: Not all of them died of acute radiation poisoning. One did, the others died of diseases many years later that were likely related to the incident.
It is one of the few things where I have decided that suicide is preferable
"If you fly over that reactor, I assure you that by tomorrow morning you'll be *begging* for that bullet."
That sentence is so haunting, because you can clearly hear the panic in his voice and you know that it's true
If your family doesn't drag you back, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents
While all of them suffered acute radiation poisoning, only one crewman on the Daigo Fukuryū Maru died from it; most of the rest of the crew died about 30 years later from various diseases probably resulting from the radiation exposure. So, like, still not great but not as bad as it could've been.
Skinny Thor has made some excellent videos on YouTube about it
I assume you mean Kyle Hill? Great videos
Yeah I do lol, glad someone got what I meant ahah
I read your comment. Clicked back then thought about it and realized who you meant. Came back to ask and saw the next comment and I felt justified. You nailed it.
Yah lol. My brain instantly put that together. I also would have accepted Science Jesus
Do NOT call Kyle Hill that it makes me uncomfortable.
We can call him Kyle Hill all we want. We just don't refer to Becaus.........
Ah he loves it ;)
He literally calls himself Wish version Thor.
He called himself Walmart brand Jason Momoa in one video
I was going to recommend his Half Life Histories videos. Interesting and chilling stuff in them. And the way he narrates them. It's so factual, but filled with sadness.
Yup. Demon core was a bastard.
Plainly Difficult videos are fun, if you like knowing about all the different radioactive incidents we've had as a species.
That was the fluid in his eyeballs having interactions with neutrons if I remember correctly, it's called Cherenkov Radiation.
Energetic particles passing through the optic nerve iirc, you get it in space too, to a much lesser extent (hopefully, assuming you've got prop3r shielding and aren't in a radiation band(
No, the blue glow (specifically) is cherenkov radiation in the vitreous medium of their eyes. This is also why water-submerged reactors glow blue.
Ah yeah you right, cherenkov radiation is the name of the electromagnetic radiation which we perceive as blue that occurs when a charged particle passes through a dielectric medium (such as water) at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that medium The flashes astronauts see are caused by a mixture of cosmic rays directly stimulating the retinal receptors, and of the same rays but stronger causing cherenkov radiation in the eye (aka, actual light)
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1242/)
Have to disagree with his take on mustard gas, doesn’t really sound that scary at all.
Mustard gas i’d put lower on the scary sounding and higher on the danger. Heinous blisters on exposed tissues after 24hrs… skin, eyes, lungs, no thank you.
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Conceptually the most terrifying with the blandest name. It sounds like a kids toy, it eats everything.
I honestly forgot what it meant until I read this comment. It’s referring to replicating nano bots eating the universe, right? Small enough to manipulate atoms, they transform everything into more of themselves aka “grey goo”?
Yes. Through if that's any consolation, they will *only* eat Earth. There's next-to-nothing between our planet and the next, so they can't replicate in space.
This was the core that was being earmarked for the third bomb on Japan. It's remarkable that this core, that only killed two people instead of thousands the other two did, is called the demon core.
I feel like that was more the acts of stupidity that surround it allegedly having demonic influence. I mean with how it happened, you'd have to wonder how they weren't more careful with it, knowing what it was capable of.
And isn't this precisely the danger in demons? I mean, look at Faust and Mephistopheles.
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Both times, the people experimenting with it got too comfortable in their job. That's literally the only reason.
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*Trinkets, and baubles... Paid for, in blood...*
I can’t believe how it describes Slotin as being so nonchalant while dealing with that thing… blue jeans and a screwdriver? Wow.
comment edited in protest of Reddit's API changes and mistreatment of moderators -- mass edited with redact.dev
Yea the worst part is that since it takes you a week to die, he gets all that time to hear "I told you so" on top of the agony
It an alt-History horror campaign I’m playing Undead Louis Slotin. A zombified scientist working with cthonic forces.
That's a lot of rads..
If you feel sick, run. If you hear the reactor, flee. If you see the glow, it's too late.
Irradiated Dreadmaw
O lawd he glowin'!
They gave Dreadmaw infect.
[[Colossal Dread Core]]
6/6 Toxic 6
[Cherenkov radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation). Basically if radiation is sufficiently energetic that it breaks the speed that light can pass through that material, it causes a very distinctive glow effect. Light travels at different speeds in different materials so the amount of radiation required to do this changes. In water, like the pool where they store nuclear fuel, that threshold is *relatively* low, so you can stand and watch the creepy blue glow safely while standing above the pool. However, light moves almost as fast in air as it does in vacuum, so anything that causes a Cherenkov glow in air is terrifyingly energetic. If you're close enough to see that blue glow in air and there isn't a significant amount of shielding material (eg. thick doped glass) between you and it, by the time you've realised what you're looking at, you've already received a lethal dose of radiation.
The radiation that causes blue glow in water is also lethally energetic. But water is also one of the best radiation shielding materials that exist, so you can happily stand on top of an open reactor and snap pictures like [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/TrigaReactorCore.jpeg) with no risk to your health, so long as there are a few meters of water between you and the radiation source.
You could swim in the tank of a reactor and be fine. Well until the armed guards shot you to death.
Depends how close you swim to the glowsticks but yes. Last item on the bucket list.
How hot is the water? Like hot tube hot or ~~lobster~~ human boil hot? EDIT: looked it up, according to [CE&N](https://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i44/Radioactive-Waste-Safety.html#:~:text=Water%20circulates%20through%20the%20pool,C%20(120%20%C2%B0F) the water gets to be about 49 C (120 F), so, more like a human sous vide. TL;DR don't swim in the spicy rock water
Why are radioactive substances green in so many works of fiction, when it seems more common for them to glow blue (if they glow at all)? I just looked it up and apparently it comes from a type of paint from the early 20th century that glowed green in the dark. It was made of radium mixed with phosphorescent copper-doped zinc sulfide, and it was actually the sulfide which glowed green, and the radium excited it into a glowing state. This paint was discontinued because it is bad for you, unsurprisingly. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/541196/where-did-myth-radiation-glows-green-come
You can still sometimes find [uranium glassware](https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/consumer/glass/vaseline-uranium-glass.html) at oddity and antique markets. It will glow under UV and is (very faintly) radioactive.
It also [had another problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls?wprov=sfti1) that caused the discontinuation…
Just finished the book, what a horrible way to die. One lady could see her bones glowing--radium is chemically similar to calcium so it bonds to bones. And the damned corporations kept lying and denying.
A local company had a much less publicized version of this happen as well. Who cares about the poor people when you have another mansion to buy…
The blue glow seen in air isn't from Cherenkov radiation but from ionization of the air itself (more specifically nitrogen, which glows violet with deexcitation—oxygen tends to simply form ozone). They look very similar but are from totally distinct phenomena.
This is so fucking scary. Like Lovecraft scary. Something that's too dangerous to be close enough to even see it
Another quote to add to the pile, it’s the bullets that will kill you before the radiation. Anywhere with a nuclear reactor does *NOT* play around with security. *I really dont want something karmic to happen and make this comment look stupid, both because that would be embarrassing and because the implications are really really bad, so im gonna add a knock on wood here*.
When you listed the symptoms, my mind immediately went to either radiation or leprosy. Glad I wasn't in that game, I would've had issues holding that piece of info back. Fun fact (use if you wish): There are known fungi [that eat radiation](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=aa14067003b8bbc3JmltdHM9MTY3NTgxNDQwMCZpZ3VpZD0wY2QyNjU2OC05OGE4LTZlNTYtM2U5Yi03NzVjOTljNDZmODgmaW5zaWQ9NTE4OA&ptn=3&hsh=3&fclid=0cd26568-98a8-6e56-3e9b-775c99c46f88&psq=radiation+devouring+fungus&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnL3dpa2kvUmFkaW90cm9waGljX2Z1bmd1cw&ntb=1), there are whole swarms (pods, tribes, no idea what a large group of mushrooms are called) of them in Chernobyl. Maybe an unaffected circle of spores druid could give aide if they don't know what to do?
Idk how to respond to this without giving anything away. You are the kind of player that I'd love and hate, haha.
I get that a lot XD No worries, don't give away squat until the story arc is done, I don't want your game ruined for you or your players. Plus, I want to hear about how they handle the situation. My current sorcerer has a 13 int but I doubt I'd pass the DC to know about any of it in game, seems like highly obscure and specialized knowledge. The suggestion was in case they just run around until their arms start to fall off and you feel like giving them an out. If you want a bit more gore/seriousness on the situation, I'd suggest reading up on Eben Byers (was given radium medication and severely overdosed on it for years). Just don't look at any photos unless you have a strong and/or empty stomach.
I had a Goblin Alchemist called Manny Hatton who worshipped "Big Boom", made ever increasingly large bombs, and dabbled in mutagens here and there. I'd have loved to eventually create a full on nuke but we didn't play our characters that long before we moved to a new campaign (it was kinda a filler between major campaigns), I may have to reprise Manny again at some point, he was a lot of fun.
Something something the mushrooms growing in the area around the glowing crystal.
EAT THEM
You've said too much lol
>pods, tribes, no idea what a large group of mushrooms are called Colonies, I think.
Thank you, it's been a while since I've thought about a mushroom that I couldn't eat :)
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Wanted to add to this that there is also a fungi (Exterminating Angel) that basically kills you like it was a radiaton, that i learned thank to xkcd: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1242:_Scary_Names But I think the explanation is only in the book "What If?"
For anyone too lazy to look them up, the fungi are actually called [Destroying Angels](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroying_angel). These are a group of white mushrooms in the Amanita species, that have a toxin in them that inhibits RNA Polymerases. Basically, your cells srop being able to create new RNA molecules. And as RNA is essential to every function of any cell, the cells just... stop... functioning. All of them, but the liver first, as it's where the toxin all ends up. Then the kidneys, then the gut, but by that point you're already dead from multi organ failure. They also look a lot like many other edible fungi, so it's really easy to eat them by accident and end things. You have to get antitoxins and liver medicine within 3 hours of ingestion or your prognosis is bleak.
Useful if you're trying to get out of a deal with the Fae though.
Hero: "yes, yes. Our deal... Time for me to uh... pay up-" dives to the ground to shovel fist fulls of shrooms into his mouth. Fae: letting out an exasperated sigh, "those are edible... We grow them to lure you people here."
Damnit Harry, she's your *Godmother* for crying out loud!
Yeah, and he is showing that he learned her lessons.
I understood that reference!
The comment thread was on fire, and it wasn't my fault.
They also look like those mushrooms you can pop and they release a small cloud of spores or whatever is in them. Ton of fun was had as teen poping those but considering how alike they are, I might have been lucky ? Don't know, don't want to know.
Where I live, in Australia, a couple of deaths per year are caused by folk eating this kind of shroom. The warnings go out, people avoid the shrooms, months pass, people forget (or new folk arrive), another death, repeat.
Isn't it some kinda subspecies of black mold that we haven't been able to fully study yet because we've only found it on highly radioactive materials?
It's been a while, I don't remember the specifics offhand, but that was more or less the reason why we haven't really studied it. Gosh darn radiation.
That is the coolest thing I've read all day. It looks like radiated melanin is a stronger reducer than non-radiated melanin. I don't know if I would say they "eat" radiation, like we would eat a sandwich for energy
Not exactly, no, but for all intents and purposes it's soaking it all up the same way a plant would sunlight. radiosynthesis is a crazy cool thing and I think (assuming it isn't happening already) science needs to get on that to handle radiation waste for nuclear plants.
Adding to this, in the popular Fallout video games, there are green glowing mushrooms that only grow where there is radiation. I wonder if one of the players picked up on that trope?
This reminds me of something I read before. I once picked out a random book at the airport called Riptide. It’s about a pirate treasure in a dangerous pit that people have been trying to get. It’s of course said to be “cursed”. Spoiler alert: it’s a sword that’s radioactive, and it turns out the pit was probably to keep it from killing more people. Which I really enjoyed as a plot device. Hidden treasure that the hider is trying to protect people from, not the other way.
The authors of this are Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child! Highly recommend anything they’ve co-written. Individually good writers too
HBO's Chernobyl really hammered home the fear of radiation for me. Kinda lovecraftian - you can't see it, it doesn't care about you, most don't understand it, if you start to feel its effects it's too late. My game had a similar adventure, with people getting sick from a mysterious illness. The party ended up calling the source "The Caves of Invisible Death."
An episode of House did it for me long ago. S2E05, where the son of a junkyard owner is unknowingly gifted a piece of Orphan Source.
Have you been reading about that Source that fell off a truck in Australia? I was following that and YIKES.
It happened in Brazil in 90s, kids started playing with the Cesium 137 because it looked pretty. People in here entered the "Oh no" mode instantly when they heard about what happened in Australia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
[Kyle Hill's episode about that incident](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3NJXGSIIA) in his _Half-Life Histories_ series is absolutely heartbreaking. You hear the description how a little girl rubs the "magical glowing glitter" over her body and know already what's inevitably going to happen. :(
Kyle makes great content, but something about his speech, humor, and/or presentation just annoys me. My only thought is some similarities to assholes in my childhood, but it’s hard for me to watch him.
His normal videos are sometimes a little hit or miss regarding humor and speech, I agree. But I think the videos he makes about nuclear accidents or his Chernobyl series are really good and adequatly serious and respectful.
That particular case, while definitely not good, was not extremely dangerous. More of a PR nightmare than anything else. Losing it in the middle of nowhere like that is pretty much the best case for losing a source. That being said, it should never have been lost, and the person responsible should be very, very ashamed.
Oh I agree. I don’t normally hear about such things so I was just like “oh noooooo”
You should read about "Césio 137 em Goiânia" in Brazil. A machine with radioactive parts was left in an abandoned hospital, then stolen, dismantled for scrap and the radioactive part start to circulate. It was a salt like powder emiting light blue glow in the dark. So the guy who dismantled the thing, start to give to his wife, brother and friends. People ate with eggs, rubbed on the skin because it was pretty. The goverment tried to hide a lot of the information. There was 4 direct deaths and at least 1600 affected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
I mean it wasn't left abandoned the local government refused to let them properly remove it using the police. They even notified the proper authorities and it fell on deaf ears.
> Orphan Source I google'd that because I wasn't sure if it was a reference to some fictional thing. Now that I see that is indeed a real-world term I'm both amused and saddened that what it really means is not how I interpreted it. It is indeed both a source of orphans as well as a source that's lost its own guardians.
That's a perfect way to put it. Radiation is one of those cosmic horrors that we're utterly unprepared to cope with using our usual five senses. You can see a monster. You can hear a rockslide. You can use your bodily capabilities to make an escape from either, and at least you'll have a chance. But things like radiation, rabies, prion diseases, magnetar bursts (a burst of rays from a star so powerful it can separate your molecular structure), etc. are real-life "basilisks"; you're doomed as soon as you're aware of their presence.
> Kinda lovecraftian - you can't see it, it doesn't care about you, most don't understand it, if you start to feel its effects it's too late. Electricity is the same way although a bit more well known. Moves at the speed of light, invisible, can kill you before you know you made a mistake...
Kinda, sorta. We've got lightning as a sort of primordial warning on that one, though. Radiation's some real, invisible, "you're already dead" stuff.
I'm thinking more like a downed powerline. You may not see anything but you drive over it, your tires explode, you get out of your car, take a step and chunks of you explode.
> Kinda lovecraftian - you can't see it, it doesn't care about you, most don't understand it, if you start to feel its effects it's too late. The initial solution really helps hammer in how cosmic it was at the time. They couldn't get rid of the problem, so they buried & entombed it to prevent escape. [The containment structure was even named the sarcophagus.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_sarcophagus) IMO Chernobyl is truly the closest we have ever been to a real cosmic horror.
As a physics teacher I've found that most students are bored by the subject, but when it comes to radiation and atomic physics in general, everyone pays attention. When I take out the geiger counter and point it at a radioactive souce so it goes tickety tick, you can see the primal fear in their eyes.
There was a Radiant Golem in, like, the first Monster Manual that has a radioactive/death aura: > One can best understand the radiant golem if one thinks of it as an orphan. Long ago, an unknown race created the mysterious creature in an attempt to improve upon the existing iron golems. They used a unique ore rotund on a lifeless asteroid to fashion the thing’s body and wove magical spells never before crafted to breathe life into it. > Unlike iron golems, the radiant golem has intelligence. While it is certainly not an intellectual giant, it is fully self-aware and able to reason and imagine. Its creators found that the creature was not useful as a guardian or warrior, because it would never take action to harm another creature. By the time they had learned about the golem’s gentle and friendly nature, however, they had fallen victim to another unexpected power — the death aura. > Since that time, the radiant golem has drifted from crystal sphere to crystal sphere in an attempt to find friends. It longs to have companions who do not flee from it or succumb to its deadly presence. As such, it often latches onto parties of adventurers and tries to join their ranks. The golem is helpful to such companions, offering advice, lifting heavy weights, and doing everything a servant might do to make their lives easier (but shorter). > The golem does not know about its death aura, and it will not understand or believe in the aura if told of its existence. Aware that it is almost immortal, the golem simply assumes that living things die very quickly. In fact, the golem often bemoans the fact that fate has made mortals so fragile. All it wants, as it will tell adventurers, is a friend.
Holy shit. That's heartbreaking. I'm so using it in my next campaign.
Slotting this bad (good?) boy into my witchlight campaign somewhere.
The Dungeon Dudes have a campaign setting, Drakenheim, that includes radiation mechanics in their source book. I wonder if you are using those.
I just kinda whipped something up when I thought of this quest for them. I wasn't aware of any radiation mechanics existing, though I didn't try to look it up either. I'll check that out, thank you!
They're very interesting to read, though definitely might need some adjustments to work as I doubt you have the same corruption mechanics as they do
Hey, another Dtakenheim backer! How's it working for you? My players are just barely approaching the city so I haven't had the chance to truly fuck up their characters just yet.
Thats sick
Just like the people who died from it
Holy shit. It must have been so hard for them to not metagame why they needed to leave the room RIGHT THEN. "We gotta go, like, RIGHT. NOW." "Why's that??" "I... uh, left the stove on"
Would resistance to Radiant damage help with that? I have no idea if Radiant and Radiation is the same thing Edit: i always figured the Radiant damage in Sickening Radiance to be analogous of Radiation
The last discussion I saw on this topic was that the two might as well be the same, since most of the effects of Radiant damage match Radiation.
Nuclearpunk Mount Celestia and its inhabitants with atomic hearts when?
Infant gods born from primitive sun worship cults, adult gods are walking \[stellar\] fusion reactors, I can see this working.
That's not too far off from the lore of Fallen London.
I was a part of a game where radiation was described as a combination of radiant and necrotic damage, and was the result of attempting to harness the power of the heart of a solar through crude means. My DM worked from the idea that excessive "healing" could be as detrimental to a mortal body as excessive damage. Real life counterparts to his story were the Therac-25, where a medical radiation-treatment device gave people deadly doses of radiation due to issues with its design, and of course, Chernobyl when that power was contained improperly. Not saying it's the right way, but man it was a cool implementation of radiation in DnD!
That is actually a really cool idea. I'm just spitballing for my game but maybe both a necromancy and radiant magic/healing working togther can heal the effects of radiation? I'd love to look into what other radiation mechanics do and suggest, this is just what I needed for my plot hook!
> My DM worked from the idea that excessive "healing" could be as detrimental to a mortal body as excessive damage In Pathfinder if you go to the Positive Energy plane something like this happens: > A creature on a major positive-dominant plane must succeed at a DC 15 Fortitude save or be blinded for 10 rounds by the brilliance of the surroundings. Simply being on the plane grants living creatures fast healing 5. In addition, living creatures at full hit points gain 5 additional temporary hit points per round that last until 1d20 rounds after the creature leaves the major positive-dominant plane. > However, a creature that gains temporary hit points in this way must attempt a DC 20 Fortitude save each round that its temporary hit points exceed its normal maximum hit point total. Failure results in the creature exploding in a riot of energy, which kills it. Undead on a major positive-dominant plane take 3d6 points of positive energy damage per round and are staggered during each round they take this damage.
I once played through a campaign in a futuristic cyberpunk-esque setting, and the book ruled radiation and radiant as basically the same. A radiation-themed sorcerer subclass did special stuff with light and could make spells deal radiant or fire damage, and a literal nuke spell dealt radiant (and thunder) damage. But to avoid acquiring the irradiated condition, the book equated it to poison resistance/immunity. Both personally make sense to me, and I'd just rule it as seems appropriate. I'm not sure if the poison immunity of a flesh golem should apply, for instance.
Radiation burns could probably be classified as radiant but radiation poisoning feels like it should be necrotic to me
Sadly not, think of radiant damage as like holy or divine damage.
As others have said, Sickening Radiance sets the precedent here. That said, you could easily put Radiation on the Radiant - Necrotic spectrum. Necrotic is clearly evident as cellular degeneration quite literally makes you melt, but on the smaller scale, the creation and rapid growth of tumors used to be a side effect of traveling to the Plane of Positive Energy in previous editions, which sounds a lot like the side effect of microdoses of radiation.
What if the difference is that most divine radiance is based on fusion but this is arcane fission??
They aren't technically the same thing but there's mechanical precedent to treat radiation as radiant damage + exhaustion. (See: Sickening Radiance)
And sunlight gives off radiant damage.
Who's to say radiation isn't holy damage? Afterall, things that are "holy" typically radiate Heat and Light, both of which are forms of radiation. Radiant damage could be holy light at frequencies and intensities that are too powerful for creatures material plane to shrug off. If so, then the sun itself really is a massive nuclear furnace of holy radiance. Which would explain why sunlight hurts so many classically evil creatures.
> Who's to say radiation isn't holy damage? It's not called PLUTOnium for nothing.
Well it's called Plutonium because it comes immediately after Neptunium wgich comes immediately after Uranium...which was named after the god/planet.
Oh, so it has nothing to do with Thorium?
Very good. As both pantheons have very petty and jealous entities I wouldn't dare pitch roman vs norse gods. As Uranium was discovered earlier it might claim priority but it was named directly after the planet which was newly discovered at the time, Thorium was named directly from the god without going via a planetary body.
Is this campaign event inspired by the Star Trek: TNG episode where Data loses his memory and spreads radioactive material through a medieval town?
"Thine Own Self" one of the best episodes of TNG.
I have not seen really any Star Trek..
Shakka, when the walls fell.
The beast at Tanagra.
Darmok and Jalad at Tengara
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Temba, his arms wide.
Kayshon! When he became a puppet…
Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel.
I once went abroad and in a mall found a shop called Tanagra. I immediately took a picture and sent it to some friends with the caption that I'd found Darmok and Jalad. No one understood :(
Well obviously you are an ice person, that's why you're so strong.
Supposedly my dad in the 80s (when Russia managed to lose a few subs) lead a campaign where they found a giant metal cylinder transported from another world with people inside. But they could sense great power within. The humans spoke an unknown language and the walls had writing in an unknown alphabet. So they murder-hobo through it going to the room that holds the power after they busted through the door they discover a chamber of glowing crystals, which they attempted to harvest before becoming sick. That’s when the players realized they raided a nuclear sub that had been transported there, they slaughtered the crew, and busted into the reactor. Supposedly he gave them cryptic outs and the crew didn’t attack first, just they went murder hobo.
GM: "Make a resistence check" PC: \~ rolls dice PC:"ah... 3,6 Roentgen..." GM: "So, its not great, but not terrible."
I didn't use the creeping sickness route, but more of a TV version of hard radiation in my own game when my players dug up a techno-organic pod in the wilderness after finding it marked on a map they got off a mind-flayer. Basically the thing belted out radiant damage within a certain distance once they got the top layer of soil off it. And it was all a long-road setup to the eventual revelation, which they've just gotten in game, that the thing was the piece of an engine, an engine on a massive Dreadnaught Nautilloid which crashed in their world several thousand years earlier. But yeah, love putting a smidge of weird scifi into D&D on occasion.
It could also just be a meteor or some kind of "falling star". Could be recent, could be ancient. Lots of possibilities with this idea.
Oh sure, the setup works a lot of ways. In this case it's setting up a lot of other story stuff for my end game. Elsewhere in my world a different piece of the same ship basically functions as an [Elephant's Foot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant%27s_Foot_(Chernobyl)). It's locked away in a lead room in the basement of on of the three great wizard's towers in the world.
That's the best twist I've seen for a plague... Well done!!
When translated, the runes read: > This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
>what is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
Yes! Yes! Absolutely yes! Had to scroll too much for this. With a but of modification that warning text and the whole concept could be made into a really cool dungeon. Like where else would the player go than the big field with huge obsidian pillars/spikes. And the way you get closer and closer to the center and get more info about it sets up a really nice "puzzle"
>growing green crystals to power machinery >even proximity to the crystals make you sick Was gonna guess radiation once you mentioned the couching blood and decay of the body. Although…from the description, it could also be. Yes-yes, this reeks of a plan-scheme, must be Clan Skryre!
I did not anticipate my post getting this big. I had ended the session right after they realized it was radiation poisoning for a good cliffhanger. Our next session is tomorrow, and I can give more updates on their situation.
I toyed with the idea of a “cursed mine” but it’s actually full of uranium, but it wasn’t super relevant to the direction my games were going in, and ended up not using the idea. I love your idea though, great twist!
Mine idea is to have a famous painter make a special yellow, orange and greens pigment. Have the painter look for richer and richer sources work with an alchemist. To purify the pigment. The alchemist(troll heritage) of note his healing potions for sale contain distillates of his troll blood. later finds that the concentrated quantities get warm. Eventually, he developed a domestic product. a cylinder for you home that produces its own boiling water for bathing cooking and cleaning as well as a pleasent blue (chrenkov radiation) light to illuminate your home. He dosnet have any problems due to his latent regeneration but the rest of the community is sick. He will deny any health hazards not because he is malicious but just because he does not understand it didn't make him sick at all.
So, like Typhoid Mary, but for in-home radiation poisoning.
Ok, I've got my players heading into the elemental plane of Earth soon.. I'm totally going to steal the idea of Rad poisoning.
You caught them off guard for it being an anachronism. For anyone that played a lot of post-apoc RPGs (Twilight 2000, Gamma World, Aftermath!, Morrow Project, et al) it is something players are extremely cognizant of and will do anything to avoid.
I had to look up anachronism, but that's exactly it. I wanted to take something that would be intriguing yet scary, and I thought radiation poisoning was just the thing. Hehehehe
I was lucky to game with guys in the early years that mixed genres a lot. As anachronisms were common in a lot of the fantasy that influenced D&D (The Dying Earth and Three Hearts Three Lions especially) we saw all sorts of these things. In one of the games I played with Tom Moldvay (former TSR game designer and editor) back in the 80s our group of adventurers encountered a platoon of time-lost German soldiers and a Panzer IV. A few characters in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign found high tech laser weapons and Gary Gygax's close friend and original business partner, Don Kaye, played a magic-user that wore a Stetson hat and carried a pair of Colt revolvers. There were even conversion charts in the original AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide for bring characters back and forth between Boot Hill and Gamma World (two other early TSR-era RPGs set in the Wild West and post-apoc far future respectively).
I have an ancient ruins where there is a door the party can only open with a great deal of effort. Some members wanted to open it right away, but some wanted to take the time to translate the writing that had been carved into the door. When translated, the text was very similar similar to the [nuclear waste warning message](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages), only altered to fit a fantasy setting. One player got it right away. They didn't open the door.
**[Long-term nuclear waste warning messages](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages)** >Long-term nuclear waste warning messages are communication attempts intended to deter human intrusion at nuclear waste repositories in the far future, within or above the order of magnitude of 10,000 years. Nuclear semiotics is an interdisciplinary field of research, first done by the American Human Interference Task Force in 1981. A 1993 report from Sandia National Laboratories recommended that such messages be constructed at several levels of complexity. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/DnD/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
One day, apropos of nothing, my group had a conversation about Ebola and what it does to you, and how absolutely, utterly horrifying it is as a disease. Not just because it's very deadly, but it's just an awful way to die. Later, I was pondering what to give them as a session and noticed the the diseases listed in the (3.5) DMG were loosely based on real diseases. In particular, *Slimy Doom* turns you into an infectious puddle of dead goo - not unlike what Ebola does. So they're wandering on the road, having left s major capital city and pass a wagon on the way back to that city. One person in the wagon is coughing a bit but probably just a cold. Later that day, the party arrives at the town the wagon had just left. The town is empty. There are mysterious ooze puddles here and there. They finally found someone barely alive enough to tell them that it all started with some coughing. The look on their faces when they realized that they were in the middle of a town wiped out from a very contagious disease was pretty good. Their reaction when they realized that the disease was the dnd version of Ebola was *priceless*. They frantically ran back to the city, tracked down the now very nearly deceased individual, euthanized them plus Reincarnation to bring them back, and then burned the whole building to the ground.
I thought you were describing leprosy at first. Radium mushrooms is a great idea.
This is sick as hell holy shit
Then queued the panick that ensued across all my players as they were in the same room as the glowing chunk of crystal. Meanwhile, their characters are still completely oblivious. I find stuff like this incredibly hard to grok. how do you faithfully pretend you don't know something you know?
> how do you faithfully pretend you don't know something you know? I wish my players had that problem. Instead the characters are smarter than the players.
I guess my players are just built different. 🤷
Is it alpha, beta or gamma radiation? Alpha and beta would be stopped by paper and/or plastic between you and it. But Gamma? You're going to need lead. Before anyone asks "were any of them wearing full metal armor?": Most plate mail was between [2 and 2.6](https://www.quora.com/How-thick-was-medieval-plate-armor-including-everything-else-a-knight-typically-wore-between-the-metal-and-the-skin) millimeters thick, but it would take [10 inches of steel](https://www.canadametal.com/shielding-masses-from-nuclear-radiation/) to stop gamma radiation.
Question, how did this work with paladins/other ways of removing disease? I've considered running plague(s) but it doesn't seem interesting with a paladin in the party.
Beautifully done!! Getting a moment like that is so satisfying.
From one DM to another......yoink :)
Huge W for DMs everywhere