I ran a ghoul combat for my first time tonight, and their damage shows as being Radioactive Physical Damage.
If a ghoul does 3 points of damage, how is the damage applied against a target immune to radioactive damage (such as against another ghoul)? Does that ghoul take both 3 points of physical damage and 3 points of radioactive damage, which would then trigger that ghoul’s heal ability?
How would 3 points of Radiactive Physical damage be applied against a target with 2 DR vs Radioactive, and 1 DR vs physical.
The book does not appear to explain this at all – or perhaps I have just rolled 20’s on my perception checks.
As noted on page 31 of the rulebook, if an attack inflicts both normal damage and radiation damage, apply the radiation damage separately and last, after everything else.
The “radioactive” property on a physical attack works the same as it does for weapons like the fat man. In the weapons section there is a description for the different effects weapons can have. These effects trigger on rolls of a “face” on the die. So if a ghoul does 3 radioactive physical damage, it means every hit marker and every face deals one physical damage, and every face also deals one radiation damage. So say you roll the 3 combat dice and get a blank, a double hit marker, and a face, then the attack would deal 1 radiation damage (apply radiation resistance or immunity if any), then it would deal 3 physical damage (apply physical resist if any).
Note that “radioactive” physical attacks are different from attacks that deal straight radiation damage (like the gamma gun). These do not deal physical damage at all and instead all the damage (regardless of it being faces or not) is radiation damage.
It is also possible for a weapon or attack’s base damage (not a property like “radioactive”) to be more than one type. For example the plamsa gun does physical and energy damage base. In this case all damage rolled (regardless of faces) is whatever type the target has the lower resitance of between the two.