Scaled down Green Lantern

[Rurik]

A friend of mine wants to play a sort of "trainee lantern" in a PL8 game we are playing, but he is having trouble scaling down the ring. I'm having a hard time understanding it too. I know that the PL is supposed to limit combat bonuses, but does it apply for things like flight?

Assuming his will is 8 can someone help me out with making a PL8 ring?

[Saltcrow]

Flight, or most things that do not require any dice rolls are not limited by PL. However, at PL 8 (and 15pp/PL), I doubt one could afford much ranks of Flight.

Here's a simplified rendition of the Power Ring I made up:

Power Ring: 62-points (removable -12pp)- 50pp
•AI and Database: feature 2- 2pp
•Communications: senses 1 (commlink to base)- 1pp
•Flight: flight 6 (120MPH)- 12pp
•Force Field: impervious protection 8, immunity 10 (life support)- 26pp
•Force Manipulation: 16-points array, all dynamic- [21pp]
••force blast: ranged damage 8
••force construct: create 8
••lifting: move object 8

So that's 50 points out of 120 is used to make the more basic functions of the ring. I left out the scanning beam/universal translator as they are somewhat situational and less required for fluff and as such can be stunted off of the Force Manipulation array.

[JDRook]

That's a tall order. There's quite a few PL10 GL builds on the boards, but 8 is getting tight. Are you also using the standard 15p/Pl for 120p to start?

As a trainee, you may way to figure out how much less the he can do with the Ring than full-fledged GLs. For instance, Flight is not actually limited by PL (although high-speed Slam Attacks may be a consideration), but there may be some arbitrary limit placed on him for the sake of your game setting. Maybe he's only permitted to use subsonic speed (about Flight 8 ) while based on Earth (which is where I assume you're based), or maybe his Space Travel is limited to only between Earth and Oa. There may be similar limits on the Scanning Beam, Universal Translator, and possibly even the Database until he's proven himself.

The Force Bubble may be an issue. I usually use that as a base power for the array when lowering PL since it's the hardest to reduce, but you may want to simply not have it available for trainees. If you must, though, one way to make a really cheap Bubble is Burst-Affect Others on 9p of Life Support leaving out Starvation & Thirst (the Bubble doesn't serve meals) for 18p and and adding ranks of Reach until it's far enough out for your liking or big enough for your array.

For the rest of it, you'll need watch PL limits. The Force Field will need to drop unless his Dodge/Parry are very low (4 or less). The Force Manipulation powers are tied to Will, so if he has 8 Will, then 8 ranks of Force Blast, Force Constructs and Lifting would work fit comfortably in a 16p Array pool, plus points for each array slot. (Decide whether you want Dynamic as a trainee.) The Mobile Constructs effect, if you choose to have it, would need to be rank 5 to fit at that size. Give him a +8 total attack bonus on his Ring powers and he's good to go.

Of course, Will doesn't have to be at PL; all the established GLs have Will higher than their PL, balanced with a lower Fortitude, so it would be completely reasonable to give your GL trainee a Will of 9 or 10 (no doubt showing serious promise as a natural talent) and raising his Force Manipulation effects. For Will 10, you could have the 3 main slot at rank 10 (blasts as strong as a tank and constructs stronger than steel), Mobile at 6 ranks and even have room for the Bubble with a couple ranks of Reach. His accuracy would have to drop down to +6 overall to balance PL, but the array with all 5 slots Dynamic would only cost 29p total, and that's before the Removable discount.

Think on what you want and I might whip up a full PL8 ring later tonight.

EDIT - actually Saltcrow's build is really good, and 50p is a good target for the cost of the ring.

[Rurik]

Thanks for the replies, they really helped. I'll talk with my friend about dropping some stuff out of the ring completely and use Saltcrow's build as an example.

[Zaran]

Have you talked with the GM? Seems like if they wanted to do a PL 8 campaign that they probably didn't want space cops in the game.

[kenseido]

Berior has a PL9 Green Lantern in his thread of Street level builds.

[Foreshadow]

Personally, when I see lots of green lantern stuff I don't think a guy like Hal Jordan should have an 18, and then the rest peppered just below.

For me, maybe the 'average' should be rank 12 to 14 at the most. Hal should be a 16 and honestly I don't like the DC approach of making villainous versions always slightly less. Sinestro should have the same or slightly more but that goes against the ethos I see. Meaning, that is one reason why the DC approach can get silly and a reason I didn't read their comics. Yet, when you watch you'll see a lot of heroes enmasse and the idea of them being so high rank gets ridiculous. Perhaps the concept of the new marvel game would be handy. Solo Lantern rank 14, buddy rank 15, solo rank 16 or something like that as we assume the more 'solo' they get the more power creep sets in. In other words like solo D10, team d6, and buddy d8 or something like that.

I see lanterns all the time get their shield effect shattered, and that to me means the rank is high but against an 18 rank effect it goes over and shatters it. Hal for example, gets his stuff shattered by Star Sapphire and yet what is her rank placed at, like 15.

I think Hal has power creep, and the corp in general. They don't need that rank to demonstrate the stuff I see them do, minus some comics where the writer took a flight of fantasy.

I'd set the average green lantern to PL 12, make the ring 12. Keep in mind there are A LOT of them. An army of guys with rank 12 blasts, is nasty.

Maybe make it rank 14 effect, +10 attack, but more isn't needed.