The Gaming Den

As you may be able to guess from this thread, I'm a bit of a Green Lantern fan.

So, I've got a two-part question of sorts for any psionics fans that also have some familiarity with Hal, Kyle, Alan, John, Guy, and the rest.

1) What abilities do you think a Green Lantern has? I believe I've got a good idea, but I figure that other folks out there might know about some seldom-used power that I simply have never read about.

Currently, it's safe to say that a Green Lantern uses his willpower to focus emerald energy for a variety of purposes. The most commonly-used (and famous) powers are that of construct creation, force fields, and flight. Any others?

2) 3.5 Psionics is so well made that it could simulate a Lantern, albeit half-assed. Heck, they even made a prestige class that works with the signature power of a Green Lantern, construct creation. What other powers/prestige class abilities/items/feats/etc. can you think of that would also help make a psion into a good Green Lantern-inspired sort of guy?

Off the top of my head ...

Green Lantern rings can talk, have intelligence, and function as universal translators, but I'm not sure if that really counts as part of the signature Green Lantern "thing".

Life support may fall under "force fields".

Rings seem to have some kind of "detect" abilities, but it's not clear what the limitations on this are.

--d.

Personally, I would do green lantering as a combination of:

Necklace of Adaption
Wall of Force
False Life
Programmed Image
Telekinesis
Locate Object
Fly
Some kind of Force Attack (perhaps Crushing Fist? Mordenkainen's Sword?)
Maybe a Shadow Conjuratio-like effect

While GL makes a lot of crazy crap, when a big green rhinocerous shows up and gores some clown - that's a force effect direct attack. It is not a literal creature with AC and hit points.

I would do it with spells, because I don't actually know how Psionics work and don't care.

Hal Jordan basically can do Evocations (Force), Illusions (Shadow, Figment), and Divinations. He also needs some Transmutations - but all of the ones he has should be Evocation Force effects and are miscategorized (Telekinesis, Flight). He can do some Conjurations, but those are miscategorized from Evocation as well (Mage Armor).

He is also nebulously protected, which is weirdly distributed between various schools, but you'd probably want to just make it a unique game mechanic (GL seems to have temporary hit points that refresh over time).

-Username17

Frank wrote:I would do it with spells, because I don't actually know how Psionics work and don't care.

I'm tellin' you, man, you're missing out.

At any rate, thanks for the replies thus far, d., Frank. I had forgotten about the detection abilities GLs have, d., so I'll have to think upon that. Also, Frank, you are right--much of the time, a construct is just a nifty way to deliver some sort of force attack. Sometimes, however, they can linger and do other stuff.

Basically, a GLish character in D&D would have to have some advanced summoning techniques, as well as just plane good ranged attacks (with special FX to have those attacks take the form of, say, a charging rhino).

Oberoni wrote:
I'm tellin' you, man, you're missing out.

I doubt that, actually. It uses Spell Points.

Charge Casting is inherently problematic in an open-ended roleplaying game. It just doesn't work well, at all, if the game is not specifically finite in extent. Spell Points is a kind of charge casting that allows you to use extra high-powered spells by giving up lower level spells, and vice versa.

That hits a big problem when you hit the D&D power-setup. Namely, that stuff from 8 levels ago is basically pointless. So to an extent, getting more uses out of your current stuff by forgoing some of the old crap is a something for nothing trade-off. There is literally no number of Identifies you can not cast that will be worth you having an extra Teleport.

But that's not what pisses me off about spell points. What pisses me off is that you can't pull a Sailor Moon. The "last gasp" of your magic isn't the really high level spell slot you had left over - it's whatever you can squeeze off for half a spell point or some shit.

In short, when all seems lost and you have to reach for your last gram of strength to fire off your last spell, it's Ghost Sound and not Firestorm. That's bullshit.

I am totally over spell points in role playing games. Especially ones in which there is a power curve even half as stiff as it is in D&D.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Charge Casting is inherently problematic in an open-ended roleplaying game. It just doesn't work well, at all, if the game is not specifically finite in extent. Spell Points is a kind of charge casting that allows you to use extra high-powered spells by giving up lower level spells, and vice versa.

Though I agree, I would have to also agree that you are missing out on something with 3.5 psionics (what I'm not sure, but I'm sure its something).

But as to the charge casting thing, I haven't done the math but by vague memory of practical application as far as I can recall when I actually used these guys the number of spell points the psion gets compared to cost actually ends up meaning that if he throws around the best spells he can (much as a wizard would generally throw around their highest level spells where possible) he eats up his PSP at about the same rate that a wizard eats up high level spell slots, if not faster.

So though charge casting is bad, 3.5 psion charge casting isn't really significantly worse than the screwed up "standard" spell system because it basically ends up around about the same number of best level effects per entirely arbitrary and redefinable day cycle.

If anything its a bit of a rip off because if you DO use the nature of its spell point system set upto "trade" low level spells for high level ones you actually end up with a similar (or I swear sometimes it seemed smaller) number of high level slots to the wizard/cleric, and basically no low level ones (I think they should have been a tad more generous with the PP, especially for the psionic classes other than psion, the wilder and even more so the Psi warrior really get the boot put in on PP, or at least thats what I remember thinking).

On this particular side-track, I will ultimately say that anyone can come up with a quite plausable reason for ignoring something, and it extends to game stuff as well.

Ultimately, I'm sure I could state something like "Well, because of X, I'm not even going to bother with Y..." where Y can be anything.

I'd miss a lot of great stuff if I did that. Psionics might be one. D&D altogether would probably be another.

The Lobster on the Phone wrote:If anything its a bit of a rip off because if you DO use the nature of its spell point system set upto "trade" low level spells for high level ones you actually end up with a similar (or I swear sometimes it seemed smaller) number of high level slots to the wizard/cleric, and basically no low level ones (I think they should have been a tad more generous with the PP, especially for the psionic classes other than psion, the wilder and even more so the Psi warrior really get the boot put in on PP, or at least thats what I remember thinking).

The solution to helping psions catch up isn't giving them more power points. That just breaks the game.

But I love psions - they're my favorite type of caster.

Perhaps not for Psions, but I can certainly see reason to give 1st level Psychic Warriors more than 0 uses per day of their 1st level power.

I had some success using standard battlefield-control spells, modifying only the description. Setting up a forcefield parallel to the floor results in a surface no less slippery than grease, surely a color spray could be in shades of green, and the three magic words for handling a closet troll are Kyle's Green Tentacles.

totally offtopic, how exactly did you find this thread, sir_neil? last post was in 2005.

It's full of juicy goodness.

Of course, I'd do it with a VPP on charges with the charges expent as the powers are defined, with a once-a-day recharge.

He could extend the powers in the pool of n-ray,fly, life support, and tk with 'usable by others' of course that multiplies their cost and therefore while he might ubo life support and fly he prolly wouldn't do his TK unless he only needed it to help a group of kids with shovels...

-Crissa

It is. Green juicy goodness.

****
I could say it's because the Search function works so well, but really all I did was look at all 40 pages in the IMHO forum. If you mean how did I know about it, josephbt, it's because I read it when Oberoni first posted it.