Hey all. Recently got the core rules as a birthday gift, super excited to run it for my group. I had a quick question about construct powers (Green Lantern, Captain Cosmic, etc). If a character is able to rapidly/instantly change between melee or ranged weapons, should that simply be handled as flavor and have the character use either the Close Combat or Ranged Combat quality with the same damage type? Could hard light constructs be considered a Signature Weapon? Is there a mechanical aspect I’m overlooking? Any input would be great, really excited to play this game!
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Personally, how I would build a Hero who makes Constructs would be to have the Hero be a Minion-Maker. Although that only really works if the Character’s Constructs continually do stuff without the Hero needing to do anything, and are destroyable. You definitely could go another route and just have your Constructs be represented by your Abilities and Powers, etc.
Anyway, onto your actual question:
Yep, that absolutely works. Although remember that Close Combat and Ranged Combat aren’t the only Qualities that you can use to Attack. You could use, e.g., Self-Discipline, Awareness, maybe even Science!
I’d definitely say so.
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Awesome, thanks for your input! Hadn’t considered the minion angle before!
You’re welcome. I actually got the idea for Constructs as Minions because Captain Cosmic’s Deck in the SotM Card Game has his Constructs as Targets.
And Captain Cosmic’s constructs even do the basic minion actions. One Defends, one Attacks, one Buffs, etc.
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The Minion angle was one of the things I disliked about the Mayfair and WEG/Yeti licensed DC superhero games. Green Lantern did not have telekinesis power he created a flying glowing green hand… now figure out the strength , structure, and speed stats for the hand.
Of course I do own all WEG/Yeti books and even bought Blood of Heroes (2nd edition) from Pulsar that licensed the Mayfair system for their home setting. The choices for Hal Jordan write up just rubbed me the wrong way.
For Green Lantern specifically, I would probably consider his Lantern Constructs to be a unique Materials Power, because its effect is to create stuff which he then uses to various great effect. This doesn’t matter a lot compared to using Signature Weapon, except for Red Abilities - Signature Weapon uses the Hallmark abilities, and I think the Materials abilities would fit a bit better. And if it were Green Lantern’s explicitly Willpower-derived constructs, Self-Discipline would make a lot of sense as the usual quality to go with it.
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Personally, I would use Cosmic + Self-Discipline, but that’s just for aesthetics and not taking into account the mechanical considerations.
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Yeah, aesthetically that would also work. Red Energy powers in Sentinels are pretty attack-focused mechanically, but if your construct-user is shifting to attacks as they weaken it works.
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