The Book of White Lantern (Hal Jordan)

[Arch-vile]

Healing all wounds is crazy strong. He could just camp by Thor or Superman and heal a massive amount of wounds. I worry that would price him out of pairing with less expensive figures.

I like your wording change though; I think we should just apply that to both sentences.

BRIGHTEST DAY
When a Unique Hero you control within 6 clear sight spaces of this White Lantern that is not an Android, Construct, or Undead and does not have a white Battery Marker on its card would be destroyed, you may instead move 1 white Battery Marker from this card to that figure's card, ignore any wounds that figure would have received, and that figure is not destroyed. Once per game, when this White Lantern would be destroyed, you may instead remove 1 white Battery Marker from this card, ignore any wounds he would have received, and he is not destroyed.

[Arkham]

Personally, I’m much more interested in seeing the whites built on saving lives, rather than healing. I still feel making them focused on healing sort of takes away what the blues are about, and the blues are already one of the least interesting mechanically/army wise, imo.

[Arkham]

After doing some research, here's what I've gathered:

1. White Lantern rings charge up over specific circumstances surrounding life, similar to how Black Lantern rings do with death.
2. Different users have had different key moments on how they've used the abilities, which could help differentiate how different White Lanterns could be designed.
• Sinestro = specializes in taking out Undead/Black Lanterns in mass
• Hal = saving others
• Deadman = resurrection
• Kyle = combination of other rings' abilities (blue, green, red, orange etc.)

We've said we want to have the whites mirror the blacks to a degree, with life being the focus rather than death. So with that all in mind, how about something like this for Hal?

NAME = WHITE LANTERN
SECRET IDENTITY = HAL JORDAN

SPECIES = HUMAN
UNIQUENESS = EVENT HERO
CLASS = SAVIOR
PERSONALITY = FEARLESS
SIZE/HEIGHT = MEDIUM 5

LIFE = 4
MOVE = 6
RANGE = 4
ATTACK = 3
DEFENSE = 3
POINTS = ???

BRIGHTEST DAY
If this White Lantern or a friendly Unique Hero that is not an Android, Construct, or Undead within 4 clear sight spaces of this White Lantern would receive enough wounds to be destroyed, you must instead place one white Battery Marker on this card, to a maximum of 4 placed by this special power for the entire game.

WHITE LIFE BATTERY 4
Add one to this White Lantern's Attack, Defense, and Life numbers for each white Battery Marker on this card.

LIFE OVER DEATH
Once per round, after taking a turn with this White Lantern, you may remove 1 white Battery Marker from this card and then remove up to 2 Wound Markers from this card. You may then choose an adjacent undead figure and place the Wound Markers removed from this card, onto the chosen figure's card.

FLYING
SUPER STRENGTH

Basically, the more he can save himself and others, the stronger his ring gets. It maxes out at 4 saves for the entire game, regardless of any removed markers. Then, once he's maxed out, he's a pure ass kicker, who can expend said markers to self heal and dish out auto-wounds to undead if possible.

Mainly, it drives home a focus on life and the protection of it, without feeling like it's rehashing how the blues or indigos operate. The power also should be worded to initiate before a Black Lantern would be able to roll to convert them, thus delaying your own forces being used against you. When they are, after your saves have run out, you now have the means to dish out wounds to those that have been turned into Undead pawns.

If you wanted, you could even combine the White Life Battery short text into Brightest Day, and add on Fearless Charge as the 3rd power, which would hit more often with the higher life ceiling, for that extra Hal flavor. That combined with this direction would certainly give you the "WOW" factor that an event hero Lantern should, IMO.

BRIGHTEST DAY
If this White Lantern or a friendly Unique Hero that is not an Android, Construct, or Undead within 4 clear sight spaces of this White Lantern would receive enough wounds to be destroyed, you must instead place one white Battery Marker on this card, to a maximum of 4 placed by this special power for the entire game. Add one to this White Lantern's Attack, Defense, and Life numbers for each white Battery Marker on this card.

LIFE OVER DEATH
Once per round, after taking a turn with this White Lantern, you may remove 1 white Battery Marker from this card and then remove up to 2 Wound Markers from this card. You may then choose an adjacent undead figure and place the Wound Markers removed from this card, onto the chosen figure's card.

FEARLESS CHARGE 17
After you take a turn with this White Lantern, if he is not adjacent to any friendly figures and is engaged with at least one enemy figure, roll the 20-sided die and add one to the roll for each Wound Marker on this card. If you roll a 17 or higher you may take another turn with this White Lantern.

[MrNobody]

Adding markers instead of subtracting feels a little funky, but it would solve the problem with the whole +Life value thing. I am a bit worried about being able to save the same figure 4 times per game. Sounds like it could get annoying with a Flash or Spidey.

[MrNobody]

Here’s my attempt to do a take on it. I like reincorporating Fearless Charge, or at least the mechanics.

WHITE LIFE BATTERY 4
Start the game with 4 white Battery Markers on this card. Add one to this White Lantern's Attack and Defense numbers for each white Battery Marker on this card. When this White Lantern would receive enough wounds to be destroyed, you may remove a white Battery Marker from this card to ignore those wounds.

BRIGHTEST DAY
When a Unique Hero you control within 6 clear sight spaces of this White Lantern that is not an Android, Construct, or Undead and does not have a white Battery Marker on its card would be destroyed, you may instead move 1 white Battery Marker from this card to that figure's card. Ignore any wounds that figure would have received, and that figure is not destroyed.

LEADING THE CAVALRY 17
After you take a turn with this White Lantern, if he is not adjacent to any friendly figures and is engaged with at least one enemy figure, roll the 20-sided die, adding 4 to the roll if he is engaged with an Undead. If you roll a 17 or higher you may take an additional turn with any figure you control with a white Battery Marker on their card. You may not take any additional turns with other figures you control.

So this would give him 3 roles he could play;
-Solo tank, just saving himself over and over again.
-Combat medic, saving people and turning them into “cavalry” he can lead into battle.
-Eventually, a WL synergy piece. Note how if a WL has no battery markers left, he can save them, moving a marker to their card and keeping it in the “economy.”

And like I said, I can see “moving white Battery Markers to other cards” being a unifying aspect in the future. Sinestro can maybe move them to Undead to weaken them, Kyle can move them onto the cards of other Lanterns to copy their powers, so on and so on. And then maybe a Life Entity design can play off that by giving +1 Life to all Unique Heroes with white BMs on their cards.

But also it gives us a Hal who’s playable right now as the sort of Deus Ex Machina “cavalry is here” thing that the WLs were in Blackest Night.

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by Arch-vile

Healing all wounds is crazy strong. He could just camp by Thor or Superman and heal a massive amount of wounds. I worry that would price him out of pairing with less expensive figures.

I like your wording change though; I think we should just apply that to both sentences.

If we want to stay the course, I like this direction. I was mostly just against tracking wounds that occurred "this player turn." I can understand the appeal of not going overboard on healing.

I do think there's a lot of merit to considering a "charge up" mechanic that mirrors Black Lanterns. I could see a convergence of the above and Arkham's suggested mechanics working well.

[Arch-vile]

Lots of stuff to digest here! I'm not really a fan of mirroring the Black Lanterns and having Hal slowly charge up. It's unique but just not what I'm looking for in this design. I'd like Hal to start the game at 100%; he's not someone that should be waiting on the sidelines to power up. He's always the first one in the fight.

I do like that Leading the Cavalry power. The simplicity of minor healing or Undead auto-wounds is still appealing, but having Hal literally be the guy that charges in & bonds with whoever he saves is the most thematic thing possible.

[MrNobody]

I guess I just don’t see the appeal of the current “lose a wound and a life at the same time” White Power Battery mechanic. I’ve been wracking my brain the past few days for scenarios where it would come up, and all I’ve got is;

1) When Hal is at 0 wounds, he might think twice before burning a marker. I admit that’s a twist, but it’s not one that strikes me as particularly fun or thematic. (“Look...I was gonna save your life, but I’m not hurt yet so...sorry.”)

2) When there’s a power that works off the number of wound markers on a card.

3) When there’s a power that works off the total life number of a card.

And I’d say it’s a bit generous to consider 2 and 3 separate options. Is there something I’m missing or haven’t considered? It just seems to me like he basically has 8 life except way more complicated and potentially less fun.

I said I’d let y’all do the initial to see if it was fun to play before I raised too much hell, but I just feel like there are a ton of cool ideas being bandied around here that are being tossed aside to stick with this mechanic.

I think I’d feel different if this was just a weird thing that Hal has. But this is the White Power Battery power. It’ll probably be on most, if not all, White Lanterns. And I guess I just don’t see the point in sticking with this minor mechanic for them when there are so many more exciting things that can be done in that space.

[MrNobody]

Originally Posted by Arch-vile

Lots of stuff to digest here! I'm not really a fan of mirroring the Black Lanterns and having Hal slowly charge up. It's unique but just not what I'm looking for in this design. I'd like Hal to start the game at 100%; he's not someone that should be waiting on the sidelines to power up. He's always the first one in the fight.

I do like that Leading the Cavalry power. The simplicity of minor healing or Undead auto-wounds is still appealing, but having Hal literally be the guy that charges in & bonds with whoever he saves is the most thematic thing possible.

Sorry for the double post, just wanted to break up my giant text wall a bit.

Also not loving the “charge up” mechanic. Seems fun gameplay-wise, but the Black Lanterns are fashioned the way they are for thematic reasons. The Blackest Night event was all about them trying to score kills to increase the power of their central battery, so it makes sense that they “charge up” in game. Same isn’t really true of the Whites.

I think what I’d be excited by is each WL having a niche, like what Ark posted about. Hal can save and rally people, Sinestro can be the Undead slayer, Deadman can resurrect. Each one has a role, but they’re all still clearly themed after life and can work well together. Seems a lot better than trying to fit all the things a WL can do onto Hal’s card.

[Arkham]

Originally Posted by MrNobody

Adding markers instead of subtracting feels a little funky, but it would solve the problem with the whole +Life value thing. I am a bit worried about being able to save the same figure 4 times per game. Sounds like it could get annoying with a Flash or Spidey.

I had the power as a must rather than may for that reason. Theoretically, the enemy could just attack Hal, forcing him to burn them quicker than having to deal with trickier figures who are already good at staying alive. I don’t feel he should be choosing who to save, but rather obligated to save anyone in danger, as my understanding the white ring does a bit of its own bidding. This allows the enemy team a way to force it to avoid abuse.

[Arch-vile]

The sole reason for removing a wound marker with the battery is so Hal doesn't kill himself when he spends a marker.

[MrNobody]

Originally Posted by Arch-vile

The sole reason for removing a wound marker with the battery is so Hal doesn't kill himself when he spends a marker.

But you get what I’m saying, right? -1 Life and -1 Wound is just balancing out the scales, basically doing nothing. If he just has 8 Life, it’s going to feel the same in 95% of gameplay situations.

With a power like this, it takes your brain a split second to look down at the card, see how many markers you have, see what the base value is, then add the number of markers to the base value. It may only be like 1/2 of a second, but I think those 1/2s add up when you’re doing them >25 times a game. That’s fine with something like the standard GL power, because that effect is super tangible on the battlefield. But here, it just seems like I’ll be doing those minor mental maths for something that’s an interesting caveat at best.

If he’s basically just going to have 8 life except for like 3 rare occasions, just give him 8 life. Or even better, this gives us the chance to brainstorm something even more exciting.