Light Control

Effect: Array (Environmental Control)

Action: Standard (active)

Range: Ranged

Duration: Sustained

Saving Throw: None

Cost: 2 points per rank

You can generate light as bright as daylight, illuminating a radius determined by your power rank, like a use of Environmental Control.

COUNTERING

Light Control is obviously useful in countering effects with a darkness descriptor by banishing darkness and shadows. So Light Control can counter darkness-based Obscure effects, for example. It may also be able to counter certain light-based effects, interfering with holograms or “solid light” constructs, for example, or powers like Color Control.The ability to control light can counter light-based attacks as well: light blasts, blinding dazzle attacks, and so forth.

ALTERNATE POWERS

In addition to (or perhaps in place of) the default effect, the following Alternate Powers are suitable for a Light Control Array:

• Blast: You can project a blast or beam of light as a Ranged Damage effect. A Light Blast can be a classical laser (coherent light beam), which realistically does lethal damage, but is often non-lethal in the comics. A variant is a specifically nonlethal “photon beam” or something similar, like a bolt of “solid light.”

• Communication: A modulated laser might be used as a medium for Communication, usually visual or auditory, although the signal could carry virtually any sort of information. See the Communication effect for details and configure the effect as desired based on the points available from the Light Control Array.

Alternately, this effect might be acquired outside the Array to make it available to you all the time.

• Create Object: You can form objects out of “solid light,” which are usually glowing and either translucent or opaque (as you choose).

• Dazzle: The archetypal Visual Dazzle is a beam of blinding light, with a rank equal to your Light Control rank. Non-visual forms of Dazzle aren’t usually associated with Light Control.• Dazzling Aura: As a standard action, you can radiate such blinding light that anyone looking directly at you may be temporarily

blinded by a Visual Perception Area Dazzle effect with a rank of one-half your Light Control rank.

• Environmental Control: In addition to the basic ability of illumination, Light Control could also grant the ability to generate heat by projecting infrared radiation. Note that to be able to generate both heat and light at the same time, you either need to acquire a separate Environmental Control

effect or halve your Light Control rank for determining your radius (since the two effects cost twice as much).

• ESP: The ability to direct and gather light allows you to view distant places, giving you Visual ESP at your Light Control power rank. (Note that “light” doesn’t constitute a Medium flaw for ESP, since light is required for normal visual senses anyway.)

• Healing: Some divine or magical forms of Light Control may grant the ability to shed “healing light” over those in need, allowing you to use the Healing power at your Light Control rank. The Energizing extra is a common one for this form of Healing.

• Illusion: With the power to generate and bend light, you can create holograms, Visual Illusions at your Light Control power rank. Apply the Progression power feat to increase the size of your projections.

• Obscure: You can control light in an area to obscure vision, either by filling the area with a blinding white-out or by removing all light, leaving only pitch blackness. This is a Visual Obscure effect at your Light Control power rank.

• Strike: You can create melee weapons or attacks out of light, ranging from a “laser-fist” punch to a “laser sword” or even weapons of “solid light” that inflict melee damage equal to your Light Control rank.

POWER FEATS

• Affects Insubstantial: This power feat may represent the ability to modulate the frequency of light to affect insubstantial beings in different ways. Note that

sensory effects (like Dazzle) work on insubstantial beings already and don’t require this feat to do so.

• Improved Range: Given the directness of a laser beam, a Light Blast might have this power feat to reflect its accuracy over long distances, able to make ranged attacks with an improved range increment (or even no range increment at all with 3 ranks of Improved Range).

• Ricochet: Since light normally “bounces” off reflective surfaces, the GM may choose to allow a limited use of this feat for free to a light-controller with an available reflective surface (mirror, polished piece of metal, etc.). In uncertain cases, the GM can still ask for a hero point expenditure for the power stunt.

• Subtle: While some Light Control effects aren’t particularly Subtle, some can use light shifted partially or entirely outside the visible spectrum, such as infrared or ultraviolet Blasts, making them undetectable to the naked eye.

FLAWS

• Sense-Dependent: Light Control is well suited to SightDependent effects, in addition to those that are already sensory in nature. For example, a Perception Range Nausea or Stun effect of Light Control might be Sight-Dependent to represent modulated or strobe light effects that upset equilibrium or induce nausea or unconsciousness.

ASSOCIATED EFFECTS

The following powers are often associated with Light Control:

• Flight: Light-controllers often have the power to fly, sometimes surrounded by a glowing aura or leaving a glowing contrail behind them. The ability to fly at the speed of light requires 20 ranks of Flight.

• Force Field: You can surround yourself with a protective field of hard light that enhances your Toughness.

• Immunity: Immunity to light-based Dazzle effects (1 rank) is common for light-controllers. Other types of Immunity include light Damage (5 ranks) and all light effects (10 ranks), including Damage, Dazzle, and other powers requiring saving throws.

• Invisibility: This power may be based on the ability to “bend” light around things, making them invisible.

• Light Form: A light-controller might have the ability to transform bodily into light (see the Alternate Form power for details).

• Space Travel: Light Control may be connected with the ability to travel through space at the speed of light (rank 1). The ability to move at light-speed in an atmosphere is considerably more useful, and expensive.

• Super-Senses: The ability to control light can provide certain visual senses, particularly Low-Light Vision, Infravision, UltraVision, and Extended or Radius

Vision.

• Teleport: A Teleport effect can be the ability to transform into immaterial light, moving at the speed of light to another location (passing through any physical obstacles) and reforming there. This sort of Teleport might be Limited to only going places where light could normally go (unable to penetrate opaque barriers,(for example). Realistically, since light can only travel 186,000 miles per second, such a power should be limited to no more than rank 10.