My 4e Clone: Points of Light

Yeah, themes would be my second choice of place to put specific concepts.

I'm curious though; what do you see PPs as? This question isn't aimed at Dr. Bad Wolf in particular; I'm interested in all opinions.

IMO, Themes and PPs are exactly the same thing, just in different level brackets.

But I like that. I think the game needs exactly that.

To me Paragon Paths are elements of the character that they grow into or are not immediately obvious when they're starting out. In Star Wars for example, Luke would have gotten the Jedi Knight paragon path coming into Return of the Jedi. After eight years traveling the world and honing himself Bruce Wayne took the Batman paragon path.

Indeed, the notion from Batman Begins of becoming more than a man, but a legend is EXACTLY the thing you should be looking for in a paragon path. In 4E you start out a hero who is a bit larger than life, but by paragon tier a character should be one of the most important people in the world (and at epic tier the characters become one of the most important beings in the cosmos when it comes to epic destinies).

Things like General of the Armies of [Insert Kingdom here] or Mage of the Hidden Circle (provided the Hidden Circle is some sort of group with world-wide reach) are what you should be shooting for... not a Pit Fighter (to use one example from 4E that while great mechanically just was NOT paragon in fluff to my mind)... unless you're referring to the Legendary Pits of Kha'ra'brek where only the most legendary warriors of a generation are allowed to train and compete (or some similar fluff).

The point of a Paragon Path should be "Go Big or Go Home" when it comes to fluff.

doctorbadwolf wrote:

IMO, Themes and PPs are exactly the same thing, just in different level brackets.

But I like that. I think the game needs exactly that.

I was going to suggest that if we had Themes in the original design they might have made paragon level where one gained access to a second theme

Chris24601 wrote:

After eight years traveling the world and honing himself Bruce Wayne took the Batman paragon path.

The years from when that 8 year old went went from mourning to Batman are back story (... philosophically Bruce died with his parents and was reborn when he discovered the totem he was a ghost and after that a sham - Clark Kent is a real person - Bruce Wayne simply isn't)

What people seem to be suggesting is an idea I want to scrib from Ultramodern4: The Ladder. Basically in Ultarmodern4 you pick a Class and a Ladder at character creation. It's almost like 4e with Themes, but Ladders grant power swaps at every level, some mechanics, and the ability to a different main stat if you meet certain requirements (Example use Dex instead of Str for all powers when wielding X weapon). I really like how these two parts interact and how much more freedom it brings to a Class. I think implementing something like that for "Themes" in 4e would be really cool. Full set of power swaps for all levels and alternate main stats would make Themes feel relevant and open up some really unique gameplay.

cyvaris wrote:

What people seem to be suggesting is an idea I want to scrib from Ultramodern4: The Ladder. Basically in Ultarmodern4 you pick a Class and a Ladder at character creation. It's almost like 4e with Themes, but Ladders grant power swaps at every level, some mechanics, and the ability to a different main stat if you meet certain requirements (Example use Dex instead of Str for all powers when wielding X weapon). I really like how these two parts interact and how much more freedom it brings to a Class. I think implementing something like that for "Themes" in 4e would be really cool. Full set of power swaps for all levels and alternate main stats would make Themes feel relevant and open up some really unique gameplay.

Trying to build a character who is highly skill oriented brought me to the conclusion that the same issue with attributes on combat capability applies outside of combat ...

In general one could go a few directions make more than one attribute applicable all the time or (the I hate dump stats idea) or simply make the base attribute more adjustable. (or the heros/winners play to there own strengths idea). 4e kind of uses the latter for combat

Applying the heros play to there strengths can be enabled for other skills.
One idea to address that atleast partially is have an attribute selected at the time you take the skill (this is your primary determiner attribute each skill could have multiple choices it expresses your typical performance style. I have seen 2 fairly plausible ones for each 4e skill.

Perhaps an attribute might be selected that reflects the approach taken towards learning/training in the skill - for instance when learning - Most learn-able skills might be learned through inspiration and giftedness (cha/int?), or discipline (wis), or tenacious(con) practice. (using this reasoning to achieve heroes or winners play to their strengths TRAINED skills might for a very wis based character use WIS other skills would then use one of the two above.

And all the lines of dump stats suck idea, when a given skill is actually used you determine based on the task ... an additional attribute that is the basis for that use for instance nature skill used to name a creature (int) nature skill used to influence a creature(cha) nature skill used to notice somethings wrong(wis).

Garthanos wrote:

Chris24601 wrote:

 After eight years traveling the world and honing himself Bruce Wayne took the Batman paragon path.

The years from when that 8 year old went went from mourning to Batman are back story (... philosophically Bruce died with his parents and was reborn when he discovered the totem he was a ghost and after that a sham - Clark Kent is a real person - Bruce Wayne simply isn't)

It depends on when you're starting the story whether its back story or not. In "Batman: Year One" he's already been trying to fight back against the criminals of Gotham and knows he needs to be something more, but its not until that bat breaks through the window that all his thoughts and plans come together into "I shall became a bat!" and Batman is born from the ashes of Bruce Wayne.

The same holds true for "Batman Begins" (which is what I was specifically referencing in my previous post) and in that film there is a fairly clean divide between his activities with the League and then doing his recon/setup in Gotham and his activities once all his work comes together in the identity of Batman.

One paragraph or less than a page discovering that without the totem he is missing something.. doesnt count (as going through heroic tier)
They went for years without elaborating the process or throwing hints to maintain a sense of mystery about how he became what he became....

Arguably people might play starting at paragon just based on power scale, then heroic tier might be entirely in backstory (fut unless you want to play bruce being a drop out in order to find specialist teahers and sneaking in to there offices at night and similar story line... not thinking even that will be overly interesting) Elaborating on him getting himself thrown in prison as practice was kind of adventurish though and while the late training with the group under Raz Al Ghul was interesting it was perhaps not very close to adventuring.

C4 wrote:

Points of Light is the true-to-4e clone I've been working on since the start of the year, and this is the thread to talk about it. The purpose of this clone is to have a game which adheres to the 4e-isms that we all love, while addressing the problems that were never officially errataed. My goals include, but are not limited to:

1. Fix the math, and less math. No feat taxes, no enhancement bonuses, no stat boosts, just +1 per level. Easy to adjust the scale if you want flatter math.

I am now curious about skills? did they get hit by this same banner?

Garthanos wrote:

C4 wrote:

1. Fix the math, and less math. No feat taxes, no enhancement bonuses, no stat boosts, just +1 per level. Easy to adjust the scale if you want flatter math.

I am now curious about skills? did they get hit by this same banner?

Most definitely! I also included a lot of specific skill DCs in the Skills pdf, to avoid the "Wut, skills DCs scale with PC level?!" confusion/trolling that results from page 42.

I'm glad that you brought up skills, because I need to decide how to tweak how abilities get applied to different skills. Due to the way I'm handling rituals and utility powers, players are going to really want to apply their prime ability to their class' 'power source skill.' (Religion = divine, nature = primal, etc.)

So I have to decide, for example, whether to keep Religion as an Int skill and give divine classes a trait allowing them to use their prime ability. Or whether to simply make Religion a Wis skill.

C4 wrote:

Garthanos wrote:

C4 wrote:

1. Fix the math, and less math. No feat taxes, no enhancement bonuses, no stat boosts, just +1 per level. Easy to adjust the scale if you want flatter math.

I am now curious about skills? did they get hit by this same banner?

Most definitely! I also included a lot of specific skill DCs in the Skills pdf, to avoid the "Wut, skills DCs scale with PC level?!" confusion/trolling that results from page 42.

I'm glad that you brought up skills, because I need to decide how to tweak how abilities get applied to different skills. Due to the way I'm handling rituals and utility powers, players are going to really want to apply their prime ability to their class' 'power source skill.' (Religion = divine, nature = primal, etc.)

So I have to decide, for example, whether to keep Religion as an Int skill and give divine classes a trait allowing them to use their prime ability. Or whether to simply make Religion a Wis skill.

I saw a list once for using more than one attribute for skills so. .you would have religion be Evangelical/Inspired (Charisma) or Judicial/Discovered(Wisdom) or Intellectual(Learned)....selected when you learn it.
Another option disconnects them.
The task specific selection for which attribute ie what am I using my religion skill for determines which attribute is used with it this time.

I am kind of liking the idea of a different attribute being used depending on TRAINED vs untrained use.

Heroes/Winners Play to their Strengths is the idea that its not a bad thing that a Character can end up using on just one attribute for most of there significant activities. In effect it might boil down to your class abilities and your trained skills are more level based instead of attribute based.
However for untrained skills and improvisations that you might end up being out of sorts and using something different. Its when you are doing things that arent yours or forced by imbalance or perhaps an enemy having combat advantage that you use an off attribute for actions in a fight. (A rogue forced to use STR a fighter forced to use DEX for instance)

Similar could be used for skill use... While I dont think STR could be the basis for every skill every TRAINED skill could describe the advantage gained from training as determined by Discipline  (WIS), Persistance and Repetition(CON),Inspiration and Quality Communication(CHA), Fast thinking and analysis (INT). Or something like that.

Perhaps since strength doesnt work so well in this requards we could specify trained skills should be based on a secondary attribute for everyone that would might avoid double dipping

Quite honestly 4e kept too much of the skill system from 3e and didnt apply enough of its own sensibility to it.

I've been polishing the PoL controllers, and I noticed something odd about 4e powers that create walls: they always seem to be in multiples of 4. Usually 'wall 8' or 'wall 12,' which seems odd.

My group hasn't seen many walls powers in play, so I wonder if anyone can shed some light on why multiples of 4 rather than multiples of 5?

There's quite a large difference between being dazed and being stunned. Even between being dazed and being staggered -- that's dazed, with the added restriction that 'you can only pick a minor or a move.' You might even say there's a huge difference.

A dazed enemy is somewhat constrained if not already conveniently positioned, but can usually still attack and thus reliably contribute to his allies' success. But a stunned or even a staggered enemy almost might as well not exist.

This is a problem for my Points of Light project, because each controller has a feature that upgrades certain conditions to more extreme conditions -- and a couple of them can upgrade dazed to staggered.

So here's an idea: instead of having multiple action-denial conditions, there's only one of them. Staggered, stunned, one of those two. Anyway, there's just the one, but there's always a certain 'probability of effect' associated with any given power that imposes the condition. Like a hit line might read "X damage, and the target is 50% stunned (save ends)." After being hit, the target starts each turn rolling to see if it loses its actions that turn, and then ends each turn by rolling a save to end the condition as usual.

This allows more gradual transitions between 'different' conditions. I hate adding strange die rolls to combat, but I know that leaving dazed and staggered/stunned as they are now is going to create uncomfortable system mastery, and generate a bit of understandable annoyance in players. ("An at-will stagger attack? Suweeet!")

Similar to your thought I think... I was considering implementing a system where wounds were basically a case of creating a affliction which induces recurring conditions. They might recur when you roll 1 or 2 or 19 or 20 on your first attack roll. Being affected by the condition was rolled separate and was distinct from over coming the condition when it occurred.

If you're going for the spirit of 4E and its consistency, then I'd make any negative effects only show up on low rolls, never on high rolls. High roll always being a good is one of the things that helps the game to be more intuitive for new players and inflicting a negative condition on them when they crit isn't really in the spirit of heroic fantasy (muscle pulls and the like should occur when you hit the target wrong, not when you hit it perfectly right).

If you MUST have negative conditions stretching so high up the chart then make it natural odd rolls (never on natural even rolls). This preserves the natural 20 as a perfect hit while allowing for significant chances for a negative effect (like a pulled muscle causing problems) to happen at any time.

Chris24601 wrote:

If you're going for the spirit of 4E and its consistency, then I'd make any negative effects only show up on low rolls, never on high rolls. High roll always being a good is one of the things that helps the game to be more intuitive for new players and inflicting a negative condition on them when they crit isn't really in the spirit of heroic fantasy (muscle pulls and the like should occur when you hit the target wrong, not when you hit it perfectly right).

The theory of that one wrt my injury syste is that you cant do something using the normal perfected techniques without tweaking the impairment - instead of some other form of preventing you from doing it perfectly it just gives repercussions.

It's also kind of intended to put the person off balance from what is normal...

People notice both really high rolls and really low rolls so I was also thinking one of the problems that needs solved in any protracted injury system is keeping track and remembering to apply it - perhaps you are right and the consistency would be more useful than those extra touches.

Garthanos wrote:

Chris24601 wrote:

If you're going for the spirit of 4E and its consistency, then I'd make any negative effects only show up on low rolls, never on high rolls. High roll always being a good is one of the things that helps the game to be more intuitive for new players and inflicting a negative condition on them when they crit isn't really in the spirit of heroic fantasy (muscle pulls and the like should occur when you hit the target wrong, not when you hit it perfectly right).

The theory of that one is that you cant do something using the normal perfected techniques without tweaking the impairment - instead of some other form of preventing you from doing it perfectly it just gives repercussions.

It's also kind of intended to put the person off balance from what is normal...

People notice both really high rolls and really low rolls so I was also thinking one of the problems that needs solved in any protracted injury system is keeping track and remembering to apply it - perhaps you are right and the consistency would be more useful than those extra touches.

Hmm perhaps having injury repercussions triggered by poor performance (ie a low roll) OR on types of actions defined as exertions (such as those dailies etc) would be true to form and better emulate and actually make the situation a choice... or make the threshold 5 or less for exertions.

My latest addition to Points of Light, the five classic chromatic dragons. I've added morale entries to each monster along with each tactics entry, to provide a guideline for when monsters will throw in the towel. Check it out!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B59SaBrvxRDSejJaYU1fSWVvaUU/edit?usp=sharing

(The wyrmlings and young ones, at least.)

Just curious, where you planning on including Skill Based Powers?  I did not see any references to them.

And looking at races, how were you planning on working with races like Shades and Vampires where they can be turned into them?

Liking what I am seeing, by-the-way.  Might steel some ideas for my current game.  

To answer in order:

1. Yes. All utility powers will be skill-based. I.e., each requires training in a given skill, and a skill check to determine how well the power is executed.

2. I hadn't given any thought to undead races, but if I do include them, I'd handle them more-or-less like the revenant.

Nice!

Just one question: Why did you make reds skirmishers instead of soldiers?

Fundamentally, soldiers are team-monsters. Pair them with say, artilleries, and they create an interesting tactical challenge.

But iconically, dragons are solos, and so they should each shine as solo challenges. A solo soldier is essentially just a generic monster with +2 AC, so I opted to go skirmisher with the red because skirmishers work well with every caste.

Are you doing anything with Martial Practices?
I am seriously considering transforming martial practices in to something along the lines of Heroic Exertion (a way to spend your HS to enhance most any skill you are trained in, in several ways). They werent careful about how they balanced MP... and they created artificial barriers around normal skill use, by defining things in terms of enhancements of whatever you allow without expenditure, it prevents that.

Also 13th Age uses something they call Recoveries.... which keeps the connection to healing but I think I would evolve HS a different direction and go with Heroic Reserves so they can be used for things other than delimiting recoveries / representing longer term energy depletion.