It’s been a while since my last post, so I figure it’s time for an update. I’ve done a lot of work, though not nearly as much as I’d like.
Real life strikes again. *sigh*
Anyhow, I’ve done some work with monsters, with rituals, and with general rules tinkering. But mostly, I’ve been working on classes and builds:
Power Sources: In the end, I decided to go with martial instead of ki. The other power sources are of course divine, primal, elemental, and arcane. (Thematically, arcane classes are the sorcerers and warlocks of 4e.) All classes in each power source share one primary ability, with the exception of martial which is split between Strength and Dexterity. Divine classes focus on Wisdom, primal on Constitution, elemental on Intelligence, and arcane on Charisma. Every power source has at least one build option for every ability other than its primary ability.
Build Powers: Unlike 4e builds, which are defined by an assortment of features and/or odd powers, PoL builds are each defined by a thematic pair of powers — a signature encounter power, and a signature daily power. (These powers take the place of 4e’s level 1 encounter and daily powers, and scale with level.) Each signature power gains potency at least in part from a non-attack ability, and in this way each build’s secondary ability is determined.
For example, an archer can choose one of the following combat styles at 1st level: Arrow Storm, Bullseye Bolt, Dancing Spear, or Hurling Marauder. Each combat style comes with a pair of signature powers, so let’s say an archer player chooses the Dancing Spear style. (Obviously, class names aren’t strict definitions of specializations.) This style comes with Dancing Strike, an attack that allows the character a free shift, and Dancing Spear Stance, a stance that allows the character to shift several spaces as a move action. Both powers gain potency from a high Constitution, and since Dexterity is important to all archers, the player will want to prioritize Dexterity and then Constitution.
Build Themes: As I mentioned, martial build themes take the form of combat styles. Divine build themes are divine patrons, elemental build themes are elemental specialties, primal build themes are spirit guides, and arcane build themes are arcane talents.
Stance-Like Powers: The first daily powers I wrote for PoL were the martial signature dailies, and I thought it’d be neat if they were all stances. When I moved on to the other power sources, it occurred to me that stance-like daily powers could be a great way to cut the 5 Minute Workday off at the knees; characters can’t use two stances at once, which creates a big fat carrot for players to continue adventuring. At least until they run out of stance-like dailies, that is.
I ended up writing all daily powers as stance-like effects, though I’ve only written signature dailies so far. Divine dailies transform the character into a kind of divine avatar, primal dailies transform the character into a wild animal, arcane dailies grant the character strange traits, and elemental dailies turn the character into a living manifestation of their favored element.
Stance-like dailies could eliminate the need for action points — which would mean one less thing for players to think about in combat — but would pretty much require every single daily in the game to be stance-like.
Worth it? I haven’t decided yet…
Complete4th 
Martial – yay!! 😉
Glad to hear you’re still scribbling away.
I’m *really* interested to hear more about monsters, and what you’re doing about them. I seem to remember you’re decreasing their hp? If so, you skould really, really include a very simple rule of thumb for converting standard 4e monsters to PoL (such as “multiply hits by 0.65) – it would be a shame to discourage use of all the cool late 4E era monsters
lol, I knew you’d like the change back to Martial. I sent you, among others, an email a few weeks ago so I think you might have me spammed.
I hadn’t considered a conversion guide, but there will absolutely be a make-PoL-monsters-from-scratch guide, thanks to a fellow 4e fan who’s done a lot of work with monsters. A conversion guide will be pretty easy to write.
Hey, I’d love to help you out in any way I can, rule writing or playtesting or what have you. arcaneshield@gmail.com
have you thought about giving all the daily stance powers the ability to end them early to get to use a cool power? probably balanced such that normally you would not want to use them but if your desperate enough it gives you an option.
No, I hadn’t considered this idea. I’ll have to give it some thought…
are you going to leave skills as is or are you going to change them?
I may tweak them, so that divine classes can use Wis for Religion, for example. And I added a few specific DCs for various skills, but other than that, I’m leaving skills largely as-is.
Loving what I am reading
have a couple random thoughts
first on stats, one that might introduce some flexibility, and to have some consistency in each power source is have each source have three stats.
let us say we are talking about arcane and the three are wis, int, and dex. each class would give you a option of two of those three for your primary, so a wizard could be wis or int primary, and then the two not picked would be what you could chose for your secondary stat. this would give alot of flexablity in stat choice, and fluff wise few classes could not justify having two different primary stats
second is with area attacks. the big problem with them in 4e is that each time an area burst goes up a notch (area burst 1 to area burst 2 ect) it is too large of a jump, that is why expand spell is so overpowered and why its so hard to make any spell bigger.
what if area spells are are area blasts, eg fireball would be an area blast 3 in 10. so 3×3 within 10sqs. this provides some granularity, so you could give small increases.
another idea is to be able to add targets or squares outside the burst. so for example fireball could be a area blast 3+2 in 10. this means that your fireball could attack every creature in a 3×3 area and then hit 2 creatures who are adjacent to the area.
I like your idea to change everything to blasts, if only because it avoids using two easily confusable words to define two very similar concepts. I know my group took a while to wrap our heads around the difference between blasts and bursts.
Oddly though, I think that 4e tends to overvalue area damage. For example, fireball covers 9 spaces, so someone thought “Whoa, this spell can deal nine times its damage!!! I’d better cut this sucker down a few damage dice…” Without considering how rarely nine monsters actually stand in a neat 3×3 block, or how much of that damage is wasted on minions, or how circumstantial area attacks are due to friendly fire, or how damage doesn’t actually matter until an enemy drops.
I’m not familiar with Expand Spell though; what exactly does it do?
I meant enlarge spell sorry (see bottom) it is the reason by wizards are better area blasters then sorcerers even though sorcerers in theory are strikers and wizards are not. it also is one of the big reasons why wizards are the best controllers, they can ALWAYS hit 2+ targets with their area attacks from level 1.
in general I think area burst 1’s are fine, a good baseline size for area attacks, the problem is that if you enlarge it you go from getting 1-2 targets to getting 3-5, and it also being all but impossible to not be able to hit at least 2. basically the jump from area burst 1 to 2 is way too large.
(the following ignores the third dimension)
an area burst 1, and a blast 3 both attack 9 squares
if you enlarge a area burst 1 to an area burst 2 it now covers 25sqs
if you enlarge a area blast 3 to an area blast 4 it now covers 16sqs.
one thing you might want to consider is putting real penalties to expanding spells, something to A) make it an interesting choice, rather then a given like it is with enlarge spell and B) to stop controllers from being better area strikers then real strikers.
there is a reason it is all but impossible to enlarge anything unless your a wizard, there are builds who MC and take a paragon path JUST to enlarge their spells and its worth it.
Enlarge Spell
Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: Wis 13, wizard
Benefit: Before using a wizard at-will or encounter attack power, you can choose to take a -2 penalty to each die of damage rolled with the power to increase the size of its blast or its burst by 1.
You can’t use this feat on a power that doesn’t roll dice for damage.
Hello. First time reader and big 4e fan. id like to say first good luck in your endeavor to create something unique and fix the issues with 4e. that said id like to give a bit of input on this. after reading through your blog posts you have a lot of good ideas, and a lot of bad ones in my opinion, but the biggest issue i find is removing something from the game that has been around since its creation by gary gygax. character stats and their modifiers. i understand why you are doing it, i just personally think its the wrong way to go, though i have no constructive way to take it in a different path so take it how you will. second would be the power sources mentions. they are once again classic archetypes that should remain as they are. If you truly are attempting to fix the issues with 4e i would first suggest, not attempting to fix what wasn’t broken in the first place.
I see what you’re saying about ability scores and modifiers, but I don’t know what you’re getting at with your comment about power sources. Is it the abilities that I tied to each of them, or do you not like what I’ve done with the arcane source?
Yes, as far as the sources go. it doesnt makes muck sense to me to once again fix what wasnt broken
How on earth can I get a copy of these rules? It sounds so great but I can’t find any files online and have just emailed C4 a second time. (Once about a year ago)
Hi Desmodaeus, don’t know why I never got your emails! I just sent you one with links to my work so far; if it doesn’t reach you, try getting a gmail address.
Would love to get a copy of you rules. Been 15 years since I DM’ed anything and my kids are asking me to DM their group… Hopefully these can simply what seems to be a daunting learning curve…
Hi Astin, and sorry for the delayed reply! Unfortunately, Points of Light has a ways to go before being playable.
Do you need any assistance? You’ve been relatively silent for a long time now. I myself am working on a more… extreme update, which takes 4e in spirit, some bits of 13th Age, and some of starwars saga edition, which I think is an amazing ruleset.
I plan on having a class for each power source, and every odd level you take a feat, every even level you take a talent. Talents have trees and will take the place of both class features and powers. The intention is that each talent will provide a passive and active bonus… but still in the works with that.
Hi Arcane Shield, it’s great to hear about other fan projects in the works!
If you want to help with Points of Light, I could use feat ideas and suggestions: Which feats do you like best, either conceptually or mechanically? Which do you think are the best designed? Etc.
You can email me, or post to my thread in the 4enclave.