Time Bandits: A Third Chronomancy Class.

[eronarn]

I actually really love this idea though I don't like any of the proposed talents at all. An alternative: TIME RUINER. http://chainsawsuit.com/2010/03/10/ruination/

The starting zone is saved for each game. Later in the game (should be before the East if you want it to be at all balanced), you run into a temporal rift guarded by a Warden NPC. Looking through the gateway, you recognize it as the place you started your adventuring career. You have an option to enter, and if you choose to give yourself one item from your inventory, you unlock the Time Ruiner class.

The Time Ruiner starts in a zone as normal, but is met by a copy of the last character to have gone through the time portal, who gives them that item to start the game with. This completely ruins continuity and sets the young adventurer on a life of crime... time crime.

Of course, paradox is maximized when temporal theft is bidirectional! Your future self steals things from your present, you steal things from your future self to make up for it, and you both steal from everyone else on Maj'Eyal while you're at it.

Mechanically, Time Ruiners have a certain level of base Paradox that never goes away (which causes failures/anomalies as usual). Their activated abilities steal from their future, increasing their Paradox. If their Paradox gets too high, they'll be stolen from! This passively reduces Paradox - they have no way to actively do so. They also always have a level of Paradox because if it drops too low they'll receive gifts from the future, again increasing their Paradox towards some base level.

Their temporal trees would look something like this:

~2 generic temporal trees
~2 mostly activated Time Ruiner trees, focusing on stealing from either yourself or from others (probably requiring a cat point)
~2-3 more passive Time Ruiner trees, focusing on specific facets of gifts/theft (luck, spells, resources, etc.)

I think this would allow for a lot of temporal weirdness, feeling very different from current chronomancy, while having a minimum of scumming. Sending one item back is a very powerful effect but if there's any item so strong that it makes a tremendous difference in winnability to find it at L1 it should be looked at anyways.

[Aoi]

As to uncapped, nah, I don't like it. It encourages grinding up till the talent is at 5/5 and restarting again and again.

Oh no, don't mean that the bonuses stack over and over with each rebirth, but that it's not limited to 5 points. The more points you drop into it, the weaker you are currently, but your next life will be that much more powerful. (So, with the random example that you can bring one item per point, you could raise it up to 20 points and take 20 items.)

[String]

I probably would balance it something like this.

TL 1 - You give your past self some advice, increasing all saves by X.
TL 2 - You teach your past self some basic knowledge, giving it +2 generic talent points
TL 3 - You teach your past self some advanced knowledge, giving it +2 class talent points
TL 4 - You continue to watch your past self after your initial encounter and will pull it out of the timeline for a split second when it's about to die and take it's place. (Grants the past self an extra life or something along those lines.)
TL 5 - You split the timeline, allowing you to pass an item off to your past self without destroying the spacetime continuum. This permanently increases your past self's paradox by 25 or 50 if the item was an artifact.

I'd also make the talent easily accessible in combat. Current character is about to die and you don't see a way out, "Well it's up to you now kid."

I've goofed around with it a bit this morning. Having trouble getting the newGame function to pass along the characters birth values (it keeps pulling up the birth screen and letting me reselect everything).

As to uncapped, nah, I don't like it. It encourages grinding up till the talent is at 5/5 and restarting again and again.

What about this:
Activating the skill instantly teleports you to a "time" themed room with a portal.
Activating the portal takes you to a scaled time warden boss fight.
If you defeat the encounter, the spell is a success.
Every time you succeed the boss fight gets more difficult for the subsequent linked-playthrough.

?

[Tasseographer]

Eronarn: That's also a really awesome interpretation of the concept! I think I actually like your mechanics a little better in many cases, too.

I feel like the class should have temporal warden hunting parties who show up more and more often on the overworld map, actually, in any case. For Paradox Mages, too, come to think of it! It's always implied that there is some vast game of cat-and-mouse going on between Temporal Wardens and Time Criminals, but we never see any aspect of it. As a Temporal Warden, you close the rift... but Paradox Mages never get the corresponding quest of CAUSING trouble or escaping the authorities.

How about this:
Closing the Rift gives Temporal Wardens a clue regarding who CAUSED it-- and makes a new dungeon appear, the lair of an evil Paradox mage they can go beat the poop out of.
Closing the Rift implicates a Paradox Mage in its creation, and they have to kill or evade groups of temporal wardens who might appear in any zone for a while.
The glowing man outright attacks Time Bandits/Time Ruiners for ruining and banditing time.

[eronarn]

I'd really like to see one of the high-Paradox effects be a bunch of temporal wardens showing up to lecture you on the space-time continuum, if that isn't in the game already.

[edge2054]

Actually if you pay close attention to the paradox mage and temporal warden unlocks it gives you a clue what kinda mayhem paradox mages can cause

[Aquillion]

I'd really like to see one of the high-Paradox effects be a bunch of temporal wardens showing up to lecture you on the space-time continuum, if that isn't in the game already.

Not so much 'lecture you' as 'assassinate you' -- it would actually make sense, if your Paradox is absurdly high, for one of the anomaly / backlash effects to summon a bunch of hostile Temporal Wardens to kill you so you'll stop screwing things up for everyone else.

[Avianpilot]

I like the humor value of the lecture idea, but yeah it's more likely that they've come to kill the character. Still isn't going to stop me from bending time to my will!

[eronarn]

I like the humor value of the lecture idea, but yeah it's more likely that they've come to kill the character.

Having 'cute' effects of anomalies is just fine IMO - summoning random townsfolk is already in, for example, but you could run into your own corpse, or yourself as a child, or your evil (or good!) twin without having those encounters be life-threatening. Indeed, one advantage of a 'lecture' could be giving you a quest you can do.

It'd be cool for any TW encounter to occur in a Fearscape-like temporal rift, but based on the layout of the level you're currently on, like how the temporal rift in Daikara works.

[Aoi]

Why not have both? Some time wardens could be the type where they believe that anybody who interferes with the stream of time [other than those like them] is a threat and others might believe that a free agent could be converted to their cause... or make a slight change to the timeline they want while keeping their own hands clean.

[Grey]

Good cop, bad cop time wardens? There's John Royce, the straight-laced, do everything by the book warden who doesn't hold with anyone stepping out of timeline. But he's paired up with Sylvo Baracour, a maverick go-getter, a risk-taker, a loose cannon, ready to bend the temporal rules to get the job done. It's a mismatch of anomalous proportions! But can they band together to fight time crime whilst dealing with shadows from their future past? Follow their adventures in our timeless new series Time Cops: Past Redemption!

[Elkan]

Awesome grey... just....awesome

[Avianpilot]

Indeed, one advantage of a 'lecture' could be giving you a quest you can do.

Love the idea. A variant of that could serve as the unlock for the class. Have a Paradox Mage or Temporal Warden encounter these guys, with the requirement that they go on this quest to catch the time bandit. Perhaps have an area that is similar to the Rift for the background to the setting; I'm thinking an area that changes depending on when you're in the area. For example, imagine the Lumberjack village. You chase the bandit there, and it looks like it does now. He gets hurt by a certain amount, and warps. You follow him and appear in the future, with the village having houses that are more like modern houses, and perhaps the town is bigger. The bandit jumps again, and it's forest, jumping to the past before the village was constructed. Maybe have another jump or two along those themes (I think during the Spellblaze would be good for one of them) before finally forcing the bandit to submit. Spare him and unlock the class (and/or some other reward for doing the quest on subsequent playthroughs), or kill him to receive a reward from the Wardens.

Of course this quest would have to be something a little less random than a specific anomaly occurring, but I think that it would be a good way to unlock the class.

[Sirrocco]

Spare him and get a bit of extra love for whichever character you make next?

Also, I find that I prefer "time bandit" to "time ruiner" as a class name.

[Grey]

I have an idea for a time-travelling roguelike game where you will quickly earn the reputation "Timeraper" amongst the elder races. I'm not sure that's appropriate for a class name in ToME though...