Mana Clash's effect on Chronomancers

[James LaBrie]

Currently, Mana Clash has no effect on Paradox levels. This is rather discouraging, as Paradox spells tend to be some of the most debilitating towards the character.

Solution, make Mana Clash hit at or (possibly) above the rate it affects mana, instead raising the paradox level of the character. This brings NPCs in particular closer to anomaly and backfire rate then they normally are, considering in most fights they don't normally get near the level required for that.

[Laerte]

+1.

[edge2054]

Mana Clash works (conceptually) by burning off stored magical energy. Paradox isn't a stored resource and conceptually is closer to equilibrium than it is to mana.

I don't see how Mana Clash could affect it.

That said, can't you shut down a Paradox Mage with Aura of Silence? Or one of the new antimagic weapon egos?

[James LaBrie]

Conceptually I do see your issue. Remind me; is Aura of Silence mental power vs mental save? In that case, it seems unlikely to work often enough to be a reliable shutdown, especially when antimagic would imply you're actually good against arcane users. My issue with weapon egos, while helpful, is that I need to be next to the Chronomancer to hit. Mana Clash is helpful to deplete their resources, helping to close the distance. Otherwise, particularly against something like a Paradox Mage that has a multitude of skills to keep enemies at bay, it's very hard to close the distance before they inflict an extreme amount of damage.

If the concept is the only issue, perhaps we could work on that, though I don't have any obvious solutions

[edge2054]

Yeah, mind power vs. mental save. As to how reliable it is that really depends on how invested you are in Mindpower. Chronomancers tend to have high will and magic so will have decent base mental saves but don't have any talents that improve it beyond that really (aside from Spin Fate). They also don't have access to silence protection (which is also a very rare immunity for NPCs compared to something like stun or confusion immunity and very rare on equipment as well).

Beyond conceptual issues, Paradox also has no upper limit. One of the things about Mana Clash is once it empties the pool it deals no damage (and the damage is fairly high before that point). I'm not sure allowing the player to Mana Clash NPCs with Paradox Pools ad-infinitum is a good idea either. Also Anomalies can be just as dangerous to the player as they can be to the caster so pushing an NPC Paradox user up into extreme Paradox ranges could have disastrous results.

Anyway, I'm really not fond of the idea personally because I don't see Mana Clash and Paradox in their current forms interacting this way. If Darkgod sees things differently I could live with it but I'd need more convincing to get behind this idea. That said egos or abilities that specifically mess with Paradox I could get behind but conceptually I think they'd need to be much different than Mana Clash and they possibly wouldn't effect other pools (leaving their scope much smaller than Mana Clash). Also, I need to work on Bow and Ammo egos (hopefully tonight or this morning I'll have time to do this) which would include another ranged option for antimagic.


If Mana Clash was to be reimagined though and made to affect Paradox as well as the other resources, I'd make it a debuff that dealt damage as the enemy uses spells based on the resource cost of the spell used. That's an idea I could get behind. But that's a bit more than just a concept change (it's a talent rewrite).

[darkgod]

Yeah both paradox & equilibrium are "external" ressources, you cant really mess with them

[James LaBrie]

Well I suppose I can't exactly argue with any of that.

[edge2054]

If I wasn't afraid of messing over Chronomancer player characters and totally screwing game balance Paradox would be a global effect It's not really meant to represent something the actor 'has' but rather how jacked up the spacetime continuum is.

That said, some antimagic totems could be cool and an easy way to introduce a few new talent effects that could hit chronomancers (like the debuff idea I posted earlier).

[SageAcrin]

For another issue, consider that an entire lategame dungeon is chock full of Mana Clash capable enemies, and that Paradox is a PC resource as well, with extremely fixed rate ways to lower it, and increasing costs on all your skills as it heightens.

This would create an out of proportion threat for Paradox classes(Even higher than the threat to Archmages, which is already quite high.). Mage Hunters would end up spectacularly dangerous to them due to this, and I don't think there's an elegant solution for that.

[darkgod]

Yeah and it's not like there are tons and tons of paradox using foes anyway

[Sirrocco]

Interesting thought - why not go flipside with it? Mana clash deals a healthy helping of damage and *reduces* paradox. Technically, that reduces the in-the-moment power level of the chronomancer (from the whole "higher paradox means more powerful effect" thing), and you get the tradeoff where you don't really shut them down in the same way, but you do get to keep smiting them as they spend their paradox again.

Also, antimagic seems like the sort of thing that would want to reduce the overall level of warped-and-unhappy in the world.

and if "mother nature brings reality slamming back into place, and you bear the brunt of it" doesn't quite fit the mana clash thing... well, perhaps as a different talent in a different place? If we ever wind up with a Time Bandit, it seems like and interesting high-cooldown way of dumping paradox. You could even have it deal extra damage to other chronomancers while reducing *their* paradox. Time Bandits are the sort that get into fights with other chronomantic types fairly regularly, I'd think, and letting someone else pay for their spending sprees seems like it would be be *right* up their alley.