Reworking Chronomancy ver 2

[0player]

Still Time Travel, isn't it? I mean, Paradox Bolt supposedly moves back in time (from the future back to you), Time Skip is sending things to future, Echoes about pulling stuff from the past, and Uncertain Position sounds more like something about space, but if renamed something in the spirit of Conjoined Timelines, would still work?

[jotwebe]

Timecraft? Temporal Discontinuities? Temporal Superiority? ... Ascendancy? ... Authority? Time Sovereignty?

[Parcae2]

I love the new layout! It answers pretty much every objection I had.

Miscellaneous:

1. Yeah, I like Time Travel as a name, although I did like Uncertain Position. Maybe Uncertain Position could be swapped for something else. It seems cruel to make warp and physical PMs invest three points to get there. Similarly, I think Temporal Reprieve should come before Dimensional Anchor.
2. Antimatter looks great, but you might consider swapping one of the damage spells for a utility spell, perhaps something like:

Wormhole

Throw a shard of antimatter to the ground. The resulting explosion leaves behind a wormhole linked to another wormhole somewhere else on the level. Any creature who moves over one wormhole will be teleported to the other.

This talent costs no Paradox to use.

(That last bit is so that it can be used when your Paradox is at obscene levels from Preserve Pattern. Maybe that's too good for a locked tree, I don't know, but I do feel that the class should have something or other that functions when Paradox is at 8 billion. Maybe consider unlocking Antimatter, locking Gravity, and adding some physical resist reduction to Gravity Well or Gravity Nexus instead of the physical resist reduction from Antimatter).

Then we could get Temporal Wake back. I liked Temporal Wake.

3. The locked TW tree that has mostly bow/weapon talents (sorry, don't remember the name) could use a slight buff to compete with the likes of Hounds, Energy (Redux still needs a nerf), etc. Nothing fancy, maybe just slap a taunt on the summoned clones or something.

4. I don't know that Matter is necessary? It feels like the class already has a ton of interesting talents and potential builds. That said, I don't have a good mental image of what's where any more, since so much has changed. In any case, I don't think that the class needs another utility talent on the level of Preserve Pattern, Reprieve, etc.

[edge2054]

Some of this stuff can be balanced via sustain costs. If Preserve Pattern costs enough and X talent in Matter costs enough and the player has to sink three points into a tree just to grab them, it should really discourage a player from sinking points into them if they're not interested in the other talents. Synergy can address some of this too. Preserve Pattern has good synergy with Trim Threads and Disentangle. Cease to Exist is iffy but it does let you kill something for a flat Paradox cost and rewinds all of the damage, paradox or otherwise, that you took during that time. I'm not sure what talent X in Matter is going to be yet but it will be heavily oriented towards synergy with the other talents and will probably be defensive in nature (a Damage Shield or something that builds each time you use a Matter spell for instance).

Temporal Reprieve and Uncertain Position will probably see a few more nerfs before things go live. I've been too busy juggling talents around to get much serious playtesting done.

FYI this will probably be the last rewrite, balance tweaks aside. I'm seriously hitting the burnout point and I have to be realistic about how much more energy I can put into Paradox Mages.

[Parcae2]

Yeah, that last bit is part of why I'm not sure Matter is such a great idea. If you add a new tree at this stage, it WILL need a whole lot of tweaking, at least if history is any suggestion.

Right now, the class looks pretty much done. It's got a ton of possible builds, lots of interesting and unique talents, and no giant weaknesses or game-breaking strengths (Redux aside). I'm sure that it could be even better with a really interesting, unique and balanced Matter tree - but at least one of those aspects is going to be missing out of the gate, and it will take a lot of time to fix. Only you can say if you're up for the task, but if I were in your position, I would be giving serious thought to unlocking Spellbinding or unlocking and moving Energy (I'm assuming you want another unlocked class tree) and calling it a day, at least for the time being.

By the way, I can't think off-hand of a single decent defensive ability in the game that doesn't appear in essentially all builds for that class. Resource costs won't do it. Three class points to get to the talent certainly won't do it. Synergies won't do it; they'll just turn all PMs into Matter PMs. The only way I can think of is to make the talent literally incompatible with Preserve Pattern, so that activating one disactivates the other. Even then you'd have people investing in Matter just so that they can use one talent when the other is unavailable, e.g. activating Preserve Pattern when your Matter shield goes down; so you would also have to make PP take a few turns to "charge up," so to speak.

That's going to be a ton of work. It'll also result in some really long talent descriptions, which I personally don't mind (Lichform!) but which I know is an issue for you.

[edge2054]

I've written some really long descriptions before. I just get tired of trying to explain exactly how solipsism works or even feedback.

But I really want Matter just for the sake of symmetry. Antimatter will be the locked physical tree. Matter and Gravity the unlocked ones.

That said, Matter is going to be one of the last things I do. Fatethreading is mostly updated but I still have a lot of trees to update. So if it ends up not happening then it doesn't happen.

Anyway I hear what you're saying. If it works out it does. If not oh well.

[donkatsu]

-Preserve Pattern being merged with Damage Smearing is brilliant, knocking out two birds with one stone (merging Smearing with something, and making it so you don't hit 100% major anomalies in a single turn).

-Removing resistance reduction on Cease to Exist indirectly makes Induced Phenomena and Antimatter more important, which is great.

-Matter and Antimatter as the unlocked and locked physical damage trees is thematically perfect, much better than Carbon.

-Why switch out armor for physical resistance in Antimatter?

-Unless Temporal Reprieve and Uncertain Position get hit really hard with the nerf bat or somehow specifically tuned to temporal damage, I feel like it's going to be like Shivrogoth Form where no one cares how bad the preceding talents are or what their build is, they're just going to go 1/1/1/5 all the time.

-I always felt as though the x4 faster recovery on anomalies was the most important part of Bias Weave. By comparison, a lot of the time the targeting didn't even matter because the area was so big and I was in a small room so I had no choice but to hit everyone. But it also may have been too strong. If an artifact gets the faster recovery effect, I'd make it a lot weaker than the old Bias Weave was.

-Hurray for Temporal Wardens getting Warp! I think Warp is still my favorite tree.

-I'm not sure what Fate-Threading is supposed to be, exactly. Are physical PMs not supposed to get it? Why does Matter need to be competitive with Preserve Pattern? They're just going to get both.

By the way, I can't think off-hand of a single decent defensive ability in the game that doesn't appear in essentially all builds for that class. Resource costs won't do it. Three class points to get to the talent certainly won't do it. Synergies won't do it; they'll just turn all PMs into Matter PMs. The only way I can think of is to make the talent literally incompatible with Preserve Pattern, so that activating one disactivates the other. Even then you'd have people investing in Matter just so that they can use one talent when the other is unavailable, e.g. activating Preserve Pattern when your Matter shield goes down; so you would also have to make PP take a few turns to "charge up," so to speak.

Absolutely this. Preserve Pattern is too much of a "core" talent to expect anyone to build their character without it.

[HousePet]

While having a Matter and Antimatter pair of categories is neat, Antimatter isn't particularly time/space related.

Sticking Antimatter on yourself would also be a good way to commit suicide, along with wiping out the rest of the zone.
Using nuclear weapons would also be safer than throwing antimatter.

[donkatsu]

It's a fantasy setting. It's fantasy antimatter.

Antimatter is spacetime-related because it (probably) bends spacetime just like regular matter.

[Moander]

It's a fantasy setting. It's fantasy antimatter.

Antimatter is spacetime-related because it (probably) bends spacetime just like regular matter.

Well, according to some scientists there was a equal amount of of matter and anti-matter after the big bang.

Of course that should mean that all matter should have reacted to the anti-matter and nothing should have been left. Yet somehow there was more matter then anti-matter, almost like some kind of timewizard or chronomancer went back in time and took some with him back to the future...

[edge2054]

I'm not set on the theme of Antimatter or Carbon. But I will say this.

Rex already made me some particle images for those effects when it was still Carbon. I like the mechanics of the tree and would prefer to keep it mostly intact. I really don't care what it's called. I really want to shoot Spheres of Destruction. I do some of these talents for me, because I would have fun with them, it's how I stay motivated. And that's one of them. The tree isn't going on another class.

So I'm open to suggestions but please make them specific and keep the above in mind.

@donkatsu
Negating physical damage seemed more appropriate for antimatter then armor.

I'll keep the rest of what you said in mind. Armor will probably go on Matter and I'm leaning towards making Preserve Pattern more available.

[Kiba333]

@Housepet how is antimatter not spacetime related? It is one piece of the basic groundwork of our universe. All of our observed reality can be broken down into space, time and energy (or information), with matter and antimatter being condensed forms of energy (e=mc?) at opposite ends of the same spectrum.

"Sticking" antimatter to yourself is possible as long as you use a magneto-optical or gravitational trap in order to prevent the antimatter from direct contact with the matter of your body.
Also since when have paradox mages been much about safety in the first place? xD

[MarginalMagus]

Guys I'm so excited to play this.

[malboro_urchin]

Soooo pumped!!

I personally love the idea of Paradox Mages toying with Antimatter in addition to their usual temporal shenanigans. It really gives the feeling that they and their spellcraft are all about concepts more fundamental (and irl, way more confusing) than most mages.

[HousePet]

Have directed Edge to Cosmic Strings as an alternative to antimatter. Equally dangerous, but less likely to cause massive explosions. These are basically cracks in space, where the two sides of the defect don't line up as they should.
Any attack hitting one of these would be negated.
Having one of these pass through you would do hard to block physical damage. If it were possible, I'd say this should check temporal resistance and do physical damage.

Name ideas:
Spatial Defects
Fractured Space