ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Inspired by other threads, I will attempt a remake of equilibrium:

1. Remove meditation, and instead every wilder gets it from the start, sort of like spacetime tuning for the chronomancer tree. The ability has no cooldown and works 100% of the time, but it can't be used if enemies are nearby (like the current meditation ability). It leaves the user immobile for some rounds, but if the meditation completes, all equilibrium is restored.

2. Increasing equilibrium means that the player character is out of the balance of nature. As the player accumulates equilibrium, the chance increases that those abilities will have a weakened effect. This will reduce the effective level and/or the effective values of stats used for calculating the effects of these abilities. Get equilibrium low enough, and those abilities will occasionally fail, but will still trigger a cooldown and turn usage as though they were used. Wilders who are completely out of balance of nature could face an ironic death as they are attacked by the forces that they can normally harness.

3. Meditation is replaced by natural connection. This ability works 100% of the time, and has a (50-80% scaled by talent level) chance to reduce the severity of failure for a few rounds. When severity is reduced, reduced effects are negated, failure is treated as a reduced effect ability, and backlashes instead result in failure. Additionally, a percentage of equilibrium is regenerated each round this ability is in effect. Investing talent points increases the chance of reduction in failure severity as well as the duration of the effect. Equilibrium reduction scales with Willpower.

4. Earth's eyes does not work as written with equilibrium. Instead, Earth's Eyes should be a passive, providing blind resistance, and mapping 1-4 tiles beyond the light radius. Additionally, whenever something attacks the wilder, the creature's location is known for 1-5 turns.

Some of these seem like they'd move Equilibrium too close to Paradox, even if you inverted the benefit of paradox into a penalty.

My only real problem with equilibrium is that meditation is no fun. It's a pain in the ass to have to remember to constantly use it. I suggest just having Equilibrium regenerate slowly down to 0 while you remain motionless at full hp with no enemies in sight, and making it so the rest key rests until your equilibrium is cleared. Classes that didn't start with an Equilibrium meter don't get this benefit. Leave meditation in for people who want to try and risk it with enemies nearby or something, in an emergency.

This would provide no real mechanical benefit to Nature classes (since if you've reached that state, you could just meditate), but it would be a lot less fiddly. Having to constantly rest and then push my secondary rest button is irritating.