ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

As this seems to be regarded as a relatively weak and tedious prodigy, here's my proposal to make it better and more interesting:

Revisionist History

Cooldown X, instant cast, is a spell.

Activate to be transported back in time K turns as an historical revisionist. a temporal ghost. You are phantasmal with respect to your former self, meaning that you can stand on the same tile without displacing yourself (or your clone), and take 50% damage for all types except temporal, receive 50% healing, deal 50% damage, and are permanently stealthed at power P. The damage, healing, debuffs, and dispels that you receive go to your former self, not you, and if you have a clone, what it receives goes to your former clone as long as there is one. After K turns you resume being your former self in its future state; your cooldown for each active is the worst of your revisionist and former self's. Note that your past actions are fixed, and you cannot alter the commands your former self used in any way. If your former self can't find its chosen target or can't move in the chosen direction, then the command simply fizzles.


This I hope gives a reasonable template for pretty high power in the right context, but power of the sort that can't be used without unmixed feelings in all cases.

This is very fun but nearly impossible to implement I'm afraid /

Yeah, that was one of the fears, since this would require logging some memory of the gamestate relatively constantly (even if it were a timeline-splitting sustain that did the logging and deactivating the sustain were the time-travel part) and would demand handling of some key exceptions to fundamental game rules.

As I made clear in my opinion in the OP, other, more implementable ideas for improving this prodigy are welcome, if anyone wants to join in on the thread.

I like the idea of it also granting a buff while active.

That way, you're encouraged to use it before anything difficult, then if you have to reset, you've used up the buff, but also aren't dead.

Since it's about constantly altering history, how about this; +(Mag/2) Saves, a (Mag/3) Evade chance, and a (Mag/3) chance to deflect projectiles up to five tiles away, while active? (Cap the Evade/Deflect chances at 40% to be safe.)

That way, it's an escape(that requires pre-use) and a strong(but unreliable) defensive buff rolled into one, and it's very thematic.

Here's a thing that is doable:
- When you FIRST enter a new level, you get a free Revisionist History savepoint.
- If you die while you have a savepoint, you get restored back to the savepoint.
- You can also manually trigger a reversion to your savepoint if you want, but I expect this to be uncommon.

Special rules:
- If you leave that level, the savepoint goes away (and maybe a new one is granted).
- Special mini-levels like the Intimidating Cave or the Rat Lich Crypt do give you an extra save point and do not mess with your previous save point. While in one of those specially marked mini-levels, you effectively have two savepoints in a stack.
- Fearscape and Dreamscape also need special rules, but I don't think that re-trying from inside is the right thing to do. I think if you die in Fearscape or Dreamscape, you should just be treated like you died on the regular level.
- Every Ambush! counts as a separate level, you get a free savepoint every time because holy crap those things can suck.

This has nearly all the value of the current version, with much less hassle, and you can't forget to use it. Also it's great for the ID. Not sure how to adapt it to the Arena, but whatever.

Or how about we simply re-do the prodigy as something else themed around gaining momentary access to the past at a crucial time?


I'm a frayed knot!
Prerequisites: MAG 50, achievement "Yet Another Stupid Zemekys!" ('kill' Zemekys in the Daikara after returning from the East)

Passive, Cooldown K, is a spell.
You can salvage the energy of your imminent death to save your life! The moment before the action that kills you, you may take 1 available action as an instant, even if it is not your turn. The discordance between personal timelines means that if you survive, you have a -20% global speed penalty for 10 turns which cannot be removed or reduced in any way until the time is up. Warning: this spell has a cooldown, and if you have status that normally prevents you from gaining a turn with time at the time to which the spell would send you, or are silenced, this spell will fail.

It would be nice, thematically speaking, if Paradox Mages weren't the absolute worst users of Revisionist History, like they were for Temporal Form back before it was changed. If Revisionist History becomes a combat-related talent, then it has to make up for Paradox Mages being unable to use Paradox Clone or Cease to Exist, both of which are extremely powerful talents. Other classes don't have to give up their best talents to use it, after all. If it becomes a utility talent, then it has to do something that you can't already achieve with Precognition or See the Threads.

To make it easier from a design standpoint, I'd just give it a Chronomancer-specific boost, like temporal damage or Paradox success rate, in addition to whatever change you want to make to it to make it useful for everybody else.

Something like an offensive Spin Fate?
If an enemy resists an effect, you get to reroll the attempt to apply it?

I'm not sure an offensive reroll would be good enough for a Prodigy, but perhaps rerolling when you fail a save, are hit by a critical hit and when an effect you tried to apply is saved against? Here's the chances of doing a successful throw (offensive or defensive) with and without this hypothetical prodigy:



Chance of doing 3 successful throws in a row:



The effects aren't spectacular for chances that aren't already very high to begin with, but it does make unlucky rolls and crits so much less likely to happen. This has to compete with defensive prodigies such as Draconic Will, Cauterize and Spine of the World, so anything less would certainly be yet another outclassed prodigy - and even then, I'm not sure many would pick a better chance to avoid status rather than full immunity from Draconic Will. Adding a reroll for offensive criticals would amount to about a 12% damage boost, assuming 70% crit chance and 200% crit multiplier.

Axes aren't labelled. Neither are the different curves.

Numbers are correct though.

Perhaps go with a reroll for every roll?
That could be too messy to code.

HousePet wrote:Axes aren't labelled. Neither are the different curves.

I had to choose between staying true to everything I stand for and laziness. I chose laziness.

I honestly think the best buff to this prodigy would be to remove the "must have time travelled" pre requisite. If you have time travelled, you have spells that split the timeline and hence a prodigy that splits the timeline is less useful.

Salo wrote:I honestly think the best buff to this prodigy would be to remove the "must have time travelled" pre requisite. If you have time travelled, you have spells that split the timeline and hence a prodigy that splits the timeline is less useful.

I think that whatever the timeline-modification prodigy turns out to be, this can be resolved by requiring a slightly looser interpretation of time travel. Namely, time prison and time skip both count if applied to you. Therefore chronomancers get the option almost automatically, archmages and shadowblades can get it reliably if they commit to temporal, and everyone can get it in principle if they grind carefully against pink mobs, and will get it without effort sometimes if lucky. I like the idea that particularly good prodigies (and more should be particularly good) should be defended by relatively robust prerequisites so that even if they are generally available, it's hard to get them as your first prodigy.

Why do you need a time travel prerequisite anyway? I don't understand how having it only if you grind against pink mobs is either interesting or fun, it just sounds like a boring grind where you have to get lucky. Only having it when you meet a certain escort and manage to save him isn't fun either.

To be honest, I pretty much dislike all prodigy prerequisites with the exception of those that are linked to side quests and/or require the user to make a meaningful choice somewhere. Prerequisites that protect the player from themselves are fine as well (i.e. you need block for one of the blocking prodigies). I feel that some prerequisites just limit the options you have for no good, interesting or fun reason.

So if a time travel prerequisite is necessary for some weird reason, link it either to a sidequest (do sidequest, be allowed to get prodigy) or to an interesting choice (similar to siding with assassin lord).

Salo wrote:Why do you need a time travel prerequisite anyway? I don't understand how having it only if you grind against pink mobs is either interesting or fun, it just sounds like a boring grind where you have to get lucky. Only having it when you meet a certain escort and manage to save him isn't fun either.

To be honest, I pretty much dislike all prodigy prerequisites with the exception of those that are linked to side quests and/or require the user to make a meaningful choice somewhere. Prerequisites that protect the player from themselves are fine as well (i.e. you need block for one of the blocking prodigies). I feel that some prerequisites just limit the options you have for no good, interesting or fun reason.

So if a time travel prerequisite is necessary for some weird reason, link it either to a sidequest (do sidequest, be allowed to get prodigy) or to an interesting choice (similar to siding with assassin lord).

The prodigies themselves should represent interesting choices, and in that sense the number that you can pick should be limited so long as some are way better than the others. If there are, say, 4 prevent-major-damage-spike talents, several of them should become available at a semi-random rate, so that you don't always get to pick the 2 that you want in the order that you want without pain that you would deserve because you are being uncreative and kind of cheap.

Also, isn't there a hat or something with precognition on it? If not, just introduce a rare ego of that type and you have another way to fulfill the theme related prodigy provided that you are conscious of the desire to take it as you do your quests. You also have the chance to get it from escorts if you are willing to pay the opportunity cost.