Reworking Chronomancy ver 2

[jotwebe]

Something to make Wormhole stronger: lower the exit wormhole radius by 1 across the board, but make it so that when you travel through a wormhole you can appear anywhere in a radius 1 around the exit. Lets you spam teleport effects every turn instead of every other turn, since you won't have to waste a turn stepping off of the exit most of the time.

Although there's some synergy with movement speed boosts like Celerity and Webs of Fate at the moment this would reduce. I do like it though. Maybe grant a movement speed bonus on emerging if Time Dilation or Preserve Pattern is sustained, and let you choose your point of emergence if you've got either the Warp sustain or Cosmic Circle up.

Snip has room for some more talent interaction like Quantum Spike did, maybe when it hits braided targets it does extra damage then removes the braided effect?

Or a debuff? Good place for an instakill effect, as well.

Paradox Shield right now encourages you to hit yourself a bunch of times before you start combat, so that when it pops you start restoring tons of paradox per turn. Sleepy, can't think of a good fix at the moment.

"While active, all damage you take from sources other than yourself damages the timline instead of you, ..." How abusable would that be? You'd need a source of damage you controlled that the game couldn't track to you... walking over traps comes to mind, anything else?

[donkatsu]

Then you'd just stand in front of a snake or something nonthreatening and let it poke you until you reached the anomaly threshold, run away, rest, and repeat. The only reason Disruption Shield gets away with having an effect that builds up with damage on a renewable damage shield is because its effect (the mana storm) also hurts you.

How about instead of 50% of the absorbed Paradox, it's 50% of however much Paradox you had when the shield broke?

[grayswandir]

You could just give it a decay or a time limit. "Recover 50% of paradox gained by this shield in the last 10-20 turns."

[edge2054]

How about instead of 50% of the absorbed Paradox, it's 50% of however much Paradox you had when the shield broke?

I play tested it last night and came to the same conclusion.

I'm not sure on Snip. I may put the remaining damage on trim threads instantly back on it. But I agree it's not as interesting as quantum spike was.

[donkatsu]

Also with Paradox Shield, I would always set my preferred paradox to 0 and just let the shield bring it up. Before Paradox Shield there was a good balance between wanting high paradox and wanting low paradox, but now as long as the shield is up you just want to have your paradox as low as possible, which was a model I thought you were trying to move away from with the new paradox system.

[edge2054]

Also with Paradox Shield, I would always set my preferred paradox to 0 and just let the shield bring it up. Before Paradox Shield there was a good balance between wanting high paradox and wanting low paradox, but now as long as the shield is up you just want to have your paradox as low as possible, which was a model I thought you were trying to move away from with the new paradox system.

I hear what you're saying but I really like Paradox Shield. I activated it for the Point Zero fight, got hit by a reality keeper beam I think, and triggered a fire anomaly. Panicking, I mashed DS, ended up cloning everyone and dropping a meteor before I wised up and literally walked away from the fight.

The fire killed the boss and managed to piss off all the reality keepers. Meanwhile I found a safe place to rest. Once I rested up I tried to get the loot but ended up dying on the exit portal.

Was the most fun playing ToME I've had in a long time

Mostly what I hated about the old system was that the penalties for running around with 0 Paradox weren't all that drastic or apparent. I get that Paradox Shield shifts the balance back in favor of low Paradox but the 50% spellpower penalty for going under 80 Paradox is still there and it's also a lot more transparent for the player.

That said I'm open to ideas on how to address it. Maybe the sustain cost on it should be higher? I really like the base mechanics even if it does encourage keeping Paradox low.

[Kiba333]

I just pulled the latest repository with git. Where has warp gone?
Also putting the fifth point into sealt fate (effective talent level 5.2->6.5) brings no change.

[edge2054]

I just pulled the latest repository with git. Where has warp gone?
Also putting the fifth point into sealt fate (effective talent level 5.2->6.5) brings no change.

Thanks for the heads up on Seal Fate, I'll take a look at it.

As for Warp I was wanting to get an idea of how the class will look at release. That tree, Induced Phenomena, and some kinda advanced tree for Matter/Gravity will all be locked behind achievements.

I'll unlock it again after I eat lunch so you guys can keep playtesting it.

*edit* And done. Keep in mind Induced Phenomena I'm planning to do some heavy rewriting on. Probably today or tomorrow. Any idea for an advanced tree for straight Physical PMs would be welcome too.

[edge2054]

Also want to thank you guys for playtesting and giving so much constructive feedback I get a bit testy sometimes when I think things are good and other people think otherwise. But I think the feedback I've gotten in this thread has really helped to refine the class and I'm enjoying my test character quite a bit.

Also thanks for putting up with all the constant changes. Once I give Darkgod a merge request for it to go into master it should see a lot fewer changes and save files should remain relatively stable. There will still be small balance tweaks I'm sure but the talents names and general tree layouts should be pretty much set.

Anyway just wanted to let you all know that I appreciate the early testing

[Kiba333]

I encountered a level 100 boss mob chronomancer on madness. He had preserve pattern level 13 running. Upon death it healed him for 71766 with a 19 turn cooldown.....
*edit it was a temporal warden actually. Btw i am also afraid that seal fate could become quite overpowered for high level npcs. If all your options of removing debuffs are depleted they will then be able to keep them up on you theoretically indefinitely

[Kiba333]

I would also rather like to see a debuff on snip rather than instadeath. People that rely heavily enough on pure temporal damage that they want to take snip will in most cases also skill Echoes from the past as this is easily the hardest hitting temporal spell. The instadeath on snip is then quite redundant as echoes from the past is basically the most relyable instadeath spell there is. It can not be resisted and will with near certainty kill everything below 20% life.

Instadeath fits snip thematically though so i don't know if you would be statisfied with any debuff that replaces it. But with the changes to seal fate some more debuffs should be warranted am i wrong?

*edit sorry about the double post

[edge2054]

Double posts are fine.

I'll have to think about Preserve Pattern. It's thematically appropriate but it's basically Second Life 2.0. I could just give it a flat cooldown of 30.

I do worry about the balance on Seal Fate but I'm curious how you figure it will be a problem. Not disagreeing, mind, but it's on a 24 cooldown and only lasts five turns. I can see the proc rate getting high but it's always going to be limited by the number of times you damage something on a given turn. And assuming the player has a means of escape/kiting, they can wait out the buff. Am I missing something?

I'm not set on Snip as I'm feeling the same way about needing another debuff.

[Kiba333]

I think preserve pattern is okay when used by the player. But on higher difficulties when enemies have it at talent levels over 5, they get healed for several hundred thousands hp by preserve pattern, making them in every sense of the word - unkillable.

Also i just noticed that paradox mage has not even a single hint of any spell that recovers HP in any shape or form (except preserve pattern but that doesn't really count as an actual mean to replenish health). On all of my test chars in order to stay alive and not die sooner or later i have to heavily rely on healing/regeneration infusions and/or life drinker.
True, paradox shield circumvents the need for hp replenishment somewhat but once the shield goes down you are basically a sitting duck waiting to die since your paradox will be so high initially after, that most of your spells will fail into anomalies/major anomalies. Meaning, you won't really be able able to cast temporal reprieve etc. if you have bad luck.

[edge2054]

So the issue is basically that it scales with hit points. I'll make it more like Healing Light and similar effects so that it doesn't scale with maxlife.

Induced Phenomena has a heal in it and I plan to keep that effect in some form. I'm thinking something like this, and forgive me for the rough brainstorming, didn't sleep well last night and a lot of this comes from those hours of laying awake

Cosmic Cycle
While expanding increases your temporal resist penetration by X%. While contracting increases your Willpower for Paradox by X%. (Basically Paradox Mastery but in a more interesting form).

Polarity Shift
Shifts the Polarity of your Cosmic Cycle. If it starts expanding it fires temporal bolts at targets within range. If it begins contracting (not sure, could put a heal here but it's already on Reverse Causality, of course Reverse Causality could be changed).

Some talent name here
Creatures in your contracting Cosmic Cycle have their three highest stats reduced by X. Creatures in your expanding Cosmic Cycle have an X% chance each turn to be blinded, pinned, or confused (this is an age manipulation effect as that's something thematically I've kinda brushed off this go).

Reverse Causality
Creatures leaving your contracting Cosmic Cycle heal you by X. Creatures entering your expanding Cosmic Cycle grant you X% of a turn.

[Kiba333]

I get these all the time while playing around with a warp build: