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Post by bikermatt on Jul 27, 2010 3:24:20 GMT -5
There are several headings for Magical Actions derived from Mastery of Magic. Just come up with stuff that works in the same general vein, and there's your Chronomancy.
The option was just an idea for not needing Mastery of Magic (which would also bar you from other Magic Actions, but that's really little more that flavor/cosmetic limitation).
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Post by l3eta-00a1x on Jul 27, 2010 6:17:43 GMT -5
My idea for the energy cost is a little rough, but here is my honest best guess:
Speed/Slow time (Not go back, just slow down):The energy cost would be twice the cost of the panel, with turn 1 cost 2 white, 2 is 4, 3 is 6, 4 is 8 etc.
Stop time (or slow/speed time immensely): The energy cost squares the number of panels. 1 is 1 2 is 4 3 is 9 4 is 16 etc.
Time travel: The first stone gets you back 1 year (This should probably actually cost more) than the next stone would get you back twice as long. Works as Accumulate Energy in that you put stones in it turn after turn, building up a major effect.
This is flawed, but it's my best working guess.
EDIT: In case it's unclear I'm working from an omniscient point of view, so "slow" would mean everyone around the time master moves slowly, while "fast" means everyone around him moves quickly.
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Post by takewithfood on Jul 27, 2010 9:41:02 GMT -5
For time travel I usually use the "duration" row of the D&R chart. It goes from a single page to a century, which is usually plenty enough time to move around (remember, you can always make more than one hop if you want to move more than a century in total). Sometimes you'll only want to move a minute or two backwards or forwards, so 1 stone = 1 year is actually quite clumsy.
You have to explain in detail what happens when you "stop/slow" time. What stops and what doesn't? Can unaffected people affect frozen people, and if so, what happens? (If you can't bring allies with you, try not to use this power very often - otherwise, you're preventing them from being able to play while you run around and do everything). The relative cost should match the power, so without knowing how powerful you intend this to be, talking about a cost is meaningless.
~TWF
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Post by Ricochet on Jul 27, 2010 12:27:32 GMT -5
I'm gonna chip in. If you want a cheap mastery of time, you've got to remember this simple rule: Stones spend - Resistance = stones of effect. This means that you can use your mastery to slow down everything around you. The stones you spend on slowing down time go into you defense. (Manipulate Time) You could also speed yourself up. This means that you can hit people faster. (Combine with Close Combat, Substitute for Speed)
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Post by l3eta-00a1x on Jul 27, 2010 14:05:32 GMT -5
Name one thing about this that is remotely cheap.
And the effect would be fairly all encompassing. Think Fast-Forward and Slow-Motion on a DVD, only a few people continue to move (obviously it should cost more if you have more people at normal speed). I think you'd be able to effect people, although it might do less than if you were in real time.
The time travel is a concern, because it will either become ridiculously easy to go back and fix every mistake ever, or nigh impossible to go back any real time (Millenniums). Because if I have a character with a 12 stone pool, it will take a while to go to the year 3000, or BC whatever. Given it becomes easy to say, I spend all my stones and go back however far I want. Because that simplifies it, and it's not a "combat ability".
EDIT: If the force-blast doesn't work, there would have to be a way to send specific objects through time also, which would require more cost discussion.
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Post by takewithfood on Jul 27, 2010 15:15:17 GMT -5
Teleportation - doesn't have to travel to send others +2 CL - range 2 +2 CL - time travel +6 CL
Yes, its AN +10 CL, but you can point at someone and send them hurtling through time. You can basically send anyone within 30 feet to tomorrow just by thinking about it, and there's balls they can do about it.
If your GM agrees, you can build up a time scale that looks like this:
1 stone = minutes 2 stones = hours 3 stones = days 4 stones = weeks 5 stones = months 6 stones = years 7 stones = decades 8 stones = centuries 9 stones = millenia 10 stones = whenever, dude
If your AN is high enough, screw sending people to tomorrow - send them to the friggin' Cambrian. I hope they like shrimp. (Unless you're worried about the butterfly effect.)
This is still a silly exercise, though. You keep asking for rules for outrageously powerful effects without really defining how they would work in a game mechanic (what does stopping time actually DO?) and yet you are still kidding yourself that you want some sort of balance. You're talking about powers that would rip any game to shreds, and yet you're still talking about wanting them to be hard to accompish (as though that changes anything - if you can rip a game in half at all, your character is broken). You have an unlimited stone count game, and yet you're still trying to add up costs.
I am starting to suspect that this thread is a psychology project.
~TWF
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Post by Ziegander on Jul 27, 2010 15:34:34 GMT -5
This is still a silly exercise, though. You keep asking for rules for outrageously powerful effects without really defining how they would work in a game mechanic (what does stopping time actually DO?) and yet you are still kidding yourself that you want some sort of balance. You're talking about powers that would rip any game to shreds, and yet you're still talking about wanting them to be hard to accompish (as though that changes anything - if you can rip a game in half at all, your character is broken). You have an unlimited stone count game, and yet you're still trying to add up costs. I am the GM of the "unlimited stone count game," which is part of the reason I am interested in how the discussion in this thread goes. I really don't care what your personal opinions are over whether or not it's possible to balance a Mastery of Time power or what breaks the game, etc. The thread is an attempt to come up with a reasonable Mastery of Time action and set appropriate costs to it. As far as where my game fits into all of this the guidelines are basically this, "make the character you always wanted to play and don't worry about stone count." Now, as GM I have final say as to what gets into the game. If I end up getting a CAD with Mastery of Time that makes all of the other players pointless and makes it impossible to play the game of course it's a no brainer that the CAD will get rejected. Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Stopping Time should not allow you to effect any creature, other than yourself, with any ability while Time is thus stopped. You could use the time to make preparations or set things up, but not to injure or interact with anyone else. Stopping Time should be one of the more/most difficult things to do. Resistance would be a big factor here. Also, can you exclude the rest of your team from this effect? Probably by spending even more stones. Speeding up time. What does this DO? Do you do it to single targets at once, or to an area? Which should be more difficult? If you ARE capable of speeding up the Time of a single target why should that make them any more capable of attacking a non "hasted" character? You haven't increased the "hasted" character's reaction times, reflexes, or Agility, you're simply making everything they do happen much faster than it was a second ago. Do they even realize that the stuff they do happens faster? Here's a big conundrum, if you are able to do this to single targets does that mean that you are plucking their Time out of the greater Time stream in order to control it specifically? And if so, because they are now acting in their own Time stream are they even able to effect people acting in the normal Time stream? Ugh. HEADACHES.
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Post by l3eta-00a1x on Jul 27, 2010 17:42:33 GMT -5
First of all: If I knew how this was working I'd just write it up myself TWF. I honestly have no clue. I've given some effects, give-or-take, and I gave some opinions on it. If I knew that doing so-and-so should cost so much, than there really wouldn't be a discussion. And how does this rip a game to shreds any more than the Silver Surfer. In fact he could use this action therefore: he is far more powerful. Plus, I don't want to know stone-costs (that was solved pretty early, and any change is still easy to make) but more energy. You seem to want details that I can't provide. Like Energy Cost, a detailed list of every effect I want, and how to accomplish it. Essentially you want me to write the entire rule, and you can just say whether you agree with the price. Which I don't really care about, as Ziegander has final say anyway. Zieg- I agree with the "can't affect while time is stopped" thing. And fast-motion is really only there if I can think of a point to it. One of my favorite examples that would apply is speeding up the time of a bridge, so it's repaired. Ex! Jeff (time-traveler) is on the edge of a cliff. He wants to get across with his car, but the bridge is very rickety. He decides he wants to send it forward through time, to the point where it is fixed. A few minutes (and stones of energy) later, and the bridge is safe enough to drive across Or, if you're mean, the bridge isn't repaired/enemies are on the bridge when it slips into normal time (FIGHT!). As for the time-stream things. I think they would be in a different stream (I think you as GM should have to figure out what that entitles) until they stop being slowed-down/sped-up, at which point they'd zip back into regular time. Or you can just ignore it entirely and say "Stuff happens, 'nuff said!" which is far easier. Or it could just pull a Marvel and say that it's all figured out, and nothing odd happens, because of his fine control over time.
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Post by takewithfood on Jul 27, 2010 18:08:27 GMT -5
I am the GM of the "unlimited stone count game," which is part of the reason I am interested in how the discussion in this thread goes. I really don't care what your personal opinions are over whether or not it's possible to balance a Mastery of Time power or what breaks the game, etc. The thread is an attempt to come up with a reasonable Mastery of Time action and set appropriate costs to it. You may not care, but your player is asking for advice. You said it yourself: this thread is an attempt to come up with a reasonable Mastery of Time action, and to set appropriate costs to it. That's what I'm trying to help him do. Saying things like "I want to stop time" is not helpful because it is so vague. We need at least a hint of what the mechanic will actually be like or there is no where to even begin. All I can do is offer every possible interpretation of what stopping time might mean, which ranges from anything including heightened speed to hitting the game-over-I-win button. I'm glad that game-breaking CADs won't be accepted - but that still doesn't contribute to deciding what is game breaking and what isn't. You have a player here who is asking for I-point-at-you-and-you-die-instantly powers. I don't know how to respond to that constructively. This all sounds much more reasonable. We are now in the neighbourhood of something feasible. Time travel will always be messy, though, and most TV shows and movies tend to flip flop as to whether they allow grandfather clauses or time-stream correction or whatever, usually picking whichever paradigm is easiest on the show. So, sometimes you can go back in time to fix the future, and other times when you're sent back in time, all you can do is cause events that have already happened to happen (turns out your parents only met, got married, and gave birth to you because you helped them, etc etc). Honestly, I suggest doing the same thing. If you want to have time travel in your game, you just have to be creative and the players just have to accept some fudging here and there. It is, after all, in the name of having fun, and that is always a good reason. I'll just keep out of this for now, though, since I don't appear to be helping at all, despite my best (or at least pretty okay ^__^) efforts. ~TWF
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Post by l3eta-00a1x on Jul 27, 2010 18:17:23 GMT -5
I don't really care if it's possible at this point, just that my opinion is expressed And no matter what it may sound like, I do appreciate your help. Now I can finish writing my psychology paper... JK
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Post by takewithfood on Jul 27, 2010 18:19:28 GMT -5
Hee hee. I hope you get a good grade! ^___^
~TWF
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Post by l3eta-00a1x on Jul 27, 2010 18:28:59 GMT -5
Hastily-constructed-last-minute-online-psychology-experiments-that-will-probably-get-me-a-D FTW!!!
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Post by Ziegander on Jul 27, 2010 22:54:19 GMT -5
As far as regressing Time so that you repair objects or undo injuries, I'd say that would be a +2 option incompassing both the repair of objects and the healing of organic matter. Something for the Time Blast: Let's say it can also do Stun damage at your choice. This can be flavored as disorienting the target or "stealing time" from them. THIS is a list of spell-like mechanics written for a homebrew DnD class, based on Time. Nonetheless, I feel like a lot of inspiration can be drawn from them. Other ideas: 1) Call creatures or items from the past/future (don't yet know how this should work, or price). 2) Substitute Mastery for Speed and/or Agility (+1 CL each). 3) Combines with General Knowledge for +1 CL. 4) Reconstitute Self at a discount (6w for normal, 12w for by next panel). 5) A number of times per day equal to 1/3 your Mastery AN you can automatically declare that any attack against you fails as you shelter yourself in an alternate time stream; +3 CL? Iffy.
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Post by l3eta-00a1x on Jul 28, 2010 7:49:46 GMT -5
I'm currently working on completely revamping my hastily written Mastery, into it's own unique Action. (Finally! Details! I hope...), but I'll consider what you've posted.
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