Homebrew Class: Chronomancer


Homebrew and House Rules


Chronomancer class

It was easier to post the link then the class


Interesting idea. A couple things jump out at me. First, Margin of Error at 18th level seems a lot less impressive than Do-Over at 2nd level. Not sure how I would adjust, but it's my perception that Do-Over will get the heck used out of it compared to Margin of Error.

Speaking of Do-Over, the math of 1/4 level (minimum 1) is a little weird. Most similar abilities do: Ability Score + 1/times per day. Which would be okay if gained at a higher level, but too powerful if you leave it at 2nd.

Just my .02. Not sure about balance and whatnot, there are definitely better people here at that than me. Hopefully one will comment.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

1 person marked this as a favorite.

There's a lot of issues with this class. Overall, it has a lot of really broken abilities on an otherwise underpowered, not fully fleshed out class.

Issues:

1) There's very few class features at 1st level. You basically just have spells and that's it.

2) None of the class features indicate what kind of abilities they are. Aside from spells, proficiencies, and cantrips/orisions, every ability should indicate whether they're extraordinary, supernatural, or spell-like abilities.

3) There should be alignment restrictions (and a consequence for acting against the will of the deity) for being a divine spellcaster, especially when you're implied to be deific divine caster.

4) Weapon and Armor Proficiency: There's some really awkward design choices here. Only getting proficiency based on the handedness of a weapon is rather odd and doesn't make much sense. You should just directly specify the weapons like how the rogue does. Also, it gives a deity favored weapon, but as written, they get the benefit of this even if they aren't a divine caster. You never specify an arcane chronomancer can cast without arcane spell failure.

5) Chronopool: You get this class feature at 1st level, but you have nothing to spend points on until 2nd level.

6) Do Over: This ability is ambiguous. What exactly do you mean by "can reroll?" It should specific exactly what check or roll you can use this ability on.

7) Temporal Recall: This is basically just the magus's spell recall. It's a really powerful ability that should be level 4 or higher.

8) Time Skip: This ability needs completely rewritten. It's not clear what exactly it does. What do you mean an enemy has to "skip" their action? Which action? The language is also really awkward and confusing. What do you mean it's a "will based save?" You mean the target gets a saving throw? Abilities are not saving throws -- abilities allow saving throws. Also, why does this ability say that spell resistance doesn't apply when this is not a spell-like ability?

9) Ally of Time: This ability also needs a rewrite. It's extremely open-ended and vague. What kind of abilities can you give to an ally? What's the range? What do you mean "they still have to provide the cost of the ability." If you choose to give the ally a bonus, then what's the bonus? What type is the bonus. Also, the concept of giving your allies free abilities without any restriction is rather broken.

10) Temporal Strike: I don't understand when you can use this or what action it is to activate this effect. What do you mean "1 to 5 ratio?" Are you just reiterating? Also, the ability to irreversibly age someone is insanely powerful, the kind of power you see in artifacts and really high level spells. You give this at 4th level. And they don't get a save to negate.

11) Temporal Spells: I read this ability 5 times and I still have no idea what it does.

12) Anomaly: How exactly do you actually "manipulate when others or himself go during initiative?" Do you give them a bonus to initiative? Do you reorder the turns (which would be insanely broken)?

13) Medium Armor: This technically doesn't give you proficiency in medium armor. Also, remember that light armor still causes arcane spell failure.

14) Temporal Shifting: This ability is not only vague, but also an absolute a bookkeeping nightmare. There's a good reason why abilities that actually let you travel through time are extremely rare and usually only tied to artifacts. It's really annoying to run at the table.

15) Time Lock: Wait a minute. Making someone immortal allows a saving throw, but not the power that irreversibly ages someone? This is also fairly low level for an immortality ability.

16) Sands in the Hourglass: This completely breaks the class's spell and chronopool economy. You can abuse this to consume your low level spells so you can get more uses of your high level spells with temporal recall.

17) Temporal Stability: This ability doesn't actually do what you think it does. This ability seems written with the assumption that time stop is a debuff spell. It's not. Time stop targets the caster, so all it does is make you immune to your own spell -- assuming you could cast time stop at all. Even if time stop was a debuff spell, this ability would ironically make you immune to time stop but not the slow spell. Come to think of it, it's sad this is a time mage class that can't cast time stop.

18) Margin of Error: Because sands in the hourglass broke the chronopool economy, this is essentially an at-will displacement spell, but better because it gives concealment without explaining how it works. Also, as written, this ability doesn't actually cost anything to use. It uses language that suggests this triggers when spending points to use other abilities.

19) God of Time: When I first read this, I thought Temporal Spell referred to a metamagic feat when it actually refers to the class feature that I still don't know how it works. Also, you need to be more specific when you mean "1 for 1 ratio."


Cyrad wrote:
There's a lot of issues with this class. Overall, it has a lot of really broken abilities on an otherwise underpowered, not fully fleshed out class.

Thank you for your imput this is why I put the class up here and will get to work on fixing alot of the issues in which you voiced. Also I knew I was forgetting something with the ability types. I will also work on defining the abilitys better.

Grand Lodge

You could do alot of stuff with a time based caster. My personal ideas would be make it a 1-6 spontaneous Wis based Arcane caster, with a pool of points much like a magus Arcane pool that it can do stuff with. Have the fluff be that their powers come from a connection with the Astral plane and their powers don't work in dimensionally locked places or when their affected by dimensional anchor.

Ideas for powers would be, can always act in a surprise round (Divination wizard) can push things outside time (time mystery oracle) put a creature into stasis for a turn (like the spell, but have pool powers that boost this) haste and slow as spell like abilities, time stop as a spell like ability. Maybe pick up a sorcerer blood line but modified for the time dragon and it's abilities.

As a cap stone have your self become immortal and can choose how they old they appear to be, and only once in their lives they can travel to any point in time like a time dragon.


As this is still a work in progress I will be updating this until I and most of you believe it is done.


I'd like to recommend checking out the Riven Hourglass martial discipline from Path of War for help regarding the wording on some of your abilities.


The Green Traveller wrote:
I'd like to recommend checking out the Riven Hourglass martial discipline from Path of War for help regarding the wording on some of your abilities.

thank you for the assistance I will continue work on this tomorrow.


Good to see some free chronomantic stuff again. ;)

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Homebrew and House Rules / Homebrew Class: Chronomancer All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Homebrew and House Rules