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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Class The Chronologist (Class in 30 minutes, PEACH)



Jormengand
2016-01-20, 04:02 PM
Another of my classes made in just 30 minutes!

LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
Extra Rounds
Speed Bonus1st+0+0+2+2Speed of the Temporalist
1
10 ft2nd+1+0+3+3Perfect Reaction
1
10 ft3rd+2+1+3+3Too Fast To Stop
1
10 ft4th+3+1+4+4
2
10 ft5th+3+1+4+4Ready for Anything
2
20 ft6th+4+2+5+5Stasis Touch
2
20 ft7th+5+2+5+5
3
20 ft8th+6/+1+2+6+6Accelerated Healing
3
20 ft9th+6/+1+3+6+6Time Hop
3
30 ft10th+7/+2+3+7+7
4
30 ft11th+8/+3+3+7+7Curse of Acceleration
4
30 ft12th+9/+4+4+8+8Curse of Regression
4
30 ft13th+9/+4+4+8+8
5
40 ft14th+10/+5+4+9+9Stop to Think
5
40 ft15th+11/+6/+1+5+9+9Defy Immediacy
5
40 ft16th+12/+7/+2+5+10+10
6
40 ft17th+12/+7/+2+5+10+10Temporal Teleport
6
50 ft18th+13/+8/+3+6+11+11Eternal Existence
6
50 ft19th+14/+9/+4+6+11+11
7
50 ft20th+15/+10/+5+6+12+12Turn Back Time
7
50 ft
Alignment: Any
Hit Die: 1d8

Class Skills:
The class skills of the chronologist (And the key ability for each skill) are Autohypnosis (Wis), Balance (Dex), Concentration (Con), Knowledge (All skills, taken individually) (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spellcraft (Int) and Tumble (Dex).
Skill Points at 1st Level: (4 + Int modifier) × 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int modifier

Weapon and Armour Proficiency
The chronologist is proficient in all simple and martial weapons and with shields (except tower shields) but not with any type of armour. Armour and tower shields prevent the use of chronologist class features if equipped.

Speed of the Temporalist (Su)

Chronologists move faster than normal - a lot faster. They get an additional full round's worth of actions on their turn at first level and every 3 levels thereafter. These aren't real extra rounds, just extra actions.

Chronologists count as occupying any square where they take an action lasting a standard action or more. This allows a Chronologist to flank with multiple people if the Chronologist counts as occupying multiple squares which would provide flanking. Chronologists may flank with themselves.

Perfect Reaction (Ex)

Chronologists are good at dodging - they add their intelligence modifier to their armour class from second level onwards.

Too Fast to Stop (Ex)

Chronologists are capable of controlling their attacks even at high speeds, which prevents their opponents from keeping up. They add their intelligence modifier to attack rolls starting at third level.

Ready for Anything (Ex)

From fifth level, chronologists can delay their entire turn as though they were readying it, not delaying it, except that they don't need to set a trigger condition but do need to take an immediate action to take their turn. If they don't, that turn is wasted and the next one starts at the normal time. The immediate action is deducted from that turn that they take by spending it.

Stasis Touch (Ps)

From sixth level, chronologists gain the ability to use Stasis Touch once per round, which locks a creature or object touched weighing no more than 100 lbs/level in temporal stasis for 1 round/level. Creatures and objects in stasis cannot act or be interacted with. This ability is the equivalent of a 2nd-level power and the save DC is intelligence-based. Will negates.

Accelerated Healing (Su)

From 8th level, chronologists get fast healing equal to half their class level.

Time Hop (Ps)

From ninth level, chronologists can use Time Hop once per round as a psi-like ability, and the save DC is intelligence-based.

Curse of Acceleration (Ps)

From 11th level, chronologists can use the Curse of Acceleration once per round on a creature at medium range, which is a psi-like ability that causes a single creature to advance through age categories at the rate of 1 year/round for 1 round/level, or causes an object to undergo natural decay at the same rate. Will negates, and the save DC is intelligence based. The creature gets a new save each round to end the effect. This is the equivalent of a 4th-level power.

The Curse of Acceleration is countered or dispelled by haste, and dispelled by remove curse, but its effects can only be removed with Limited Wish, Alter Reality, Wish, Miracle or Reality Revision.

Curse of Regression (Ps)

From 12th level, chronologists can use the Curse of Regression once per round, which is just like the Curse of Acceleration except that the creature or object regresses in age, which may cause level loss if levels were gained in the last year, and may cause an object to become unbuilt or a creature unborn. Also, it is the equivalent of a 5th-level power.

The Curse of Regression is countered or dispelled by slow, and dispelled by remove curse, but its effects can only be removed with Limited Wish, Alter Reality, Wish, Miracle or Reality Revision.

Stop to Think (Su)

From 14th level, the chronologist can pause time for tiny moments, just long enough to get extra time to think. The chronologist gets a bonus on all rolls to use a skill actively (as an action, unlike knowledge which takes no action) equal to the chronologist's intelligence modifier.

Defy Immediacy (Su)

From 15th level, enemies cannot act during the chronologist's turn, whether they have readied an action, are taking an immediate action, have a contingency or similar effect, are attempting an attack of opportunity, or have some other way to act during other people's turns. The effect that they were attempting simply fails; no spell slots or contingencies are wasted and the creature can attempt another attack of opportunity later.

Temporal Teleport (Ps)

From 17th level, the chronologist can visit any location already visited by the chronologist once per round as a standard action. This ability is treated as the equivalent of a 6th-level power and is a teleportation effect.

Eternal Existence (Ps and Ex)

From 18th level, chronologists can change their age to any age that a member of their species can achieve once per round, as a psi-like ability that is equivalent to a 7th-level power.

Further, a chronologist's maximum age is always the highest for their race. This is an extraordinary ability, and also doesn't go away if they lose their abilities.

Turn back Time (Ps)

From 20th level, chronologists can turn time back up to five minutes, but they must turn time back to the start of their own round where they had a chance to act, and then not act during that entire round. This ability is the equivalent of an 8th-level power.

Chronologists who Turn Back Time use their own timeline for determining anything mental, and everyone else's for determining everything physical (because they're turning back time physically, but still have continuity of existence mentally). This means, for example, that a half-dragon chronologist who runs somewhere never previously visited, uses a breath attack and takes a knowledge check, that chronologist will regain the breath weapon usage, but be unable to roll a new knowledge check or make a temporal teleport to the location that was only visited in a time that never technically existed.

Code of Conduct

A chronologist must be devoted to their cause. A chronologist who has levels in any other class loses all chronologist class features except weapon and armour proficiency and, if they have it, Eternal Existence's (Ex) component. However, a chronologist may avert this; chronologists may deliberately lose levels in other classes that they have to restore their chronologist powers.

Chronologist abilities, except for the (Ex) component of Eternal Existence and weapon and armour proficiency, don't function in armour or with tower shields, but that's just because they're too heavy and restricting, not because chronologists are philosophically against them.

Amechra
2016-01-20, 04:27 PM
So I take 17 levels in Wizard and then 3 levels in Chronologist if I want the +Int to AC/attack rolls and extra set of actions each round?

OK.

Jormengand
2016-01-20, 04:32 PM
So I take 17 levels in Wizard and then 3 levels in Chronologist if I want the +Int to AC/attack rolls and extra set of actions each round?

OK.

You take 17 levels in wizard if you feel like falling (it doesn't matter when you take those levels, only that you are a chronologist who takes them, if that's your quibble) and losing all your chronologist powers except for your weapon/shield proficiency and half of the 18th-level ability (which you don't have), if that's what you mean.

Yes, that is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote that code of conduct.

Amechra
2016-01-20, 04:58 PM
Then you have to rewrite it - you didn't have that Code of Conduct when you took those levels of Wizard, so they don't count.

I suggest replacing "take" with "have", to make your intent perfectly clear.

Jormengand
2016-01-20, 05:04 PM
Then you have to rewrite it - you didn't have that Code of Conduct when you took those levels of Wizard, so they don't count.

I suggest replacing "take" with "have", to make your intent perfectly clear.

Fine, I have changed it to make it even more obvious that's what it means.

ImperatorV
2016-01-20, 09:02 PM
This is my favorite of the class-in-thirty classes so far. Curse of regression is nasty though - maybe add a line about how to undo the two curses (greater restoration and the usual (limited)wish/miracle/alter reality perhaps?)

Also, being able to change your age to whatever is a fun way of achieving immortality.

Sky
2016-01-21, 12:42 PM
Look, it's the Flash! :smallbiggrin:

Actually, let's see how fast a Chronologist can go.

The Run feat lets you move 5x your movement speed in a single round. A Chronologist gets a max +50ft speed bonus (which I assume stacks with other increases to speed, like Expeditious Retreat). Playing a race with the Sprinter racial feature gives you another +10ft bonus when you run, charge, or withdraw. (Since it's racial, it should stack with everything else.) And, of course, Expeditious Retreat. So what we have here is someone who can run 480 feet per round. That's about 50mph, which is...surprisingly reasonable.... :smallfrown:

BUT WAIT

A Chronologist can take EIGHT full-round actions, not a measly ONE. So what we actually have is someone who can run 3,840ft in a round. That's about 435 miles an hour, about 100mph faster than the speed of sound. Now we're cooking! :smallbiggrin:

On a more serious note, I think it would be cool to have the ability to flank with yourself, or multiple other people. Maybe something along the lines of "A Chronologist counts as occupying any square where they take an action lasting a standard action or more. This allows a Chronologist to flank with multiple people if the Chronologist counts as occupying multiple squares which would provide flanking. The Chronologist may flank with themselves."

I would also like some more explanation on Turn Back Time and Temporal Teleport. How long does it take to do a Temporal Teleport? Can you bring others with you? What if the place no longer exists? For Turn Back Time, most fights last less than five minutes, so how does it work if you turn back time to a time when you aren't in combat? Losing an entire round's worth of actions is supposed to be the drawback, I think, but if you weren't in combat time-tracking mode five minutes ago, you don't really lose anything. A cooldown period or a limited number of uses per day might be a better check on this power. Otherwise, you just get infinite retrys on anything that takes less than five minutes.

Jormengand
2016-01-21, 01:10 PM
This is my favorite of the class-in-thirty classes so far. Curse of regression is nasty though - maybe add a line about how to undo the two curses (greater restoration and the usual (limited)wish/miracle/alter reality perhaps?)

Yeah, maybe. I'll add that in.


On a more serious note, I think it would be cool to have the ability to flank with yourself, or multiple other people. Maybe something along the lines of "A Chronologist counts as occupying any square where they take an action lasting a standard action or more. This allows a Chronologist to flank with multiple people if the Chronologist counts as occupying multiple squares which would provide flanking. The Chronologist may flank with themselves."

Nabbed that.


I would also like some more explanation on Turn Back Time and Temporal Teleport. How long does it take to do a Temporal Teleport?

PLAs are a standard action unless otherwise specified.


Can you bring others with you?
No.


What if the place no longer exists?
Much like Teleport/Greater Teleport:
"“False destination” is a place that does not truly exist or if you are teleporting to an otherwise familiar location that no longer exists as such or has been so completely altered as to no longer be familiar to you. When traveling to a false destination... there is no real destination for you to hope to arrive at or even be off target from."
"If you attempt to teleport with insufficient information (or with misleading information), you disappear and simply reappear in your original location."


For Turn Back Time, most fights last less than five minutes, so how does it work if you turn back time to a time when you aren't in combat? Losing an entire round's worth of actions is supposed to be the drawback, I think, but if you weren't in combat time-tracking mode five minutes ago, you don't really lose anything.
It's to stop you repeatedly turning back time again and again and again and again, because you lose six seconds of time for each 5 minutes you want to try again. You're right that it doesn't really inconvenience you massively if you're not in combat, but if you're not in combat, why are you using it?


A cooldown period or a limited number of uses per day might be a better check on this power. Otherwise, you just get infinite retrys on anything that takes less than five minutes.
Well, infinite until you run out of time from having to wait 6 seconds repeatedly.

Sky
2016-01-21, 01:36 PM
PLAs are a standard action unless otherwise specified.

Gotcha. I don't know a whole lot about psionics, but I figured it would be covered somewhere.



It's to stop you repeatedly turning back time again and again and again and again, because you lose six seconds of time for each 5 minutes you want to try again.

Ah, now I understand. That makes sense.



You're right that it doesn't really inconvenience you massively if you're not in combat, but if you're not in combat, why are you using it?

Well, you could retry skill checks, avoid every trap, stop fights before they begin, assassinating the assassin before they assassinate the king, that sort of thing. The weird stuff happens when you combine it with Temporal Teleport. If I go somewhere I've never been before, then rewind time, can I teleport there? From my point of view, as a Chronologist, I've been there. But for everyone else, I haven't. Also, could you use it to re-roll skill checks that you usually can't re-roll? (i.e. Knowledge checks) In everyone else's timeline, I haven't made the check yet, but in mine, I have.

Jormengand
2016-01-21, 01:40 PM
Well, you could retry skill checks, avoid every trap, stop fights before they begin, assassinating the assassin before they assassinate the king, that sort of thing. The weird stuff happens when you combine it with Temporal Teleport. If I go somewhere I've never been before, then rewind time, can I teleport there? From my point of view, as a Chronologist, I've been there. But for everyone else, I haven't. Also, could you use it to re-roll skill checks that you usually can't re-roll? (i.e. Knowledge checks) In everyone else's timeline, I haven't made the check yet, but in mine, I have.

You use your own timeline for determining anything mental, and everyone else's for determining everything physical (because you're turning back time physically, but still have continuity of existence mentally). I'll add that in.

Sky
2016-01-21, 02:50 PM
You use your own timeline for determining anything mental, and everyone else's for determining everything physical (because you're turning back time physically, but still have continuity of existence mentally). I'll add that in.

That would work. Still lets you do all the cool stuff without letting you teleport into a paradox or make Knowledge re-rolls.

Cestes
2018-01-13, 11:12 AM
Just a thought, what is the epic level stuff for this class? Where do you spend your levels after becoming a level 20 Chronologist? Unless there is an Epic Chronologist to spend levels in you cannot advance without losing all the Chronologist stuffs that you wasted an entire campaign on.

Jormengand
2018-01-13, 11:30 AM
You know, every time someone posts in an old homebrew design thread I have to come in and claim thread ownership before the mods lock it or something. Command unthread!


Just a thought, what is the epic level stuff for this class? Where do you spend your levels after becoming a level 20 Chronologist? Unless there is an Epic Chronologist to spend levels in you cannot advance without losing all the Chronologist stuffs that you wasted an entire campaign on.

You get an extra round of actions at 22nd level and every 3rd level thereafter, and an extra 10 feet to your movement speed at 21st level and every 4th level thereafter. The DC of their psi-like abilities increases by 1 at 22nd level and every 2nd level thereafter because that's how PLAs work, and some of them have their durations increased by the increase in ML. Epic level play is, of course, a broken mess anyway, but chronologists should probably be able to manage anyway because they get literally many turns every round.

sengmeng
2018-01-20, 06:21 AM
Powerful, fun, flavorful, and thematically consistent... but I'd never allow the capstone ability at my table. No way am I going to track everyone's hp, positions, and expendables in order to roll back events to an earlier turn. I do enough bookkeeping without that headache. Can you think up an alternative capstone for like-minded DMs?

Jormengand
2018-01-20, 06:38 AM
Powerful, fun, flavorful, and thematically consistent... but I'd never allow the capstone ability at my table. No way am I going to track everyone's hp, positions, and expendables in order to roll back events to an earlier turn. I do enough bookkeeping without that headache. Can you think up an alternative capstone for like-minded DMs?

Seven Steps Ahead (Su)

At 20th level, chronologist's actions are always in flux, and they have made every concievable preparation for the situation they're in. A chronologist may devote some amount of time to using this class feature to do something, and then later declare that they were doing a specific action.

For example, the chronologist devotes half an hour to using the class feature in a dungeon corridor full of broken miscellanea. When enemies approach for the north, the chronologist declares that they were using that half hour to build a barricade out of the miscellanea: a barricade suddenly forms in the area out of the objects. The chronologist can't declare they were doing something that would disallow someone from occupying a position they're currently in (such as declaring they built a barricade somewhere that creatures are standing) but they can make someone fall (by declaring that they dismantled a barricade that someone's on) or retroactively cause impossible situations (like declaring they built a barricade in a location that the enemy just ran through).

Similarly, the chronologist can declare they set a trap in a location such that it will trigger immediately or that they took an object with them when they had a chance.

However, this requires such an immense surge of effort that declaring what their actions were requires their entire round of actions, no matter how many they're normally entitled to. Further, if they don't declare what actions they were taking during that time within 24 hours, the benefit is lost.

This class feature replaces Turn Back Time.

Morphic tide
2018-01-20, 07:41 AM
Seven Steps Ahead (Su)

At 20th level, chronologist's actions are always in flux, and they have made every concievable preparation for the situation they're in. A chronologist may devote some amount of time to using this class feature to do something, and then later declare that they were doing a specific action.

For example, the chronologist devotes half an hour to using the class feature in a dungeon corridor full of broken miscellanea. When enemies approach for the north, the chronologist declares that they were using that half hour to build a barricade out of the miscellanea: a barricade suddenly forms in the area out of the objects. The chronologist can't declare they were doing something that would disallow someone from occupying a position they're currently in (such as declaring they built a barricade somewhere that creatures are standing) but they can make someone fall (by declaring that they dismantled a barricade that someone's on) or retroactively cause impossible situations (like declaring they built a barricade in a location that the enemy just ran through).

Similarly, the chronologist can declare they set a trap in a location such that it will trigger immediately or that they took an object with them when they had a chance.

However, this requires such an immense surge of effort that declaring what their actions were requires their entire round of actions, no matter how many they're normally entitled to. Further, if they don't declare what actions they were taking during that time within 24 hours, the benefit is lost.

This class feature replaces Turn Back Time.

There's a fundamentally broken interaction with crafting system access, here. Namely, you can spend the time to craft some unit of wealth and retroactively declare yourself to have made any item you could have made in that time within the next day, getting exactly what you need. Basically, you get the perfect item for the task, within the wealth limit offered. Fortunately, the no multiclassing rule cuts off magic item crafting access, so you aren't making the perfect 10k GP item with 8 hours prep time at level 21. But hypermundane crafting has the problem with sufficiently inflated scores to craft useful items in one day.

Edit: Absolutely horrific thing that could be done in Gestalt is retroactively declaring your prepared spells as a Wizard as needed, becoming extremely close to a spontaneous caster. This could also be done in high-epic, as there's extremely little point to keep picking spellcasting classes past level 25 or so due to the progression being maxed out.

Jormengand
2018-01-20, 07:57 AM
There's a fundamentally broken interaction with crafting system access, here. Namely, you can spend the time to craft some unit of wealth and retroactively declare yourself to have made any item you could have made in that time within the next day, getting exactly what you need. Basically, you get the perfect item for the task, within the wealth limit offered. Fortunately, the no multiclassing rule cuts off magic item crafting access, so you aren't making the perfect 10k GP item with 8 hours prep time at level 21. But hypermundane crafting has the problem with sufficiently inflated scores to craft useful items in one day.

Edit: Absolutely horrific thing that could be done in Gestalt is retroactively declaring your prepared spells as a Wizard as needed, becoming extremely close to a spontaneous caster. This could also be done in high-epic, as there's extremely little point to keep picking spellcasting classes past level 25 or so due to the progression being maxed out.

Elite equipment crafting rules don't exist and you lose all your class features if you take chronologist in gestalt, so I don't see the problem here, really.

Morphic tide
2018-01-20, 08:56 AM
Elite equipment crafting rules don't exist and you lose all your class features if you take chronologist in gestalt, so I don't see the problem here, really.

...Okay, you seriously made a class that literally cannot have any other classes at all, under any circumstances, including the ruleset that specifically requires you to have multiple classes?! In a game heavily reliant on having multiple classes to describe characters with any degree of nuance, at all? The precedent for high-devotion classes, every time it comes up first party, is to not be able to take more levels in the class when you multiclass out of it. Not instantaneous total class feature loss. Hell, a Monk that becomes Chaotic doesn't actually lose their class features, they just can't take more levels.

This would be understandable if the class did practically everything a character needs, but it doesn't. It has literally nothing but combat abilities, down to a skill list excluding anything for downtime like Craft or Profession, save for stuff up past level 15. The only reason to do this is the Extra Turns being problematic, but the vast majority of potentially problematic effects that aren't "I Full Attack eight times" or similar are gated pretty damn well from their own mechanics, either by limited uses or rules specifically disallowing or penalizing frequent use.

There's... No real reason for it, because very few things become meaningfully more broken with more turns per round. And most of them are considerably less broken than what the limited use abilities have. Also, I didn't specify Elite equipment, I specified hypermundane. And your reason given for not making rules was that it'd be broken, but magic item crafting does damn well with limiting potential rate of crafting to make it so only explicit market value reduction works, and I proposed using a check cap to give an upper bound on crafting rate based on item grade. And your refusal to accept my proposal for a modular setup was, partially, that it would be "too much effort" than giving Martials "balanced" nice things is worth. Says the guy who went and made an upgraded version of every single monster ever subject to Summon Monster for a near-monthly contest and has been pumping out flat out upgrades to numerous high power spells with the balancing factor being "but you're not an Incantatrix." In a game where Incantatrix exists in the first place.

Like, instead of flat banning all multiclassing, in a game where multiclassing is a core part of character customization, for a class that doesn't offer anything to actually do outside of combat in a roleplaying game, not even through the skill list, you could go through the slight effort of checking some numbers and working over what is and isn't broken, then adjust the class to be extremely suboptimal for those things that do break it through clauses that screw over those specific problems. Or accept that the game is hopelessly broken on its own and not bother with balance, because there's ways to get practically everything this class offers, but better in every imaginable way (except the capstone and Curses), with relatively little optimization. Literally infinite actions, a movement speed measured in mach number (though this class's x8+400 ft. speed boost is absurdly high), dealing so much damage the number has more digits than there are atoms in the observable universe and so on. 3.5 is fundamentally broken, you don't particularly need to watch balance, and as such punitive anti-multiclassing measures, which violate a large chunk of design philosophy the game has, in combination with being pure combat-only, which is directly opposed to what the game is about in the first place, are decidedly not at all needed.

Jormengand
2018-01-20, 09:30 AM
...Okay, you seriously made a class that literally cannot have any other classes at all, under any circumstances, including the ruleset that specifically requires you to have multiple classes?!

Yes. Taking some classes in gestalt (such as mystic theurge) is already expressly forbidden.


In a game heavily reliant on having multiple classes to describe characters with any degree of nuance, at all?

That says more about your ability to create single-classed characters with any degree of nuance than about the chronologist. I happen to have a second-level single-classed truenamer (https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1446750) open right now: Rikai spends their time in combat identifying their enemies with exceptional precision and knowledge, uttering words of mystical power in a forgotten tongue to heal allies and harm foes, and ripping people's hearts out with a sacrificial dagger, as well as occasionally giving up and lobbing sharp pieces of metal at them with a crossbow. Outside of combat (ignoring that they're for an arena game), they can use almost any skill (any of the non trained-only ones) better than almost anyone else at their level. And they're a memetically awful class, at second level.

As for actual nuanced characters, those aren't really build dependent (have a core-only first-level game (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?546455-The-Generic-Campaign-IC) and watch my character develop, if you really like) but nuanced builds are totally possible too, as Rikai demonstrates. Lissa's more of a nuanced character and Rikai's build is more nuanced than a fighter/barbarian whose main combat tactic is to stick people with the pointy end of a sharp piece of metal and whose main noncombat tactic is to find something worth climbing or breaking, anyway.


The precedent for high-devotion classes, every time it comes up first party, is to not be able to take more levels in the class when you multiclass out of it. Not instantaneous total class feature loss. Hell, a Monk that becomes Chaotic doesn't actually lose their class features, they just can't take more levels.

I'm aware, but being able to take chr 1/wiz 19 would be insane. Oh no, I can't mutliclass back into chronologist, watch me cry tears of disappointment as I cast two non-quickened spells every round.


This would be understandable if the class did practically everything a character needs, but it doesn't. It has literally nothing but combat abilities, down to a skill list excluding anything for downtime like Craft or Profession, save for stuff up past level 15. The only reason to do this is the Extra Turns being problematic, but the vast majority of potentially problematic effects that aren't "I Full Attack eight times" or similar are gated pretty damn well from their own mechanics, either by limited uses or rules specifically disallowing or penalizing frequent use.

Action economy is one of the strongest things to get more of in the game. That's why people muck around with trying to ignore the drawback of celerity or such.


There's... No real reason for it, because very few things become meaningfully more broken with more turns per round. And most of them are considerably less broken than what the limited use abilities have. Also, I didn't specify Elite equipment, I specified hypermundane.

I was being charitable, since hypermundanes can't use chronologist class features AND chronologists can't take hypermundane levels.


And your reason given for not making rules was that it'd be broken, but magic item crafting does damn well with limiting potential rate of crafting to make it so only explicit market value reduction works, and I proposed using a check cap to give an upper bound on crafting rate based on item grade. And your refusal to accept my proposal for a modular setup was, partially, that it would be "too much effort" than giving Martials "balanced" nice things is worth. Says the guy who went and made an upgraded version of every single monster ever subject to Summon Monster for a near-monthly contest and has been pumping out flat out upgrades to numerous high power spells with the balancing factor being "but you're not an Incantatrix." In a game where Incantatrix exists in the first place.

Right, there's a bit of dissonance here.

Trying to make a functional crafting system for elite equipment, on the basis that for a start, I've never actually seen a PC in any game I've been in try to craft and in the second instance I'm no good at making crafting systems, would have been a lot more effort than copy-pasting some monster descriptions, adding a few points of strength, dexterity, constitution and maybe a mental stat, slapping on a competence bonus to AC that looks right, and writing "Elite creature, immunity to [three damage types that make a sort of twisted sense]" in its stat block.

Crafting elite equipment is something I leave in DM hands because it allows them to decide how elite equipment fits into their game world and because I imagine that whatever system I come up with for it will be horribly abusable somehow. Like, "Move over craft (poisonmaking)" kind of abusable. And moreover, it's not the point: the point is to give mundane characters nice things. And if an 8d6/3-20 *4 weapon which is indestructible and passes straight through anything from DR to incorporeality isn't a nice enough thing for you without having to be able to get it at a third of the price (the totally-affordable-pre-epic price, no less) I don't know what to tell you.

Plus, veteran vs wizard/maker, I know who my money's probably still on, despite the elite casting.


Like, instead of flat banning all multiclassing, in a game where multiclassing is a core part of character customization, for a class that doesn't offer anything to actually do outside of combat in a roleplaying game, not even through the skill list, you could go through the slight effort of checking some numbers and working over what is and isn't broken, then adjust the class to be extremely suboptimal for those things that do break it through clauses that screw over those specific problems. Or accept that the game is hopelessly broken on its own and not bother with balance, because there's ways to get practically everything this class offers, but better in every imaginable way (except the capstone and Curses), with relatively little optimization. Literally infinite actions, a movement speed measured in mach number (though this class's x8+400 ft. speed boost is absurdly high), dealing so much damage the number has more digits than there are atoms in the observable universe and so on. 3.5 is fundamentally broken, you don't particularly need to watch balance, and as such punitive anti-multiclassing measures, which violate a large chunk of design philosophy the game has, in combination with being pure combat-only, which is directly opposed to what the game is about in the first place, are decidedly not at all needed.

I'm assuming that players will optimise a little bit without going TO on me. Even a new player is going to realise "Hang on, if I take a level of chronologist, then at 10th level I'll be able to do 18d6 damage in one round rather than 9d6, and that's more damage than most monsters have hit points". Or even just "Hang on, if I take a level of chronologist, I can charge something and then full attack it with my [combat character]". And I'm assuming that that's going to be up against people doing normal-optimisation things, not "I shapechanged into a zodar, and then..."

Also, if it's allowed in gestalt, it will just be put on the back face of everything ("I could use a ninth-level slot, but I'll blow every last burning hands I have prepared instead." "Hello, would you like to take 8 eldritch blasts to the face?" "I have so many actions that I'm running out of combat-usable utterances to throw at people!").

Finally, if you can't find anything to do out of combat on sheer weight of how fast you can move and your timey-wimey powers alone ("Oh, I have to talk my way past the guards, do I? What are they going to do, chase after me?" "So you're saying that I have to get past this door? Okay, sure, the door temporarily doesn't exist." "Jump the gap? Okay, well ignoring the ridiculous bonus I get to jumping, I'm going to throw this box into the gap, put it in stasis, and use it as a stepping stone") then you're not trying hard enough.

Morphic tide
2018-01-20, 11:07 AM
Yes. Taking some classes in gestalt (such as mystic theurge) is already expressly forbidden.
Yes, as a categoric "no PRCs that duel-progress" rule to keep things grounded in Gestalt, because it's thematically redundant and mechanically questionable for multiple reasons.


That says more about your ability to create single-classed characters with any degree of nuance than about the chronologist. I happen to have a second-level single-classed truenamer (https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1446750) open right now: Rikai spends their time in combat identifying their enemies with exceptional precision and knowledge, uttering words of mystical power in a forgotten tongue to heal allies and harm foes, and ripping people's hearts out with a sacrificial dagger, as well as occasionally giving up and lobbing sharp pieces of metal at them with a crossbow. Outside of combat (ignoring that they're for an arena game), they can use almost any skill (any of the non trained-only ones) better than almost anyone else at their level. And they're a memetically awful class, at second level.
Mechanical nuance. The Chronologist, mechanically, is almost all action economy shenanigans. The first actual active ability that isn't just more actions is at level 6, when they get an attempt every round to try and freeze a target that they are touching.


As for actual nuanced characters, those aren't really build dependent (have a core-only first-level game (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?546455-The-Generic-Campaign-IC) and watch my character develop, if you really like) but nuanced builds are totally possible too, as Rikai demonstrates. Lissa's more of a nuanced character and Rikai's build is more nuanced than a fighter/barbarian whose main combat tactic is to stick people with the pointy end of a sharp piece of metal and whose main noncombat tactic is to find something worth climbing or breaking, anyway.
They are build dependent, because what the character is capable of is defined by the class. This class's character prospects are extremely narrow because what the class lets you do is extremely narrow. You run fast and get lots of actions. At 6th level, you get to freeze things, while you get to mess with aging at level 11.


I'm aware, but being able to take chr 1/wiz 19 would be insane. Oh no, I can't mutliclass back into chronologist, watch me cry tears of disappointment as I cast two non-quickened spells every round.
But that doesn't actually break the game much further than anything else already around because you're compacting performance. You have the same overall performance to go around, you've just gotten an ability to use it at twice the rate, which is not a fundamental problem. You have the same daily damage output, so attrition works exactly as well unless the enemy is reliant on healing. Most of the "problematic" cases have daily output rates for what's "problematic" about them, and so a moderately competent DM can casually disable all the problems by actually pressing endurance one way or another. Even Tome of Battle can be pressed by having long fights, rather than numerous fights.


Trying to make a functional crafting system for elite equipment, on the basis that for a start, I've never actually seen a PC in any game I've been in try to craft and in the second instance I'm no good at making crafting systems, would have been a lot more effort than copy-pasting some monster descriptions, adding a few points of strength, dexterity, constitution and maybe a mental stat, slapping on a competence bonus to AC that looks right, and writing "Elite creature, immunity to [three damage types that make a sort of twisted sense]" in its stat block.

Crafting elite equipment is something I leave in DM hands because it allows them to decide how elite equipment fits into their game world and because I imagine that whatever system I come up with for it will be horribly abusable somehow. Like, "Move over craft (poisonmaking)" kind of abusable. And moreover, it's not the point: the point is to give mundane characters nice things. And if an 8d6/3-20 *4 weapon which is indestructible and passes straight through anything from DR to incorporeality isn't a nice enough thing for you without having to be able to get it at a third of the price (the totally-affordable-pre-epic price, no less) I don't know what to tell you.
How hard is the setup I proposed to actually implement? X GP times the skill check, with the skill check capped, provides the degree of ceiling needed to prevent utterly outclassing everything else. Hell, just ripping off magic items directly by having it be a flat X GP per Y time period works to cap the earnings.


I'm assuming that players will optimise a little bit without going TO on me. Even a new player is going to realise "Hang on, if I take a level of chronologist, then at 10th level I'll be able to do 18d6 damage in one round rather than 9d6, and that's more damage than most monsters have hit points". Or even just "Hang on, if I take a level of chronologist, I can charge something and then full attack it with my [combat character]". And I'm assuming that that's going to be up against people doing normal-optimisation things, not "I shapechanged into a zodar, and then..."
You do realize that the "more damage than the enemy has hit points" thing is something this class does absolutely trivially, all day, every day, just from the actions and 3/4 BAB, right? The 18d6 instead of 9d6 is what this class does for damage. Int to attack rolls provides enough to make up for non-full BAB, and the vast number of actions means it's keeping up with goddamn Uberchargers. Any question of damage breaking the game is a moot point because this class has more than enough by a huge amount, because even at just two turns per round, they still get to move, standard action attack and full attack twice on the same turn at 8th level. Which is 5 attacks, with the two +1s being able to easily have +7 to attack rolls because of the Int to attack rolls that doesn't overwrite the normal Str or Dex.

The thing is, everything a Fighter could do with Chronologist that doesn't require feats is something the class already does. Charge then full attack? Chronologist 20 can do that four times, with better to-hit than most Fighters will have on the charge itself. You have done nothing to stop the Chronologist from being a mega-Martial off of pure and simple action nova. And they can still pick up problematic abilities with feats to spam with all those actions, like Incarnum stuff or one of the Desert Wind Boosts for damage per attack on one round per encounter.


Also, if it's allowed in gestalt, it will just be put on the back face of everything ("I could use a ninth-level slot, but I'll blow every last burning hands I have prepared instead." "Hello, would you like to take 8 eldritch blasts to the face?" "I have so many actions that I'm running out of combat-usable utterances to throw at people!").
If the basic premise of your class is something that's so fundamentally broken, it cannot stand any multiclassing, at all, for any reason, it probably shouldn't exist in a game where over half of build variety comes from class and characters are largely assumed to gain abilities through some form of multiclassing. If it offers nothing directly non-combat, nothing to do for downtime, then it doesn't belong in a game where the point of it is to roleplay, not just crawl from fight to fight. And again, most "problematic" uses can't actually get a huge amount out of the class without devoting a significant amount of levels to it or using shenanigans that remove the usefulness of the class in the first place.

For all the daily uses classes, which are the vast bulk of "problematic" cases, you're just burning your resources faster with more efficiency than normal. You don't get any more resources, so all the DM has to do is actually have it so that the day's encounters are organized to take up most of your resources so that the wasteful novas end up running you out of resources. Sure, it magnifies rocket tag severely, but it does not actually make the amount of damage available increase.


Finally, if you can't find anything to do out of combat on sheer weight of how fast you can move and your timey-wimey powers alone ("Oh, I have to talk my way past the guards, do I? What are they going to do, chase after me?" "So you're saying that I have to get past this door? Okay, sure, the door temporarily doesn't exist." "Jump the gap? Okay, well ignoring the ridiculous bonus I get to jumping, I'm going to throw this box into the gap, put it in stasis, and use it as a stepping stone") then you're not trying hard enough.
How do you put a box in stasis to use as a stepping stone when you have to be touching it to apply stasis? And where's the bonus to Jump coming from? And the bigger problem is the utter lack of anything to do for downtime in the class, which is frequent in more freeform campaigns. Even Fighters can at least hypothetically craft mundane stuff for minor profit. Wizards can hire out their spellcasting for a pretty good profit, too.

Jormengand
2018-01-20, 11:58 AM
Yes, as a categoric "no PRCs that duel-progress" rule to keep things grounded in Gestalt, because it's thematically redundant and mechanically questionable for multiple reasons.

And the chronologist also can't be gestalted to keep things grounded.


Mechanical nuance. The Chronologist, mechanically, is almost all action economy shenanigans. The first actual active ability that isn't just more actions is at level 6, when they get an attempt every round to try and freeze a target that they are touching.

Yeah, but you can do a hell of a lot with just "More actions", whether it's spamming strength checks on a door until you pass (a 10th-level chronologist with 12 strength has a 76% chance to pass a DC 16 strength check in one round, and a 10th-level fighter with 20 strength has a 50% chance) or running really quickly for any of the multitude of reasons you could want to do that or doing the kind of actions which would normally not be viable because they take multiple rounds to set up (if you need three rounds of actions to climb up to the top of a ladder and knock some rubble onto the enemies below, crushing them, and they have a chance to knock you off between rounds, then a 4th-level chronologist actually has the opportunity to do that when no-one else has that opportunity short of some kind of early-game flight.)


They are build dependent, because what the character is capable of is defined by the class. This class's character prospects are extremely narrow because what the class lets you do is extremely narrow. You run fast and get lots of actions. At 6th level, you get to freeze things, while you get to mess with aging at level 11.

Okay, but here's the thing. With her current setup, Lissa's prospects are basically limited to hurting stuff, healing stuff, and surviving in the wild. That's the stuff listed on her character sheet. So that means that she can't do a great amount of character-building, right?

Wrong. She doesn't need powerful stuff to be written on her character sheet, doesn't even need an ability score higher than 13 (I rolled bad, shush), in order to get all shy and awkward around the other women in the party (actually, the lack of ability in charisma helps here), in order to have backstory flashbacks, in order to have meaningful interactions with the other characters, in order to be a racist jerk to half-elves, and so forth. Each of these is what makes her into a believable character: a person with feelings and emotions, a person with prejudices and with those who are prejudiced against her, a person with a personality, a person who I can believe is a person.

Now, sure, if the capability side of your character concept is "I'm the greatest warrior who ever lived" and you're, well, not, that causes a level of dissonance. But if your capability concept is anything other than "I'm the Flash" then I have some bad news.


But that doesn't actually break the game much further than anything else already around because you're compacting performance. You have the same overall performance to go around, you've just gotten an ability to use it at twice the rate, which is not a fundamental problem. You have the same daily damage output, so attrition works exactly as well unless the enemy is reliant on healing. Most of the "problematic" cases have daily output rates for what's "problematic" about them, and so a moderately competent DM can casually disable all the problems by actually pressing endurance one way or another. Even Tome of Battle can be pressed by having long fights, rather than numerous fights.

I'm very tempted just to not have the action economy discussion with you because all reasonable people should know that action economy is good anyway, but here's the thing.

Every round that the enemy is not alive means a round where they're not doing hit point damage (which loses you spell slots on Cure Assorted Wounds or Whatever Vigour) or causing a condition you have to fix (which loses you hit points on whatever you're using to fix it). So you're burning fewer resources on that. But it's also a setup where you're killing enemies faster and that means they have fewer chances to kill you. Finally, at high caster levels, you don't run out of spell slots anyway. Action economy, not spell slot economy, is what decides almost all caster fights.


How hard is the setup I proposed to actually implement? X GP times the skill check, with the skill check capped, provides the degree of ceiling needed to prevent utterly outclassing everything else. Hell, just ripping off magic items directly by having it be a flat X GP per Y time period works to cap the earnings.

I honestly have no idea whether that would actually work. Hells, I'll probably spend the time to work it out in Sword Vs Spell. But I work on things in the order I work on them. Right now it happens to be the maker, Death Before Dishonour, and arguing about whether going twice as fast is worth a level.


You do realize that the "more damage than the enemy has hit points" thing is something this class does absolutely trivially, all day, every day, just from the actions and 3/4 BAB, right? The 18d6 instead of 9d6 is what this class does for damage. Int to attack rolls provides enough to make up for non-full BAB, and the vast number of actions means it's keeping up with goddamn Uberchargers. Any question of damage breaking the game is a moot point because this class has more than enough by a huge amount, because even at just two turns per round, they still get to move, standard action attack and full attack twice on the same turn at 8th level. Which is 5 attacks, with the two +1s being able to easily have +7 to attack rolls because of the Int to attack rolls that doesn't overwrite the normal Str or Dex.

A chronologist with a greatsword can, at 10th level, charge, then make another 8 attacks dealing, say, 2d6+6 damage. That winds up as a total of 13 damage per attack on average, which is... 3 against a bebilith, 3 or 0 against most colossal animated objects, 3 against a clay golem, and enough to carve a myrmarch into tiny pieces if you can consistently hit AC 28 with your 2-BAB iteratives. Sure, you can get a nice magical sword with an energy bonus and pray that it's the right one, but that's not totally encouraging.

The wizard, meanwhile, casts two spells and can deal serious injury to multiple creatures in an area, which is enough to mash up any encounter consisting of multiple weaker creatures. Against a stronger one, he can instead turn on the Save-or-Lose buttons until they go away.


The thing is, everything a Fighter could do with Chronologist that doesn't require feats is something the class already does. Charge then full attack? Chronologist 20 can do that four times, with better to-hit than most Fighters will have on the charge itself. You have done nothing to stop the Chronologist from being a mega-Martial off of pure and simple action nova. And they can still pick up problematic abilities with feats to spam with all those actions, like Incarnum stuff or one of the Desert Wind Boosts for damage per attack on one round per encounter.

I'm okay with chronologist being yet another in a long line of classes which demonstrates that fighters suck.


If the basic premise of your class is something that's so fundamentally broken, it cannot stand any multiclassing, at all, for any reason, it probably shouldn't exist in a game where over half of build variety comes from class and characters are largely assumed to gain abilities through some form of multiclassing.

I mean, it works fine on its own, and I've not seen any problems with it, including problems with not having a "Nuanced character". But it would be problematic combined with wizard or even just warlock.


If it offers nothing directly non-combat, nothing to do for downtime, then it doesn't belong in a game where the point of it is to roleplay, not just crawl from fight to fight. And again, most "problematic" uses can't actually get a huge amount out of the class without devoting a significant amount of levels to it or using shenanigans that remove the usefulness of the class in the first place.

It does offer you noncombat stuff. It just doesn't hand you silver platters saying "This is a kind of thing you can do out of combat" in them. Are you complaining that you have to be inventive with your abilities?


For all the daily uses classes, which are the vast bulk of "problematic" cases, you're just burning your resources faster with more efficiency than normal. You don't get any more resources, so all the DM has to do is actually have it so that the day's encounters are organized to take up most of your resources so that the wasteful novas end up running you out of resources. Sure, it magnifies rocket tag severely, but it does not actually make the amount of damage available increase.

Sure, damage per day might not increase, but running out of spells is rarely what settles even mid-level fights.


How do you put a box in stasis to use as a stepping stone when you have to be touching it to apply stasis? And where's the bonus to Jump coming from? And the bigger problem is the utter lack of anything to do for downtime in the class, which is frequent in more freeform campaigns. Even Fighters can at least hypothetically craft mundane stuff for minor profit. Wizards can hire out their spellcasting for a pretty good profit, too.

Leap while holding it, while using your speed bonus to jump, and stasis it mid-jump. "Downtime" activities could include a job as a courier or whatever if you really want - I generally avoid "Downtime" beyond what's essentially shopping time because it reads suspiciously like "Not playing D&D" to me.



I think the upshot here is that chronologists have the opportunity for doing things which other characters don't, but you're not seeing that because they're not written directly on the class table.

Hish
2018-01-20, 08:42 PM
Favorable Action Economy: The Class. I'm a big fan. I generally don't like codes of conduct or multiclassing restrictions, but when they prevent the class from ripping the entire game asunder, they're alright.

There's probably something you can do to wreck things with custom at-will magic items.

SpaceCommander
2018-01-24, 11:07 PM
:xykon: "Minions, minions, Lord Xykon has it all under control"

To fix the multiclass problem, which seems to be the biggest source of contention here, just say that abilities derived from other classes cannot be used in combination with Chronologist features. For example, you would not be able to use your fighter bonus feats on attacks made with extra actions, or if you cast expeditious retreat on yourself it would not stack with your speed bonus. You could however, get a damage bonus from power attack during your extra actions, so long as you took Power Attack as a once per three levels feat instead of a bonus feat; for the second example, if your wizard buddy cast expeditious retreat on you, it would work as normal.

Happy?

Jormengand
2018-01-25, 05:26 AM
:xykon: "Minions, minions, Lord Xykon has it all under control"

To fix the multiclass problem, which seems to be the biggest source of contention here, just say that abilities derived from other classes cannot be used in combination with Chronologist features. For example, you would not be able to use your fighter bonus feats on attacks made with extra actions, or if you cast expeditious retreat on yourself it would not stack with your speed bonus. You could however, get a damage bonus from power attack during your extra actions, so long as you took Power Attack as a once per three levels feat instead of a bonus feat; for the second example, if your wizard buddy cast expeditious retreat on you, it would work as normal.

Happy?

This would... still make it pretty pointless multiclassing, and in the second instance having to count how many of your skill points came from rogue and how many came from chronologist would quickly become a drag.