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    Default Time sphere (Spheres 5e in Review)

    Preamble: After reviewing the Life sphere, I looked into the spheres classes, hoping to review them. And, honestly, I'm really rather impressed by the elegant adaptation to 5e class design. And I do truly mean that. Most of the classes in Spheres were there since inception, and most of them are largely redundant. But here, the sphere-specialist classes are just ... "paths" or whatevers of the related classes. But... god so much of the classes were lost in the adaptation to 5e. Most notably the fact that most of the classes were basically "build your own class," from pools of abilities every few levels. In 5e, there's literally 1 choice inside the classes: The path you take. You make it once, and have nothing else to decide on, outside of the choice to multiclass... which isn't particularly appealing in this system.

    I think I overall just hate 5e class design, period. That along with the OGL nonsense and... life stuff... has made me less than enthused about continuing this series. Probably going to start one for adapting the really good 5e adaptations back into PF. Explaining that's going to be fun. "Hey, this is a homebrew PF adaptation of the 5e adaptation of this 3rd party pathfinder rule set. Can you let me play it?"

    But in order to complete that series, I've got to sus out all of the good 5e adaptations that were made. I didn't particularly like the Pathfinder version of Time sphere, so let's see what the 5e version has in store for us.

    Wiki: For those looking to follow along, the spheres 5e wiki can be found here. And the Time sphere in specific is found here.

    Post-Review Analysis: I actually rather like the time sphere here. Time and Illusion are my two favorite "magic archetypes," and I think that this finally does justice to Time. And now I wished that my time off from work was on a consistent schedule so I could play a time mage.

    Spoiler: Ratings
    Show
    (1) Superb: You always want this if it's relevant to you. And it probably is.
    (1.5) Really Good: Particularly useful bits of kit, but aren't quite must-haves. (Kept it decimal, because spreading out Good so far from Superb felt unrepresentative. But I needed a step between)
    (2) Good: These make useful additions to the right builds. Among your first picks.
    (3) Usable: Doesn't hurt to have. Wouldn't go out of your way for it.

    (4) No: It technically has a use, but the cost to take simply doesn't outweigh the benefit.
    (5) Never: There’s no non-trivial reason to pick it up, from its mechanics.
    (6+) Harmful: Taking/using this is actively detrimental to your character.

    <Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
    [Square brackets] indicate a reliance on the group (players or DM) or campaign you’re playing in, and how well it does in those select groups.

    Special Ratings:
    (C) Cheese: A talent so broken that it will be instantly banned if you use it as you could.
    (?) Unrated: I choose not to rate it. Often because it is just so far out of my wheelhouse, or it’s far too ambiguous.
    (F) Flavor: This indicates that the main draw to the talent is going to be its inherent fluff or flavor, rather than raw power or utility.
    (D) D***bag: Used for when your character wants to be a D***bag.


    Base Sphere contains the abilities you gain from using a talent on the sphere for the first time.
    Spoiler: Base Sphere
    Show
    Bonus talent: Gain a (chronos) talent of your choice.

    Alter Time: This is the base effect which your (chronos) talents will alter. Concentration, 1 action, 30 feet, 1 creature. Augment by 2 sp to make it last without concentration.

    I like this change, mostly on account of how mediocre haste/slow was in PF, despite being the base sphere effects.


    Basic Talents can be selected from the sphere, after you gain the base sphere. They tend to add functionality to the sphere. Each talent you spend can get you one of the following basic talents.
    The following are groups of the basic talents.

    Chronos Talents are abilities that alter your Alter Time effect.
    Spoiler: Chronos Talents
    Show
    Steal Time (1+): 1 sp to incapacitate the target for 1 round. 1 more sp to also gain an action if they fail the save. Another sp to stun rather than simply incapacitate. All incredibly good.

    Time Freeze (1+, F): I love this effect. It can be used in much the same way as Retry (defensively at least), but even more flexibly. Want to sneak past a guard? Time Freeze until he's frozen and then walk your entire team past. Trapped hallway, with no rogue? Freeze the hallway, and let the team across. Getting shot with arrows, or the target of a fireball? Freeze your area and walk away. Only creatures get a save - objects and effects don't. Similarly, you can entirely block off a hallway from ranged assault. Want to prank the rude bar patron, freeze him in time and put a bucket over his head. Now, freeze time only lasts for 1 round, so your response to the frozen nonsense must be readily at hand, but all the same. Now, this doesn't let you retry your allies' turns, recouping a failed spell cast, wasted consumable, let the cleric attempt Revivify again or what have you. So there are reasons to take Retry over this. But this has more general usability.

    Delay Pain (1): For a spell point, and a reaction, you can delay either damage, or an effect until the end of their next turn. And it's that last bit - About the effect - which really is notable. For example... polymorph might legitimately make you unable to cast. You delay it, and then dispel it by some means before it takes effect. Just as the easiest example. Of course, delaying damage also means you get to heal it before it actually kills anyone, which is always appreciated. Especially as a reaction. And it even works offensively (though with a save), if you see the big bad trying to buff himself (or get a buff, or heal, or whatever, from allies). It's really flexible and useful.
    Note: this is a spell with a duration of 1 round, which is less than the minimum 1 minute, so it cannot be extended.

    Retroactive Preparation (1, F) The flavor side of this ability gives it a huge boost to the rating for me. Like... on strict strength, it's probably a high Good. But the fact that you tell your past self to do something, like buying a crowbar, or holy water, or napalm, or to research what the heck a green dragon is, or to have sat down and had dinner with this person you want to talk to right now... God, that's just fun and highly appropriate for a time mage, without needing to run into issues that time travel normally causes. Normally, the fact that you can use it exactly once per 24 hours (in addition to spending spell points and potentially gold) would be a deal breaker. But it's just so fitting. You could probably get your DM to let you do it [proficiency mod] times per day, if you really needed to.
    (Also, if your DM is flexible, he might allow you to count "a bandolier of acid flasks," or a complete happy meal with fries, as one item. That item count restriction is really strange and not present in pathfinder, IIRC.)

    Retry (1): For 2 spell points, force the target to redo their turn. Still didn't fix or add any wording about when this turn that they are redoing happened... But let's just assume it's the current turn you are using your reaction in. You can use it offensively or defensively. All resources and actions spent by them during that turn (aside from on Retry) are refunded. So you can get additional attempts to land [spells, attacks, etc], or to make that jump, or to just... not even walk into the trap. Or to force the enemy (who just crit you) to save or redo their turn. (Or if you could target non-current turns with your redo, just redo your previous turn on being crit so that you're out of range by this opponent's turn. No saves needed. Time frackery is stupid.)
    Also, did you just make a total fool of yourself? Redo your turn, and don't make that really silly comment that actually insulted the Karen, and started a brawl.

    Rewind Mana [1]: Let's assume you have other casters in your group, who fulfill different roles to you. Or that your DM loves to counter spell stuff. Well, now you get to counter spell the counter spell, without a roll (just 2 sp). And you can transfer mana from yourself to the other caster who needs needs more mana to pull off their specific situational spell. (Note: There are conversion rates for spell points to spell slots... in pathfinder at least.)

    Shift Time (1.5): Getting to pull and push actions is so nice. Borrow time lets your target(s) take actions from next round and use it this round, for 1 spell point. Well, if you target anyone but yourself, it costs you one action to enable this speeding up of actions... so, they better have some good situational usage to net negative 1 action over 2 rounds. But if they do, then it's really rather neat. Meanwhile Store Time is a cantrip which lets them store their action of this turn, and spend it in the next. Still a concentration spell, but if you have the jump on your enemies, it's very useful, especially with the Mass (metasphere), or Time Zone talents. (In fact, Time Zone is probably a stupid good and efficient combo with this. But that's Time Zone's fault, not this.) You all start off with like 2 actions, then drop concentration, and really get the drop on them. And it's still reasonably useful as just a cantrip, if you can anticipate a fight coming up.

    Causality (1.5): As an instantaneous cantrip, they must make a check, or else you have a 4/6 chance of notably impacting them, giving them a nice penalty unless they spend an action to remove it (or go pick up their weapon / spell book / wand / etc). And the not so useful penalties at least last for a minute, so it's not totally worthless. And for a spell point, you choose which of the penalties to apply.

    Repetition (1.5): For a spell point, you give the target a natural 20 on a strength of dex check.. that doesn't last more than 1 round, and is not opposed. So, basically just acrobatics and athletics, for default skill checks. But a natural 20 is a natural 20, and there could be other, non-skill things, like holding a collapsing ceiling trap to let everyone escape under it. Granted... this is an action, not a reaction, so the chances of you getting to use it in time for that example is particularly low. But maybe for forcing open a door instead. How getting extra time to carefully do it lets a barbarian bash down a door easier works... I don't know. Picking locks and disabling traps, undoubtedly works. (Not default skills. For some reason. 5e is weird. But I assume they use ability checks.)
    Plop it down as a Time Zone (see other talents) at the edge of a cliff so that the entire team gets the bonus without you having to cast it multiple times or spend additional spll points.

    Eject (2, F): Meh. You spend an action and spell point to maybe force a creature/object to disappear for a round. Spending another lets it disappear for up to a minute (concentration). Now, it does have utility (especially for heist-style campaigns) when targeting objects. Especially when you are being searched as you just walk through the front door. Or literally whenever you want to get any contraband past a search (though you do want it to be in a covered box so that its reappearance when you stop concentrating isn't suspicious). You can also just like... eject weapons and locks or even doors. If your DM is willing, you can count a medium-sized portion of a larger object as a medium-sized object, letting you open up a wall or floor and pass on through without causing any damage, or leaving any marks. Makes it incredible for an NPC rogue's guild. Or for the banker... although they probably would prefer to have heavy anti-magic reinforcement on their vaults. Being a banker is hard in D&D. Very hard. And expensive.
    With Time Zone, using the Concentration augment, you can eject a 10-foot radius of stuff... no. Just creatures, explicitly. But that's much more useful than base Eject. And even basically creates a wall of "stay back, or disappear into the timestream" for melee creatures. And can repeatedly attempt to eject creatures, if kept in the zone, for no additional cost. But I think I'll keep that in Time Zone's rating, not this talent's.

    Rapid Response (2): Advantage on initiative checks and act in surprise rounds when surprised. As a cantrip, so it's basically permanent. But only for one person (as a cantrip), due to being concentration. Overall, pretty balanced, if somewhat boring in my opinion. You will probably just keep it on yourself, but sometimes there's a particular party member that is really good when they go first.

    Broken Time [2]: Basically 1 spell point to give a caster a chance of losing their spells. Most people aren't firing off ability checks mid-combat. They get a wisdom save to avoid the effect, plus a new wisdom save each round to end the effect early, plus a con... wait. "Constitution check"? So it's ability check, not a save, to actually not have your spell fizzle??? That is positively strange. But it does mean that the check is made with disadvantage. So, assuming that casters are common enough in your campaign to even consider this, and they aren't divine casters, and that they tend to be bad enough to be worth your concentration, then this could be a useful talent.

    Fractured Image (2): For 2 spell points, all attacks against the target suffer disadvantage. (Average effective bonus is equivalent to about +5 AC.) Decidedly good, and fairly costed.

    Adjusted Frequency (3): "Oh my god, a number with a math symbol? Are you trying to kill 5e users?" No, as it turns out, Slow and Haste are just the normal 5e spells. Except that the major parts (the stuff about actions) are locked behind 2 sp. Which does effectively mean that you can't grant the action-bonus to multiple people, on account of being un able to spend more than your proficiency modifier spell points at once, and it being a concentration spell without it spending 2 more sp. Unless you use Time Zone (in which case, the effects are lost once they move out of the area... or granted, if enemies move in to it. Which might not be bad if you've got excess ranged characters, and a front liner that can keep baddies away.)
    So, I'm going to say that it is decidedly mediocre, with the caveat that, if you are expecting to go against a dex-save-using creature, like a dragon, then this could be rather useful to pre-apply and then run in, as the actions isn't its main deal there.
    Slow is just unnecessarily obtuse.

    Age (3, F): There's some neat utility here. Mostly non-combat. Like increasing the size of a vine to reach over a ravine, (or decreasing the tree's size to let you pass over it - or even simply climb to the top and let it go back to normal size) unspoil food, or (temporarily) un-magic items, as well as disadvantage either a target's mental or physical saves. It's funny that this does more item damage/restoration than Creation sphere's alter does, despite this having substantially more things it can do.
    Held back by the fact that its base cost is 1 sp. Like... Adjust Age, and maybe Rewind Enchantment might be worthy of that cost, potentially. One could even maybe argue for the item damage/restore. The base cost and short duration of Adjust Age means that it is also almost strictly a combat spell, rather than a disguise, which does rather suck. But it could be used in a pinch I suppose. (I'll probably adjust that to also grant an Alteration sphere trait in my adaptation.)

    Lethargy (4): For a spell point, grant 1 level of exhaustion, instantaneously. Thank god they made the exhaustion cap at 5, so that it's not literally a count down to killing them. (I hate separate kill-tracks, which have no input from other players that might be using the more common HP-track. I like Pokemon capture mechanics, because it's like "Hey, that stuff I was doing to hurt them wasn't worthless.")
    So... let's look at this as though your target had 0 exhaustion to start (as they normally will, by my experience). Level 1 does nothing. Level 2 does very little. Level 3 is actually really notable. So, over a minimum of 3 rounds and 3 spell points, if they make absolutely no saves, they now have disadvantage on attacks and saves. That's neat. But they will almost certainly be dead by the time you get them to that point. Either because they are a mook, and don't matter, or because they are a boss, and have been making their saves. So, as neat as it may be, exhaustion mechanics don't really work for combat.

    Timeline Bridge (5): Advantage on intelligence checks... woo. But as a cantrip. Woo... Oh, but as a 1 sp augment, you can end the effect, as a reaction, and grant them advantage on a save, or attacker disadvantage on attack. But there are better versions of this even in the same sphere.

    Throttle Duration (5): Largely worthless without Time Zone, and even with it, you'd really have to stretch to make it worth while. This allows you to adjust up or down the duration of effects. Fleeting says it decreases by [proficiency mod] additional rounds per round. Relaxed duration simply says it's increased by [proficiency mod] rounds. So... does it have maximum effect as soon as you cast Relaxed Duration, and so you can drop the concentration? Presumably. I dunno. So cool, you spend 1 spell point and action to get an extra 2 to 6 rounds of duration out of [effect]... Who honestly cares? You probably could get better duration increase for much the same cost (especially per round) by just casting it again. (Now, again, you could possibly get decent good value if you have a bunch of high-cost buffs, and use Time Zone... but when is 6 rounds by level 20 going to make the difference? Remember that it caps at double duration.)
    As for Fleeting Duration? Let's say a hostile effect lasts for 1 minute. At level 1, you need to use your action, spell point, and concentrate for 3 rounds in order to remove it. At level 5 it's better at only 2 rounds, and literally doesn't get better than that. Sure, you're not rolling counterspell or anything, but that's really not particularly good. And for non-combat issues like poison and disease... you can only concentrate on it for 1 minute per spell point, unless you take the Extended (metasphere) talent - which is virtually required for such a usage... which obviates the need for THROTTLE DURATION! Sure, you're reducing its duration by a couple minutes... but what diseases has a duration wherein you care about... what? 10 minutes? 40 minutes? I know pathfinder had Drow Poison which had a 1 minute unconsciousness effect. (Of course, Remove Poison is a thing... Which this spell is not.)
    I know I'm writing a lot here. But... it's just so worthless that it must be explained just how worthless it is.


    Spoiler: Other Talents
    Show
    Time Zone (1++): This makes or breaks several of the talents in the Time sphere. Like, just the ones that I explicitly mentioned this in get definite, huge benefits.

    Manipulate Healing (2): As a 0 sp augment, when affected by Haste (see: Adjusted Frequency talent), they can spend a bonus action to heal as though a short rest. And when affected by Slow (see same talent), suspends their regeneration and other hp restorations. I actually see this as the balanced version of Life sphere's healing. And the halting of enemy healing is also very (situationally) useful.

    Second Chance (2): For a sp as a reaction, any creature under your alter time effect rerolls a save it just failed. Why there would be an unwilling target, I don't know, as it explicitly doesn't say you can reroll a save that succeeded.


    Variants are restrictions upon the use of the sphere, but often gives something in recompense. They are more here for flavor than for power. They can also be used to slightly, temporarily accelerate your build, since you can basically just return the talent you are granted by the variant.
    Spoiler: Variants
    Show
    Personal Time: Can only target yourself with alter time. Can't gain the best talent in the sphere: Time Zone. I say this is just a straight up terrible variant, with only Haste, Fractured Image, Rapid Response, Retry, and Retroactive Preparation being-... OK, that's actually a good selection, but it just reduces the flexibility of even the valid talents so much.
    Last edited by SangoProduction; 2023-01-29 at 08:40 PM.

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