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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5242300" data-attributes="member: 4937">Time Manipulation falls into the category of things for which it is very hard to do in any game system.  A Chronomancer is like a Speedster in a supers game - difficult to do well.  I seriously doubt you could have made a more difficult request than this one.Oh, and welcome to the forums. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />So, to begin with, I hate your Paradox mechanic.  It's got all sorts of problems from a DM perspective:1) When it screws you, it screws the whole party.  This has the potential of causing player conflict.2) If it doesn't screw the whole party, it shunts your character into an alternate universe where I suddenly have to deal with your character as a separate party.3) When its screw you, it screws the whole campaign.  All the sudden I have to deal with this whole 'alternate timeline' thing I wasn't planning on.  Forcing me to invent a new reality every time that you made certain choices does not sound like fun to me.4) It's vague.  The part about paradox reducing how many spells you can cast is concrete and a pretty good mechanic.  You generate paradox and you get less spells tommorrow.  I get that, and I like it.  The whole 'shift to another timeline' bit strikes me as something that is likely to either be really irritating or easily ignored depending on how much effort the DM wants to put into it.  My guess is that 'easily ignored' is going to be the outcome in most cases, because its not like Wish/Miracle are easily accessible over the course of most of most campaigns.Ok, so as for your questions:"1. How powerful should aging/de-aging spells be?"First of all, they should not in most cases age a character a fixed number of years.  That's to hard to balance.  Instead, they should age a character a fixed number of age categories.Aging is generally alot less powerful than de-aging.  The exception is elderly wizard types.Aging effects are generally of one of three categories:a) Nuisance: You don't age enough for there to be any signficant effects.b) Save or Maim (Permenent Suck): You age enough that its debilitating.c) Save or Die: You age enough that you are rendered helpless or dead.There are a host of basic problems here.  First of all, categories 'a' and 'b' turn into category 'c' conditionally where that condition is 'you are older or younger than expected'.   An elderly NPC subject to a category 'b' spell is effectively facing 'Save or Die'.  A very young NPC subject to even a category 'a' spell might be turned into a helpless infant, which is effectively 'Save or Die'.   This makes 'a' and 'b' very hard to balance.Making the problem worse is if the spell makes the aging or deaging permenent.  Aging and De-aging are very hard to heal effects, especially compared to hit point damage or even ability damage.  'Save or Maim' aging must be reverable else its the most powerful 'Save or Maim' aging.  Similar problems with 'Save or Die' aging.  'Save or Die' aging must be balanced with other spells that cause death without the possibility of resurrection.(!!!)You also have to consider the impact of aging magic on the campaign world.  If its well known how to de-age some, then you have the high probability that the sufficiently wealthy section of the population is effectively immortal.  This has a huge social, religious and political impact on the campaign world.2) You see the problem, but the mechanics you are thinking of will only make the problem worse.Nuisance Aging is like: Fourth level, target ages a number of years equal to half the present age category at a cost of like 6 power points.  Not scalable by applying more power points, you have to spend another action.Save or Maim Aging is like: Fifth level, target ages to the midpoint of the next age category at a cost of like 10 power points.  Not scalable by applying more power points; you have to spend another action.Save or Die Aging is like: Seventh level, target ages an age category per 10 power points expended.Reduce by two levels and a couple of power points if the target reverts to their normal age at the end of the spells duration.The problem with aging a fixed number of years is that its devestating to a short lived race/creature (a wolf for example), but pretty much meaningless to a long lived one (like an elf).I should also point out that aging effects tend to be much more devestating to PC's than to NPC's, because an NPC probably only gets hit once but a PC has to worry about cumulative effects over the course of a campaign.3) Any spell which you would normally assign an XP cost to it to control the spell's effect on the campaign should create paradox as well as or instead of the normal cost.  Certainly any spell that causes permenent aging (rather than reverts at the end of the spell duration) should cause paradox.  In fact, any spell with a permenent effect should probably cause at least 1 paradox.  A few others should cause paradox if thematically appropriate (global or area of effect spells).'Prevent Someone From Being Born' is basically 'save or die with no chance of resurrection'.  There are equivalent effects that aren't quite as flashy, so its oddly not one of the worst offenders.  I'd put it at like 3 paradox if all it does is erase the character.   The real problem here is if it undoes everything that character has ever done, that is, does it also erase the characters offspring, resurrect anyone the character has ever killed, etc.?  In that case, its like 9th level and 30 paradox and as a DM I'd seriously consider a ban on the spell not because of its power level, but simply because of the headache it would cause for me as a DM to reinvent the campaign each time it was cast.4) If paradox is a resource, it's not a drawback.  You have to be very careful with that.5) No.  You could get away with the character casting them more times per day than an equivalent level caster, but you can't get away really with making them accessable significantly sooner.</blockquote>

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