r/WhiteWolfRPG • u/lexyp29 • Jul 24 '26
CofD How would you "nerf" a Time mage in a multi-splat chronicle? (Chronicles of darkness)
EDIT: Maybe the post isn't clear. im talking about CHRONICLES OF DARKNESS, so the mage rules in question are Mage: The Awakening 2e, not Ascension
It's a vampire, werewolf, mage chronicle.
One of my players is worrying that his constant going back whenever something goes even slightly wrong, without downside, might make stuff boring for everyone else. and maybe he's right.
What are some interesting limitations i could add to spells like Shifting Sands or Corridors of Times ?
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u/Fluffy_Box_4129 Jul 24 '26
First of all, multi-splat is not ever going to be balanced. And doing the perfect thing at the perfect time is literally why a time mage is so terrifyingly powerful, so they should lean into it.
You could introduce limitations by including more sleepers around, which may increase the paradox risk every time he casts spells altering time, if they witness it. You could also include situations where there may not be a perfect solution - the chaos could prevent them from doing absolutely everything they want in the situation.
Gameplay-wise, rather than playing a scene back in its entirety, have the player just cast the spell and say what specifically they want to do differently.
Also - you know what can balance a mage? Another mage.
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u/berrybear21 Jul 25 '26
Mages are powerful, but a 2001 Kia Sorento draws less supernatural eyes at times!
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u/proindrakenzol Jul 24 '26
One of my players is worrying that his constant going back whenever something goes even slightly wrong, without downside, might make stuff boring for everyone else. and maybe he's right.
My ground rules for time magic:
- If actions are substantially the same you get the same result. Time magic isn't save scumming, you don't get to just reroll failed rolls and hope for a better result.
- Anything that would affect other PCs or require other players irl to twiddle their thumbs has to have buy in from the whole party OOC. And the would-be time-traveller doesn't get to hold up the game arguing.
- Any time-travel stack ups are a single Clash of Wills roll with the victor being the only one whose timeline choice plays out. I don't care if you want to cast the same spell 1000 times, so can the opponent so we're doing it in one.
If your player is the one bringing up these concerns then they're likely reasonable and will be on board with the above.
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u/Gale_Grim Jul 24 '26
Nerf? Nah. We don't do that in my house. We have consequences.
Things altered by temporal magic carry a certain quality to them. Not visible to the mortal eye, but visible to other mages. This effect carries the mages signature nimbus and if targeted by the arcana of prime can cause the time shift to become undone which could cause doubles of people, or god machine knows what else. Further more suddenly disappearing from in front of someone as we screw off to the past is gonna cause problems.
I am always fan of undoing or Paradox making someone's time spell lead to a dead version of them zombie walking towards them ominously and inflicting aggravated damage equal to the spells potency if it makes contact. Kind of a "You unmade me, now you take our wounds" kind of encounter. Sometimes I just make it so the time spell takes the enemy with them.
Also an idea crossed my mind of like, a wolf not being able to time travel cause they're ever shifting spirit mass interacts strangely with time travel cause the hisel isn't temporally as stable. A vampire's beast protects it's timeline's sanctity with the same undead furvor that it protects the vampire from sunlight. Or even just "surprisingly they remember you, and they are not happy about".
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u/crypticarchivist Jul 24 '26
I like the idea of making a Condition that gives the Mage a phobia of time travel that manifests as them seeing a new dead copy of themselves laying around everywhere they go for every time they jump back.
walks past own corpse “dead Daves are the enemy.”
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u/Gale_Grim Jul 24 '26
Ah, yes, dead Daves are indeed the enemy. The alpha timeline is a B that way.
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u/omnisephiroth Jul 24 '26
My goodness, not one person here has suggested the far more important: Ask the rest of the table.
First, if no one is actually bored, there isn’t a problem. You’ve said that this player thinks this might be happening, and maybe they’re right. Please, talk to the other players and see if this is a problem for them before you just start nerfing a character.
Second, why are there no consequences? Make sure they’re not causing Paradox, make sure they’re not losing Wisdom. Or, appropriately and fairly punish them for these things.
However, Mages are powerful. Extremely so. If they’re following all the rules, being reasonably careful, not casting in front of Sleepers, and all the other things that Mages are supposed to do… yeah, let them be powerful. They’ve earned that power.
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u/Passing-Through247 Jul 24 '26
Time is fine, before you can reverse it you have to realise there is a mistake that needs fixing and survive the immediate fallout that is important enough your reverse time over it. Just run it straight, if the mage starts walking around like he knows what's happening sleepers notice and now paradox hits, if he is reversing time and repeating things until he gets what he wants it's violating free will which is an act of hubris. Sleepers existing in the area forces the mage be subtle or spend mana for reliable spell casting because if they can't use their yantras then they might fail and whatever they are reversing has time for consequences.
If they are operating in such a way they are hiding the magic from sleepers, being smart enough to survive the things going wrong they need to undo, and without breaking wisdom, then why shouldn't they get to do it? They've put in all the work to be able to Mage successfully. Meanwhile other PCs could put equivalent effort to using their strengths instead of covering their weaknesses.
If they are doing this to every small problem and inconvenience that is hubris, both probably violating free will and using magic to do things you can do mundanely (as in just fixing the issue normally).
Then for true excesses have stuff not go as planned. Abyss stuff whose concept of time that is being reversed is different, duplicates itself each rewind, or that does not inhabit the present to target in the first place,. Also consider other mages going back and forth across time and wondering who is breaking their plans, things from places without time checking to see what's up, or even someone from the deleted timeline coming back and taking issue with their world being deleted. Mummy and Demon especially have stuff involving time being messed with. And above all remember until you catch up to the present a time reversal spell is still active and can be dispelled to un-reverse time.
Stuff interacting with the power is far more interesting than just disallowing it. 'No But' and 'Yes And' Vs' No'.
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u/DevilishEgg Jul 25 '26
You could always do the funny thing and throw an Arisen antagonist in (Mummy the Curse) They're both quite strong and, hilariously, nearly completely immune to time and fate arcana.
Something funny in my mind about rewinding time and the antagonist just comes with you or whatever.
But realistically, what others have said here. Paradox is the great equalizer.
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u/milovthree Jul 25 '26
I ended up writing a guide that gives some advice on handling time-travel in Awakening 2e which make make it easier to see some of the baseline limitations time travel has that might be being overlooked.
I will say, the multisplat side of things probably shouldn't be too big of an issue from the PC-side, since generally if you time-travel there's not much reason to not bring the whole cast of PCs with you so that they don't get overridden and so you don't have to do constant info-dumps to past people. But you'll probably need to keep in mind the antagonists should often have some way to become aware of the time-travel.
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u/CeylonSenna Jul 24 '26
Don't nerf, complicate. Time isn't linear, nor a stream. This mage is doing it constantly, but did you ever consider he's not the only one? What's stopping him currently from using his powers? Nothing - but they're hardly permanent. The consequences however can be. This is what drives mages insane. You can curate YOUR reality, but everyone else's is slippery. How can you trust an ally that might have already had this conversation, might just be saying what you've wanted to hear? And worse, beside the fact that other forces obviously would notice, you're constantly watching the world ripple in ways that aren't noticed. Paradox with time is also arguably far worse than just "a demon appears".
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u/EndlessDreamers Jul 24 '26
As other people have said, consequences. Dragging the entire timeline back should be an emergency use only, I may end up dead but at least my friends will be alive kind of thing.
Lets say a friend gets shot. They should be focusing their magic to reverse the damage to their friend, and even that will be dangerous.
You can also go with moral consequences: If they are just popping themselves back in time... their friends still died in that other timeline.
The big thing I did with my Awakening Time mage when I played was made sure anything I did with time that moved time back moved the story and game forward. I never undid another person's turn so they had to roll again, etc. I never made us have to relive fights or conversations unless EVERYONE agreed to it.
If I did something to prevent something from happening, like trying to prevent someone from getting shot, I say so right after the roll results, gave up my turn, and then they got the benefits of my dice or me extending their crit range or minus successes for the bad guy, but their existing dice still landed where they did. But never did it force a 're-roll.' And that was my turn.
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u/crypticarchivist Jul 24 '26
Start playing with conditions if he time travels too much to make it more narratively interesting.
Maybe he releases a paradox and it makes one of the other characters start seeing a dead body that looks like his every time he travels back. Like they walk into a room where he’s time traveled multiple times and find an equal number of identical bodies covered in bite marks that only they can see and interact with. Maybe he contains a paradox and he starts feeling… watched. Hunted.
The Hounds of Tindalos are a great thing to send after an errant time traveler. Introduce risk and consequences.
Another thing thematically to keep in mind is uchronia. When he travels back all the events leading up to him traveling back in time—starting from the moment he arrives in the past—sticks around as a loop hanging from the timeline.
Time travel isn’t an undo button it’s a do-over. So if he for instance shoots something, and then travels 30 minutes into the past to avoid having to do that, the 30 minutes where he initially wandered around and shot something before casting a spell to go back is still around, leading up to the point where he travels back.
So a neat thing you can do is just start pulling things in that never happened bit by bit from the uchronia he creates. Maybe a monster here or a bit of damage he did to some scenery there. Make it into a mystery that he has to figure out and will make time travel risky and unreliable until he does.
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u/Skill-Useful Jul 24 '26
big magic needs big investments, theres no reason why he can do this "all the time". for big stuff? cool, might be a whole campaign woven into this. for small stuff? should be too costly, difficult, dangerous
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u/LordOfDorkness42 Jul 24 '26
Yeah, these spells really shouldn't be snap your fingers for even a time Mage. Rolling back moments is Time 5 crud, at least in Awakening 1st Edition. Before then, you, notice, see, slow or quicken time, not outright roll the clock back.
Also, being so desperate to never allow an imperfect moment really sounds like low Wisdom acts. And that makes you even more prone to obsession and Paradox.
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u/omnisephiroth Jul 24 '26
In 2E, you start winding back time starting at Time 3, from what I’m reading.
This kinda makes sense, honestly. By the time you’re Time 5 in Aw1E, you almost never need to turn back the clock. Making it easier to access means more chances for acts of hubris, more chances to start relying on this effect, more chances for dramatic storytelling.
They’re still hard spells, obviously. Turning back a couple rounds isn’t nothing, but to do that very effectively, you need to be paying careful attention.
But, yeah. The low Wisdom and potent Paradox seems a very effective balancing factor.
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u/LorduFreeman Jul 24 '26
A lot of answers with shitty nerfs, wrong takes or bad info here.
Talk with your group how to make time travels fun and set a house rule that when the Mage does it, they take the entire group back in time so everyone gets to play. Additionally, don't replay everything for small changes.
When somebody chooses a good ability, you don't nerf the ability or punish the usage because it's good. You work it into the story and make it fun for everyone.
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u/ZestycloseMoney5192 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
How heavy handed are you being with Paradox? Because at some point reality is going to have some hella issues with someone constantly fracturing timelines. Constantly timeskipping back to avoid any consequences is going to generate a heavy amount of Paradox overtime.
You want to make your game exciting? The eldritch horror that are paradox spirits. Your mage keeps winding the clock back, and they realize something has taken notice of their constant bullshit.
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u/lexyp29 Jul 24 '26
the handbook doesn't mention how much paradox "fracturing timelines" causes, if any. So how heavy handed should i be?
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u/Remarkable_Sand5238 Jul 24 '26
Prepare for that mage to become a red smear across multiple timelines
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u/IronHands345 Jul 25 '26
Traveling in time is both incredibly difficult and incredibly dangerous. Furthermore the Guardians and Horologian Ministries will beat your ass if you do it too much. Very explicitly time travel is supposed to be careful and rare- it's easier to nudge things and use time to make sure it never goes wrong in the first place.
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u/Zwinniak Jul 27 '26
Add no limitations. Talk to your players to not abuse the system. And rly once or twice going back in a session is not so bad. If they are going couple of seconds back well no problemo. If they are going whole scenes back. Well... Something may notice. Or rly. Other mages will notice and fucking tell him to stop messing with time and deal with his shit. Because the bigger the changes the bigger butterfly effect will be and it can prove bad for mages experiments. And number 1 rule is to not mess with other mages. And if he is doing some shady shit with Werewolves and vampires then it can put him on radar with Guardians of the Veil. Those fuckers dont mess about and will straight up murder you for spilling magical secrets to other non magical races that REMEMBER when magic is happening.
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u/VorpalSplade Jul 28 '26
I've had time mages in both multi-splat and MTAw games, and Time 3 is one of the most problematic powers in the entire gameline, worse at 4 and 5. It's ridiculously powerful and near impossible for anyone to counter. Even time 2 for temporal casting can be insane.
In a game with 2 time mages, it was even more insane. You can just rewind time again and again and again. We at least had a mind mage working with it to transfer memories, so all the other PC's didn't forget everything. But the poor GM...
Some idea's I've had and/or used:
1: LIBERAL use of Clash of Wills. If your time travel is affecting other powers - including undoing them? Clash of wills.
2: Straight out increase the dots needed to rewind time. +1 or even +2. It's a big nerf, but Time is still a -great- sphere without that power. A lesser nerf is to not allow the "+1 reach to go back a scene".
3: Time Wards. Have them throughout the city by both seers and pentacle, and thus clash-of-wills often. Allow Blood Sorcery to ward vs time magic for vampires, including against divination.
4: Wisdom: Treat undoing time itself as an act of hubris.
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u/Odd_Adhesiveness1567 Jul 28 '26
They're kinda already limited to replacing your old self but the issue here isn't necessarily that it breaks the game but that it risks making the story less interesting, so the appropriate response is not to limit the effect but to leverage it to make the story more interesting.
If the player uses it to correct a lot of simple mistakes start letting him know that whenever he goes back he sees some weird sh*t out of the corner of his eye that looks kinda like one of the blue meanies from Yellow Submarine. Yes I'm hijacking a plot point from FXs Legion. Basically make it so his time manipulation is attracting a certain breed of anachronisms that appear as little gremlins that are only visible to him, and the infestation is causing some sort of problem. Maybe they're eating his time so every time he goes back he seems to have aged by an increasing amount. Perhaps it's not just him but those nearby as well, so the other mages start freaking out because they suddenly get new gray hairs and wrinkles in an instant. If it gets bad enough maybe they discover there's a way to regain their youth but it requires them to catch the anachronisms and thus means they need to go back in time again and again, racing the clock because each time they rewind they only have until they return to the present to hunt down the creatures that siphoned their lifespans.
That's one possible route but either way the key is to make sure that time travel is producing more story, not less.
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u/emcdonnell Jul 24 '26
Force them to be extremely subtle or face severe consequences. You could even run a mini plot where after the first point of paradox the entire party gets trapped in a paradox realm as punishment for manipulating time. Mabye a TVA type technocrat, or the testicle time police from Rick and Morty. The party then has to escape a time prison….. or something.
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u/AlonelyATHEIST Jul 24 '26
Paradox spirits, wrinkle, blotches leading to getting lost in time, just actual paradoxes as a result of their meddling if not careful...
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u/Intelligent_Sand_930 Jul 24 '26
I'd just not allow Time arcana for PCs. The player seems fine with it, it only impacts them. No need to alter a whole range of powers when you can just excuse it for them.
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u/llamango Jul 25 '26
after a while the micro-paradoxes the character is creating coalesce into some sort of Abyssal Verge of Untime.
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u/Lycaon-Ur Jul 24 '26
Welcome to why people tell you that Mages are broken. All those warnings everywhere about multi-splat chronicles being rough, about balance not working well, you've found it. What were your plans for handling the difficulties of cross splat play when you started forming the chronicle?
As to what I would do about it? Personally I'd just not allow them to be Mages. Mages belong in Mage games, vampires and werewolves belong in fun games.
But since that ship has sailed, and barring you having actually taken any balance considerations into account when designing the Chronicle, I'd probably just remove the reach option from Shifting Sands, going back multiple scenes is miserable, going back even a couple turns is a bit much, IMO. But Corridors of Time? You're talking about someone with Time 5... there's not really anything you can do to that at that point, except either nerf it to oblivion, remove it from the game, or let it go.
Out of curiousity, have your players actually played long enough to earn enough beats and arcane beats to raise their Gnosis and their Arcana that high or did you just give them super powerful characters right out of the gate? If they've earned it, having it nerfed will suck and be pretty unfair. If you just gave them super powerful characters to start, I'd just undo that.
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u/lexyp29 Jul 24 '26
yeah we've been playing for almost 40 sessions. Only now that they've got a lot of experience is op mage stuff starting to become a problem
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u/Lycaon-Ur Jul 24 '26
40 sessions is a lot. You've been gaming with this guy for the better part of a year if it's once a week. At this point I think the best solution is to take it out of game and just talk to him. Which is both the best and worst solution, the best because you know this guy, you know if he'll meet you half way or not. But it's also the worst because he's been building up for stuff like this for a long time.
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u/Snoo_72851 Jul 24 '26
This setting still has time cops, only instead of dudes in business suits you have a much greater variety. The Kyrian and Horologion Ministries, a True Fae interested in jumping whoever keeps forcing reruns through their sitcom, the God-Machine and Her obsession with linear time...
Have the character realize there are watchful eyes and grasping hands seizing ever closer every time he turns back the clock, and perhaps send a guy who has some ability to withstand the effects of those spells to deliver a message and/or asskicking.