And different people play for different reasons. When I’m DMing, I’d be tickled pink that the player is engaging with the world, attempting to shape it, and not just riding the rails. When I’m playing, I select tables where sandboxes are encouraged.

Party wants to build a lair? DM brain wheels turning… I’m going to run a tower defense scenario or two! That’ll be epic for them! Clearly a rival mad mage doesn’t like them encroaching on his monopoly on lairs in this forest… Or whatever.

There’s a lot of spells in the game that have things like: if cast every day for a year. How the hell are players in an urgent scenario ever going to cast Teleportation Circle in their lair for a year? Nevermind the thousands of gold that’ll cost. If the player comes to me with a plan though, Imma roll with it, throw up some obstacles, toss some roleplayer scenarios in, maybe have the BBEG find out about their plans and attempt to disrupt, etc. And after handwaving some downtime, and rewarding them with their permanent circle in their lair, everyone will have had a great time :)

L15 scenario. The above are two entirely separate scenarios – I was not assuming two chronomancers in the same party.

Let’s simplify this from an action economy perspective so we aren’t running into the reaction limits. Let’s assuming combat lasts four rounds, and on each of the first three rounds, you cast Polymorph (killer whale), and use your Chronal Shift to force a reroll if they save, generally with the goal of burning legendary resistances. Obviously this works better with a bigger party casting save or suck, to burn them faster (you can only Chronal Shift once per round though) or you can use the L10 trick above if well prepared. Great, in the fourth round, you cast Polymorph (killer whale) again and force them to fail the save as a reaction. Take one point of exhaustion. Easy enough, right?

Well, magic jar is fun, but requires serious prep to reduce the risks. An L15 wizard should already have a lair where they can leave their body safely, and they’d need to capture their target and bring them to their lair. This is why I chose L15 for this scenario instead of L14, because you need access to the spell. Assuming your wizard has a Researcher background or something (so you can handwave the meta), you can use locate person to find a CR12 Duergar Despot who has immunity to exhaustion. They exist in Forgotten Realms at least. Your DM might rule they don’t exist, and then you’ll have a harder time finding a humanoid immune to exhaustion to capture to magic jar into. That whole capture scenario would be an amazing multi-session mini-arc.

So worst case scenario, the DM says such a target doesn’t exist. Well, then you have to wait until L17 to pull this shit off. True Polymorph can create a humanoid that is immune to exhaustion (there are dozens of them!) to create a magic jar target. Or you can use Wish (also broken) to summon such a creature, or simply wish yourself immune to exhaustion.

I mean, if you’re an L17 wizard, you’re basically god anyway. But the Chronomancer can pull off godhood at L15 if they can become immune to exhaustion with magic jar.

Even at L14, with the exhaustion penalty, it’s stupidly strong.

Side note: killer whale is my go to. It’s huge, thus hard to carry away by minions; has a huge bag of hitpoints, hard for minions to slap once to return back to BBEG form; and has a speed of zero on land. A good BBEG will have contingencied dimension door or something, so it isn’t foolproof. You can try to trap them in Mordenkainens Magnificent Mansion or something that prevents escape through teleportation, but that adds another layer.

Did I mention that wizards are broken?

I agree. It’s very situational, requires huge investment in prep, an extra five slots (for catnap), familiars all ready to go, probably a surprise round to get all the spells off together, and a bunch of other insane ideal circumstances. A smart enemy wouldn’t be caught flat-footed like that either.

The less broken things are just to give your other party members their own familiar, give other party members a single wizard self buff (like Shadow Blade), or combat cast something like Leomunds Tiny Hut. All of which requires downtime or precombat prep.

Wizards are broken in general. This one is just more broken than others.

Only dealing with the L10 scenario.

(1) You get to choose two new spells at level up, in addition to those you find elsewhere. Assuming your DM hasn’t restricted sourcebooks.

(2) This is where catnap is required. It shortens a short rest to ten minutes (at the cost of an L3 slot). This allows you to create new motes before the previous ones have expired.

(3) the motes are being triggered by familiars, who can become the concentration holder. How do you get that many familiars? Well, you give your familiar motes with Find Familiar and have them crush them.

Furthermore, each familiar can then dismiss their familiar to their pocket dimension for unbreakable concentration.

Everything works, rules as written. Broken? Yes.

Chronomancer wizards – let me try anyway…

L10 Chronomancer wizard enters the room, winks, and five L4 concentration spells, and one L5 concentration spell happen simultaneously (requires just under an hour of prep, L10 feature, catnap spell, a lot of spell slots (11 L3 or higher), and a bunch of familiars).

DM: dafuq

L15 Chronomancer wizard enters the room, winks, and burns three legendary resistances and forces a failed save, autokilling the BBEG.

DM: ah, but that’ll be four points of exhaustion!

Chronomancer: (shrugs) I magic jarred into this critter who is immune to exhaustion and can now force anyone to fail at any time without recourse.

DM: dafuq?

Familiars don’t leave corpses.

Was the pulley created by Karsus? Then yes.

I know this was probably meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but it looks like you’re advocating genocide. Are you sure you meant to post it as above?

No, you cannot attach a drop to this castle and drag it across the countryside, even with a nat 20.

One day it’ll be in textbooks as a warning. But people are condemned to ignore it. They’ll say: “but our right wing guy isn’t that kind of fuckup”. And the cycle continues.

Usenet also largely became a venue for bootlegging and porn – and due to the nature of the protocol, companies hosting Usenet services didn’t want to have to store all of that shit. After about 1995, you didn’t go there for discussion anymore. Eternal September messed it up. Lemmy is fortunate that you can’t really use it for file sharing, a few images notwithstanding, or the same thing would happen.

This is pretty funny. “Mommy? how are baby dragonborn made?”

Kids these days and their fancy usenet

And even before that FIDOnet was a thing. But the nerdy details and the narrative don’t match so…

Too small. We only have users with individual agendas still.

May I talk to you about my lord and saviour, Gandalf?

Hello fellow human. I am making smalltalk like humans do sometimes.

Nationalism and jingoism and, more recently, anti-terror laws – how democracies die.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I wish my holidays were longer – this one sounds very interesting 🤔

Never heard of it, but it sounds like a well crafted non-combat game. Niiiice :)

Been through it, although not since the last update or two. Don’t really want to restart it. Also wish it wasn’t first person :)