Spheres of the Aether

[TheGurw]

Well, this is pretty obvious. I'd choose T&T. Here's why-



T&T either trumps or can be used as equally effective as the following-

Geomancy- T&T can also cause the earth to shape-shift into objects that appear to be golems. Furthermore, controlling plants at the molecular level can cause rapid growth, just like Geomancy.

Hemomancy - T&T can virtually destroy hemomancers by controlling their minds and making them no longer crave blood. Furthermore, T&T can control blood on a molecular level, and can therefore drain all the blood out of a hemomancer himself.

Necromancy - This is pretty easy. A T&T can control dead things just as easily as a necromancer. While the dead things wouldn't be "alive" like a real necromancer, a T&T can still achieve the same effect. A T&T could also control the same dead things that the necromancer is controlling, thereby making the necromancer ineffective.

Water - A T&T can control water on a molecular level just as easily as a water seer.

Fire - Same as a water seer. Controlling fire on a molecular level would allow a T&T to either ravage cities or to prevent a Fire seer from ravaging cities. Your choice.

Lightning - Same as water and fire seers. Control lightning on a molecular level.

Arcane - Since arcane is a magical property and not necessarily a physical property, this one would be a bit difficult to control. However, by merely inhabiting the mind of an Arcane Seer, the T&T could control whatever arcane powers the Arcane seer possessed.

Time - This one is a bit tough, but here goes. By entering the mind of a Time seer, the T&T can prevent or force a Time seer to do certain things. The T&T can travel or freeze time simply by entering the mind of a Time seer. Granted, if the T&T were to freeze time through a Time seer, the T&T would also freeze. However, the T&T's ability of mind control would still work even though this his physical body were frozen, thus allowing him to still accomplish his goals through mind control of the Time seer. Furthermore, the T&T, through being able to control things at the molecular level, could force his own frozen body to move however he'd like while time was frozen.

Future Sight - T&T doesn't really need to fight a future. A future seems quite harmless. However, a T&T could enter the mind of a Future and thereby also see the future, providing the T&T with the powers that a Future holds.

Holy - As long as a T&T mage isn't evil, he'll have no qualms with a Holy. Otherwise, an evil T&T may be in for a very tough fight against a Holy, since a Holy doesn't work on a molecular level, but rather a spiritual level


So there you have it, T&T by far the superior force.

I see one big flaw in your theory. Like the rest of the spheres, T&T requires focus to work well. If you are questing in a group, that might be easy - the rest of your party can keep the heat off of you while you focus on controlling and manipulating others/materials. However, in a simple one on one, as the situations you described imply, your mage wouldn't be able to hold that focus easily. You have to concentrate on winning over the mind of the opposing mage and wresting control of their minions, while creating your own minions to do battle, whereas they merely have to maintain a focus of their singular power. A mind focused on one thing would require you to be a much more skilled mage in order to control it - if you were both at a similar skill level, you'd be losing control and taking the brunt of their force regularly. Whether or not you can win a battle depends solely on whether you can maintain control - which isn't possible when you're facing an equally skilled mage. You have to remember that balance always exists-there is no singular super power. In my own case, for example, a skilled water mage could control the fluids in my plants, or a skilled controller of fire could manipulate the heat of my lava flows, turning them into so much useless gravel.

 

[Sean1995]

I love it how everyone overlooks the might of the Future Sight.
A magician of the future sight orb can tell where an enemy will be, with exact certainty, days before you even come anywhere near.
This lets them set up traps and plan ahead. Something as simple as "He's going to step right here in the future, so I'm going to hide a poisoned stake right where he steps."
The best bit is you can then future sight again to see if it works, and if it doesn't, try something else.
Contingency plans on contingencies.
Like a goddamn magic batman.

 

[Kris]

I love it how everyone overlooks the might of the Future Sight.
A magician of the future sight orb can tell where an enemy will be, with exact certainty, days before you even come anywhere near.
This lets them set up traps and plan ahead. Something as simple as "He's going to step right here in the future, so I'm going to hide a poisoned stake right where he steps."
The best bit is you can then future sight again to see if it works, and if it doesn't, try something else.
Contingency plans on contingencies.
Like a goddamn magic batman.

Add mad sword/gun skills to that, and you have something OP.

 

[Miguel]

Add mad sword/gun skills to that, and you have something OP.

 

[TheGurw]

I love it how everyone overlooks the might of the Future Sight.
A magician of the future sight orb can tell where an enemy will be, with exact certainty, days before you even come anywhere near.
This lets them set up traps and plan ahead. Something as simple as "He's going to step right here in the future, so I'm going to hide a poisoned stake right where he steps."
The best bit is you can then future sight again to see if it works, and if it doesn't, try something else.
Contingency plans on contingencies.
Like a goddamn magic batman.

A good counter to that is the time traveler, or the anti-magi. Future Sight won't affect someone who freely manipulates time, nor will it be able to scry a person who can't be seen with magic. If anyone is interested in the counters to their particular chosen sphere, I am working on a list.

 

[amaterasu]

A good counter to that is the time traveler, or the anti-magi. Future Sight won't affect someone who freely manipulates time, nor will it be able to scry a person who can't be seen with magic. If anyone is interested in the counters to their particular chosen sphere, I am working on a list.

I would actually love to see counters. One of my favorite things about these sorts of things is that there is no overarching power, and one is balanced by another.

Sorta like government.

 

[Miguel]

A good counter to that is the time traveler, or the anti-magi. Future Sight won't affect someone who freely manipulates time, nor will it be able to scry a person who can't be seen with magic. If anyone is interested in the counters to their particular chosen sphere, I am working on a list.

I would like to see the one for water plox.

 

[bbgunshot]

Having put a lot of thought into Future Sight, I think I would have to go with that sphere. Honestly it was the first sphere that really interested me, but I didn't feel like I would be powerful enough, or be able to do enough cool stuff with it. However, I just can't get over how interesting and amazing the ability would be.

I like to think of future sight working by showing you the future independent of your own actions, that way you have the ability to change the future if you desire. This change could either be through you yourself preventing/doing something, or informing someone else to take action. Your sight is strongest when you are focusing on your immediate future, actions that will physically affect yourself. Most seers would keep an awareness of what will be happening to them 5-10 minutes in the future at all times, and when they put forth extra effort they can see distances of hours, days, weeks, or even further depending on the power and focus of the seer. It takes some extra effort to see the future of others, and especially that of inanimate objects considering the lifespan of non-living things.

 

[mountainboy965]

I'm having a hard time picking between time and Necromancy.

You mentioned time twice, so obviously time is your best choice...

 

[TheGurw]

I would actually love to see counters. One of my favorite things about these sorts of things is that there is no overarching power, and one is balanced by another.

Sorta like government.

Sorta like government should be*

I would like to see the one for water plox.

Necromancy and Lightning. Only a truly skilled water mage can remove the impurities from any water, while simultaneously preparing the water for battle. Electricity dances through the impurities in water, directly to fry your brain.

Necromancy might not make sense at first, but think about this: how do you drown a corpse? Or an army of them?

 

[Skryter]

Time is pretty much the counter to everything. One quick travel to your foes birth and problem solved.

 

[Sean1995]

Time is pretty much the counter to everything. One quick travel to your foes birth and problem solved.

It's expressed that the strongest chronomancers can jump only several years to the past. To reach the point of your opponents birth you would have to jump 20 years or more back.
Plus you would have to know the exact location and time beforehand.
And even if you did manage to go back and kill them, you would be placed in an alternate timeline which, in a RP setting, wouldn't effect everyone else in the main timeline, basically removing you from existence.

 

[Skryter]

It's expressed that the strongest chronomancers can jump only several years to the past. To reach the point of your opponents birth you would have to jump 20 years or more back.
Plus you would have to know the exact location and time beforehand.
And even if you did manage to go back and kill them, you would be placed in an alternate timeline which, in a RP setting, wouldn't effect everyone else in the main timeline, basically removing you from existence.

Going off the original image the exact number of years a Chronomancer takes to master time itself and the exact number of years a Chronomancer can jump back in time isn't clear cut but your point is duly noted.

Although, considering that mages can control the elements I doubt it would be hard to find and obtain someone's birth records.

 

[TheGurw]

Time is pretty much the counter to everything. One quick travel to your foes birth and problem solved.

As was stated, only the absolute strongest of the Chronomancers would be able to jump that far; and in order to do so, they would have to find a way to cheat death (ie. Be close friends with an extremely powerful Holy Mage or a Hemomancer willing to give away some life force). Given the short lifespan of Chronomancers (in absolute terms, ie. in timeline years, not relative years), this seems particularly unlikely, unless a young Chronomancer meets and befriends a much older and more experienced mage with the ability to extend life.

 

[TheGurw]

Apologies for the double post, the phone makes it difficult to edit.

It's expressed that the strongest chronomancers can jump only several years to the past. To reach the point of your opponents birth you would have to jump 20 years or more back.
Plus you would have to know the exact location and time beforehand.
And even if you did manage to go back and kill them, you would be placed in an alternate timeline which, in a RP setting, wouldn't effect everyone else in the main timeline, basically removing you from existence.

I dislike this alternate timeline thing. No, I think for Time to even work at all, alternate timelines are detrimental to the RP.

 

[Sean1995]

Apologies for the double post, the phone makes it difficult to edit.


I dislike this alternate timeline thing. No, I think for Time to even work at all, alternate timelines are detrimental to the RP.

That is exactly the point I am trying to make. If a chronomancer could just go back and change things it would mess up already established events. Thats why I said the alternate timeline, which also wouldn't work.
This is what I'm suggesting. In relation to the Time Sphere during the RP, time travel into the past can only effect current happenings via past setup. If they went back in time and killed someone, this person would have already done things and impacted the world, so it would be impossible to say " oh he just didn't do them anymore" as it the act of killing them would cause a massive butterfly effect.
When dealing with massive powers single actions cause massive consequences, just undoing them wouldn't be possible in an RP setting.
Ugh, time shenanigans make my head hurt.

 

[bbgunshot]

I'm glad to see everyone still has interest in the Spheres of the Aether and is activity discussing it. I was unsure if I should mention it at first, but that someone that contacted me on steam is actually the one who created the Spheres of the Aether. He stated that he and some of his friends had been slowly working on a sort of game based off of the Spheres of the Aether. I could mention how we've been trying to come up with a forum RP version of it and see if he can help us determine how the counters and class strengths might work. I know Gurw has been creating his own counters list, but I'm sure other ideas couldn't hurt. Some help structuring the whole RP idea may also be useful.

Oh, and an idea I had involving future sight as far as a forum RP goes. Someone obviously can't know what will happen next. But when someone does do something, for example someone has an ambush ready for another player that would kill them. When the player springs the ambush, the seer has the option of saying he informed that player beforehand of the events, or another player of the events, and they would have the ability to either be prepared for the ambush or dodge it completely. Since seers themselves don't have any remarkable powers, when they are attacked, they have the ability to dodge the attack, is inform an ally player to assist them. For balancing reasons you could only do this so many times of course.

I feel a similar system could be employed to help balance the chronoshphere. You can jump back and forth a max of a few days or weeks once you have enough power, or you could save that power for when it gets later into the game and you become more powerful. Then used your stored power to go back in time and kill a player. There is still the whole, messing up the timeline thing to consider.

But I do really like the idea of making the focus/power a measurable unit that everyone starts out with equally. Then you can use a lot at the beginning of the game if your ability doesn't take long to master to gain an advantage. Or save the majority of it for later game and use it on the more powerful abilities you've now learned. At certain points in the game, everyone will advance in power and be able to do more with their abilities. In turn, these abilities will take more focus to perform, but they will also be more powerful.

 

[Patchouli]

It's expressed that the strongest chronomancers can jump only several years to the past. To reach the point of your opponents birth you would have to jump 20 years or more back.
Plus you would have to know the exact location and time beforehand.
And even if you did manage to go back and kill them, you would be placed in an alternate timeline which, in a RP setting, wouldn't effect everyone else in the main timeline, basically removing you from existence.

As was stated, only the absolute strongest of the Chronomancers would be able to jump that far; and in order to do so, they would have to find a way to cheat death (ie. Be close friends with an extremely powerful Holy Mage or a Hemomancer willing to give away some life force). Given the short lifespan of Chronomancers (in absolute terms, ie. in timeline years, not relative years), this seems particularly unlikely, unless a young Chronomancer meets and befriends a much older and more experienced mage with the ability to extend life.

Apologies for the double post, the phone makes it difficult to edit.


I dislike this alternate timeline thing. No, I think for Time to even work at all, alternate timelines are detrimental to the RP.

The way it words it, I got the impression that you -cannot- go back in time. You can go forward, and then go back to the time you came from, but you can't go back further than you progressed. Basically, what happened happened. You can't change it. At least that's how it sounded to me.

 

[TheGurw]

In regards to Chronomancy: I don't believe jumping forward was the intention - the way it read to me implied you could only jump back, not forward beyond the point of which you had naturally progressed. I would say chronomancers, for the sake of RP, will only be able to do limited jumping - a few hours, maybe a day or two at most. Similar to the suggestion for Future Sight, a chronomancer will be able to roll (for lack of a better thought) to see if they were able to successfully alter the timeline to, for example, put a weak spot in the sword of an anti-magi so that it breaks early on in the battle. More dramatic actions (ie. physically harming another character before the battle) will have a lower chance of succeeding, will require a higher skill level and focus, etc.

Future Sight would work much the same. I forsee chronomancers finding their skill more useful when altering the present flow of time, for example speeding up, slowing down, or freezing time in order to subtly manipulate the accuracy of arrows or spells (ie. an arrow that should fly a foot over the head of a powerful grunt could be lowered to be dead-on; a mage could be turned a few degrees to the left to make the focused spell miss entirely where otherwise it would have wiped out 20 grunts). On the other hand, Future Sight specialists would find their ability to see the future much more useful when attacking rather than defending - an enemy will be in this exact spot 30 seconds from now, I'll let fly an arrow to hit exactly there. Again, the more dramatic the use, the lower chance of success.

 

[Anaxo]

Why didn't this end up happening?