Hot take: I can’t stand the word “dunamancy”. I don’t care for critical role, so maybe it’s justified somehow (or maybe just if someone I liked said it a lot I’d learn to let it go), but as it is, it hate it. It’s not duna/dyna- (physical force or potential energy) it’s not a -mancy (a form of divination), and it sounds like a cringelord teenager’s invented name for sand magic. Plus now that it’s canonized, I have to argue with every group I run for that my setting doesn’t subscribe to the many-worlds theory and that is not an acceptable flavour for their magic in my game.
Anyway to answer the question, I once saw a class entirely reflavoured from top to bottom as a Chronomancer. You probably think it was a wizard or a warlock or something, but no, it was the Battle Master Fighter.
Weapon/armour proficiency and extra ASIs were because they did extra training in a personal timeloop. Second Wind was a short personal rewind, Action Surge was a personal fast-forward. Most of their maneuvers were various manipulations of time; rewinding themself to parry, slowing the enemy for precision strike, looping themself for feinting strike, rewinding an ally for rally.
I don’t remember all the flavour, but god dang it was cool.
Much as I’m generally not keen on CR stuff and will never not be salty about them accidentally turning D&D firbolgs into cow folk, the name “dunamancy” is actually a bit better than that. It’s just based on another meaning of the Greek word that “dyna-” comes from. This version is better translated as “potentiality” or “possibility”. Aristotle used it for a bunch of stuff, so it got brought into English with that meaning as “dunamis”. The -mancy bit is definitely just because fantasy stuff uses it to mean any magic though
That Chronomancer was actually pretty close to the flavor I had for a 4e character that I only got to play for 3 sessions because our DM was a flake Q_Q
Yeah, that’s the other thing that bugs me about Dunamancy, that it’s actually four separate schools of magic in a trenchcoat. Dunamancy covers time magic, gravity magic, luck magic, and, for lack of a better name, quantum-alternate-universe magic. Because in the Critical Role setting those are the same thing, or something? So while not every spell needs to be reflavoured, those that do need individual consideration.
I mean dunamancy is space-time magic. If you can manipulate space-time at a fundamental level you can make your own luck. It makes sense to me, even if it does cover a lot of different aspects of magic.
And IRL there is no such thing as particles, it’s just waves all the way down bby, but that doesn’t mean you can’t academically specialize in things besides quantum mechanics
Hot take: I can’t stand the word “dunamancy”. I don’t care for critical role, so maybe it’s justified somehow (or maybe just if someone I liked said it a lot I’d learn to let it go), but as it is, it hate it. It’s not duna/dyna- (physical force or potential energy) it’s not a -mancy (a form of divination), and it sounds like a cringelord teenager’s invented name for sand magic. Plus now that it’s canonized, I have to argue with every group I run for that my setting doesn’t subscribe to the many-worlds theory and that is not an acceptable flavour for their magic in my game.
Anyway to answer the question, I once saw a class entirely reflavoured from top to bottom as a Chronomancer. You probably think it was a wizard or a warlock or something, but no, it was the Battle Master Fighter.
Weapon/armour proficiency and extra ASIs were because they did extra training in a personal timeloop. Second Wind was a short personal rewind, Action Surge was a personal fast-forward. Most of their maneuvers were various manipulations of time; rewinding themself to parry, slowing the enemy for precision strike, looping themself for feinting strike, rewinding an ally for rally.
I don’t remember all the flavour, but god dang it was cool.
Much as I’m generally not keen on CR stuff and will never not be salty about them accidentally turning D&D firbolgs into cow folk, the name “dunamancy” is actually a bit better than that. It’s just based on another meaning of the Greek word that “dyna-” comes from. This version is better translated as “potentiality” or “possibility”. Aristotle used it for a bunch of stuff, so it got brought into English with that meaning as “dunamis”. The -mancy bit is definitely just because fantasy stuff uses it to mean any magic though
I honestly wasn’t aware it was a Critical Role thing until I posted this.
Wow that fighter is awesome. I’ll add it to the list of characters I would play if I wasn’t a forever DM.
Good take.
Also that chrono legionare is super flavourful!
The weirdest thing they did was make the Pathfinder diety Sarenrae canon in 5e
That’s actually really neat
That Chronomancer was actually pretty close to the flavor I had for a 4e character that I only got to play for 3 sessions because our DM was a flake Q_Q
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Yeah, that’s the other thing that bugs me about Dunamancy, that it’s actually four separate schools of magic in a trenchcoat. Dunamancy covers time magic, gravity magic, luck magic, and, for lack of a better name, quantum-alternate-universe magic. Because in the Critical Role setting those are the same thing, or something? So while not every spell needs to be reflavoured, those that do need individual consideration.
I mean dunamancy is space-time magic. If you can manipulate space-time at a fundamental level you can make your own luck. It makes sense to me, even if it does cover a lot of different aspects of magic.
By that metric, all magic is dunamancy.
And IRL there is no such thing as particles, it’s just waves all the way down bby, but that doesn’t mean you can’t academically specialize in things besides quantum mechanics