D&D 5E How exactly does the Feywild time warp work? (Can it be used for going back in time?)

[WaterRabbit]

This is like the question as to how fast the Enterprise can travel. Answer: The Speed of Plot.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TravelingAtTheSpeedOfPlot

 

[77IM]

A wizard did it!

 

[77IM]

In all seriousness, you could fix the paradox (preserving causality) this way.

f(x) is unknown or random in a quantum sense, and collapses into a real value (by rolling on the table) only when its value needs to be observed, e.g. when returning to the material plane. However, Charlie, when he interacts with Bob at M/1, already has an observed value of f(x), in that Bob is bringing a message from F/1440. So for Charlie, f(x) must have already advanced to AT LEAST F/1440 (because he has Bob's message from that time). Had Charlie not interacted with Bob at all, then he would not have observed a value for f(x) and would arrive in the Feywild at F/1. In other words, f(x) is not globally monotonic, but is monotonic in respect to local events.

This does introduce the problematic question of just how local the events must be. If Alice returns at M/1 and causes a butterfly to flap its wings leading to stormy weather later in the afternoon when Bob enters the portal, does Bob's value of f(x) depend upon Alice's? If the influence of past events is widespread and subtle, then f(x) winds up effectively being globally monotonic, leading to the problems with that model. OTOH if past events must have direct and clear influence in order to count as "observed" for the purpose of determining the value of f(x), you could accidentally re-introduce the paradox, for example if Bob tells residents of the Feywild that the weather was stormy when he left and they deduce that it was due to Alice's return (counting as a message transmitted to the past). So I would leave this question up to the DM's discretion, and probably err on the side of including all past events that are observed during game-play.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I glossed over the OP a bit because it seemed overly complicated.

I roll on a table. Sometimes time travels faster and sometimes it travels slower and sometimes it travels in reverse and the table also has a ratio.

Rip Van Winkle. He falls asleep for an hour and wakes up 40 years later. Or maybe 40 years before he's born. As the story-teller, I try to avoid the latter (going back in time) unless it makes for a good story.

I also make space completely crazy too. 1 step can be 100 miles. or a step forward makes you get further away from where you are going.

 

[Oofta]

The way I do it is that time in the Feywild simply works differently, but always forward. While time in the FeyWild is elastic, it's like a rubber band. Over a long enough period of time it will match up to the prime material but whether it's running faster or slower is going to vary.

On a related note, there is no way to go back in time in my world. There could be a bubble dimension where it seems like you go back in time, but in reality nothing will have changed in the "real" world. If there were a GroundHog Day type campaign arc (repeating the same day over and over again) it wouldn't matter if you spent two days or a year repeating the same day, at least a few seconds would have passed when you re-enter the real world.

In theory you could go back in time more than a few moments (a round or two in D&D parlance), but it realy piss off the Norns. You do not want to piss off the Norns.

 

[jgsugden]

Your failure was your assumption that there it only works in one way. It is wild, fickle, contradictory and capricious. It can't be controlled - by PCs, at least - and it isn't something that can be made into a sensical model with no contradictions.

For my purposes, I deterine 'return schedules' for the PCs when they enter the Feywild. I'll roll as many return schedules as there are PCs, but I'll assume we won't need all of them. If the first group to return is days become minutes and the second is normal and the third is days become years - it is easy. When group one returns, they'll have a wait before others return. If they break into three groups, then that third group to return will essentially be out of the campaign.

If the first group to return is days become years, the second is days are days, and the third is days become minutes, then whe the first group returns, I have the action stay with the group that stayed in the Feywild until they leave it. If the secnd group also leaves, we'll have the action stay wih any remainder in the Feywild. If the rest leave in the third group, they'l arrive home first. After the appropriate period, the second group will appear. However, the first group may be out of the game for a long time before they return.

If, in my second example, the third group goes back to the Feywild to find their missing allies, they will not find them. They left the Feywild at a point in time that is in the past of the Feywild. So, they are not in the Feywild to be found. That group that went to the Feywild again will have multiple options for how they may return based upon how many there are.

You can still have contradictory events, but it mostly works - and those constradictions fit with the idea of the Feywild.

 

[Shiroiken]

In older editions, they listed a specific time rate for characters in other planes of existence. The most notable ones I recall is that time ran twice as fast on the elemental planes, but super, SUPER slow in the astral plane. This meant that if you wanted to do something quickly (like crafting), you wanted to do it on an elemental plane. If you wanted to keep something from happening (such as a time based curse), you go to the Astral Plane to buy time. I do not know if they created such time rates for the Feywild or the Shadowfell (which your post indicates they have), but you could use them the same way. In any case, you should not ever travel back in time. Even if the result would a character to leave and then rejoin, you should have resolved that part before the time lapse in the Feywild (or Material plane).

Personally I like the notion of random time in the Feywild, which fits its chaotic nature. You might return within the exact second you left, or you might return a century later. While this may play havoc with a campaign, if planned and designed, it could be used as a way to setup a legacy campaign, where some PCs are the descendants of other PCs. Still not a fan of backwards time travel, because that leads to a lot of paradoxical nonsense, especially with my players

 

[Umbran]

Okay, so, I think there's a simple answer to the issue.

The purpose of having Feywiild time to run strangely is to enable stories of the form, "Jack enters the fae realms, spends what he thinks is a week, but comes back with many years passed at home." Or "Jane enters the fae realm, spends years there, and comes back with no time having passed at home." We want *end results* like this. The point is to generate things like fairy tales, not sci-fi time travel stories.

We may randomly determine the overall difference in rates when the character enters, but that is a *metagame convenience*. It is not binding physics. Feywild time is not fixed-rate for a person, it is wishy-washy, timey-wimey, and the die roll is only a broad generalization of what happens overall. If Alice leaves at Prime Material Time t=0, and we have Bob leave at PMT = 5, to meet Aice, and Alice has not yet returned, then there is *no way* she returns before PMT = 5, whatever her die-roll said. Her interaction with Bob is more important than the die roll.

 

[GothicEmperor]

If it's not a paradox you're not doing the Feywild right.

 

[clearstream]

I'm trying to understand how the Feywild time warp effect works. (Note that use of wish spells, or any other effect that alters the time warp effect for only particular creatures, are out of scope of this analysis.)

A wonderful question! I have several ideas relating to it, starting with the following.

First, consider the case where Alice goes from the Material Plane to the Feywild at time M/0 (and thus arrive at time F/0), then at time F/2 Alice jumps back to the Material Plane. The probability that Alice will arrive back at M/730 is 0.05 (if she rolls a 20 - days into years - on the time warp die). However, suppose instead that at time F/1 she jumped back to the Material Plane for a very short time (let's say a fraction of a second) and back to the Feywild, then stays in the Feywild until time F/2. Then this is two separate trips and in order for Alice to arrive at M/730, she would have to roll a 20 both times, a much lower probability. But this makes no sense since f() is a global function that just represents which M-clock times connect to which F-clock times, and doesn't depend at all on when Alice made her jumps.
[*]

The line of reasoning assumes that the die roll determines the time step. That can't be measured directly and may not be true. Alice can do experiments like these:


Experiment A - M/0 > F/0 > F/1 > M/x
Iterating A gives her a Monte Carlo appreciation of f(x) where time spent in F is 1.


Experiment B - M/0 > F/0 > F/1 > F/2 > M/x'
Iterating B gives her a Monte Carlo appreciation of f(x) where time spent in F is 2.


Experiment C - M/0 > F/0 > F/1 > M/x > M/x+1 > F/x+1 > M/x''
Iterating C gives her a Monte Carlo appreciation of f(x) iterated. It can't prove that M/x' == M/x''.


Experiment C is not commensurate with M/0 > F/0 > F/x+1 because x can't be known until she returns to M. With hindsight, she can suggest probabilities, but they are only descriptive. The mechanism remains unknown to her.


She can't prove that the global function is not consistent, because she cannot go back in time to repeat any experiment. She can show that when there are multiple jumps bunched up, she's less likely to experience a given time step; but she can't show that, that's not what would have happened had she taken only one jump on that occasion. What she discovers is a version of observer effect, which she cannot explain using ordinary day-to-day concepts. She is forced to conclude that the number of jumps an observer makes changes the probability of the outcome, without ever knowing if that outcome wouldn't have been reached anyway. Assigning a probability is different from describing the mechanism.


Do you see what I mean?