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<blockquote data-quote="paradox42" data-source="post: 3526115" data-attributes="member: 29746">The real problem with making a Chronomancer (or for that matter, anything related to time) is that different DMs classify time-based powers differently, and think of time differently. For example, some might allow PCs to go into the past and create a paradox which destroys reality (the quest could presumably be set up around such a thing, a la Back to the Future). Others would disallow time travel to the past for exactly the same reason; to them, paradox can't happen and the only way for the universe to stop it is to disallow travel into the past (scientists who advocate this idea for real-world physics call this the &quot;Chronology Protection Conjecture.&quot;)To those in the second category, any power of a Chronomancer which allows any sort of meddling with the past is immediately &quot;broken.&quot; To the first group, a Chronomancer class that doesn't have such a power is lacking something, and probably worthless.I'm in a third category of time-travel theorists myself, usually called the &quot;parallel worlds theory-&quot; which states that at any given point in time, all possible outcomes actually do occur, but essentially separated into their own timelines which never influence each other again (except perhaps through weird sorts of quantum interference depending on precisely how you interpret quantum mechanics). With this theory, the whole notion of paradox becomes irrelevant, because anything you do in the past to change the future just creates a new timeline for you to follow and has absolutely no effect on the one you came from (which, since you thought of the action as a &quot;change,&quot; obviously didn't include it in the timeline you originated in).With this theory, Chronomancers likely not only have the power to travel to the past and change things, but might actually have powers to travel between parallel universes- cross the second time dimension, if you will. People in the first two categories would probably not only consider this broken, they'd probably fail to even understand why a &quot;time mage&quot; even has some of the powers ascribed to it by the third-category theorist.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="paradox42, post: 3526115, member: 29746"] The real problem with making a Chronomancer (or for that matter, anything related to time) is that different DMs classify time-based powers differently, and think of time differently. For example, some might allow PCs to go into the past and create a paradox which destroys reality (the quest could presumably be set up around such a thing, a la [i]Back to the Future[/i]). Others would disallow time travel to the past for exactly the same reason; to them, paradox can't happen and the only way for the universe to stop it is to disallow travel into the past (scientists who advocate this idea for real-world physics call this the "Chronology Protection Conjecture.") To those in the second category, [b]any[/b] power of a Chronomancer which allows [b]any[/b] sort of meddling with the past is immediately "broken." To the first group, a Chronomancer class that [b]doesn't[/b] have such a power is lacking something, and probably worthless. I'm in a third category of time-travel theorists myself, usually called the "parallel worlds theory-" which states that at any given point in time, all possible outcomes actually do occur, but essentially separated into their own timelines which never influence each other again (except perhaps through weird sorts of quantum interference depending on precisely how you interpret quantum mechanics). With this theory, the whole notion of paradox becomes irrelevant, because anything you do in the past to change the future just creates a new timeline for you to follow and has absolutely no effect on the one you came from (which, since you thought of the action as a "change," obviously didn't include it in the timeline you originated in). With this theory, Chronomancers likely not only have the power to travel to the past and change things, but might actually have powers to travel between parallel universes- cross the second time dimension, if you will. People in the first two categories would probably not only consider this broken, they'd probably fail to even understand why a "[b]time[/b] mage" even has some of the powers ascribed to it by the third-category theorist. [/QUOTE]

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