The effects of time travel?

[rom90125]

I have decided that my players will need to travel back in the distant past to prevent some dastardly deed from occuring in the present. Our setting is a slightly modified FR, and I plan on making extensive use of the recently released 'Lost Empires of Faerun'.
I am working out the hows/whys of the PCs jaunt to the past and the subsequent effect on world history, but what I'm less clear on is how will their magic items work in the past? And what about spellcasters? Will the weave behave differently? Will specific spells be nonfunctioning in the past? And what about divine spellcasters? Assuming their deity existed (as a deity) all that time ago, will they be limited as well?

Any thoughts and/or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

If I remember my realms-lore, you won't have to worry about spells not functioning, but they may function all too well. They had 10th level spells and the like back in Realms history and the weave was somewhat easier to use.

I did a time-travel game once. I'd stay away from "butterfly effect" chaos-theory time travel which can have stepping on a twig to change lots of things. I'd go for the "Quantum Leap" version which only has major actions affecting very specific things. Otherwise you might very well go insane.

There is one -- and to my mind only one -- advantage of Butterfly Effect time travel is that anytime later in the game if one of your FR-loving players says "But such-and-such didn't happen that way in Obscure Novel X" you can just say it must be an unintended effect of thier time hopping.

 

[Umbran]

I am working out the hows/whys of the PCs jaunt to the past and the subsequent effect on world history, but what I'm less clear on is how will their magic items work in the past? And what about spellcasters? Will the weave behave differently? Will specific spells be nonfunctioning in the past?

Hm. I'm not aware that the general methods of arcane magic use in the Realms have changed all that much over time. You wave your hands in a particular manner, intone the particular words, and have the right components and magic happens. The basic rules are still the same, so newer arcane magic spells and items should still function in the past.

I recall reading that the Weave was somewhat easier to use in the past of FR. That's a vague description. I might simply interpret it as saying that the system was more error tolerant in the past - not so picky about exactly how you waved your hands, pronounced syllables, and so forth. Which means that travelling into the past has very little impact upon your PCs.

And what about divine spellcasters? Assuming their deity existed (as a deity) all that time ago, will they be limited as well?

That's a darned good question. This'll depend a bit on the particulars fo the metaphysics. If spells come from the act/state of worship, without active intercession by the god, then your clerics are still fine. If it requires s9ome form of act on the aprt of the deity to grant spells, then the god(s) in question are going to instantly become aware that something funny is up, as a higher-level spellcaster suddenly stars asking for things where none existed before.

It gets really odd for characters who worship gods who have had a fairly stable portfolio, but for whom the personage has changed. The god of magic being perhaps the greatest offender here. Darned that Time of Troubles!

Actually, that also depends upon the gods' perception of time. If they live in a human-style timeline, then time travel will cause as much confusion for them as for any human. If their consciousness is not as temporally localized, though, they won't be thrown for a loop by this.

 

[the Jester]

[evil laugh]

You could make them convert their characters to 1e for the 'back in time' game... this allows things like unlimited magic missiles, old-skool multiclassing for a couple games, and percentile strength. It's good if everyone's played older editions and enjoys the nostalgia effect. Otherwise it is highly disorienting to the players as well as their characters, which can also be very cool.

 

[BlackMoria]

I suggest that you download the Netheril: Empire of Magic from the Wizards site (it is a free download). It has a section on time travel and the rules for adjudicating time travel and the effect of items and all that stuff.

Since you are doing a FR campaign and this is a FR supplement, your golden....

 

[painandgreed]

Heh. You should make them all convert their characters to 1E after they head back in time. ;-)

Depending on which empire you plan to usem you might be able to find more info on the Wizards website as they have free PDFs of some old 1E suppliments. Some of them have extra rules for how magic worked back then such as in Narfell, mythals, and spell arcs IIRC.

 

[maddman75]

There is one -- and to my mind only one -- advantage of Butterfly Effect time travel is that anytime later in the game if one of your FR-loving players says "But such-and-such didn't happen that way in Obscure Novel X" you can just say it must be an unintended effect of thier time hopping.

In my more demented moments I'm tempted to run a "the real Realms" campaign for my game novel reading players. This is the "real" Realms. The stuff they've read in the novels all their characters know. But its all *wrong*. Its just what the legends say, the tales the bards tell, and more often than not just PR.

Drizzt for instance, in the "real realms" would be a drow assassin that was exiled from his homeland for some crime. He was hired by Ten-towns to put down a barbarian uprising. That was pretty much it. Bruenor Battle-hammer never knew Drizzt, he has been dead for three hundred years in fact. But the tales got wound up with each other. Elminster is just a sage, a pompous one who is quite mad, and has been polluting historical documents by inserting himself into them, claiming to be everything from a bandit to the lover of a goddess.

It just sounds like so much fun.

 

[Mark]

The effects of time travel?

It makes many Internet fans froth at the mouth and start screaming about how it is upsetting canon as presented in the original series, but most of the time they forget how much it actually was a part of the orig...


Sorry. I thought this was a Star Trek thread.


Nevermind.

 

[ThirdWizard]

2nd ed had Chronomancers, a short book detailing methods of timetravel and its effects. This document has some varous thoughts on use of time travel in varous campaign settings.