What would you like to see with time magic?

[Humanophile]

Just my two cents, but I'm strongly against any larg scale time magic work.

Why? Because while to a certain degree I could see many good uses for it (slowing, speeding, stopping time, minor reversals/skips, viewing the past/future, taking/copying items from the past/future, and even attacks based on selectively screwing with the timestream), those all can be at best worked on with "normal" spells. But if someone makes a time mage, be it a class or just a rulebook, you suddenly open the question "OK, when can I travel through time?" It's inherent in the job description. It's so genre, anything in that vein will have to include a nod to it.

And I think even the most creative, intelligent DM out there will have a hard time keeping up with PC's able to alter the past at whim (which can include altering the history of a known future too much). Time travel works best when it's under the control of one narrator, and I doubt you'll find cooperative players with that intuitive a knack for what you want.

So in brief, I'd like to see time affecting spells tossed out as ideas in a larger work, but anything greater is DM perogative only.

 

[Zarrock God of Evil]

I own Chronomancy too and did a bit of conversion once - haven't gone back to it yet, though. It's a very interesting class and Time Travel on Temporal Prime was handled very well in the old book. Complicated - yes - but also sufficiently dangerous. Some very neat spells in the book (Paradox anyone?) as well.

I would like to see a book that presented a variety of time-based PrCs, options for timetravelling, a walkthrough of the Temporal Energy Plane from MotP (change name if necessary), temporal artifacts, spells, etc.

A very nice timetravelling spell was included in Netheril: Empire of Magic. It was called Conduit and allowed an entire group to travel back in time. Once there they had to stay there for "an entire year". Moreover, spells, items and qualities that did not exist at that part of Faerûn's history were not transferred either way - but you would regain them upon return to your own time (and lose any you brought with you). A very neat spell to take players back to the past and do some adventuring and return them later.
What a thrill when the players discover that they in fact helped in the destruction of Netheril (How The Mighty are Fallen )

-Zarrock

 

[thundershot]

Napftor: To let you know, I'm not planning on making a "COMPLETE GUIDE TO CHRONOMANCY". It's going to be something built in to an adventure that I'm writing, but I want to have all of my bases covered. It'd be easy for me to just do it myself, but I'd rather get input from the community.

 

[Tempuswolf]

There were some old SF novels about a psionic detective/policeman/spy named Croyd by Ian Wallace, Croyd, Dr. Orpheus,... that had some concepts that would put a handle on time travelling in a game setting.

The past was called Uptime and it was basically set in stone. When Croyd travelled to the past he could only witness events and generally only from the perspective of a sentient being though at times he went disembodied. Croyd sometimes cheated and "changed the past" by actually having been in the future to start with rather than the present.

The future was called Downtime and it was a probabilistic place that became fuzzier and fuzzier the farther "down" he went, eventually becoming a total washout. (He set up a sort of demi-plane hideaway there.)

One of the tricks that Croyd used was to go to the future and bring back future versions of himself like a form of cloning.

Using an iron clad past and a fuzzy future you can keep weird paradoxes from creeping into the storyline.

One more thought on time travel is that like any travel spell that tends to separate the party, you need to make sure you can use the ability on others unless you are planning on a soloing campaign.

 

[Morrus]

Question: If spells from Chronomancer and Tome of Magic are converted to 3E (that haven't already yet by Wizards), and put as open source in a product, is it legal? (I'm just asking...)

I'm going to pull out my Chronomancer book to see what I can extract from it.

You can't just convert a 2E product, or parts of one, and release it as a product. But you can come up with your own unique tae on the concept of time-based magic.

I'd recommend that you start this from scratch, without even loking at your 2E Chronomancy book. Lock it up somewhere so that you can't inadvertently use WotC's IP.

 

[thundershot]

You can't just convert a 2E product, or parts of one, and release it as a product. But you can come up with your own unique tae on the concept of time-based magic.

I'd recommend that you start this from scratch, without even loking at your 2E Chronomancy book. Lock it up somewhere so that you can't inadvertently use WotC's IP.

Oh, I had no intention of converting a book. I've just been grasping at straws coming up with spell ideas. It's not like I want to write a "complete book of chronomancers", it's just an adventure with some new open source material built in (spells, magic items, prestige class) to spice it up. It's the first book I've ever written like this, and I have no intention of making a dime off of it (though I'll likely submit the idea to a company or two, if they're interested).

Thanks everyone! Any more input (especially on special abilities on the prestige class) would be welcome! (though I've got a rough draft done on most of it, but it can change easily).


Chris Dickinson

 

[thundershot]

Knocked to page 3?

BUMP!

 

[thundershot]

Well... Mongoose's upcoming Chronomancy book kinda nixed what little progress I had in my own "time mage" project...

HOWEVER, the adventure in which this was going to appear IS still being worked on, and, depending on when Chronomancy comes out (and how much of it is OGC), I may use some of it.

The adventure itself WILL have time travel in it. A time travel mystery, actually... but that's all I can say for now.

Once it's done... I hope to find someone to release it...


Thank you all for you help!
Chris