"We have to go back! Back... to the future!" [Prestige Class]

[henebry]

Key question:

When you go back in time and shout, "Duck, it's a trap!" does your friend re-roll his Ref save, or does he simply add +2 to the roll he already made? I imagine it's the former (as otherwise the ability would rarely be useful), but given the paradoxes involved in time travel, you might want to specify that a new roll is made, with a +2 insight bonus applied.

Also, you might want to add that if your friend rolls a natural 1 on his re-rolled Ref save, he turns to you and says "My name's not Duck" just before being impaled by the great scythe which comes out of the wall.

A second, more serious question: you describe Time Walk as enabling Chronomancers to visit the past without any possibility of disturbing the past. Yet the Chronomancer and his companions aren't incorporeal. What are they? By what mechanism (beyond DM fiat) are they prevented from affecting the past? This ability definitely needs some fluff to make it feel plausible.

Taken literally, the inabilty of Time Walking Chonomancers to afffect the past world would seem to impede their gathering of information: how do they open doors? how do they turn the pages of books they find?

Also, given that Chronomancers cannot affect the past with their Time Walk, I was puzzled by the fact that they see it as their duty "to stop those manipulating the flow of time with abandon and to rein in rogue Chronomancers." For none of the powers which you grant to Chronomancers would seem to enable them to mess up the flow of time.

Finally, where's the joy of time travel if there's no possibility of generating a time paradox? Given that nearly every movie, book or TV show which features time travel has a plot that centers on a time paradox, it seems perverse to create a role-playing scenario where time paradoxes have been ruled out.

I wonder if you might modify Time Walk so that the Chronomancer gradually gains greater capacity to change the past as she gains levels. Thus, the capstone ability of "Ultimate Chronological Manipulation" is subsumed into Time Walk as simply the only legal application of Time Walk once you've gained the ability to impact the past when you travel back in time.

In this version, Time Walk can affect just the chronomancer or himself and a number of creatures = 1/2 his level. But only the chronomancer can act in such a way as to affect the past, and he only gains this ability at higher levels.

As for the fluff explanation for why you can't affect the past, I can think of two possibilities:
1) you're incorporeal (perhaps some different kind of incorporeal than the incorporeality of ghosts: call it a time spectre). If you play it this way, the chronomancer and his companions can move through doors and read open books, but cannot manipulate objects which are part of the past world.
2) you and your companions are in a time bubble: a time-stopped past moment. If you play it this way, the chronomancer and his companions can open doors, read books, etc., but cannot witness the words and actions of past individuals, except as freeze-frame statues. This version has the advantage of building upon an extant spell (Time Stop); it also offers a means of affecting the past even at low levels, for the Chronomancer might leave a message written in chalk, or steal a spellbook. Of course, such activities would be considered illegal by the Chronomaster guild, and that's precisely the point. Unless there's the possibility of messing up royally, much of the fun goes out of time travel stories.