Time Travel

[atemu1234]

Ok. My group and I are Doctor Who fans. After watching a few episodes during a campaign, we started wondering how we could include time travel, and we came up with a few ideas. As DM, I thought to create a few different time-traveling things.

Chronionates: Basically time lords. Following racial traits:

* +2 Wis, +2 Int. Chronionates are quick learners and smart besides.
*Regeneration (Su): Chronionates can regenerate twelve times throughout their lifespan. They can activate this ability manually, or suppress it willingly, but otherwise it activates when they reach -10 hit points or less. This ability functions as a Reincarnation, except you automatically regenerate as a chronionate. You cannot reincarnate as any older than middle age, and cannot be any younger than pubescence (chronionates age as elves, so around ~100 years, equivalent of a 12-year-old human).
*Artifact Familiarity (Ex): A chronionate can make and fix their time-travel gauntlets as a magic item of equal value, unlike any other race, which treats them as one would an artifact.
*Favored Class: Artificer.
*LA: +2

The chronionates worship a Paragon Great Wyrm Time Dragon Divine Rank 18 (Dragon #359) named Chronion, the last of his kind and existing in a realm outside of time and space with his favored servants, the Chronionates. They have gauntlets which allow them to travel through time, based on an arbitrarily high use magic device check. (I flat out told the PCs they'd never time travel without an NPC chauffeur) Their realm is called Krion.

Then, on a whim, I made a time-travelling "ship" called the voyager. It looks like a massive stalactite (or is it stalagmite) that floats about a mile above the ground. It is manned by Flumphs, who tend to wind up stranded on other planes. It runs on magical-psionic energy, black holes and yadda yadda. This is all meant to be an easy way to have fun with my PCs.

Any thoughts, all?

[Fouredged Sword]

Have fun. Handing out 12 free resurrections is not a huge deal. After level 10 or so, they will have cheep revival anyway. Past that, they have a free feat (ancestral relic)

Hand wave the time travel bit. I would make it not a gauntlet, but an intelligent ship that takes the shape of an object that fits in the environment it winds up in, bigger on the inside of course.

But yes, have fun. Roll with the punches and down't worry about the mechanics you don't intend to hand to the players (so long as they know that).

[Vhaidara]

I actually like this. It also gives you free license to kill them if the mess up, since they have 13 lives.

I would make the gauntlet more like the sonic screwdriver, if anything.

[Fable Wright]

You may want the homebrew forum for this.

As is, it's a very weak option for a LA+2 race. I would bump it down to LA +1, or maybe even LA+0, given their lack of racial features that help in combat.

[Vhaidara]

Also, if the entire party is going to use these, then you can just make it LA 0. Actually, these don't seem too much stronger than normal 3.5 races (the regenerations are a very limited resource, so they shouldn't be worth too much), and I'd put them on par with standard PF races.

[atemu1234]

You're right. I should've posted this to the homebrew forum, and I'm going to put the race there, but right now I just want to know if time travel is at all viable.

[Hytheter]

Travelling back in time could have some dire consequences on the game from a meta perspective.
If you allow the future to be changed, then you run the risk of invalidating sessions of play time. If not, then you may end up railroading the players, since the future is "predetermined". And if you start getting into alternate timelines and paradoxes there's a good chance your campaign will start making no sense at all.

[iceman10058]

as far as time travel, use doctor who as a guideline. between fixed points in time and paradoxes resolving themselves, you should be fine. just make sure they dont see eachother

[Vhaidara]

Hytheter covers the problems in repercussions.

As far as the means, there are a few really high level spells, but you're best of DM fiating a magic item that does it.

If you want to build the TARDIS, the inside is a sentient demiplane with an extremely easily controlled time flow. So if you want to go into the past, you have the time flow be 1 second = - 1 year, while traveling forward 1 second = 1 year.

[NichG]

The thing with time travel in Dr Who is that 90% of the time its more about different-times-as-different-places. The focus is on exploring different historical eras and the distinctive themes they introduce (and a set of thematically distinct 'future histories'), as well as the idea of seeing how things play out in the grand scheme of things.

So I'd embrace that and make it part of the setting. Imagine that the various eras each have their own 'now', and things done in the 'now' of one era don't interact with the 'now' of a different era (it has to 'catch up' first). When you time travel, its more like you're plane-hopping, with each era having its own historical continuity and not having access to nearby moments in past or future.

For example, lets take a D&D-like setting and break it up as far as different styles we can observe:

- Primordial era (YC 0). Great big monsters, Iron Heroes-type world, great magic use is few and far between and tends to be transformative/cataclysmic when it happens - new races are created, entire empires are forged under the guidance of a Merlin (or a Karsus), etc. Maybe some early age Tolkien influence, so Silmarillion-style stuff with the immediate 'children of the gods' still walking the land and interacting with other races (perhaps they're the first mages). Greek myth is another good inspiration here.

- Dawn of Conquest (YC 300). Bands of raiders roam the world, but a few people have formed the first nations in order to resist them. Magic is a bit more common now, but weaker, as its secrets have to be rediscovered since the loss of the ancient peoples. This is a time for kings to be made, and nations to grow from the chaos of war. Monsters are used as beasts of war, carefully cultivated by warlords who are toying with more power than they can control.

- Demon-breach (YC 600). Civilizations have formed, kings and nobles and so on are all in place, and a variety of churches flourish. However, the secrets to planar contact have recently been rediscovered by the races of the world, and cults surrounding powerful extra-planar creatures known as 'demons' have begun to flourish, and those cults have been driven to do some horrific things in an attempt to summon the demons to this world. In response, a secret Inquisition has been formed by the major churches to root them out and to police extra-planar contact for the good of all.

- Blasted Lands (YC 900). In YC 864, the Demon Alprazghat was released and laid waste to the surface of the world. The planet is now, aside from certain pockets, a postapocalyptic waste. The Inquisition has been scattered. Mankind is on the brink of extinction. In the aftermath, strange beasts roam the lands and the demon-king looks over all. Dark Sun is good inspiration for this era.

- Age of Rationalism (YC 1600). Following the apocalypse, mankind has realized that knowledge is the only way to pull themselves up from destruction. And so with great difficulty, the world has moved forward. Some demons have come through, and some have been vanquished. Magics have been employed to renew nature in places, and to make life easy once again. People have realized they need to understand the world to deal with its hazards. As such, much of the taboo areas of study are being pushed forward as fast as possible. This is the age of fantasy-Newton, with people delving into forgotten ruins to pull out as much lore as they can (possibly with people pursuing planar travel the way explorers journeyed to the New World in the history of Earth, though to preserve the feeling of expanding borders the 'planes' should actually be fairly small places and also local to the world or even the continent, like lots of demiplanes plastered onto the globe).

- Age of Industry (YC 1800). Mortalkind has achieved such mastery over the arts of magic and technology that the world has been brought to order and the ancient threats have been forced into the shadows completely. Monsters are unheard of, unless recently escaped from the lab of a Professor of Magicology. Instead, mankind are the monsters, and their greed and ambition drive them. This era'd be strongly motivated by Ebberon (and the Tippyverse if you like), with touches of Victoriana and steam punk as desired.

- The Modern Era (YC 2000). Magitechnological computing engines have revolutionized the world. Now spells can be sent along mithril wires thousands of miles long across the world at need, and so on. d20 Modern + Modern Arcana + inspiration from Shadowrun.

- The Revolt of the Colonies (YC 2200). Greater Teleport means that individualized space travel has always been feasible, but generally the other planets of the solar system were noxious and dangerous places to go to, of little interest to most (and the great mana barrier around the edges of the solar system where the nature of magic changes has prevented further exploration except for a few unmanned probes kicked out from the edge by curious mages). Now, however, the Kriegstein Process has allowed these outlying planets to be terraformed by breaching the walls between the worlds and their associated demiplanes. In YC 2231, the first of many revolutions occurs, as the colonies seek independence and freedom, on the background of the particular spiritual motivations of the exemplars of these extra-planetary demiplanes that have been merged in the terraforming process. The first 'aliens' are born from the influence of these ruptured demiplanes on the inhabitants of the planetary colonies. Something like Serenity for inspiration.

- To the Stars (YC 2500). A way past the mana barrier has been discovered, a sort of Rosetta stone for magic that allows spells to be converted to work in their local sphere. This takes time and effort, and so Greater Teleport applied at ship-level becomes the means of transportation across the stars, but voyages still take months (and involve a cadre of a few 'Guild Teleporters' whose responsibility is to teleport the entire ship by way of resonant enhancement devices that improve both their scale and their skill). A ship whose teleporters die or burn out becomes stranded forever. Spelljammer-inspired.

- The Age of Metaplanetary Engineers (YC 3500). Thanks to discoveries across the 173 inhabited star systems and the 14 distinct Mana Zones, the secrets of Demiplane Creation have been unlocked. And with it, mortal-kind has gained the ability to customize environments, spiritualities, systems of magic, and so on, to their taste. Mankind sees itself as the new gods, but the old gods have not forgotten the way of things, and have stirred from their long rest to challenge mortalkind and ask - are they truly ready for ascension?

- And Beyond? (YC 250000+). Mankind has fallen, risen, fallen, and risen again. There are so many buried and lost technologies, so many fragments of old civilizations that survived forward, or splinter groups that have tried their own thing, that any two travellers meeting in the vastness of space will have completely different ideas about magic, technology, culture, religion, species, and so on. The universe has become a great melting pot where everything is possible, and yet nothing is ever completely centralized.

In this sort of campaign, you can't say 'I go to year 250005!' - you can only go to each era (perhaps these are beacons seeded by the race of time travelers, and the beacons are all drifting forward in time in sync), and they all move forward with your personal time. So if you went back to YC 0 in this setting, nothing you did would influence YC 250000 for another 250000 years of your own personal time. And by that time, you'd be going to YC 500000 when you traveled to the 'And Beyond' era.

[Slipperychicken]

Then, on a whim, I made a time-travelling "ship" called the voyager. It looks like a massive stalactite (or is it stalagmite) that floats about a mile above the ground. It is manned by Flumphs, who tend to wind up stranded on other planes. It runs on magical-psionic energy, black holes and yadda yadda. This is all meant to be an easy way to have fun with my PCs.

Any thoughts, all?

Just try not to get it stuck on the wrong end of the galaxy too often

[BWR]

Pick up the old Chronomancy supplement for 2e. It ha a lot of fun ideas.