What to do with a localised 1-year Time Stop

[Jowgen]

You have a garden variety magical munchkin with access to both Hallow (lets say as a SLA for simplicity) and Time Stop. It is ruled that Time Stop can be affixed to the Hallow, which magical munchkin does.

First question is, how does this work now in terms of duration?

Time stop is weird in that its duration is "1d4+1 rounds (apparent time)". With Hallow its "spell effect lasts for one year and functions throughout the entire site, regardless of the normal duration and area or effect", affecting all creatures or creatures who share your faith or alignment, or creatures who adhere to another faith or alignment, per your choosing.


The intuitive solution is that the inside of the Hallow acts as an area with the fast time trait, which remains for 1 year. Interestingly, the SRD example actually uses the example of one year on a fast time plane equating to 6 seconds (i.e. one round) of normal time. Using that as our equivalent, 31540000000/6 giving us a time dilation of about 5.256.666.666. So spending the whole year of real time in that time dilation bubble would be the same as sitting around until our sun goes into red giant mode. Of course as written, only creatures are affected by time stop, which has other brainy-hurty implications.

An alternative solution would be that the Hallow's 1 year duration is in apparent time only, so upon casting any affected creature within the Hallow has 1 years worth of action and the Hallow just ends with no apparent loss in time. Of course, simply using Hallow again allows for the effect to be renewed, so its still perfectly feasible to keep the effect going at the same effective rate of time dilation.

Yet another way to rule this would be that Time Stop is an instantaneous spell, so that any creature who enters the Hallow gets 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time, after which the effect either re-triggers immediately, on the next round of real time, or ceases to affect the creature until it leaves and re-enters. This seems like a fun ruling for a bunch of reasons. For one, multiple creatures entering the time dilation Hallow would all be acting massively sped up, but probably out of synch relative to another (i.e. one guy gets 2 rounds of actions while another gets 5). This also makes it way harder to predict just how much time has really passed outside, since the relative speed of time keeps fluctuating.


In any case though, having the option of affixing Time Stop to a Hallow basically gives you all the time in the world to do stuff (at least until the Quarut come knocking something fierce). Even if leaving and re-entering are required, that action cost can be mitigated by other means to become a non-factor.

So second/main question is, what fun things would you have your munchkin use his super-charged hyperbolic time chamber (however it works) for?

[Kayblis]

I'd like to point out you're purposedly allowing for something not allowed in the rules, so it's like asking "when I ignore/break the rules, how do the rules work?". The answer is, however you want it to work, you're not working with the game rules anymore.

For a point of reference, Time Stop is a Personal range spell, Target:You. You could treat your ruling the same way you would other spells like that, let's say for example Righteous Might. If you affix Righteous Might to your Hallow, what do you expect to happen? Is it a constant Buff Boi area where everyone is huge and strong all the time, or would it be a single cast effect each time you enter? That's a cool sight to behold, and the former could even work as a premise for a hardcore colosseum dedicated to a god of duels.

For me personally, I like the idea of it being a constant effect, for 1 year in real time. The dilatation cited sounds a bit too much, but it doesn't matter really. You could treat this as an area of free extra time, go in to read a book and get out a few seconds later with the book and your own fanfic of it in hands. Go in with the materials needed and come out with whatever you're able to craft from it. It's basically a zone of instant downtime.

[Shalist]

Duration: 1d4+1 rounds (apparent time); see text

This spell seems to make time cease to flow for everyone but you.
In fact, you speed up so greatly that all other creatures seem frozen, though they are actually still moving at their normal speeds.
You are free to act for 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time.

The spell effect lasts for one year and functions throughout the entire site, regardless of the normal duration and area or effect.

You could argue that both the duration (which while brief, is not quite instantaneous, per the quoted text) and apparent duration (1d4+1 rounds) are changed to 1 year, meaning that it seems to do nothing ('protection from phane'?).

Alternately, you could argue that hallow makes no mention of apparent duration, and thus only increases the actual duration. Ergo, anyone entering the field would experience 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time, spread out over the course of 1 actual year. Frankly, that sounds like a pretty awesome prison.

edit: For what it's worth, the 3.5 FAQ on hallow:

Q: When a spell effect is fixed to a hallow spell, how do unusual durations (such as those of protection from energy) or instantaneous durations (such as those of dispel magic) work?

A: The spell effect fixed to a hallow or unhallow spell is treated as being cast on any eligible creature each time it enters. In the case of “ablative” spell effects that are used up gradually (such as aid or protection from energy), the full effect of the spell is renewed each time the eligible creature re-enters the hallowed/unhallowed area (with the newer version entirely replacing the older version). In the case of instantaneous effects (such as dispel magic), the spell affects eligible creatures each time they enter.

So there's interpretations, but no clear RAW answer. I actually prefer a 'renews once every (duration of spell)' type interpretation, even if it'd mean (i.e.) 20+ time stops per round in this specific case.

[Nifft]

Each person who matches the hallow conditions gets the time stop effect applied, every round, for one year.

Similar to how dispel magic might be applied by hallow, since that's also an effect without an extensible duration -- though presumably you'd set the conditions so dispel magic hit enemies, while time stop applied to friends.

[Johel]

Alternately, you could argue that hallow makes no mention of apparent duration, and thus only increases the actual duration. Ergo, anyone entering the field would experience 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time, spread out over the course of 1 actual year. Frankly, that sounds like a pretty awesome prison.

So it would slow you down instead of speeding you ?
I like it.

[DarkSoul]

Based on the FAQ quote, I would rule that stepping into the hallowed area casts time stop on you as normal, and recasts it every time you re-enter the area after leaving, assuming you're not already affected by time stop.

[Jowgen]

I'd like to point out you're purposedly allowing for something not allowed in the rules, so it's like asking "when I ignore/break the rules, how do the rules work?". The answer is, however you want it to work, you're not working with the game rules anymore.

Well, Hallow's spell description only states that the spells that can be tied to it include those listed, so other spells are possible. The text provides no guidelines on what constitutes a valid spell, and the listed example spells include everything from rays to personal range, so it defaults to DM judgement, which I think is different from being straight up not allowed. But enough of that and onto the fun at hand.

For me personally, I like the idea of it being a constant effect, for 1 year in real time. The dilatation cited sounds a bit too much, but it doesn't matter really. You could treat this as an area of free extra time, go in to read a book and get out a few seconds later with the book and your own fanfic of it in hands. Go in with the materials needed and come out with whatever you're able to craft from it. It's basically a zone of instant downtime.

Zone of Instant Downtime. I like it. I do agree that the indicated dilation is a bit much, even if based on a raw example...

Lets see, a character who hit with Time Stop it gets at least 12 seconds of apparent time compressed into a virtual instantenous moment. Question is how short is instantenous? Based on human visual perception numbers, I'd say at most 1/15th of a second. So at the very least, we'd get a dilation factor of 80 as a pretty damn conservative estimate. I'd round it up to 100 for simplicity of math, personally.

So with that it would take 10 minutes for one round of real time to pass, which I think is reasonable in terms of cat girl wellfare.

You could argue that both the duration (which while brief, is not quite instantaneous, per the quoted text) and apparent duration (1d4+1 rounds) are changed to 1 year, meaning that it seems to do nothing ('protection from phane'?).

Alternately, you could argue that hallow makes no mention of apparent duration, and thus only increases the actual duration. Ergo, anyone entering the field would experience 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time, spread out over the course of 1 actual year. Frankly, that sounds like a pretty awesome prison.

edit: For what it's worth, the 3.5 FAQ on hallow:

So there's interpretations, but no clear RAW answer. I actually prefer a 'renews once every (duration of spell)' type interpretation, even if it'd mean (i.e.) 20+ time stops per round in this specific case.

Interesting on all accounts. The "it does nothing" interpretation is actually the most terrifying, in that you wouldn't feel any effects for a year, but still be subject to all the other stipulations of the spell. I.e., you still can't attack/target anyone, enter AMFs or be detected, even though everything seems fine.

The "actually slows down" interpretation is also very cool, not just as a prison but as a potential repercussion for messing up in set up. If someone in my game were trying to mess with timespace on this scale using such a unorthodox method, I would absolutely require some additional spellcrafts and arcanas or such as part of the casting. If they fail, they accidentally inverted the time dilation lens and will probably be stuck in limbo for a year.

The FAQ ruling is probably accurate but real darn cumbersome for all intents and purposes. Since each casting gives at least 2 turns, our guy can simply set up a rotating standing desk at the edge and 5 ft step in and out each turn to reset the duration, while doing his reading/crafting/whatever without loosing any action. It doesn't change anything about the bottom line of what can be done with this, it just makes it look stupid in practice. As such, in adherence to the rule of cool, I say best to disregard the FAQ ruling here.

So, by some means or another, we have a Zone of Instant Downtime on our hands. Or a temporal prison, if the DM is feeling vengeful. Back onto the topic of fun things to do...

How about just opening a decanter of endless water? As our attended magic item we can use it no problem and it'll work at our speed. Of course the water coming out becomes a non-attended and therfore regular speed item almost immediately upon shooting out, so we gotta be mindful of the pressure, but we still have a decanter pumping out liquid at least 100 times faster than normal. That is a lot of water....

[Jack_Simth]

When you enter the area, you get 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time. These do not happen instantly. Instead, they're a "bank" that you can use in increments of one round as a free action on your turn... provided you're within the Hallow. If you step outside the Hallowed area, any remaining rounds (including partial rounds) are lost.

[Shalist]

I.e., you still can't attack/target anyone, enter AMFs or be detected, even though everything seems fine.

Huh, I hadn't thought of that aspect of it.

The FAQ ruling is probably accurate but real darn cumbersome for all intents and purposes.

Agreed, and frankly it doesn't fit my idea of it. I.e. if there's a monastery with (insert hallow buff here), I'd expect everyone inside to have it on them, not just the handful who recently walked through the front door.

That is a lot of water....

Bonus points if you combine it with a permancied wall of fire and/or a colossal (64-gallon, i.e. bathtub-sized) 'sacred vessel' (BoED, turns water into holy water). And tuck it all into a hallowed portable hole (or possibly a spaceship), of course.

Hmm, a (redeemed?) darkskull might also get you mobile.

Any thoughts on safety? I could imagine trapping folks inside until they starve just by standing in the doorway.

edit: Does 'speaking is a free action' have any bearing on communicating inward (or outward) of the time dilation field? Is there a different answer for using command word items, given that they require a standard action? Hmm...

edit 2: Incidentally, would (placing and) reading explosive runes count as an attack?

[Jack_Simth]

Any thoughts on safety? I could imagine trapping folks inside until they starve just by standing in the doorway.

Drop a Sustaining Spoon and a bowl in there. Once it's attended, whoever's stuck is fine - they just use the spoon once a day.

Also, of course: You don't occupy the ENTIRE doorway. I've gotten through pet doors, and there's WAY more space than that around most folks. You've got plenty of time to take 20 on that DC 15-ish Escape Artist check.

[Jowgen]

Drop a Sustaining Spoon and a bowl in there. Once it's attended, whoever's stuck is fine - they just use the spoon once a day.

This does raise the question to what extend we can assume magic items and daily limit abilities to recharge according to our perceived time. As written time stop only affects creatures, and by extension items they attend. Even if we keep the spoon in hand 24/7, who's to say that it recharges after 24 hours of virtual time rather than real time? Healing belts recharge at dawn for example, which in our Zone of Instant Downtime is like once every few months.

Wizards might be able to get their spells back with just resting 8 hours, but Clerics are only supposed to get their divine juice refilled by their deity by praying 1/day, so their stuff might not recharge either. And then we also have the question how our non-creature targeting spells work. Like, does our Unseen Servant work in real or virtual time?

In any case, for avoiding death of starvation/dehydration a Ring of Sustenance seems like a much better solution than a Sustaining Spoon.

Also gotta consider suffocation. You are consuming oxygen at least at 100 times normal speed, so even if the chamber isn't completely sealed, good ventilation is important.

You are also gonna age. At a dilation of 100, if you take a wyrmling in with you, after the whole real year has passed you'd have a young adult with you. Drop a human in there and if they can't get out they're basically gonna live out their entire life in super speed over the course of a couple months.

This whole thing could have great application for breeding creatures as well, be it life stock or for magical creature part harvesting. Of course that'll require ungodly amounts of feed and produce literal mountains of animal waste.

[unseenmage]

Hmmm, Int Magic Items count as Constructs and with the right spells imbued they could theoretically attend objects.

[Nifft]

Hmmm, Int Magic Items count as Constructs and with the right spells imbued they could theoretically attend objects.

A construct attending a ball.

[unseenmage]

...

A construct attending a ball.

Basically yeah.

Tie the Decanter of Endless Water to the talking sword and toss them into the time dilation then walk away.


EDIT
What happens if there is Lich Briar or similar in or beside the time field? Do you accrue negative levels faster?

[Jowgen]

Hmmm, Int Magic Items count as Constructs and with the right spells imbued they could theoretically attend objects.

Spider Thief is probably the best bet for this. They're cheap, intelligent and don't take up much space. You can have a bag of them and just tell them to sit/hold onto stuff you want to keep sped up along with you. Just don't give them the ability to build more of themselves, unless you want Replicators. Cuz that is how you get replicators...

Dedicated Wright would also be a good options if crafting is the goal. In fact, you could just purpose the field as a place for your dedicated wright to do your crafting for you in virtually no time.

Tie the Decanter of Endless Water to the talking sword and toss them into the time dilation then walk away.

As I read it, as soon as the water shot out reaches the end of the 20 ft Geyser, that is when the water stops being part of the items effect and should therefore return to functioning in normal time. It basically becomes an almost solid viscous substance. So unless the growing mass of solid water and knock back of the geyser forces our construct out of the time dilation bubble, we get this:

The semi-solid water encases the bubble/construct, creating a slowly expanding seal wherein pressure builds up, until it either force-stops the decanter's flow, or just keeps on building pressure incrementally as the water shell is still expanding (or just 100 times slower than normal), unitil at some point it crushes the decanter/construct. The way to maximize this would be to set it up so the decanter rotates in a way to create a perfect 40 ft diameter sphere of solid water that we then keep layering more sheets of solid water onto the inside.

Some rough cat girl killing math, assuming a stationary decanter on a swivel at 100 factor of time dialtion: a 20 ft radius sphere (assuming a stationary decanter on a swivel) has a volume of 33510.32 square ft, which fits about 268 5 ft squares. If each turn of virtual time lets us fill one 5 ft square with solid pressurized water, then it'll take at most 3 turns of real time before our pressurised water sphere is full. I'd give it at most another 2 turns of real time before the pressure backs up enough for the already geyser force water wave just explodes in a massive tsunami.

From within the field, we'd basically just watch in slow motion as the built up water slowly moves outwards in an explosion that crushes everything in its path. So once we get this started up, we have less than 30 seconds to try and get out of the blast radius.

What happens if there is Lich Briar or similar in or beside the time field? Do you accrue negative levels faster?

I don't think it can be said to fall under under the "fire, cold, gas, and the like" exception. Mabye if the Lichbriar, as a living plant, can be counted as an attended object? It would while being planted in a victim, but after that it doesn't seem like it would get the attended benefits of using the vicitms saves or anything like that. Maybe if we animated the lich briar, but then it would be subject to the "no attacking" limitation.

[unseenmage]

Spider Thief is probably the best bet for this. They're cheap, intelligent and don't take up much space. You can have a bag of them and just tell them to sit/hold onto stuff you want to keep sped up along with you. Just don't give them the ability to build more of themselves, unless you want Replicators. Cuz that is how you get replicators...

Dedicated Wright would also be a good options if crafting is the goal. In fact, you could just purpose the field as a place for your dedicated wright to do your crafting for you in virtually no time.

...

I remember Tippy using Animated Objects for simple item activations. Does the Minor Servitor (SS) or Awaken Sand (Sa) spell work within a Time Stop effect?

[ExLibrisMortis]

If you move into the area of the hallow spell, you get 1d4+1 rounds of time. Using your first round of stopped time, you move out of range and right back in. Net gain: 1d4 rounds of apparent time. You repeat this indefinitely until you have enough time to do whatever you want, then you do whatever you want, then you repeat. Infinite time, and it all technically happens in the first round of the first round of the first round of [...] of the first round of the first time stop.

Infinite time is a bit stupid, though. It's probably better to go with 1d4+1 rounds of additional apprent time per round of real time, that is: everyone within the area of the hallow spell gets 1d4+2 turns' worth of actions each turn, but the time stops can't be nested or applied more than once per turn, even by jumping across in and out of the spell's area. A variable time dilation, if you will, with the rather freaky implication that (locally) you will see people zipping ahead and falling behind you all the time, though on average, everyone ages at the same rate.