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Emperor Tippy
2009-10-16, 11:21 PM
How to tell the future in 6 easy steps

Step 1: Be a Psion with the powers Force Dream, Schism and Time Hop, Mass
Step 2: Manifest the power Forced Dream on yourself
Step 3: Manifest Schism
Step 4: Have your Schismed mind manifest the power Time Hop, Mass on yourself to send yourself 15 hours into the future.
Step 5: Use a full round action to gain the days worth of memories from the Thought Bottle
Step 6: Use your swift action to activate Forced Dream, placing you back at before Step 4.

The set up for this is a room with a table and a though bottle in it. You also need an Orange Ioun Stone (or some other way to boost your ML to 21 so that your Schism can use mass time hop). At the end of the day, you place the days worth of memories into the thought bottle and leave it on the table. When you jump forward in time you gain those memories of living the time in between the jump and now, you then go back to before the jump but you take the memories with you.

Repeat as needed.

--
This is like super divination because you know what is coming, at least in general terms. It is also super spying.

I mean you don't have to be stealthy at all, or worry about being found out. Once you learn what you want (no matter how bloody you were or how many people found out), you send the knowledge back and reset.

---
The only real problem with this trick is if you die, it ends the loop.
The only real way to get around this is to effectively stutter the loop by combining it with Tleilaxu Ghola's save game mechanic.

Just activate the save game trick every time once you complete your hop and if you die on the iteration you are still outside the loop but you do retain all memories except for that last loop and you do know that you did something that resulted in your death that go through.

EDIT: Actually I found a better way to prevent deaths in the loop and retain your memories. Before you enter the loop you need to have used the spell Clone to growth yourself a Clone. Then, you leave your clone next to your thought bottle and upon your death it immediately awakens. You have it place it's memories inside the thought bottle so that they are now entered in the loop and you now remember everything up too and including your death.

Deth Muncher
2009-10-16, 11:26 PM
Not only am I glad to see you back in action, Tippy, but it's good to know you haven't died. Haven't seen you around breaking the game lately.

But wait...you're using Psionics. Isn't magic your forte? What is this ludicrousness? Did you learn to bend Psionics to your will in your vacation?

Elfin
2009-10-16, 11:31 PM
Wow...crazy. :smalleek:
Nice to see you back, Tippy.

Emperor Tippy
2009-10-16, 11:36 PM
Not only am I glad to see you back in action, Tippy, but it's good to know you haven't died. Haven't seen you around breaking the game lately.

But wait...you're using Psionics. Isn't magic your forte? What is this ludicrousness? Did you learn to bend Psionics to your will in your vacation?

I've always liked Psionics and I just recently found out about the Save Game trick and that got me interested in messing around with time. This is the result. It's amazing what one can do with 20 minutes worth of boredom.

----
Oh, if you want extra security on your time hopping you should buy a Craft Contingent Spell Time Stop set to activate upon you being hit with a Mass Time Hop after you say uga buga. Thanks to forced dreaming you don't expend it and this gives you guaranteed security on the other end of the trip, to make sure that no one has readied actions to kill you when you appear (if they found out about your fun).

Seffbasilisk
2009-10-17, 01:29 AM
Still saying, all the memories that never were, will clutter up the mind. You would likely be dealing with incredible Int, but even so.

Myrmex
2009-10-17, 01:43 AM
Reminds me of that movie, Primer.

Doc Roc
2009-10-17, 02:00 AM
:: shrug :: As you said, it basically is a variation on T_G's old save game trick, but not as cool. 3/5.

Good to see you back though!

Myrmex
2009-10-17, 02:06 AM
:: shrug :: As you said, it basically is a variation on T_G's old save game trick, but not as cool. 3/5.

Good to see you back though!

Yo Tippy, I'm really happy for you, an imma let you finish, but T_G had one of the best time exploits of all time.

Emperor Tippy
2009-10-17, 02:06 AM
:: shrug :: As you said, it basically is a variation on T_G's old save game trick, but not as cool. 3/5.

Good to see you back though!

Yep, mines cooler.

His doesn't let you remember everything that happened after you save. Mine does.

Doc Roc
2009-10-17, 02:23 AM
It's actually not clear that you can target anything other than a whole creature with time hop. In general, powers and spells that affect you while schismed hit both minds or more accurately, the body you share. Unlike temporal acceleration, time hop lacks an exception clause for Schism.

Also, due to the wording of schism, you may need to have it up before you manifest forced dream.


Answer me a koan....

How fast is no action?

Cicciograna
2009-10-17, 04:12 AM
Pardon my ignorance, but what is the "save game trick"?

Emperor Tippy
2009-10-17, 04:13 AM
http://web.archive.org/web/20080416123150/http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=737126

Seffbasilisk
2009-10-17, 04:27 AM
...the Flash?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odU1bHaYNDQ

Fishy
2009-10-17, 05:14 AM
I love it, but if I were a hypothetical evil DM:


The subject reappears in exactly the same orientation and condition as before.

If you are not standing in the same place you were when your Schism manifested Time Hop, it arrives outside of your body.


If the space from which the subject departed is occupied upon his return to the time stream, he appears in the closest unoccupied space, still in his original orientation. Determine the closest space randomly if necessary.

If you are standing in the same place, the space is 'occupied', and a literal reading of the text pushes the Schism somewhere else.

Either way, a part of your mind ends up on the floor. Could get messy.

Emperor Tippy
2009-10-17, 05:21 AM
Just to clear this up, you aren't sending the Schism into the future. The Schism is manifesting Time Hop, Mass to send the real mind into the future. Whether or not the Schism comes along really doesn't matter. I would say it does but I suppose that is up to the DM.

Fishy
2009-10-17, 05:58 AM
Ah, so Schism is just for the extra action you need to do everything you have to do in the one round Forced Dream gives you. You could get the same result with Action Surge or Delay Power, right?

Wow, the causality of all this is weird.

Indon
2009-10-17, 09:35 AM
I daresay that any mechanics use that involves the DM needing to fabricate rules for time travel is a fascinating one.

Just make sure to have your schism run away or something, because if he makes contact with your future self (which, after you return, was formerly your other past self), you could conceivably cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe. (If you're lucky, the destruction will be localized to the campaign)


Also, there's a book out there somewhere that lets you travel forward through time without any complicated magic or psionics, though at a fixed rate of an hour for every 3600 seconds of actual time that passes.

Wait, wait. Is this a joke, or is there really a D&D ability somewhere that lets your character move forward in time an hour for every hour that passes _outside_ the game?

The use of 'actual time' is confusing in this context.

ericgrau
2009-10-17, 11:24 AM
I smell the plot to Final Fantasy 1.

Oslecamo
2009-10-17, 11:50 AM
However, since the future hasn't hapened yet, there's nothing guaranteeing that what you've seen will actualy happen.

The principle of chaos will make that even if you have seen the future, this will result in small changes that will change the future, meaning you may only be fooling yourself thinking that the BBEG will rolll a 1 on his third save.

Flickerdart
2009-10-17, 11:54 AM
But that isn't the point. Things like distribution of troops and traps will still be the same. The BBEG will still, likely, be in that very room, and have the same contingencies prepared to fire when the PCs enter. He'll still try to get off his seemingly innocent but devastating combo involving 3 rounds of casting Quickened Prestidigitation, but now you'll know that he's a threat.

Emperor Tippy
2009-10-17, 12:00 PM
However, since the future hasn't hapened yet, there's nothing guaranteeing that what you've seen will actualy happen.

The principle of chaos will make that even if you have seen the future, this will result in small changes that will change the future, meaning you may only be fooling yourself thinking that the BBEG will rolll a 1 on his third save.

Ah, but the only variable is your actions. Nothing else changes. With enough iterations and an intelligent enough character, especially if combined with the hypercognition power, one should be able to get pretty much whatever result one desires if it is something that isn't physically impossible, no matter what actions you take.

And sure, while you loose out on the random dice rolls, you gain something much better. Total knowledge of your enemies abilities and standard attack routines. Basically, if I manifest X then 99/100 iterations the baddy does Y.

PlzBreakMyCmpAn
2009-10-17, 12:17 PM
I smell the plot to Final Fantasy 1.
So true.

For those of us who are too lazy too look this up could you explain the powers and why they allow you to do what you say. I believe you and all but Im sleepy :smallredface:

Emperor Tippy
2009-10-17, 12:30 PM
So true.

For those of us who are too lazy too look this up could you explain the powers and why they allow you to do what you say. I believe you and all but Im sleepy :smallredface:

Forced Dream is a rounds/level power. Once it is manifested, at any time during it's duration you can activate it as a swift action to reset your current turn. That wipes out everything that has happened since the beginning of your turn and you are the only one who remembers what occurred.

Time Hop, Mass sends you hours/level into the future.

So, since your turn starts in the past (before you are affected by Mass Time Hop), you can use Forced Dreaming to go to the future and then back to the past.

A thought bottle let's you store or retrieve up too a full days memories as a full round action. This means that you still have your swift action. So you get sent to the future, use the thought bottle to gain the next days worth of memories, and then activate Forced Dreaming.

Now, all you retain is your memory. So you remember everything that was placed in the thought bottle.

The Rose Dragon
2009-10-17, 12:31 PM
This feels like the plot of Butterfly Effect, but in reverse.

Doc Roc
2009-10-17, 12:45 PM
I do not see that you can target either the schismed mind or the real mind separately.
Nothing else lets you do so that doesn't have some very specific language, I see no reason why this would be an exception with no exception.

Fishy
2009-10-17, 12:53 PM
The real problem is that the contents of the thought bottle are in the causal past of you reading the thought bottle. Until what you put in the bottle matches exactly what you read, you have a timeline that doesn't work.

The other problem with this plan is- what if some jerk with a hammer smashes your bottle between when you fill it and when you read it again?

Emperor Tippy
2009-10-17, 12:55 PM
I do not see that you can target either the schismed mind or the real mind separately.
Nothing else lets you do so that doesn't have some very specific language, I see no reason why this would be an exception with no exception.
What are you talking about? Nothing of mine cares about the Schism at all. The only thing Schism does is manifest Mass Time Hop. Whether or not said schismed mind comes along (I believe it does as it is part of your mind) is utterly irrelevant.

Doc Roc
2009-10-17, 12:59 PM
What are you talking about? Nothing of mine cares about the Schism at all. The only thing Schism does is manifest Mass Time Hop. Whether or not said schismed mind comes along (I believe it does as it is part of your mind) is utterly irrelevant.

Then I must be missing the part where some of you stays behind to actually experience the day. Because thought bottle memories can only be retrieved by the person who stored them, and time hop means you spent your day wallowing outside the timestream.

Nohwl
2009-10-17, 01:06 PM
i thought you left, good to know you're back.

Kyeudo
2009-10-17, 01:21 PM
I don't see how this works. The Thought Bottle never gets filled, because you spend the day outside of time and then warp back to the begining of the day, so you never get any memories out of the Thought Bottle.

Indon
2009-10-17, 01:29 PM
I don't see how this works. The Thought Bottle never gets filled, because you spend the day outside of time and then warp back to the begining of the day, so you never get any memories out of the Thought Bottle.

What if you leave the Schism behind and the bottle collecting its' memories?

Doc Roc
2009-10-17, 01:31 PM
Can't. There's no way to "leave the schism behind."
I worked up a similar trick based on your schema, Tippy, but it relies on exploitatively high ML abuses, fission, timeline manipulation, a rope, and timing abuses via non-actions. If I can line it up more elegantly, I'll hand it over.

Fishy
2009-10-17, 01:49 PM
Let's say you're in a room with a Thought Bottle, one hundred doors, and it's the stroke of midnight, 00:00:00.

Iteration 1:

At the beginning of your turn, you manifest Time Hop and jump 15 hours into the future. Because you used Schism, Delay Power, Action Surge, or some other form of extra actions, you still have one full-round action and one swift action left.

You arrive at 15:00:00, there is a Thought Bottle in front of you, and it is still your turn. You spend a full round action retrieving whatever is stored inside it. At 15:00:06, you activate Forced Dream, and undo the turn, returning to 00:00:00. The trip 'never happened', but you remember everything that is in the thought bottle.

At 00:01:00, you open door #1. It contains an orc with a pie. You kill the orc, take the pie, and go about your day.

At 14:30:00 or then abouts, you insert "An orc with a pie is behind door #1" into the bottle.

At 15:00:00, your past self arrives, and reads the contents of the bottle, "An orc with a pie is behind door #1". This is different from whatever you read in the first iteration, because that's the whole point. At 15:00:06, your past self goes back in time, and you/he know(s) that an orc with a pie is behind door #1. This 'isn't how that happened last time', a HORRIBLE TIME PARADOX occurs, iteration one ceases to exist and retroactively never happened, Iteration 2 doesn't actually notice.

Iteration 2:

Knowing an orc with a pie is behind door #1, you open door #2. It contains a kobold with a pie. At 14:30:00, you insert "A kobold with a pie is behind door #2, and earlier I read a thought bottle that said an orc with a pie is behind door #1."

At 15:00:00, you arrive again, read a thought bottle that isn't the same as what started Iteration 2, which means that this all unhappens again.

And so on and so forth. The only way to get to 15:01 from here is if you can make a stable loop where you fill the thought bottle with exactly the same information that the thought bottle was filled with before you filled it. Or something.

Or at least, that's what the time travel theory on that website that I can't find right now because it's linked to by tvtropes says.

Doc Roc
2009-10-17, 02:11 PM
That's not how it works RAW.
You never went forward. You undid that. Time in D&D is sequential in nature. You didn't linearly traverse until after undoing your forward leap. And it is undone, not reversed. When you went forward, you hadn't yet gone there the long way around. That's the crucial thing here, and relying on any other interpretation is GM fiat designed to maximize rather than minimize the creation of paradoxical situations.

Radar
2009-10-17, 02:59 PM
It's good to see you back Tippy (and your ideas too). :smallsmile:


I don't see how this works. The Thought Bottle never gets filled, because you spend the day outside of time and then warp back to the begining of the day, so you never get any memories out of the Thought Bottle.
No, you don't skip the day. You travel into the future, then go back and fill the bottle. Yes, it might create paradox, but totally works - that's stable time loop for you. You can't think only through someones personal time.

As for finding a broken bottle scenario: it's still a vital information - you know, that someone found out your trick.

@Fishy:
That is the simpliest way of finding the right (stable) solution. Yet, those iterations might not converge [1] (lead to a stable solution). In practise, you try to solve the loop problem as a whole - everything that will happen has already happened - it works well in simple mechanics [2], but would be completly unworkable in any RPG.

[1]"Polchinski's paradox" - described neatly here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle).
[2]F. Echeverria & G. Klinkhammer - scetched there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle) as well.

PS. Sorry about hammering in some popular science. :smallsmile:

edit:

That's not how it works RAW.
You never went forward. You undid that. Time in D&D is sequential in nature. You didn't linearly traverse until after undoing your forward leap. And it is undone, not reversed. When you went forward, you hadn't yet gone there the long way around. That's the crucial thing here, and relying on any other interpretation is GM fiat designed to maximize rather than minimize the creation of paradoxical situations.
Time is sequential, yet there is more then one sequence going on. For RAW examples see Time Stop. Heck, Forced Dream is explicitly creating a paradox, since it allows you to go back in time and retain your memories of the future. The only thing Tippy is doing, is streching the size of the time loop (from 1 round to 15 hours).

Indon
2009-10-17, 03:04 PM
That's not how it works RAW.
You never went forward. You undid that. Time in D&D is sequential in nature. You didn't linearly traverse until after undoing your forward leap. And it is undone, not reversed. When you went forward, you hadn't yet gone there the long way around. That's the crucial thing here, and relying on any other interpretation is GM fiat designed to maximize rather than minimize the creation of paradoxical situations.

Please outline where in one of Wizards' books they talk about time travel mechanics, for it to be Rules As Written?

Aspiring Chrono-DM's want to know.

Randomatic
2009-10-17, 03:10 PM
There is a simple way to get the trick to work. You can convince your DM to let you play a Dvati. :smallwink:

Doc Roc
2009-10-17, 04:17 PM
Time is sequential, yet there is more then one sequence going on. For RAW examples see Time Stop. Heck, Forced Dream is explicitly creating a paradox, since it allows you to go back in time and retain your memories of the future. The only thing Tippy is doing, is streching the size of the time loop (from 1 round to 15 hours).

Your interpretation while logical does not mesh with the RAW effects of reverting a forced dream or the structure of time hop. When you get there the long way around, you will have already reverted the time line. There is no RAW support for your otherwise excellent argument, which is a valid interpretation that however produces more problems than the RAW.

The RAW looks like this:

Label: A
block{
Manifest forced dream
Time hop
-Label T
Exit time hop
Obtain currently empty Label T memory state.
Trigger forced dream
}
Revert engine to state A.
Only information is retained, not event sequence or engine state.
Reach Label T by living your Day.
Store memories.

Deth Muncher
2009-10-17, 04:25 PM
Please outline where in one of Wizards' books they talk about time travel mechanics, for it to be Rules As Written?

Aspiring Chrono-DM's want to know.

The only thing I've ever seen is in the 3.5 Faerun archive, there's a 9th level spell "Teleport Through Time." It's an absurdly hard spell to pull off. I suggest you go look it up.

Indon
2009-10-17, 04:42 PM
According to the Epic Level Handbook, time travel determines the future as the future invoked, as of when the time spell is used (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/timeDuplicate.htm).

That is to say, time travel can not be used to change the future, because the use of the time travel spell determines what that future will be. So if you tried this trick and you found your corpse holding a shattered thought bottle?

You're in trouble.

Also note this amusing quirk:


Using this spell to snatch a single future self stretches time and probability to its limit; more powerful versions of time duplicate are not possible. A character cannot bring more than a single future version of him or her self back at one time, nor can a character snatch a version of him or her from farther in the future.

Realms of Chaos
2009-10-17, 08:18 PM
Okay, I know little about time travel and even less about extreme abuses of the rules (pun-pun still confuses me). Let me see if I have this straight.

It seems that (after schisming) you use forced dream, speed yourself into the future via time hop, return to your current round as a swift action, and then store your memories in a thought bottle.

There are 2 things that I don't understand.

1. This entire thing seems to rely on an odd interpretation on a loophole that makes it so that rather than remembering yourself getting sped through time, you are remembering a hypothetical timeline that had occured during that time.
The only way I could see that working is if you somehow send your schismed mind (with the active forced dream effect) into the future so that when it emerges once more, it gains access to all of your memories from the future and can still use forced dream to head back and tell the rest of your mind about how everything worked.

2. The only way to fill a thought bottle is to possess the relevant memories to start with. That said, what is the meaning of the thought bottle?
Edit: Is it there so that your schism can store its memory before the end of the power?

Emperor Tippy
2009-10-17, 08:39 PM
Okay, I know little about time travel and even less about extreme abuses of the rules (pun-pun still confuses me). Let me see if I have this straight.

It seems that (after schisming) you use forced dream, speed yourself into the future via time hop, return to your current round as a swift action, and then store your memories in a thought bottle.

There are 2 things that I don't understand.

1. This entire thing seems to rely on an odd interpretation on a loophole that makes it so that rather than remembering yourself getting sped through time, you are remembering a hypothetical timeline that had occured during that time.
The only way I could see that working is if you somehow send your schismed mind (with the active forced dream effect) into the future so that when it emerges once more, it gains access to all of your memories from the future and can still use forced dream to head back and tell the rest of your mind about how everything worked.

2. The only way to fill a thought bottle is to possess the relevant memories to start with. That said, what is the meaning of the thought bottle?
Edit: Is it there so that your schism can store its memory before the end of the power?

Your Schism does nothing.

You use Forced Dreaming, now at any time within the next 20 rounds (assuming a ML of 20) you may, as a swift action, restart your current turn. The only thing that you bring back to the start of your turn is your memories.

Round 1: Forced Dreaming
Round 2: Manifest Schism
Round 3:
Schisms Action: Your Schism manifests Time Hop, Mass to send *you* 15 hours into the future. Whether or not the Schism goes with you is irrelevant.
Your Action: Use the Thought Bottle to gain the memories contained inside of it. Use your swift action to activate Forced Dreaming.

You now go back to the beginning of Round 3, before you ever went into the future.

--
Now, you live out the next 15 hours as normal. Then you place those 15 hours worth of memories inside of the thought bottle. This is where your past self arrives and gains the memories.

The very act of arriving wipes that specific time line and the only evidence that it ever existed is your memories.
---

It's a stable time loop of 15 hours.

Indon
2009-10-17, 09:04 PM
--
Now, you live out the next 15 hours as normal. Then you place those 15 hours worth of memories inside of the thought bottle. This is where your past self arrives and gains the memories.

The very act of arriving wipes that specific time line and the only evidence that it ever existed is your memories.
---

What other timeline is there, aside from the one that you teleport into?

Doc Roc
2009-10-17, 09:43 PM
None. Forced dream doesn't roll-back, it deletes.

Godskook
2009-10-17, 09:48 PM
It's a stable time loop of 15 hours.

Except what happens in the case of your thought bottle not being accessible when you 'appear' in the future?

Tyndmyr
2009-10-17, 11:13 PM
I believe that without the thought bottle, you won't know the future afterward.

Though it's pretty easy to figure out that something went wrong.

Flickerdart
2009-10-17, 11:24 PM
But if someone stole your bottle or something, you'd still have the memories of all the previous recursions, and the scene of the crime. You'd even have a full-round action to manifest some powers and get a good idea as to who the culprit is.

Bogardan_Mage
2009-10-18, 12:24 AM
According to the Epic Level Handbook, time travel determines the future as the future invoked, as of when the time spell is used (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/timeDuplicate.htm).

That is to say, time travel can not be used to change the future, because the use of the time travel spell determines what that future will be. So if you tried this trick and you found your corpse holding a shattered thought bottle?

You're in trouble.
Yeah, it looks like it says that but I don't think that's what it's trying to say. Please note this:


Because the future self was previously only a possibility, his or her resources are not depleted as a result of whatever might occur this round (even if the character dies this round).

That's pretty unequivocally saying you can change the future, at least in the sense that the future you enter into need not be the one that you summoned yourself from a round earlier.

And that bit about stretching time to its limit is contradicted by several non-epic things, so I don't know.

Radar
2009-10-18, 07:08 AM
You know? The whole algorithm is just like a cotrollable Groundhog Day. :smallbiggrin:


Your interpretation while logical does not mesh with the RAW effects of reverting a forced dream or the structure of time hop. When you get there the long way around, you will have already reverted the time line. There is no RAW support for your otherwise excellent argument, which is a valid interpretation that however produces more problems than the RAW.

The RAW looks like this:

Label: A
block{
Manifest forced dream
Time hop
-Label T
Exit time hop
Obtain currently empty Label T memory state.
Trigger forced dream
}
Revert engine to state A.
Only information is retained, not event sequence or engine state.
Reach Label T by living your Day.
Store memories.
Thank you for your insight. However the above schema would work well, only if you consider the time travelling person without the rest of the world. Let's ponder a slightly different scenario, that would show the point:
Meet Psion A and Psion B - they are bestest friends etc.
Round 1. (for both) Psion A manifests Forced Dreaming
Round 2. (for Psion B) Psion B manifests Time Hop, Mass, to send A 15 hours into the future.
Round 2. (for Psion A) While sent into the future A retrieves memories of B stored conveniently in a Thought Bottle and activates Forced Dreaming to go back in time.

Here is the important question: who would according to RAW go first? Psion A with his turn in the future, or Psion B with his day full of actions?

If B, then A will acquire a day worth of information anyway and can give those informations to B, when A gets back in time. This obviously leads to a regular time paradox and would allow the original method as well.

If A, then his Hop would do nothing, since the world is literally waiting for him to do his turn. More fun: it is happening so, only because A will decide to go back in time, so casuality is shattered all over the place anyway.

Lycanthromancer
2009-10-18, 06:37 PM
This could be simplified a bit with a manifestation of fission. Split yourself in half, have one-half (the part split off from the primary) manifest forced dream and then mass time hop. Have the half that stayed behind put the info into the thought bottle, and have the half that was thrown into the future take that information back with him.

Voila.

Also, to do this without a thought bottle, use mind switch, or possibly mindrape. What about fusion?