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View Full Version : Crazy Psionic Loop [3.5e]



Ganurath
2011-05-16, 12:21 PM
First of all, I know full well that the following would not be viable for PC use. This is something I imagine would be part of a psionic version of the Tippyverse. Some time ago, someone speculated as to what a psionic Tippyverse would be like, and I made an argument based on the prominence of low-level powers that a psionic Tippyverse would be better suited to reaction, fixing problems, and extraplanar colonialism. High-end powers like Genesis reinforce this by creating potentially infinite extraplanar real estate, but there's a possibility for truly limitless problem-solving potential. I believe I have something, I just need to confirm mechanical viability.

What You Need:
At least two Elan Nomads capable of manifesting 9th level power Time Regression (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/psionicPowersQtoW.html#time-regression), ideally with magic items that eliminate the need for sleep and a Lawful Alignment.
A clock that is flawlessly precise and can clearly indicate the second, minute, hour, day, month, and year of each moment.
Communication infrastructure that can get a message across the nation in a matter of rounds.
A basic code that indicates truly catastrophic events.

How It Works:
Catastrophy Strikes! Emergency response does what it can, and the event is communicated to one of the Elan Nomads meditating in The Clock Room. These Elans, sleepless and replete, are constantly readying actions to manifest Time Regression in response to the other telling him the coded message.

Receiving Elan conveys the message as a free action, which communicates the nature of the disaster, the location, when it will be, and how far back in time the warning needs to go. This triggers a readied action from Warning Elan, and he goes to the round before the message was received.

Warning Elan conveys the message as a free action, triggering the readied action of Receiving Elan who has yet to receive the message. Receiving Elan regresses, going to a point in time before Warning Elan had to pay XP for his own Time Regression. The pair continue to bounce the message back and forth is such a manner until the message reaches the intended time.

For simplicity's sake, the cycle stops with Warning Elan, who communicates the calamity to the emergency response people. Now having foreknowledge of the calamity, they can take action to prevent it from ever occuring, either by performing a scry-and-die on the leader of an attack, divining the source of the mishap to prevent a mistake, or reinforcing structures and evacuating the area of a natural disaster.

If things still go south, the cycle is renewed, going back even further in time and stopping with Receiving Elan, this time conveying more complex messages of action and reaction. Odds are a permanent mindlink item between the Nomads is involved, shift rotations to avoid mind-numbing boredom, and Seers supporting the communication infrastructure figuring out the source of adaptive threats.

So, Playground: Can multiple manifesters using Time Regression bypass both the XP cost and the 1 round regression limit through committed coordination?

Lix Lorn
2011-05-16, 12:25 PM
I'm actually changing my mind and saying this is too awesome to say 'No you should feel bad.'

Interesting though... you're focussing on defensive applications. An empire using this could win any war ever. EVER.

Lapak
2011-05-16, 12:46 PM
I'm actually changing my mind and saying this is too awesome to say 'No you should feel bad.'

Interesting though... you're focussing on defensive applications. An empire using this could win any war ever. EVER.Well, not ANY war ever. To grab two easy examples:

- pre-emptive attack that kicks off war is specifically targeted at early-warning Elans; any sufficiently dangerous enemy should know enough to do this.

- the foe is overwhelmingly powerful far enough in the past to push one of the early-warning Elans back so far they lose access to Time Regression as they attempt to give a warning early enough; that is to say, the Elan-warned empire never had a chance starting from before they even implemented the system.

:smallwink:

Ganurath
2011-05-16, 12:47 PM
Well, I suppose one could consider the strategies being used by the enemy a disaster, but that would be trickier to code, and the communication infrastructure would have a harder time reaching offensive fronts. Still, the applications are certainly valuable, especially with the subtheme of extraplanar colonialism being reworked to extraplanar expansionism.

Lapak: While I'll agree on the latter point, the former assumes that the Clock Room wouldn't be one of the top three most defended locations in the Psionic Tippyverse nation. Also, keep in mind that we're talking about at least a pair of Psions of at least 17th level.

SharkVersusKoda
2011-05-16, 01:26 PM
well...1 flaw...time travel paradox. if they keep travelling back in time to alarm a group to stop a catastrophe before the catastrophe was intended to happen, then the catastrophe never happened in the future to have the Elans react to, therefore they never travelled back in time.

Ganurath
2011-05-16, 01:32 PM
Time Regression works to change the future with foreknowledge. The Clock Room follows the same logic, just over a greater period of time than six seconds. It follows the Dragonball Z rules of time travel, as I imagine, only without the pesky existence of the unaltered timeline.

Urpriest
2011-05-16, 01:33 PM
Very nice. True, you can get a lot of this less clunkily with the Save Crystal Trick, but that trick has to be done in advance. Any sensible empire would have reactive solutions to problems as well.

In my Psionic Tippyverse (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10979521#post10979521) game I might not even be worried about the Elans getting bored. There are other Elans who basically just serve as Erudite power libraries for the Psicrystal Governors.

Ganurath
2011-05-16, 01:42 PM
A proper Tippyverse wouldn't settle for finite contingencies, that much is certain.