Is there a chronomancer class?

[ken-do-nim]

I want to play a wizard who is a master of time (and looks oddly like Tom Baker). I don't recall seeing one, but there are *so* many books, I figure someone here probably knows right off the top of their head.

[TheOOB]

Barring a few campaign settings, time manipulation is a concept which D&D shys away from, so you won'y find much about it. Heck, theres not even a single spell that manipulates time in the PHB (time stop just makes you really fast, and temporal stasis just puts the target in suspended animation, not quite time manipulation).

[starwoof]

Well I dont like to plug myself (too much!), but I made this prestige class a while ago.

Chronomancer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36667&highlight=chronomancer)

I think I worked out the issues, and I managed to do it without any paradoxes. Theres very little actual time manipulation. Might not be what youre looking for though. As far as I know theres no official class.

[Rahdjan]

I'm thinking there's a monk PrC floating around somewhere that had to do with time, but I don't know if there's an arcane caster PrC for that. Fatespinner out of the Complete Arcane was the closest I found.

[Roland St. Jude]

Seems like there was a 2E Chronomancer. But I agree with ^^^ time travel is generally avoided in D&D, especially 3.x.

[Innis Cabal]

there is several third party spell systems and several spells in a dragon mag....number which escapes me....the 3rd party book is called Chronomancy and is apart of the Eldritch Encyclopidya series

[Ramza00]

Barring a few campaign settings, time manipulation is a concept which D&D shys away from, so you won'y find much about it. Heck, theres not even a single spell that manipulates time in the PHB (time stop just makes you really fast, and temporal stasis just puts the target in suspended animation, not quite time manipulation).
Wish can undue misfortune, and I believe one of the psionic prcs (the monk one?) could do so also

[Behold_the_Void]

Psionics dips into the realm of time, but in general D&D 3.x shies away from it.

[Exarch]

You could just play a standard Wizard who has a love for spells such as Timestop, Haste, Slow, etc.

Not too many, but a buffing wizard is a nice wizard.

[Seffbasilisk]

In my IRL D&D group, one of the DMs has a 'Chronomancer' prestige class in his world. I'll ask him about it for ye.

[Aquillion]

For clerics (and others who use domain spells), there is a Time domain (http://www.imarvintpa.com/dndLive/DomainIndex.php?Domain=Time). It doesn't have any actual time travel or anything, but it's still made of awesome. (Haste, Freedom of Movement, Time Stop, Contingency, Foresight, and Moment of Prescience, among others... and you get the last two at a level lower than anyone else. Oh, yes, and it grants Improved Initiative as a bonus feat.)

Otherwise... Psionics, particularly Nomad Psionic disciplines are the most time-travelish you're likely to get. There's Time Hop and Mass Time Hop to send people forward in time, and Time Regression to undo the last round. (Time Regression costs XP, of course.)

One person came up with a loophole to make Time Regression more powerful... basically, it says that it sends time back to the start of the manifester's last round, so you just freeze your psicrystal outside of time with quintessence or something similar, and order it to use Time Regression the round it's unfrozen to send things back to whenever you froze it... Seers get Precognition and Greater Precognition, but really, the ability to see the future there is just fluff. The actual effect is a +2 or +4 Moment of Prescience.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Wouldn't Chronomancer just be greek for someone who can read a clock?

There's Zerth Cenobite from Complete Psionicsome unknown book and there are hundreds of homebrew classes.

[KoDT69]

There is an actual 2nd edition supplement called Chronomancer. It was very detailed and had a lot of checks and balances in place. Each very powerful spell stated strict guidelines for thier use. Wow, those were the days. I bet those poor hapless Chronomancers wish they could have jumped forward to 3rd edition to become Planar Shepards and Divine Oracles and stuff! :smallbiggrin:

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

*ZOT*

Stop, foolish mortal!
I have traveled across time and space, from the celestial bastions of the future, to tell you you must not meddle in time!

Also, it's your kids! Something's got to be done about your kids!

Anyways, yes: time domain and zerth cenobite is pretty much it, unless you want to play a Chronotryn out of fiend folio (but they're at least LA+19 or some such, soo...).

[ken-do-nim]

Otherwise... Psionics, particularly Nomad Psionic disciplines are the most time-travelish you're likely to get. There's Time Hop and Mass Time Hop to send people forward in time, and Time Regression to undo the last round. (Time Regression costs XP, of course.)


That's what I was looking for, along with the basics like haste/time stop/moment of prescience. I'll check it out tonight.

Gee, you know how there's mystic theurge, wouldn't it be great to have a class that allows you to advance in spellcasting and psionics?

[kamikasei]

That's what I was looking for, along with the basics like haste/time stop/moment of prescience. I'll check it out tonight.

Gee, you know how there's mystic theurge, wouldn't it be great to have a class that allows you to advance in spellcasting and psionics?

The Cerebremancer (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/prestigeClasses/cerebremancer.htm) does just that, but as with most dual caster prestige classes, is generally viewed as not worth caster/manifester levels lost to multiclassing.

[Jimp]

I think there's a Chronomancy book by Mongoose Publishing as part of their Encyclopedia Arcane series. I haven't looked at it, mainly because I deleted it from my computer by accident >_< Some of the other stuff in the series seems reasonably balanced though.

[Ramza00]

The Cerebremancer (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/prestigeClasses/cerebremancer.htm) does just that, but as with most dual caster prestige classes, is generally viewed as not worth caster/manifester levels lost to multiclassing.

Cerebremancer has more early entry tricks (precocious apprentice which actually works with psionics but not mystic theurge, heightened sigil krau, or for the psionic side ardent+practiced manifester)

Thus you can only be 1 manifester level behind in psionics and 3 in arcane. If you do it this way it is very worth it. Without early entry tricks its even worse than mystic theurge for arcane and psion have far more overlap in what you can do.

[Mewtarthio]

There's this spell (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pg/20030409b). It's ninth level, requires you to locate a place that hasn't been visited by man for as long as you want to go back, and can't be used to affect your own past as you have to kill yourself for some inexplicable reason.

Alternatively, just create a long, high-DC ritual with some obscure requirements (and I don't mean "DC 50 Use Rope check," I mean stuff like "must be performed when the planets are in precise alignment," "material component: Blood from a god slain within the past twenty-four hours," and other "only when I say so" stuff).

[Chunklets]

I do believe there was something in a recent issue of Dragon about time magic, but I don't recall if it was a prestige class or just a bunch of new spells. I see if I can find the issue in question.

[Assassinfox]

The Dragonlance 3E supplement Legends of the Twins has a lot of time-travel stuff included.

Also, there's the Encyclopaedia Arcane: Chronomancy by Mongoose Publishing.

Or, you could get your hands on the 2E Chronomancer book and try and make a 3E version of it.

[ArmorArmadillo]

You don't need to take a class for this, just choose spells that deal with time.

[TimeWizard]

Time? Wizardry? Someone called? Aww Yeah!

There is indeed a very good section of Dragon magazine about Chronomancy, which was one of the last 4-5 issues (IIRC). True, there used to be a chronomancer, and now time magic is generally taboo in DnD... (friggan conspiracy). I'm surprised nobody mentioned a Diamond Mind Swordsage (ToB). For fun, send a PC back in time to AD+D. Best time travel idea I've ever heard. Then again, you could always pull a Rincewind: travel back to the dawn of existance, find the fountain of youth and hangaround long enough to kill your own grandfather... unless Asimov is right and you are immune to Time Paradox's... but then, historical inertia.... and maybe a dash of Slaughterhouse Five? ....

God damn, now I'm going to be up all night.

[Henshin_Fanatic]

Of course, if your looking for a prestige class than you can't do much worse than the Chronorebel PrC from Hyperconscious.

[Assassinfox]

Then again, you could always pull a Rincewind: travel back to the dawn of existance, find the fountain of youth and hangaround long enough to kill your own grandfather... unless Asimov is right and you are immune to Time Paradox's... but then, historical inertia.... and maybe a dash of Slaughterhouse Five? ....

When did Rincewind find the fountain of youth and kill his grandfather? :smalleek:

[TimeWizard]

When did Rincewind find the fountain of youth and kill his grandfather? :smalleek:

He didn't, but he said it was the only thing he had to look forward to while he was stuck at the begining of time at the end of (Faust, strikethru) Eric.

[Assassinfox]

He didn't, but he said it was the only thing he had to look forward to while he was stuck at the begining of time at the end of (Faust, strikethru) Eric.

Gonna have to read that book again now. :smallsmile:

[henebry]

My interest was piqued by Starwoof's Chronomancer PrC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36667&highlight=chronomancer), and (while this doesn't really count as time magic per se) I did bring his thread back to the present by adding a comment. :)

Like some of the supplements the rest of you mentioned, he went to a fair bit of trouble to hedge round the PrC's powers to prevent Chronomancers from affecting the past and creating time paradoxes.

But it seems to me that the whole point of time travel stories is trying to do something vital while at the same time avoiding creating a time paradox (or, alternatively, trying to fix a paradox you've inadvertently created). All this fun drops away if it's impossible to create a time paradox.

So it seems to me that the DM should either plunge in all the way, making time travel central to the campaign (and making clear to the players that dire consequences will result if they go too far) or the DM should avoid time travel altogether.