RipVanWinkle
2015-04-15, 05:31 PM
In a campaign of mine that I am DM-ing for my inner circle of dungeon-roving friends I have been playing a bit with time. I need to find a way of balancing the method by which characters change. Basically the players end up either in a monk temple or (before the creation of the temple and long after its destruction) an ice cave high in the mountains. Inside they find a strange octogonal altar made of a single piece of smooth gray stone with pillars at all eight corners. The altar is about 14' by 14' by 40' and has a shallow circular recession inscribed within the octogon at the bottom. Each of the adventurers is lured in and then an unbreakable crystalline wall slides into place trapping them. The clear walls become mirrors and show endless variations of themselves (with the other adventurers appearing to be missing) some with only subtle differences and others even different races alltogether. A thick mirror like liquid seeps from the roof and begins filling the chamber filling the PC's lungs and knocking them unconcious. After a series of hallucinations they awaken in a world seemingly covered in the liquid with glowing columns of silver light rising up stretching into endlessly into a polychromatic horizon. The players choose a column and travel to that column's universe or time. When they exit they awaken in the set world with an unbreakable, refilling vial of the strange mirrory liquid that only they can see and that cannot be broken or separated from its now host. A sip from the vial changes their place with one of their dimensional doubles (I've included their characters from past and current campaigns as well), a swig changes the character and dimension, a gulp transports you back to the 'Dimensional Selection Plane' (I need a better name), and a downing the bottle? The gods can only guess. So, here's the question: does this give to much power to my PC's and if so, how would you suggest I go about nerfing or changing this mechanic?