Time Mage As The Final BBEG?

[Scorponok]

Has anyone ever played a campaign where a time mage type was the BBEG? Was just looking through some other forums and was inspired. I can see the final scene before the big fight at the end of the campaign:

BBEG: Time. What's the point? Time goes in one direction, at least in how we perceive it. We grow older. Time seems to move faster with age, and then we die. The more aware of our own existence we become the more eminent death seems.
So why? Time is the only constant. It controls everything. So why do we live? Is there no point? Are we just beings of circumstance that are subject to the passage of time?

Hero: We can't even see all colours there are. What makes you think we can perceive all aspects of time? This cosmic dance of bursting decadence and withheld permissions twists all our arms collectively, but if sweetness can win, and it can, then I’ll still be here tomorrow, to high five your yesterday, my friend.

I'm in the middle of another campaign, but thought this might inspire someone to make a campaign based on stopping a time mage.

[Buufreak]

Luckily my party doesn't lurk here too often, so I think it is safe to post. In a deity game I've been working on, the party's ally but also the ultimate BBEG is Janus, Roman god of travel, time, change, beginnings, and ends. The general idea is he wants to change the world, and his best plan is to hyperaccel it forward until it can be started over. Not the perfect plan, but that kinda happens when you are literally two faced and obsessed with order through alteration.

[Afgncaap5]

I've never made a BBEG be a time mage, but I've put a couple villains here and there who dabbled. I have a (frankly insane) order of time traveling Eliciters who carry sun-dial shaped shields and have gnomon wands as focus devices. Inspired by a player's hero, their shout of "To the future with you!" is generally a cue for a really, really annoying few rounds of figuring out when everyone is.

Having said that: I don't know if he counts as a "time mage", but there are definitely elements of that with Lord English in Homestuck. Similarly, a cadre of criminals in Homestuck called The Felt all seem to have curious time-related powers that cover a number of different aspects of the flow of time to our understanding of time (ranging from the curious "I can see trails showing where everyone is going to be going in the future" power, to the questionably valid "power" of being able to step into something and "go to the future" by stepping out of it again later. It's... not clear if it's actual time travel or if that guy just gets inside and waits.

[KillianHawkeye]

Well... outside of Final Fantasy, I've never really encountered the idea of a "Time Mage." For D&D/d20-related stuff, there really isn't much to go on when it comes to time manipulation. Haste, slow, time stop, and a couple of other really obscure spells aren't really enough to fill that niche properly.

[Crake]

In my setting, time is the one aspect of reality that is actually guarded by a deific level power. Practically all the other gods are dead, the few that are left alive don't particularly care about their portfolios (read: boccob and fharlanghn), but time is kept in order by an ancient primordial being, who's birth literally created time, and any who interfere with, or threaten the flow of time simply just disappear. Time is the one sacred thing about my setting, where practically anything else is "Are you strong enough? Then sure"

[Jack_Simth]

Luckily my party doesn't lurk here too often, so I think it is safe to post. In a deity game I've been working on, the party's ally but also the ultimate BBEG is Janus, Roman god of travel, time, change, beginnings, and ends. The general idea is he wants to change the world, and his best plan is to hyperaccel it forward until it can be started over. Not the perfect plan, but that kinda happens when you are literally two faced and obsessed with order through alteration.

... Would anyone notice? If you speed everything up, you also speed everyone up. Unless it's happening unevenly for some reason, of course. If you speed up, say, the Prime Material Plane to 100 to 1 ... about all that happens is that people who go off-plane don't come back for a long, long time. At 10,000 to 1, they never return as far as anyone knows. Meanwhile, everyone has their full normal life. About all it effects is planar merchants.

[danielxcutter]

... Would anyone notice? If you speed everything up, you also speed everyone up. Unless it's happening unevenly for some reason, of course. If you speed up, say, the Prime Material Plane to 100 to 1 ... about all that happens is that people who go off-plane don't come back for a long, long time. At 10,000 to 1, they never return as far as anyone knows. Meanwhile, everyone has their full normal life. About all it effects is planar merchants.

That might actually be the point(that is, only changing the time flow of the PMP): deities need worship and screwing with the temporal speed of the PMP could severely harm them. The reverse is also possible: seperate the time flow of the PMP from the Outer Planes in order to prevent or at least delay divine interference messing with your evil plan.

[Doctor Despair]

That might actually be the point(that is, only changing the time flow of the PMP): deities need worship and screwing with the temporal speed of the PMP could severely harm them. The reverse is also possible: seperate the time flow of the PMP from the Outer Planes in order to prevent or at least delay divine interference messing with your evil plan.

That's a funny thought. A deity would get their portfolio sense triggered, certainly. If they were on the PMP to investigate, they wouldn't notice anything happening. Once they left, it would be too late, assuming the change was instantaneous once started and revved the speed from 0 to 100. Granted, you'd still have to contend with any deities that spend ALL of their time on the PMP, but if you create some diversion or reason for them not to be, you'll be square. Fluff-wise, this could definitely make everyone but Ur-Priests lose ALL their casting, which could be a huge plot motivator. Maybe all the churches are offering some major reward and throwing their WBL around to try to solve the issue, since their prayers are going unanswered.

For those above who were wondering about spells that affect time, Teleport Through Time is a classic and, unfortunately, the clause that prevents these things from happening, since a deity could teleport back through time and enter the PMP to see what the fuss was about pre-speed up. However, TTT has text that suggests that the dnd universe is predeterministic, or to put it another way, major events are going to happen no matter what you meddle with. In that sense, this plan is genius because it allows you to "sneak in" some major world-altering events so that Greater Powers That Be couldn't go back and change it afterward. Of course, that doesn't prevent deities from making your life (or afterlife) very unpleasant after those Big Events, so those events had better leave you otherwise immune to divine retribution. ;)

Edit: Oh, I forgot to answer your post more directly. Deities, outside of houserules, don't *need* worshippers, iirc. It's just that they have them. Like... they gain worshippers in the same way a class gains features, but taking away one feature doesn't take away all of them. They still have all their powers and divine ranks unless otherwise acted upon. In fact, technically I think they still have worshippers, ironically enough.

[Ualaa]

There was a Chronomancer product for 2nd edition, I believe.
That might have been by TSR; I don't think WotC owned D&D back then.

There is a product with a similar name on Drive Thru RPG, available as a PDF download.
Chronomancer: Time Travel for Everyone, by Clarke Publishing (329 pages).



Interesting campaign idea, anyway.
Not too much to add, beyond those potential resources.

[Buufreak]

That might actually be the point(that is, only changing the time flow of the PMP): deities need worship and screwing with the temporal speed of the PMP could severely harm them. The reverse is also possible: seperate the time flow of the PMP from the Outer Planes in order to prevent or at least delay divine interference messing with your evil plan.

Couldn't have explained it better, although he wouldn't see it as an evil plan I don't think. More a progression of the Material so much so it causes deities to start falling off without worship, allowing a new era and new pantheon to step up.

[Particle_Man]

The only trouble I can see is that if the Time Mage really lived up to the name, then any heroes that would try to defeat the Time Mage would have been retroactively murdered as babies in their cribs, or at least have contingency plans much like the Oracle did vs. Belkar.

So you need some way for the heroes to be immune to the time magic or invisible to the time mage.

[Doctor Despair]

The only trouble I can see is that if the Time Mage really lived up to the name, then any heroes that would try to defeat the Time Mage would have been retroactively murdered as babies in their cribs, or at least have contingency plans much like the Oracle did vs. Belkar.

So you need some way for the heroes to be immune to the time magic or invisible to the time mage.

Or, as Teleport Through Time recommends, treat the past as relatively immutable as it relates to large details. Even if the mage murders the heroes, that would just leave a temporal vacuum that would be filled by another hero -- a new hero that the mage, having just arrived from the past, has the disadvantage of knowing nothing about. Thus, the time mage does not directly interfere with the heroes' past, but may have nigh-infinite time to prepare and gather resources and research for a future encounter.

[Crake]

The only trouble I can see is that if the Time Mage really lived up to the name, then any heroes that would try to defeat the Time Mage would have been retroactively murdered as babies in their cribs, or at least have contingency plans much like the Oracle did vs. Belkar.

So you need some way for the heroes to be immune to the time magic or invisible to the time mage.

That only works if the time mage is actually capable of traveling through time, rather than simply altering the flow of time.

Edit: Also, I just realised: Is this idea inspired by Dr Strange? It seems pretty much like it was exactly ripped from Dr Strange :smalltongue:

[Buufreak]

That only works if the time mage is actually capable of traveling through time, rather than simply altering the flow of time.

Edit: Also, I just realised: Is this idea inspired by Dr Strange? It seems pretty much like it was exactly ripped from Dr Strange :smalltongue:

LALALALA! Not seen it yet, can't hear you, LALALA!

[Crake]

LALALALA! Not seen it yet, can't hear you, LALALA!

:smalltongue: sorry, figured anyone who cared would have seen it by now, it's been almost 3 months since it's release.

[Psyren]

A Psion, and in particular a Nomad, can make a very capable "Time Mage."In addition to the boring things like haste and slow, they get to rewind time, freeze creatures in stasis, send objects and creatures forward in time (thereby removing them from the present) and use their knowledge of the future to boost their offense and defense. This all works even better if you have the 3rd party Hyperconscious book, which contains the Chronorebel PrC - a 9/10 manifesting class with an array of time-themed powers.

Trying to stop a time traveler though is a headache from a story standpoint. The fact that you can even try means they already failed, unless you're dealing with multiverse theory or a paradox of some kind, any of which can stretch your players' suspension of disbelief well past the breaking point.

[AtlasSniperman]

I have a BBEG with time magic that I've used in a couple campaigns with different groups.
He's a sadistic torturer who tortures people for as long as he can keep them alive, and when they're willing to confess, sends them back in time to when he first was handed them. Gets them to confess in the past, hands the information to whomever is hiring him, and begins torturing both victims.

Torture is however a famously inaccurate way to get information, but his information is always perfectly accurate. Because? Because if the confessee wasn't going to give up the true(and just lie) the torturer would know by the time the victim was due to be sent back that the information would be false, doesn't send him back at that time, and instead at another time. Basically the information is correct because if it wasn't correct it wouldn't exist. Torture through Tautology Paradox!

In the few situations where the PC's attacked his installation headon he was perfectly prepared as a slightly future version of himself had sent all the details of said attack back in time carved into the skin of a victim.

He was good fun to run and wicked hard for the PC's to face, It is because of this guy I love the Encyclopaedia Arcane: Chronomancy.

[Kurald Galain]

Recommended reading material: GURPS Time Travel. Yes, even if you're not playing gurps and have no intention of doing so. The whole splatbook is a big treatise on altering the past, paradoxes, various methods of chrono-retconning, and so forth.

[Crake]

I have a BBEG with time magic that I've used in a couple campaigns with different groups.
He's a sadistic torturer who tortures people for as long as he can keep them alive, and when they're willing to confess, sends them back in time to when he first was handed them. Gets them to confess in the past, hands the information to whomever is hiring him, and begins torturing both victims.

Torture is however a famously inaccurate way to get information, but his information is always perfectly accurate. Because? Because if the confessee wasn't going to give up the true(and just lie) the torturer would know by the time the victim was due to be sent back that the information would be false, doesn't send him back at that time, and instead at another time. Basically the information is correct because if it wasn't correct it wouldn't exist. Torture through Tautology Paradox!

In the few situations where the PC's attacked his installation headon he was perfectly prepared as a slightly future version of himself had sent all the details of said attack back in time carved into the skin of a victim.

He was good fun to run and wicked hard for the PC's to face, It is because of this guy I love the Encyclopaedia Arcane: Chronomancy.

I feel like that's a bit overkill in a game where mindrape and probe thoughts exist. If you're capable of casting teleport through time, you're more than capable of casting those. I mean, realistically, if you were that powerful and wanted to engage in your sadism, you wouldn't need much of an excuse, just abduct people for your own personal satisfaction, wipe them from existence so nobody realises they're gone, and enjoy yourself?

[AtlasSniperman]

I feel like that's a bit overkill in a game where mindrape and probe thoughts exist. If you're capable of casting teleport through time, you're more than capable of casting those. I mean, realistically, if you were that powerful and wanted to engage in your sadism, you wouldn't need much of an excuse, just abduct people for your own personal satisfaction, wipe them from existence so nobody realises they're gone, and enjoy yourself?

Overkill? Yeah
Fun? Heck yeah.
Why use mindrape when the various kinds of timetravel are so much more fun. And mindrape results in only one victim per casting XD

[digiman619]

Recommended reading material: GURPS Time Travel. Yes, even if you're not playing gurps and have no intention of doing so. The whole splatbook is a big treatise on altering the past, paradoxes, various methods of chrono-retconning, and so forth.

Good book. The two Alternate Earths follow-up books can autofellate (Remember kids, swearing is cool as long as you use fancy words!). In the dozen alternate timelines the two books introduce, being Jewish is a drawback in every single one of them! I mean, on the world where the Nazis won makes sense, and I guess I could understand it in the one where the Confederacy won the American Civil War, but why is it the case in the one where Saladin conquered most of Europe, or the world where the Norse were a global power, or the Steampunk-esque one where physics is different for no apparent reason. Most egregious is the one where the Genghis and company conquered Europe, leaving the Americas untouched by foreign power. Know why it's egregious? Because the Mongols were (near as I can tell) the only ancient empire that had no religious discrimination; they didn't care who you prayed to if you did your job well.

Sorry, this has been bugging me for about 2 years now and I felt the need to vent about it.

[ChaosStar]

Having said that: I don't know if he counts as a "time mage", but there are definitely elements of that with Lord English in Homestuck. Similarly, a cadre of criminals in Homestuck called The Felt all seem to have curious time-related powers that cover a number of different aspects of the flow of time to our understanding of time (ranging from the curious "I can see trails showing where everyone is going to be going in the future" power, to the questionably valid "power" of being able to step into something and "go to the future" by stepping out of it again later. It's... not clear if it's actual time travel or if that guy just gets inside and waits.
Good to see another Homestuck fan. Anyways IIRC it was pretty explicit that Biscuits' "power" isn't time travel, unlike Eggs' power, Biscuits' power just put whatever was inside the oven into stasis until the timer rang and the oven opened. Well technically that might count as time travel, but only one way.

[Crake]

Overkill? Yeah
Fun? Heck yeah.
Why use mindrape when the various kinds of timetravel are so much more fun. And mindrape results in only one victim per casting XD

Does it though? With mind rape you can induce multiple personalities, so you can make as many victims as you want!

[Jack_Simth]

Trying to stop a time traveler though is a headache from a story standpoint. The fact that you can even try means they already failed, unless you're dealing with multiverse theory or a paradox of some kind, any of which can stretch your players' suspension of disbelief well past the breaking point.

Well... there's three basic theories of paradox resolution in fiction (and any time you're going into the past for purposes beyond observation, you introduce a paradox - if the change you're making was already made, there isn't any incentive to change it, so you never went back to do so...):
1) Fate. What did happen, will happen, because that's the way it went. If you go back in time to murder your grandfather, you find out he wasn't actually your grandfather, or some circumstance prevents you from doing so.
2) Insulated Effect. You can change anything you like; the change is 'insulated', even if the change wipes out your ability to make it in the first place. You go back in time and kill your grandfather: He dies. You may cease to exist as a result, or you may not, but if you get back to your own time there's no trace you ever walked the earth... and your grandfather stays dead.
3) Multiverse. When you change the past, you don't change your past, you spawn a new parallel reality. The difference between this and Insulated Effect is difficult to tell from within the timestream; the most common giveaway being that the present you return to may be exactly the same one you left... although you may not always end up in the old one.

There's a lot of flavors and mixes of those (e.g., 'You can change small things, but not big things' is a mix of 1 and 2), plus of course the variations on 'effectively not possible' (such as in The Langoliers). But those are the ones that tend to crop up in fiction.

[Crake]

Well... there's three basic theories of paradox resolution in fiction (and any time you're going into the past for purposes beyond observation, you introduce a paradox - if the change you're making was already made, there isn't any incentive to change it, so you never went back to do so...):
1) Fate. What did happen, will happen, because that's the way it went. If you go back in time to murder your grandfather, you find out he wasn't actually your grandfather, or some circumstance prevents you from doing so.
2) Insulated Effect. You can change anything you like; the change is 'insulated', even if the change wipes out your ability to make it in the first place. You go back in time and kill your grandfather: He dies. You may cease to exist as a result, or you may not, but if you get back to your own time there's no trace you ever walked the earth... and your grandfather stays dead.
3) Multiverse. When you change the past, you don't change your past, you spawn a new parallel reality. The difference between this and Insulated Effect is difficult to tell from within the timestream; the most common giveaway being that the present you return to may be exactly the same one you left... although you may not always end up in the old one.

There's a lot of flavors and mixes of those (e.g., 'You can change small things, but not big things' is a mix of 1 and 2), plus of course the variations on 'effectively not possible' (such as in The Langoliers). But those are the ones that tend to crop up in fiction.

My favourite is number 3, because the solution goes like this: You confront the BBEG, he teleports back in time to kill your parents, then returns to the future where you're gone. Only you're not. It's actually HE who is gone from YOUR timeline :smalltongue:

[Eisfalken]

As an aside, be VERY sure about the setting you do this in. FR and Greyhawk (and pretty much every other "official" setting) has gods who have a very big hate for chronomancy (as it was called back in 2nd edition).

This doesn't mean that a wizard or whatever couldn't "hack" his way with time magic. Keep in mind that Vecna went up against the entire 2nd edition setting to do something similar with planar magic... and won. But this idea should be something along those lines: an epic, cross-world, cross-plane adventure that should have a huge potential to shake up EVERYTHING.

Main question is motivation. What does the BBEG want that requires such powerful time magic?

[Crake]

As an aside, be VERY sure about the setting you do this in. FR and Greyhawk (and pretty much every other "official" setting) has gods who have a very big hate for chronomancy (as it was called back in 2nd edition).

This doesn't mean that a wizard or whatever couldn't "hack" his way with time magic. Keep in mind that Vecna went up against the entire 2nd edition setting to do something similar with planar magic... and won. But this idea should be something along those lines: an epic, cross-world, cross-plane adventure that should have a huge potential to shake up EVERYTHING.

Main question is motivation. What does the BBEG want that requires such powerful time magic?

To bring back his wife who accidentally touched his sphere of annihilation, clearly.

[Thealtruistorc]

I've been running a time-travel-heavy campaign recently, so I'll add some of the things I've been using for my major villains. This campaign actually has a couple of BBEGs, so I'll be referring to them as S and C, respectively

S traveled back in time because it was the only place that she was safe from a malefic god who was out to destroy all of humanity (and succeeded). Ever since then, Sofia has been running experiments and creating superweapons in various points in the past, using entire civilizations as test subjects for equipment or target practice for her golems/robots/fleshwarped monstrosities that she plans to utilize in finally stopping the massive elder evil at the end of time. If they fail, she simply jumps back in time and sends them all through a gauntlet of more perils at the expense of other hapless past civilizations (her "research" has churned out a god and four demon lords, but even those aren't enough to win the war she is trying to fight).

S is known for falsely pretending to be a deity, and has several powerful cults scattered around the world in her name. She uses them to draw whatever resources she needs, applying liberal use of technological "miracles" to keep these cultists appeased. In addition, she always provides followers with just enough information about the future that they will continue to serve her needs, but never any more. Ironically, her worship has become so widespread and fervent that the idea of S (but not S herself) is now capable of granting spells.

C, on the other hand, is much more aggressive and erratic in his lifestyle. He's a simple man who had one goal: to stave off his death as long as possible. This has meant spending copious amounts of time and energy on divinations to figure out what is fated to kill him and how he can stop it from doing him in. C has paid off or manipulated most other time travelers into serving him, and is willing to try any and everything to make himself live forever. He has even eliminated entire nations and doomed an entire planet to extinction in the name of keeping himself alive just a bit longer. Naturally, this has made him enemy number one of the entire universe, but he has gotten so good at evading detection and enjoying the thrill of the chase that he wouldn't have it any other way.

Also, I wrote up a time travel thing for a publisher a while back. With luck, it should be on store shelves within the next 6 months.

[Flickerdart]

You can always steal the plot from Wakfu:

The main villain is a chronomancer who wants to travel to the past and avoid losing his family. To that end he gathers a vast quantity of life force, which makes a lot of people want to clean his clock.

[Yuki Akuma]

You can always steal the plot from Wakfu:

The main villain is a chronomancer who wants to travel to the past and avoid losing his family. To that end he gathers a vast quantity of life force, which makes a lot of people want to clean his clock.


he doesn't believe what he's doing is wrong, because his end goal is to go back in time and change the future anyway.