Methods to travel backwards in time

[Fero]

D&D 3.5/3.0/Dragon Backwards Time Travel

I want to compile all known semi-viable methods to travel backwards in time (including sending information, items, and/or spell effects) for 3.5/3.0/Dragon. I am not arguing that any of these will work in a given game or are wise to use. Rather, I am compiling this list so that players/DMs who want to use backwards time travel have a starting without home brewing time travel from scratch. Please let me know if I missed anything. So far, I have:

1. Teleport Through Time (Spell-9/Tra/Perilous Portals, 3.0): 9th level spell allows backwards time travel with significant restrictions.

2. Create Time Portal (Crafting Feat- perilous Portals, 3.0): Create portals to the past with many restrictions.

3. Time Regression (9th level psionic power, SRD): Spend XP to travel one round in the past.

4. Forced Dream (3rd level psioniv power, Magic of Eberron): Allows the target to restart a single turn. Cast on a small creature, such as a psicrystal, and combi e with Quintessence to create a sortgame "save game.” When things go bad, very quickly take the target out of the Quintessence, use magic/psionics to project knowledge of events into its brain, and have it “restart” its turn.

5. Outside Time Planar Trait (MP): Some planes, notably the Far Realms exist outside time. As such a traveler to/from could theoretically depart before entering. Afroakuma (whose opinion i greatly respect) says this doesnt work. However, i could see a DM ruling otherwise. Even then, getting to and leaving the Far Realm requires, likely several, suicide missions. Moreover, there is no way to control when you arrive back in time.

6. Backwards Time Planar Trait: In theory a plane can have a Backwards Time trait. The only limited example that i know of is a blurb in the Manual of the Planes that a layer of the abyss has a limited backwards time trait with respect to aging. That trait does not allow time travel, but perhaps some other plane/layer could?

7. Hindsight (9th level spell, SC): I have heard of combos that use this spell to travel back in time, but am not sure how they work.

Any others?

[ShurikVch]

Great Wyrm Time Dragon (Dragon #359)

Create Time Gate spell (Call of Cthulhu d20) - Sorcerer/Wizard 9, 10,000 XP

Hound of Tindalos (Call of Cthulhu d20) - Temporal Travel SQ

[Bohandas]

Timereaver (Towers of High Sorcery page 50)

[ShurikVch]

FWIW, in the Shadows & Light (WoW the RPG), Nozdormu the Timeless is able (1/month) to travel back in time (up to 1 week)

[Elenian]

Uh. Hm. You could maybe build a time machine using relativistically-accelerated ring gates. For that matter, any instantaneous transportation or communication magic can theoretically be used to violate causality with the right system of reference frames. Y'know, if dnd follows our current understanding of relativistic physics...

[JNAProductions]

Uh. Hm. You could maybe build a time machine using relativistically-accelerated ring gates. For that matter, any instantaneous transportation or communication magic can theoretically be used to violate causality with the right system of reference frames. Y'know, if dnd follows our current understanding of relativistic physics...

I wouldn’t assume that.

[Elenian]

I wouldn’t assume that.

Nor would I, but if you're a dm and you feel like having the bbeg cobble together Eberron space program for the purpose of making a time machine out of ring gates so they can use time-loop logic assisted cryptology to crack the church of the silver flame's ciphers, who am I to stop you?

[JNAProductions]

Nor would I, but if you're a dm and you feel like having the bbeg cobble together Eberron space program for the purpose of making a time machine out of ring gates so they can use time-loop logic assisted cryptology to crack the church of the silver flame's ciphers, who am I to stop you?

That does, admittedly, sound pretty dope.

[ShurikVch]

Uh. Hm. You could maybe build a time machine using relativistically-accelerated ring gates. For that matter, any instantaneous transportation or communication magic can theoretically be used to violate causality with the right system of reference frames. Y'know, if dnd follows our current understanding of relativistic physics...
We don't need Ring Gates to achieve such speed: projectiles are traveling infinitely fast - thus, character with Distant Shot (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#distantShot) is able to hit distant stars with arrows(/bolts/darts/etc)

[Inevitability]

Phanes (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Phane) have the following ability:


Time Regression (Su): If the phane spends an action per round for four rounds, at the end of the 4th round the phane regresses back in time 4 rounds, to the very 1st round it originally began concentrating on time regression. On its second pass through the time stream, it can take completely different actions, based on its knowledge of the future (though if it takes different actions from its first pass through the time stream, the events of the original time stream are also changed).

[aglondier]

AEG sourcebook "Magic" (i think) has a Chronomancer base class for 3.0. Also, Mongoose did Encyclopedia Arcane: Chronomancy.

[Beni-Kujaku]

We don't need Ring Gates to achieve such speed: projectiles are traveling infinitely fast - thus, character with Distant Shot (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#distantShot) is able to hit distant stars with arrows(/bolts/darts/etc)

If an epic character with Distant Shot shoots at a distant star, seeing its light from thousands of years ago, and rolls a natural 20 (to overcome distance restrictions), what happens? Does the arrow go in a completely different direction than it was fired in to hit the actual position of the star? Does it hit the observed position and gets lost in space? Or does it rewind time to hit the star that was actually seen, as per the feat? Perhaps more importantly, does it move at the maximum velocity that such a bow could impart an arrow, at the speed of light (in which case, it won't hit its target before millenia go by, which could allow for divination of the future position of the target depending on the arrow's trajectory), or does it teleport to hit the star in the same round it was fired ?

Also, the Time Duplicate epic spell makes your version from 1 round in the future travel back 1 round to the past.

[ShurikVch]

If an epic character with Distant Shot shoots at a distant star, seeing its light from thousands of years ago, and rolls a natural 20 (to overcome distance restrictions), what happens? Does the arrow go in a completely different direction than it was fired in to hit the actual position of the star? Does it hit the observed position and gets lost in space? Or does it rewind time to hit the star that was actually seen, as per the feat? Perhaps more importantly, does it move at the maximum velocity that such a bow could impart an arrow, at the speed of light (in which case, it won't hit its target before millenia go by, which could allow for divination of the future position of the target depending on the arrow's trajectory), or does it teleport to hit the star in the same round it was fired ?
Arrow moves to the past, and hit the star when it was in the observed position? :smallamused:

[Remuko]

Arrow moves to the past, and hit the star when it was in the observed position? :smallamused:

this is my take too tbh. instantly means no travel time and at distances that far its going back in time easy.

[Bohandas]

Does stuff like Recall Agony/Recall Death and Timeheal count, or just full-blown time travel?

[Shinoskay]

Mystryl made the time conduit spell

[Inevitability]

If sending spell effects is sufficient, then plain old Wish should work: it can after-the-fact force a reroll for anything that happened in the last round and then reshapes reality to be consistent with the new version of events.

[loky1109]

Arrow moves to the past, and hit the star when it was in the observed position? :smallamused:
And Star has Reflect Arrows feat, so it throw arrow back and kill archer far before he was born. )))

[Evoker]

Phanes (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Phane) have the following ability:

Oh my *god* I know that this is a dumb high epic monster or whatever but *how* on *earth* are you supposed to run that as a DM? Hit your players over the head to induce amnesia?

[Clause]

Can't you use lucid dream for it? Like, time is relative in the dreams, so, you can sleep, dream with a long past time. Make exaustive checks ans life-risky missions, and awake in a pass time. I see this like possible on the hands of a able DM and creative player(s)

[Doctor Despair]

Phanes (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Phane) have the following ability:

Alright, so if you dominate (via necrotic tumor) a phane to waste its entire life, you can basically just get a fool-proof way to send any information back to the past, right? You should be able to make it use its ability such that:

1. The phane is always preparing to go back in time. It spends three actions on the ability, then does not spend the fourth, but instead spends it on a new iteration of the ability. This leaves it positioned to, on round X, whenever you pull the trigger, to go to round X-4 -- the round where you chose to not go back in time, but rather start the new iteration of the ability. Choose differently -- complete the time hop back, to the previous round where you chose not to travel back in time... and so on until the designated point.

2. Tell it to deliver whatever message, warning, information, etc you want to your past self.

If the DM says you can't spend the fourth round on starting a new iteration of the ability, you would need to pause for a round, then start it again. This doesn't kill the trick, but it does mean you need two phanes for it.

That's neat. There's no clauses that you can't change the past either like teleport through time has, so you end up with just an oracle-like phane that answers every riddle, warns you of every trap, and points out every upcoming opportunity with perfect advice.