Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 SonidZero Jan 11, 2015 20:59:36	Alright so I had this idea for a "save point" magic item, and it gradually expanded until it became this. How exactly timelines and paradoxes are handled is up to the GM.   I've been thinking about some potential roleplaying/campaign opportunities with this, like letting a PC interact with a previous or future version of themselves (which would be very complicated) or a campaign where the party finds a Staff of the Chronomancer in an ancient study with a single quartz gem remaining, which has already been halted.   Have a read, and see if you can figure out how to abuse this item (in an unintended way).   Staff of the Chronomancer Staff, legendary (requires attunement by a sorcerer, warlock, or wizard)   This staff can be wielded as a magic quarterstaff. While holding it, you gain a +2 bonus to saving throws and spell attack rolls. Up to four pieces of slowly spinning, flawless quartz are suspended in rings on the staff. The staff has a number of charges equal to 5 per quartz gem + 5 for the following properties. It regains 1d4 per quartz gem + 2 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, you, along with the staff, are erased from time. You no longer exist or ever did, and any evidence of your existence is erased or adjusted in a way that alters reality the least. Spells. While holding the staff, you can use an action to expend some of its charges to cast one of the following spells from it, using your spell save DC and spellcasting ability: augury (2 charges), blink (3 charges), blur (2 charges), contingency (6 charges), disintegrate (6 charges), haste (3 charges), hold monster (5 charges), hold person (2 charges), regenerate (7 charges), sequester (7 charges), or slow (3 charges). You can also use an action to cast one of the following spells from the staff without using any charges: guidance, longstrider, or mending. Finally, you can use an action to expend all remaining charges to cast Time Stop but take turns in a row equal to 1d4 + the number of charges expended divided by 10, instead. Flashback. While holding the staff, you can use an action to expend 5 charges and halt a spinning gem, marking a specific point in time and reducing the maximum number of charges the staff may hold by 5. You may use an action to touch a halted gem, speak its command word, and expend all remaining charges. The gem is then consumed and disappears. You and any willing creatures touching you, to a maximum of the number of charged expended, are instantly transported, not to a different location, but the moment in time the gem was halted. This transportation is subject to the familiarity table of teleport in relation to time instead of distance, and you are considered “Very Familiar” if you halted the gem yourself. Any attempt to transport a creature twice with the same gem erases that creature from time. Any creatures or objects that have been transported with flashback threaten paradox with their alternate versions. If a transported creature or object comes within a mile of another version of itself, the younger version disappears forever. If two versions of a creature have a difference in age of at least 20 years, they avoid paradox, and may coexist.
#2 Goober4473 Jan 11, 2015 21:47:59	Do you replace the old version of yourself? Or do you only return to the time, not the place, where you used it?
(Reply to #2) SonidZero	Goober4473 wrote:
#4 Sorxores Jan 12, 2015 8:20:53	I found the staff and stop the gem right there.   Then I take my party and teleport back in time with them to 5 minute ago.   with the uncertainy I teleport back to 7 minute ago (before I stop the gem) Since we do not replace our old self, there is now a double of myself (and a double of my party) and a double of the staff where the gem didn't got stop yet.   So now I got 2 staffs and our group of 4 player now got 8 player each with the full set of magical item they own. would be fairly easy to redo the same thing with the new staff, reappearing 2 minute before halting the gem, and now having 3 staff and 16 party member etc...   Or even better return to when the first gem got halted, kill teh mage owning the staff and now you got a version of the staff with 3 fonctionning gem instead of just one.   To fix those it's fairly easy:   When you go back in time you take the place of the most similar relative that exist. (so if you existed you go back and take your own place, if you go 4 generation in the pass, you take the place of your great great great grand father (or uncle), you take the place of the one that had the same class or similar class as you do). They is a relative of your character for sure, since your character didn't appear from no where and your race existed back when the first being using the staff halted the first gem.   Then the staff exist simultaneously in all time, so if you halt a gem and go back in time before you halted the gem the gem is still halted. Even if there is 2 copy of the staff they both share the same charge pool since they are the same staff
#5 SonidZero Jan 12, 2015 10:57:18	Yeah the biggest "exploit" is that you could potentially team up with 4 copies of your party. Swapping a character for an appropriate relative is pretty messy. I think some simple paradox resolvale for transported objects and creatures could work, where coming within a mile or so of themselves (including all of the party's gear, the staff itself, the creatures) causes the younger version to disappear. Creatures could have a buffer on this, like say after 20 or so years (when, biologically, almost all the cells are replaced anyway). I could even ditch that last line. Edit: Updated the original post to reflect this paradox resolval, which should avoid any magical item cloning, or party multiplication, while keeping things interesting.   Sorxores wrote:
#6 transcendantviewer Jan 13, 2015 6:04:25	I have a paradox to propose. Let's say I'm charmed to use the staff's last charge and am erased from time, what really happens? I'd cease to exist, so the Charm wouldn't have a target, and since the Charm wouldn't have a target, I'd still exist, because I wouldn't have been charmed into erasing myself. Or would reality just say "No" and the last charge would just burn out and everybody's fine? Or would I simply be erased and the timeline would just gloss over the whole ordeal like a pot hole under a fresh layer of tar? Point is, erasing somebody from existance, to me, sounds like a bit of an unpredictable effect. Not only that, but some of the effects don't seem to make sense, even for a Legendary item. Legendary items are supposed to be spawned by gods and avatars of creation. If something like this was really created by a god, why would it even be allowed to be used? Why wouldn't the god that created it just use their powers to unravel time itself and be done with it?   Sorry for the tangent there, I'm a bit of a critical thinker. I guess I don't really know why this item exists. It seems like if it were even to be used, the entirety of the campaign would fall apart at the seems. You would have the entire adventure unraveled by a now omnipotent wizard, just undoing time itself and bending the timeline to their whim because once they break the flow of time, what law is there to say that the staff isn't always fully charged? It's now independant of time, so it's technically fully charged, missing all of its charges, and no longer exists, but still does. It's distorting reality in ways that seems like more trouble for DMs than its worth. It's cool, there's no doubt about that, but it's too easy to be unpredictable, after all, we have no idea what happens in a paradox. It's best to limit their possibility as much as we can, in my book.   I guess I'm just overthinking this whole thing. It's an awesome concept, but it seems like it would add unnecessary complexity to an already wonderful system. Not to mention, the possibility to undo the entire adventure at a moment's notice, if you're not careful as a DM.
#7 durntaur Jan 13, 2015 11:14:32	This doesn't break your magic item, but it's something fun I would add to its properties: if a PC mentions another PC annhilated by the staff, that player must roll a d20. On a 1, that PC is also annhilated as their evocation of the memory of said annhilated PC bridges the reality of their consciousness/soul with oblivion/non-existence, ad infinitum.