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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Delmorian on March 18, 2011, 03:49:08 PM
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I asked this question elsewhere, and was directed here.
The sixth law, as I understand it is:
"Thou shalt not swim against the Currents of Time" and is intended to prevent someone from changing the past or seeing the future with the intention of changing it. (some creatures living in past, present, and future at same time see it, but are not interested in altering it)
My question was, are other forms of cronomancy allowed? I have been considering a character for the RPG (with which, I admit, I have no skill or knowledge, just realize, I am a gamer, and SOME DAY, when my group gets over its 0 edition Rules Cyclopedia kick it is currently on, I plan to shift their objectives this way...) and I wanted to figure out of the concept was worth wile for me to atempt.
As we all Travel through Time at a constant rate of one second per second, and in the same direction, from the past, through the present, to the future, I figure it is not against the laws of magic to travel forward in time. Otherwise, wardens would be chopping off their own heads constantly, over the guild of their "temporal transgressions". ;D
My thought was... what about Altering the velocity you travel at, or altering the velocity ANOTHER person travels at, through the use of magic.
Example: My wizard and his posse are jumped by a big bad and his goons. We realize the goons are going to pin us down till big bad can get off his big powered up blast and kill us all. (Big Bad, being bad, doesn't care about the laws of magic) Soooo, I manage to pop off a bit of thamaturgic cronomancy in which I hop Big Bad ten minutes forward in time, basically hyper-accelerating him so that in one second to him, ten minutes pass, real time. This lets me and my posse finish up the goons, and set a good strong containment circle in the spot where bad is going to be popping in. I realize I would have to have some sort of "place holding" pattern to make this work, as if it was just "hop forward to exact same spot in space" then the bad would be in the same spot, but the EARTH would have moved on. Depending on the rotation of planet and so on, could be High in air, or under ground. Neither way would that end well for him, or me (not being a big bad, I DO care about first law infractions) but that is one way I can see legal cronomancy working.
Another way could be using Cronomancy to heal an injury, by increasing your experienced time, to allow it to heal "naturally" in the course of a minute, what would have taken months.
I can also see an NPC character, like the observer from Fringe, traveling forward through time, hopping from day to day, skipping over the dull parts and stopping in every year or so, till some objective was achieved or some fated event occured.
So... cronomancy.
Coments, observations, opportunity to riddle my idea with bullets of scorn and derision?
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I'm not sure that you need to worry about the rotation of the earth, as you would in a science fiction game. In a fantasy game, the ramifications of 4-d shifting in the context of a planetary body moving in space and time generally don't get a lot of coverage. There are some exceptions, of course, but those generally happen when an author or game is trying to "science up" its magic.
In the Dresdenverse, there is some coverage about respecting/factoring in the laws of physics, but Rituals, for the most part, seem to be anchored to a point on Earth, and maintain a relative position with it.
Time in the Nevernever, for instance, travels at a variable pace, sometimes much more quickly than the real world. Although the Ways are said to shift over time, this generally doesn't manifest as an immediate consequence, and it is a fair assumption that there is no risk of your Way shifting with the rotation of the Earth.
Dresden Files is actually incredibly geocentric from certain perspectives, so I think introducing the 4-D implications you mentioned are probably unnecessary, unless you specifically want to give the investigation an additional wrinkle.
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'Swimming against the Currents of Time' is intentionally vague, but there's nothing in the Law that prohibits one from swimming faster WITH the current. So, accelerating your speed by moving faster through Time is not against the Law imho.
There is a reference to prognostication in the books, so I don't think that seeing the future is illegal either. To use the Law's analogy, you're not swimming; you're popping your head up and looking either upstream or downstream. It's difficult (and if you're running a game people with foresight are VERY annoying...), but not illegal.
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IMO this works, going forward certainly isn't against the "flow". Now as for slowing people heres how I look at it.
When wizards work their mojo they have a construct in their head, sort of a mental image of what it is that they are trying to make happen. This is easy for a fireball as you just picture what you want it to be. A force evocation might be imagined as a fist. Now for a time evocation... It gets pretty figurative.
I suppose for slowing a person you could imagine them swimming against the current and that would be breaking the sixth law. But I also suppose the construct could be formed differently to achieve the same effect, figuratively having the swimmer tread water and go slower, or effect the river itself. For me at least time slowing effects are fair game.
Healing doesn't make a whole lot of sense though, natural healing is able to occur because of an expenditure of proteins and nutrients over months. If you try and accelerate your body a month or two enjoy the starvation. I imagine it could be done by gorging yourself on food and intermittently accelerating. Otherwise you'd kill yourself.
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I'm not sure about the slowing down bit...
If the current of time is pulling everything forward at the rate of one second per second and you make someone move forward at the rate of one second per minute, that's fighting the current and maybe swimming against it - unless you get into a eddy.
Richard
(who has swam in a river and knows how hard swimming against a current can be)
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I'm not sure about the slowing down bit...
If the current of time is pulling everything forward at the rate of one second per second and you make someone move forward at the rate of one second per minute, that's fighting the current and maybe swimming against it - unless you get into a eddy.
Richard
(who has swam in a river and knows how hard swimming against a current can be)
Is creating an eddy against the 6th then? See thats my point depending on how the wizard forms the construct in his mind he can avoid breaking this law.
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If there are areas in the NN that have time pass at different speeds it may be possible to open a portal to those areas and use a "spill-over" effect to speed up time in localized places on Earth.
Consider the following example:
A wizard steps through a portal from the Earth to a place in the NN where time moves 10 faster. As he puts his first foot through the portal, he is in a crazy state where the blood on one side of his leg is moving 10 times faster than the blood on the other side. This can lead to any sorts of problems from pressure build up, to lack of oxygen to said body part and weird muscle contractions due to neurons firing at the wrong times. ...What happens when his head is half way through?
In order for this to work without killing you, the portal itself must create some sort of interface where time starts speeding up gradually as you pass through (kinda like cool air coming out when you open the door to an air conditioned room). Thus, a chronomancer could simply be adept at opening minuscule slivers of openings to places in the NN where time flows differently so that the residual chono-effects do what he wants.
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I'm agreed with most people here on how that interacts with the first law, however mechanically I don't know if it's a functional concept. Taking your example into consideration, that sounds like you're taking the big bad out, which means that the spell would likely require more shifts than you could safely muster in combat (sounds like somewhere between 10-35 shifts depending on the importance of the NPC, and seeing as how they're the big bad I would guess it would be on the high end). So from a mechanical stand point I would think that this would be difficult to model.
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'Swimming against the Currents of Time' is intentionally vague, but there's nothing in the Law that prohibits one from swimming faster WITH the current.
Harry actually mentions something about this being against the Laws in (I believe) Proven Guilty.
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I'm agreed with most people here on how that interacts with the first law, however mechanically I don't know if it's a functional concept. Taking your example into consideration, that sounds like you're taking the big bad out, which means that the spell would likely require more shifts than you could safely muster in combat (sounds like somewhere between 10-35 shifts depending on the importance of the NPC, and seeing as how they're the big bad I would guess it would be on the high end). So from a mechanical stand point I would think that this would be difficult to model.
How does plot importance increase the power required? I don't recall any framework of rules regarding anything like that... Are you talking about taking him out as in applying enough stress and consequences to take him out? If so that is not the point the point is to remove him out of the battle until later and then combat him on different terms. If PCs were going to just take him out by dealing that much stress there wouldn't be a need for time magic in the first place. On top of this for thaumaturgy 35 shifts is completely within the realm of possibility anyways. But we're missing the point here.
I think the effect that is being sought here is a maneuver which is then being invoked for effect, which is completely within the rules and achievable with relatively few shifts. The victim would get a defensive roll but the shifts required would be nowhere near ~30. Magic maneuvers are simple evocations, however 10 minutes is a bit much for evocation thaumaturgy would be doable though for that long.
This however is quite a potent effect for a spell. In a game of my own I would consider limiting it in some fashion from being used all the time.
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As a side note this kind of magic can derail a game into conversations into the ramifications. A player of mine wanted a weapon that sent whatever it hit into the future not doing any damage just sending it.
Then we pondered what happens if it hits the ground activated?
Long story short The planet momentarily disappears and without gravitic pull the atmosphere sucks into vacuum and the earth reappears with no air and everyone not in an airtight room or underwater dies.
We decided that only matter along the item's surface area would be transported, making a sort of time lightsaber.
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I went looking and found the section of Proven Guilty:
“Gone almost exactly twenty-four hours. So we did some kind of time travel?” she asked.
“Oh, God no,” I said. “That’s on the list of Things One Does Not Do. It’s one of the seven Laws of Magic.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But however it happened, a whole day just went poof. That’s time travel.”
“People are doing that kind of time travel all the time,” I said. “We just pulled into the passing lane for a while.”
Richard
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Harry seems, to me, to be referencing only 'poof, gone' time-travel, there, not merely 'swimming faster', which to me would clearly fall under the 'passing lane' description.
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I went looking and found the section of Proven Guilty:
“Gone almost exactly twenty-four hours. So we did some kind of time travel?” she asked.
“Oh, God no,” I said. “That’s on the list of Things One Does Not Do. It’s one of the seven Laws of Magic.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But however it happened, a whole day just went poof. That’s time travel.”
“People are doing that kind of time travel all the time,” I said. “We just pulled into the passing lane for a while.”
Richard
These metaphors are really not helping are they? I could do so much with that analogy as well.
So time travel is more like a teleportation through time I suppose and speeding is perfectly ok I guess... Can I let off the gas, slow down and be in the laws? Or apply another's brakes?
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No, slowing down is 'swimming against the current'. You can move at the same rate of speed as everyone else does. You can go forward faster. You can pop your head up and look ahead or behind you as you travel (handy, that). But the second (sorry!) you begin to go against the current, even if it's just to let other people catch up... you're violating the Law.
Now, you could legally play perceptual games; confuse someone's awareness of how much time is passing. (You're not meddling with their mind directly; only influencing what they perceive, like a time-hologram surrounding them.)
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My interpretation of the law is that it only refers to sending people, objects, or knowledge back in time, primarily due to the potential paradoxes involved and the opportunity to abuse such a power to selfish ends.
That said, I don't think chronomancy and divination themselves conflict with the law. However, I'm betting that most wizards don't study these areas too heavily, and that chronomancers would be looked down on and distrusted by the wardens because they're messing with powers that come close to breaking the law. It's like how Harry has refused or been reluctant to research certain kinds of spells (such as in Storm Front) due to the bad impression it would give if he was found out, regardless of what he actually did with the knowledge.
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How does plot importance increase the power required? I don't recall any framework of rules regarding anything like that... Are you talking about taking him out as in applying enough stress and consequences to take him out?
Plot importance usually signifies how many consequences must be inflicted to take someone out. If they're a mook then they have no consequences and it usually only takes five or six shifts to take them out.
If so that is not the point the point is to remove him out of the battle until later and then combat him on different terms.
Seemed to me that he was trying to remove him from the combat, and then set things up so that when he returns it's in a position of extreme disadvantage (I.E. within a circle) sounds like a "taken out" result to me.
If PCs were going to just take him out by dealing that much stress there wouldn't be a need for time magic in the first place.
That's exactly what I'm saying. Mechanically it doesn't work any better than anything else.
On top of this for thaumaturgy 35 shifts is completely within the realm of possibility anyways.
Which is why I said that it's not feasible to draw that much power in combat, not ever.
I think the effect that is being sought here is a maneuver which is then being invoked for effect, which is completely within the rules and achievable with relatively few shifts. The victim would get a defensive roll but the shifts required would be nowhere near ~30. Magic maneuvers are simple evocations, however 10 minutes is a bit much for evocation thaumaturgy would be doable though for that long.
This is not something I would allow at my table for several reasons. Firstly a maneuver must create an aspect that can be removed. Part of the maneuver mechanics is that the target may take an action to try to remove said aspect. If an aspect is likely to last the entire combat (or longer) with no way of reversing it then it's a consequence. Secondly this just isn't any fun. The "bam, suddenly the climax of the story is completely pointless" spell is rarely fun.
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To those who have posted:
Thank You, your comments are greatly appreciated and they have helped me in my development of this idea.
In reference to the "Mental Image" I am using... I do in fact see its in the "Time = water / Time passing = stream" concept, and I use metaphors of skipping a rock for the combat thamaturgy time hop.
I also had another idea for its use... Hanging Spells. Figure there is a moment, after the completion of a ceremony, before the spell goes off and causes the wall of sound, or the light show, or the creation of the Hero Feast. So, if I do a spell with full ceremony, all the bells and whistles, and have THAT inside a circle, which is creating a magic "cyst" construction outside the time stream, linked to... say, a tattoo, where the spell is held in abeyance, drawing energy from me to maintain the "cyst" until I "collapse the state" and the spell completes. This could be a way to do the big prep ceremonies and be able to take the effects with you. For instance, set up a couple of really good sleep spells or floods of water, and have them on your person to get out of jams. Perfect to combatize the fields of magic you have little skill in, but still want to use. I know, its a serious "Find rule, work loophole, bend rule over" maneuverer, but there are several folks in my game group like that, and I have to keep up, just to survive the new and higher level of death the GM hands out, to keep pace with the guys who can one shot the unique monster the GM has spent several days slaving over to please us. Its a vicious cycle.
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No, slowing down is 'swimming against the current'. You can move at the same rate of speed as everyone else does. You can go forward faster. You can pop your head up and look ahead or behind you as you travel (handy, that). But the second (sorry!) you begin to go against the current, even if it's just to let other people catch up... you're violating the Law.
Now, you could legally play perceptual games; confuse someone's awareness of how much time is passing. (You're not meddling with their mind directly; only influencing what they perceive, like a time-hologram surrounding them.)
I doubt slowing down time for yourself (making the world go faster) is against the 6th law. Consider that you can "easily" do this by traveling at relativistic speeds even without magic.
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This brings an interesting question to my mind. Are Council trails detailed in the books? I wonder if there are eldritch lawyers lurking around for questions like these. If there are, then they probably have some kind of precedent. If they do have a precedent, then where are they kept?
It would be interesting if there was some legal tome or council sub organization that wizards could consult for more clarification.
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At least two trials are (at least partially) shown in Proven Guilty, with the book opening at the last half of one and ending on another.
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Although travelling at relativistic speeds will appear to slow you down, for a living being this would be the province of magic, not science. (And thus altering the current around you.)
Now, if your group is okay with that not being a violation, then the table is correct. But I think the Wardens would get concerned about someone who is shading that close to a violation.
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I'd put it right up there with animal zombies: worrisome, but technically not against the Laws.
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Note that you can also enter the NN at places where the time is passing slower/faster, and thus gain a similar effect (P.G.)
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But when you access the Never-Never, you're not putting your mortal magick directly against the flow of time. You're merely taking advantage of a slower (or faster) stream that you can hop to. Perfectly legal.
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If you look up the laws in the players handbook, I don't remember the name right now, it says that it is NOT against the laws to go forward in time. It is frowned upon because if anyone were to travel forward in time, they would have a tremendous temptation to then flow back to their own present when they got there with the knowledge the future gave them. Think Marty McFly in Back to the Future, the sports almanac that lets Biff bet on ever winner for 20 years. What would you do if you knew the future?