Time Powers (FiD)
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Time is a mysterious and dangerous power. It allows looking into the past and possible futures, but can create deadly paradoxes.
Time is the governing principle of all things, the regulator or the stream from Order to Flux. Together with Space, Time governs position and movement. The universe would be incomprehensible without orderly time. Time is a favorite of disaster theorists. Many claim that time manipulation is foolhardy and dangerous. Some claim time is an artifact of our perception; that it is the ultimate prison. Time travel is possible, but temporal inertia tend to restore events to what they were and minimize the effect of any changes to the past.
Time attacks stops time for an instant, then you set up weapons and events to cause harm when time resumes. They are hard to defend against, but likely to cause severe backlash if time is released too soon.
Time Power Effects
Action | Basic No minimum 3 Stress |
Advanced Minimum 2 Dice 5 Stress |
Master Minimum 4 Dice 7 Stress |
Apex Minimum 6 Dice 13 Stress |
Attune | Chrono Sense Detect time creatures and powers. |
Causality Collapse Dismiss a Time creature or power effects. |
Chrono Conjuration Summon a Time a creature. |
Time Travel Extremely dangerous. |
Command | Time Whisper Command Time creatures that don't understand you. |
Chrono Command Help an ally resist. |
Temporal Tip Help yourself resist. |
Time Tyrant Command Time creatures as a superior. |
Consort | Alter Age You can change your age. |
Temporal Transition Become an alternate self. |
Chrono Change Temporal Transition others. |
Temporal Thralls Temporal Transition crowds. |
Finesse | Temporal Turbo Increase the speed of a mount or vehicle. |
Time Technique Set up a fine and potent close-range attack. |
Time Trim Manipulate time precisely in small spots. |
Chrono Charge Set up a storm of blades, suppressing scale. |
Hunt | Time Trace Track time-travellers and time warps. |
Temporal Target Reverse time to make a creature attack itself. |
Timelapse Change how much time an event takes. |
Temporal Turmoil Reverse time to make several attacks go wild. |
Prowl | Time Tactician A warning of future events. |
Double Time Double your movement. |
Temporal Teamwork Crew Time Tactician and Double Time. |
Time Stop Only you can move. |
Skirmish | Stop Watch Resist Time damage. |
Time Touch Set up a melee attack. |
Temporeal Tango Distracting slow time. |
Time Torrent Set up a storm of attacks. |
Study | Chrono Classifier Identify objects and creatures of Time. |
Chrono Clarifier Learn the powers and abilities of Time. |
Chrono Chronicle Observe the past and possible futures at your location. |
Chrono Cartographer Chrono Chronicle on everything in a wide area. |
Survey | Time Tingle Notice Time effects in a wide area. |
Time Twinkle View a place in a potential past or future |
Temporal Temptation View a creature in a potential past or future. |
Transcend Time Perceive area in a potential past or future. |
Sway | Tempo Understand time creatures and their motivations. |
Translate Time Crew can communicate with time creatures. |
Temporal Temptation Plant suggestions for future action in any mind. |
Temporal Tyrant Permanently change the mind of a Time creature. |
Tinker | Overklock Work with clock tools and protective devices. |
Tailor Tempo Make a machine operate faster or slower. |
Time Transformation Conjure objects from alternate timelines. |
Wish Break down causality. |
Wreck | Age Erodes Noisily compress the wear of time. |
Future Fault Expose objects to potential future events. |
Date of Destruction Future Fault, but silent. |
Tide of Time Future Fault a large area. |
Expanded Time Powers
Attune
Harness the power of Attune to perceive and manipulate supernatural energies, allowing you to detect and interact with supernatural beings and phenomena. Time does not grant access to another plane.
Chrono Sense Detect time creatures and powers.
Time creatures rarely bother to disguise themselves, but time manipulations can be very subtle and hard to detect, making this useful. Limited outcome suffices against something you can clearly see. You need greater outcome against against something that is hidden (standard outcome) or behind a wall (great outcome).
Causality Collapse Dismiss a Time creature or power effects.
This is different from other dismiss and dispel powers in that what you do is speed up the effect so that the duration runs out. You can end the operation of any power that has a duration, be it a summon or something else. The effect needed depends on the duration.
- Limited Outcome: End an effect with a duration less than a full score.
- Standard Outcome: End any effect that lasts a full score. This is the most common situation.
- Great Outcome: End an effect that lasts more than a score but less than a year. Such effects are created by long-term projects.
Dispelling is often used as a setup action to help another character in a situation when the opposition is using powers. This improves the position of the supported action.
It can also be used to break the continuing results of powers. When used directly, the effect is usually limited unless the opponent is relying on powers for their safety. Against an opponent that uses power to fly or even breathe you can have a better effect.
Chrono Conjuration Summon a Time creature.
Summon Time creatures or time twins from alternate timelines. A weakness of Time summoning is that it does not offer the control other powers do over their summons. You must bargain for their services. This means you usually try to summon creatures you expect to be friendly. A common trick is to summon alternate versions of yourself. One way to do this is to call three ages of fate, that is yourself at two additional different ages, with either the energy of youth, the maturity of adulthood, or the wisdom of age.
Another way Time summons is different is that it is basically impossible to research what creatures to summon. With infinite timelines and no real source of information, the best you can do is to picture what you want in your mind and call out to a creature based on this.
Time creatures generally come in three types, spirits, time tins, and chronovores.
Time spirits are immaterial and ephemeral. They have various Time powers and can help direct and control Time effects you use. They can use sophisticated powers and their agenda is to maintain the time stream.
Time Twins summons variants of known creatures from other timestreams or from a possible past or future. This is essentially an identical twin of the creature you based the power on, with some significant differences. Based on their experiences and choices in this alternate time stream they may have different abilities from their twin from your timeline. These alternate timelines are usually worse than the world you live in, leaving creatures from there traumatized in different ways.
Chronovores resemble normal creatures, having a biological body, metabolism, and functioning as ordinary living creatures but also have Time abilities. Chronovores are predators that haunt the timelines, attracted to extensive use of Time powers. They can be summoned but are very hard to deal with. A summoning usually lasts for the current score.
Outcome determines the amount of control you have over what kind of creature you summon.
- Limited Outcome summons only chronovores. You disturb the time continuum and a predator pounces on you out of time. Usually not helpful, but might attack other time-users warping time even more than you are.
- Standard Outcome summons a random Time Spirit or Time Twin of you. If you have previously summoned such a creature, you can choose to summon that individual again.
- Great Outcome allows you to summon a Time Twin of another creature you have a close connection to, such as close friendship.
Typical consequences include:
- The creature is hostile or incapacitated by trauma.
- You replace your Time Twin, ending up in their reality for a time.
- They observe you for their own future Time summoning.
- You get horrifying glimpses of the alternate time.
- Attract a chronovore.
Time Travel Extremely dangerous.
You and your crew can travel to the past, future, or to alternate timelines. This is extremely dangerous, not only because of paradox, you might also lose your way and be unable to return. Because there are infinite alternate timelines, it is rare that journeying into the past changes the present, and a future you travel to is only one of many possible futures. A more common use of Time Travel is to find some valuable object or information.
Command
Command and intimidate Time creatures, projecting authority. Position and effect depend on the situation and your relationship with the listeners.
Time Whisper Command Time creatures that don't understand you.
This is useful for intimidating Time creatures and commanding foreign or alien subordinates. Combined with Sway: Tempo, it allows two-way communication.
Chrono Command Help an ally resist.
You can warn someone of a danger they are about to face. You must have some way of communicating this information to them. You roll for this power as the situation comes up, but in the fiction you may have warned them in a flashback. This improves their position by two steps, entirely resisting consequences from a controlled or risky position and improving a desperate situation to controlled.
Temporal Tip Help yourself resist.
You sent a message from your future back to the present. A warning from the future allows you to use Command instead of the appropriate attribute (Insight, Prowess, or Resolve) to resist a consequence. The cost is that the stress cost increases, instead of six minus your die result, the cost is seven minus the die result, the cost of Temporal Tip as a Master power.
Time Tyrant Command Time creatures as a superior.
Targets will see you as an officer, professional superior, alpha, or other leader type outranking them. This does not remove existing loyalties, which can lead to conflicts. Understanding the social order of your targets helps avoid conflict with their established loyalties. Ordering Time Spirit to ignore a disturbance is harder (needs more outcome) than telling them to deal with it and move on, because their task is to protect the timeline.
Limited outcome might result in a creature not doing what it might not have done anyway, like forgetting to report you or give you a ticket. Standard outcome makes the creature do what it should, but in a way you decide, like a Time Spirit escorting you to safety or doing you a quick favor. Great outcome means targets will ignore their normal routine and go out of their way to please you, like chronovores fighting for you.
The position depends on the creatures' actual relationship to you—ordering a creature that sees itself as your superior is a desperate position. A controlled position comes from a creature that agrees you are superior, usually just making retrying harder. A risky position is typical against a creature that sees itself as your equal and not your enemy, possibly leading to heat, misunderstood orders, or small rebellions
Consort
Consort Time changes your age and at higher levels that of others. These powers might be used as a set-up action. This may give a bonus to effect or improved position, make success automatic, or even allow an action that someone of your age could not do.
A common consequences is that you are mistaken for someone, or that your assumed form is somehow a hindrance. You might be obnoxiously cute, trigger prejudices, or have unexpected handicaps. Outcome determines how exact your control of the change is.
Alter Age You can change your age.
This is not merely a physical change, your mind also changes, becoming more playful and physical when younger and more calm and wise as you age. You can also change your attire to remove wear and make it appropriate to your new age. Alter Age can be used as a set-up action for a number of other actions but may penalize other things, as appropriate to your new age.
Temporal Transition Become an alternate self.
You become a Time Twin, yourself as you would be in an alternate timeline. This can change your abilities for new ones or temporarily overcome some trauma.
Chrono Change Temporal Transition others.
This is Alter Age or Temporal Transition applied to a willing or helpless creature. You never know others as well as yourself, so if you mimic Temporal Transition you need one step greater outcome than you would need for yourself.
Temporal Thralls Temporal Transition crowds.
This is where Consort becomes a combination of the Chrono Change and Time Tyrant power abilities. You Chrono Change a number of existing creatures and give them a task that they will perform with gusto, turning them into single-minded minions. Targets must be willing, non-sentient like animals, or just very minor figures in the plot, many tiers below you.
This is usually used to create a host of goons that will fight and chase for you. Such goons are more interested in chasing and cornering targets than in actual combat. Or they can be given bit parts, creatures out of time acting as servants and workers.
Finesse
Temporal Turbo Increase the speed of a mount or vehicle.
Increase the speed of a mount or vehicle giving it fine quality.
Time Technique Set up a fine and potent close-range attack.
Time Trim Manipulate time precisely in small spots.
Manipulate time precisely in small spots. This can slow down or hasten alarms, timers, and other mechanisms.
Chrono Charge Set up a storm of blades, suppressing scale.
Hunt
Time Trace Track time-travellers and time warps.
Temporal Target Reverse time to make a creature attack itself.
Timelapse Change how much time an event takes.
Temporal Turmoil Reverse time to make several attacks go wild.
Prowl
Time Tactician A warning of future events.
Double Time Double your movement.
Temporal Teamwork Crew Time Tactician and Double Time.
Time Stop Only you can move.
Skirmish
Stop Watch Resist Time damage.
Time Touch Set up a melee attack.
Temporeal Tango Distracting slow time.
Time Torrent Set up a storm of attacks.
Study
Chrono Classifier Identify objects and creatures of Time.
Chrono Clarifier Learn the powers and abilities of Time.
Chrono Chronicle Observe the past and possible futures at your location.
Chrono Cartographer Chrono Chronicle on everything in a wide area.
Survey
Time Tingle Notice Time effects in a wide area.
Time Twinkle View a place in a potential past or future.
Temporal Temptation View a creature in a potential past or future.
Transcend Time Perceive area in a potential past or future.
Perceive a large area in the past or a potential future, giving you an idea of strategic events.
Sway
Tempo Understand time creatures and their motivations.
Translate Time Crew can communicate with time creatures.
Temporal Temptation Plant suggestions for future action in any mind.
Temporal Tyrant Permanently change the mind of a Time creature.
Tinker
Overklock Work with clock tools and protective devices.
Tailor Tempo Make a machine operate faster or slower.
Time Transformation Conjure objects from alternate timelines.
Wish Break down causality.
Wreck
Age Erodes Noisily compress the wear of time.
Future Fault Expose objects to potential future events.
Date of Destruction Future Fault, but silent.
Tide of Time Future Fault a large area.