Time is the eternal judge of all, the force that imposes a regular rhythm and order to things. Sorcery can partially overcome time, but only partially and in a limited fashion. This kind of magic is often thought of as dangerous, with the capacity to cause paradox and major disruption of the world, so it is regarded with even more suspicion than most other sorcery.
Interaction with Time are governed by Speed, and that is the difficulty of personal effects, though unwilling targets can use Dodge instead.
Duration for time effects can be confusing. In general, count duration in the time which moves fastest. Thus Time Cell counts time inside the cell, while Time Tomb counts time in the world outside.
Backlash with time effects removes you slightly from the time stream, reducing your Speed by one for the rest of the session.
Time Effects
Time Sense
The master of time can pierce the veils of time, looking into the past and future, and sensing any time distortion in the area or time near by.
Post cognition
You can look into the past to see what really happened in the past. This is not reading psychic impressions (use Divination for that), this is actually seeing exactly what happened as if you were there.
You can view things that have happened in the past with amazing accuracy. A roll of 20 gives a full impression of past events (just as if you had been there). A roll of 10 will give you a basic visual image, seen from some distance. If you do not know exactly when the event you want to see occurred, you have scant the past, increasing the difficulty by 5 or more. It can take considerable time to scan large spans of time, so it is always best if you now what date you are looking for.
Time Distortion Sense
When time is manipulated, it sends ripples through the continuum that you can sense. These ripples are easy to detect, but hard to pinpoint. The GM should give you warning well ahead of time when you encounter someone using Time magics other than time sense. Distance is about ten meters or minutes per point of Magic attribute you have.
Prediction
You can try to predict the future. This is very uncertain, so predictions are never very accurate. The GM will give you his best estimate of what will happen, but he might well be wrong. The difficulty is not static; the GM will simply expend more effort trying to think up a better prediction if you roll is better.
You are planning to attack a warehouse, and want a clue about how it will go. A result of 5 or so will give a general impression of a hard-fought victory, as the GM is expecting a tough but not impossible fight. A roll of 10 might yield images of the hostile sorcerer's flame blasts. A result of 15 might show how some goons as they come out of their hiding places (making it impossible for them to surprise you during the fight) while a result of 20 clearly shows the enemy sorcerer enchanting the goons' weapons to cause poisoned wounds.
Task Prediction
A specialized prediction effect where you look into the future to see the most opportune way to do specific action. This costs a Magic point and gives you an extra die (similar to a Fortune die) to add to any one task decided upon when casting the spell. If conditions change a lot before you use this bonus, it is lost, so task prediction is usually best used for immediate tasks. In order for another character to get this bonus, you must somehow transmit the information. This bonus does not stack with itself or other effects that grant extra dice beyond normal Fortune dice.
Conjure Time
Create extra time for personal use. Twist the laws of reality for your own pretty purposes. This cost a Magic point.
Time for Action
You create time for somebody to act, allowing him to do more in combat and action scenes. This affects the next sequence. Add 1d6 to the target's Initiative for the next round.
Time for Work
You can create more time for an individual, giving him more time for work, sleep, play and leisure. It seems time never runs out for this guy, though he moves no faster than usual. He gains a number of extra hours equal to your Magic to spend during the day.
Time Cell
You wrest your target out of the time stream. He now exists in a pocket of time, an empty bubble with a diameter equal to your Magic in meters. He stays there until some set event causes the Time Cell to collapse, whereupon he is restored to his original position in time. It can never last more than one hour per point of Magic spent creating it, and the minimum cost is one Magic point.
GMs are encouraged use this as a plot device; players can use it at the GMs whim, but it is generally much less interesting for them.
Time Cells are not very stable, but their existence can be tied up to specific events or objects. You can prepare the cell in advance, putting a bound supernatural creature, maze, trap or similar inconvenience in the Time Cell. When this obstacle has been overcome, by force, guile or other means, the cell collapses. If two or more people are put into the cell, it lasts until all living people in the cell agree to depart.
It can also be used as a retreat for study, healing and other activities you don't want interrupted.
The most common combat use of this effect is to place a monster or deathtrap in the time cell beforehand, then banish your opponents into it. For players, this might be played out, but for NPCs it's usually made as an abstract roll. A death trap pits your Intrusion scores against one another; for each point he fails by, he takes one wound point. He must try until he succeeds, but may add any Wound Points taken in previous attempts to his rolls.
Time Shift
You can cause a shift in the time stream, causing temporal displacement in time or changing the way time affects things.
The difficulty does not depend on the amount of time bridged, but on the connection between the present time and place and your target. So, if you want to travel to the time of Ancient Egypt, go to the pyramids. Because of the amount of flux still swirling through recent events, time travel of less than a hundred years are almost impossible.
When using Time Shift, you must research the time you want to go to and its relationship to your own time, finding the exact spot and time when time shift is possible. This must be done as a part of the preparations for an adventure, in collaboration with he GM. If you manage to come to the specific time and place and spend the Magic points, the story usually depends on this effect, and thus it works. Otherwise, it fails.
Restoration
You recreate a place, restoring ancient glories to fallen ruins and resetting traps and inanimate guardians. Anything that has been destroyed, worn out or fallen into decay in the location is restored; objects that were taken away are not. Some specific eternal guardians may be restored as well, but generally, people and animals are not affected.
This is great for adventures in exotic past locations, looking for treasures in buried palaces and so on.
Time Travel
Those present are whisked away to a faraway time. They usually stay there only for a limited time, or until a specific event occurs, but this is highly variable. Because this power involves no chi, changes caused are temporary and will have worked themselves out in the intervening time, so you usually cannot change the present by changing the past. You can gain new knowledge, rescue someone, recover artifacts and so on, depending on the exact properties of this particular time rift and the GM's whim.
Time Tomb
The reverse of Time Cell, Time Tomb puts the target into suspended animation, removing him from the time stream until the effect collapses. He either ceases to exist in the meantime, or stands about still as a statue, impervious to all.
You can only use Time Tomb on a helpless or voluntary target. Duration depends on the amount of Magic points you spend when invoking it. It can be broken with Remove Curse (from the Schticks Divination or Metamagic).
DamageImmunity does not protect against this effect, as it affects reality itself. It can thus be used to imprison very powerful entities who cannot ordinarily be slain.
| Magic Points Spent | Duration |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 Day |
| 2 | 1 Week |
| 3 | 1 Month |
| 5 | A year and a day |
| 7 | Ten years and a day |
| +2 | multiply time by ten |