Chaps, I've been toying with the idea of a proper discipline of psychic technique to do with the manipulation of time and control of. Essentially it's an expansion from the Divination tree with elements from biomancy with some overlap or other useful abilities concerning the effects of manipulation. Many of the ideas are intended to be high power and perhaps rather than be bought by experience alone, require discipline, training and focus to unlock.

Time is intended to be a difficult thing to control or manage and therefore every action from this tree will generate an amount of "Temporal Instability" which is rolled and tracked privately with the GM. Small abilities will generate little to no instability as their consequences on the continuum are intended as negligible however more powerful effects will cause a lot of problems if left to manifest. As this rises it will cause greater levels of unpleasantness as the passage of time eventually tries to rewrite and amend itself

I'm still working on the stat line and details but the basic overview for theoretical powers currently stands as:

Past/Future Sight - Allow the psyker to look forward or backwards in time for an amount of hours to see the events in the same place of what has happened or what will happen (latter is GM discretion and can of course be averted)

Speed/Slow Body- Allow the psyker to speed up the passage of time in a particular area. Such effects can be used to say speed up their regenerative processes for recovery or delay the effect of a poison to keep someone alive.

Speed/Slow Target - More intense, target a figure to say affect their movement or agility as they are slightly out of step with the passage of time. Attack or move slower/faster, better initiative...that sort of thing

<More pending>

Paradox - Top tier ability. Practically akin to a Wish spell from dnd, allows the psyker to make drastic changes (within reason) to the state of play. At GM discretion may be used to say rewrite an encounter which has occured. Say bring someone back from the dead by having that shot miss instead or remove a low tier enemy from existence in the fight somehow. Needless to say though that such events will have MASSIVE consequences even if successful so again the GM needs to be clear on controlling this.

The theory is still very much WIP though so brainstorming for initial ideas. Suggestions thus far? Havent written much though, on a brief break.

Just in case. Should it be narrative power granted to one and only hero (one and only party) or it should be permanent factor of play?

The idea with instability is more intended as an effect focused on those connected to the caster but with a focus on the psyker if required and with each step moving away in terms of links as the value drops to a steady medium. These persist irrespective of where the character goes. In the event of instability, depending on the results (table pending), backlash would prioritise them, followed by anything manipulated by them and then those connected immediately (party members, then allies etc if not covered by the previous.)

All abilities will likely have a component part required as some sort of time piece such as a chrono as a focus point for their power.

The idea with instability is more intended as an effect focused on those connected to the caster but with a focus on the psyker if required and with each step moving away in terms of links as the value drops to a steady medium. These persist irrespective of where the character goes. In the event of instability, depending on the results (table pending), backlash would prioritise them, followed by anything manipulated by them and then those connected immediately (party members, then allies etc if not covered by the previous.)

All abilities will likely have a component part required as some sort of time piece such as a chrono as a focus point for their power.

No, I mean... well, commonly hobbits don't have One Rings, but it's normal Frodo have it. He is the one who have though, so it's plot device, not a balance-needing issue. But if every hobbit have a One Ring that allow him to get invisible and command undead, it's definitly something strange.

So if you're creating a power that some chosen character or a couple of characters using - it's one matter, but if something that is aviable to anyone who want - it's completly differ.

Ah that, well given I'm trying to avoid making it buyable with XP the aim would be more that its picked up through roleplay and while I can only recommend that as few players as necessary have it to avoid multiple conflicts, if a GM wants to give it out en masse then they better be a **** time lord in order to fix it!

This reminds me of the loop the ToF adventure through at me when it suggested summoning the dead courier back to mind probe. Now that tool is constantly on the table, sigh.

Think about not only growing plants faster, but suddenly having hours to interrogate the prisoner instead of minutes. Able to see the punch code for the door? Check for ambushes (conflicting with personal augury). Your big bad blood thirster reduced to the speed of a nurgling.

As cool as the possibilities are, i think this is best handled by a hired npc for containment purposes.

This however is where the instability mechanism kicks in. Take the michael and over time the power gets tainted. Effects mirror and go wrong, visions get fuzzy, circumstances change from your perception and the visions are wrong (code change etc). It very much falls to the GM to determine the consequences in the continuum with excessive or reckless use.

Needless to say my list of counter effects are truly terrifying in preview with some high end consequences resulting in extreme premature ageing which causes temporary (or potentially permanent) stat loss. Slow cellular recovery to weaken natural healing...these ideas will sting

I appreciate some people are a little sceptical on whether this will work and are seeing problems with it. I agree there are some issues...I'm still running with it mind because I love the idea, I like coming up with weird ideas and I'm a stubborn sod. If you aren't keen on it then you are advised to not use it . A lot of this depends on how creative or quick on their feet the GM is and how quickly they can adapt an entire plot. I therefore recognise that this may not entirely be suitable for all circumstances. I'm happy to review any feedback with this idea which is brought up for the sake of refinement.

So I managed to look through and I was thinking of how to apply the Chrono Instability effect. The idea thus far is that each power accumulates a number of instability points from 1D5 for minor ones and up to 3D10 depending on the severity. The idea is that once you start screwing with time, it's very difficult to stop the consequences of your ability fully. You slowly create a running total which the GM keeps track of and then at their discretion or whenever another one gets used, they must roll a D100 and test against the current instability threshold. The main caster is of course the target but the GM may discretionary choose ally characters if they are associated but apply a negative modifier on the roll to give them greater chances of not being disrupted because one player went nuts and tried to rewrite the Horus Heresy.

After each roll on the table, reduce the amount of instability by 1D10 to a minimum of 5 points of instability.

Pass 0 DoS - Minor temporal inconvenience. Divination based powers fail, give false visions or illusions of a false past. The GM may give the player false information on divination rolls as their messing with time generates an alternative timeline which may never come to pass or never happened. At their discretion may also use this to change minor details of the plot such as rearrange an enemy guard pattern which they had initially expected and planned for only to have it redone. Alternatively the GM may have a single minor inconsequential item disappear from an affected players inventory as time rewrites to prevent them from acquiring it, either it fell from their pack, they never got to the merchant in the first place etc. Such item is advised to be small like a trinket or ammo clip.

* Minor knack, mess with their heads a bit with trinkets vanishing or false details. Designed to disorientate

1 DoS - Events of the past are rewritten. The GM may make any NPC ally or assistant exceptionally angry or hostile towards the subject as if all good relations have been obliterated and they have severely wronged or deceived them somehow. The consequences of this and entities affected are at the mercy of the GM and for their own amusement. The cause of this anger is not known to the affected character but may be an opportunity for a side quest to redeem themselves etc.

* This can be quite dangerous in the right hands but also quite benign. It could make a merchant they used to know refuse to do business with them since events were rewritten to have the lead psyker sleep with his daughter and knock her up but not call back or something all the way up to angering a Chaos Lord since they broke his favourite game set in an argument over which way Knights move in a five dimensional warp based chess game where the player insisted knights move up, right , forward and then backwards six weeks while the NPC disagreed and said it should have shifted a dimension aside and then moved.

2 DoS - The flow of time starts to become disrupted. For the next 1D5 hours of narrative time, affected players are acting out of flow with the normal passage of time and the GM may select whether this be fast or slow. They suffer a -30 penalty to all interaction tests due to being out of flow with time and either their agility bonus is doubled or halved depending which result is in use. Finally, acting out of sync with reality cause a significant strain on the body and once the period has expired, fast characters will find that any held clocks or time pieces are actually a few hours ahead and they must also suffer a number of levels of fatigue equal to how many hours the effect lasted which takes an equivalent number for it to disperse. Slow characters find that less time has passed and do not gain the fatigue.

* Argument for this is that being faster gives a sizeable edge in combat so the fatigue needs to kick in afterwards to remove it. Slow characters have their agility nerfed which is a pain in itself. Acting out of synch prevents interaction which in the right time can really hamper their ability to help with the plot so yes, disrupt.

Now we get to the more permanent stuff:

3 DoS - The affected character starts to suffer as the energies of time wrack their physical body. Permanently change the characters age and the age of all items on their person up or down by 1D10 for human characters or 1D100 for marine characters. The effect of this may vary and are in the hands of the GM to determine. Human characters may become frail or too young to operate, marines may find themselves going slightly more deranged. Items meanwhile also age to the same amount which of course means certain items on their person may spoil or cease to function after a decade plus of service. Their appearance may also change to match this.

*This can be an equally disruptive ability if used right but can also be a difficult one to play. The idea is that I want to make a character move slowly towards being weakened. Now for human characters this is easy to do as the body easily suffers the rigours of time but for marines it's a little tricky. I was toying with giving them a disorder or two. Feedback welcome.

4 DoS - Not sure on this one yet...

5+ DoS - A temporal paradox occurs. Heavy manipulation of time comes at a severe price. At random the GM is entitled to alter any major points of the plot as the players reckless manipulation has led to disastrous consequences such as losing them all their support from the Khornates due to the leader challenging the Berserker to an Arm Wrestle and instead blowing it off with a shotgun, thus permanently losing his support. Alternatively the GM is entitled to make various modifications to player equipment such as loss or damage to armour, weapons or gear with all the usual consequences thereof. Finally they may attempt to remove a single character from existence. With NO MODIFIERS WHATSOEVER the affected character must either make a dodge roll (to avoid a past killing blow), Toughness save (to ignore or shrug off a fatal wound or toxin), or Willpower Save (to avoid going nuts). If passed, no consequence. If failed, the character is removed from the flow of events and either not part of this or ceases to exist. Burning infamy can be used to prevent this as per rules for player death.

* I wanted this to be very much a "Alright, you messed with time, now time messes with you, using a bat to the face. Rewrite major events, strip you of support (or items) and even potentially remove NPC or characters from existence

The trouble with the 5 DoS effect is that any player can just use a few Infamy points to succeed. Is that normal?

...that or I make it akin to the peril of the warp 00 "Total Annihilation"?

...that or I make it akin to the peril of the warp 00 "Total Annihilation"?

So it's "Total Annihilation", but hey! You get a save!

I can live with that. Death or cease to exist.

Would excessive alterations in the time-stream draw unwanted attention. After-all there are always things lurking across the threshold. Some of the lore with hounds of tindalos could fit in to this set or be a good point to draw from. Mess with time and you get a fun new horror of constant a pursuit that requires very esoteric methods/practices to avoid/survive. If I remember correctly the hounds exist in 'angled' time rather than our 'curved' time. As such they can only enter/interact this reality through angled surfaces (such as the corners of walls) which may force the target to develop very specific practices and requirements for accommodations and items.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hounds_of_Tindalos

I have to agree that this would be an extremely difficult discipline to acquire.

Perhaps the information exists in only two near unique sources: "The Tzeenichian Terrible Time Twister's Tome " or " The (Theoretical) Journal of Proceedings ( in potentia) of The Ordo Chronus".

Well, the idea is interesting. There many powers from multiple books which would fall into this "chronomancy".

I could be Enuncia type of discipline. Similar to https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/68812-enuncia-in-black-crusade/?hl=enuncia

Would be nice to see the extension.